Brewed Fresh Daily

JPMorgan to freeze foreclosures

The Kauffman Foundation has launched a remake of its website.

Jack and I worked together when I was at Case Western Reserve. He is a gem.

Cleveland (Oct. 31, 2008) — Jack Kleinhenz, Ph.D. CEO of Kleinhenz & Associates was recently named a Fellow by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) at its annual meeting in Washington, DC.

NABE Fellows are selected on an annual basis by NABE’s board of directors. Selection criteria include service as a professional business economist, contributions to the field of business economics, and outstanding contributions to NABE.

Kleinhenz joins a select group of 100 NABE Fellows that include Nobel Laureates Lawrence Klein, Milton Friedman, James Tobin; Federal Reserve Board Chairmen Paul Volcker, Alan Greenspan; several former chairs of the President’s council of economic advisors and current or former presidents of Federal Reserve Banks.

Richard Herman passed me along an interesting white paper produced for Advance NEO by Scott Shane at Case Western Reserve University. It’s sure to spark some discussion:

Contrary to much popular opinion on economic development, encouraging the total amount of entrepreneurial activity in a region is not a worthwhile goal for philanthropists or policy makers.

The paper concludes:

This white paper suggested several next steps to take in enhancing the amount of “attractive” entrepreneurial activity in the region. The Fund should collect primary data to understand better how to encourage the development of “attractive” entrepreneurial activity in the region. The Fund should create a dashboard of measures of “attractive” entrepreneurial activity to measure how well the region is doing in enhancing the level of “attractive” entrepreneurial activity. The Fund should create a task force to identify specific interventions to attract high-growth venture capital-appropriate entrepreneurial talent to the region. The Fund should also create a task force to identify interventions to encourage the growth of existing businesses. Finally, the Fund should coordinate its efforts with those of the Lt. Governor’s office.

You can download the white paper here.

Compare a recent report from the Kauffman Foundation on strategies to support entrepreneurs available here.

Richard Herman has a lot to say about this report. I posted his e-mail over at NEOhioXT.

via Twitter:

Wendy Hoke has an article on Cleveland in the Christian Science Monitor:

From housing rubble, sprouts green furniture

What would it take for Cleveland to scale this thinking into a city strategy? Youngstown’s starting to think at this level with its Grey to Green Festival.

Despite Court Wrangle, Ohio Officials Take Steps to Builds Life-Sci Industry in State

Eaton Corp. gets $71 million from state to move from Cleveland to Chagrin Highlands

Ohio’s stake in GM, Chrysler enormous

Rebuilding a neighborhood: Group works to revitalize Fairfax, one house at a time

NE Ohio plant could be hurt by a GM-Chrysler deal

Hudson, Boston Heights officials pursue partnership

Clay Webb, from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Chicago Regional Office, sends this along:

Dear Neighborhoods, USA Members and Friends,

An award opportunity through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) will honor ten outstanding individuals who have made significant contributions to improve health and health care, especially to underserved communities across the United States. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community Health Leaders award was established in 1991 to recognize individuals who make extraordinary contributions to improve health and health care in their communities. You may know someone in your community who would be a good candidate for this award.

Only ten awards in the amount of $125,000 each will be made for the 2009 award cycle, so it is not an award opportunity that is widely available.

If so, the nominee would need to meet the following criteria:
Shows innovation in starting or enhancing a grassroots initiative which improves health or health care in their community
Is in mid-career with a three to ten year record of accomplishment
Has not received significant national recognition for their work
Is a citizen or permanent resident of the United States or its territories by the date full nominations are due
Is affiliated with a public or nonprofit organization that is tax-exempt under Section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code

While you may know of individuals who are high ranking health care employees or senior level officials, they would not likely be competitive candidates.

The nomination deadline is: November 7, 2008 (2 p.m. PMT)
Nominators will be notified if their candidates are selected to move to the full nomination stage.

In order to nominate a person who meets the criteria, you musty submit your nomination online at:
http://www.communityhealthleaders.org/leaders/nominate_leader/brief_nomination

The nomination is relatively simple and will not take long. It involves answering a few questions regarding who you are and how you know the individual you are nominating and information on the nominee along with a brief (250 word) description of why you are nominating that person.

To find out more information on the award opportunity please visit the website at:
http://www.rwjf.org/applications/solicited/cfp.jsp?ID=20422

or you may contact:

Helen Dundas, Administrative Coordinator
RWJF Community Health Leaders
hdundas@rwjf.org
Office: (609) 627-5809
http://www.communityhealthleaders.org

It looks to me that David Daberko left one heck of a legacy.

The Washington Post reported yesterday: a Cleveland institution has fallen.

NCB cratered largely due to a misguided strategy to pursue the subprime market. One commentator notes:

While it’s true that the weakened housing and credit markets made the most dramatic impact on National City in 2007, the crime for which it now faces the gallows was committed in 1999. That’s when former chief executive David Daberko changed the bank’s business mix by accumulating higher-yielding, but riskier, loans (most notably subprime mortgage loans).

As Bill Callahan has documented, commercial banks’ subprime strategies dismantled twenty years of development in Cleveland neighborhoods in a matter of months. From yesterday’s Washington Post:

Last year alone, 8,000 homes went into foreclosure in the city, whose population has shrunk below 450,000. With tax collections shriveling and a recession looming, the city is in its worst shape in years.

Misguided meddling in local and statewide politics gave us the Greater Cleveland Partnership’s laughably deceptive “Learn and Earn” casino proposal and pushed Tim McCormack, a persistent critic of the business leadership, out the door — as McCormack believed at the time — to prepare the way for a convention center. Read more.

(Looks like McCormack was pretty much right about that one.)

And Daberko walked away with a nice severance.

(Graphic from this story at the Dayton Daily News.)

An impressive line-up last week:

Agenda
Some videos

3 hospitals, UA and med school create BioInnovation Institute in Akron, a multimillion-dollar medical research program