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September EYE on Business-Montana Chamber Newsletter

It’s the Economy,
Stupid!

With all the various issues on folks’
minds these days, the #1 concern
is still the economy. That’s why we
were happy to sponsor the 4th Annual Economic Outlook –
Midyear Update series the past few weeks.

And the response was great! We expanded the event from two
locations last year to six sessions across Big Sky Country this
year. At each location, we had around 100 attendees, so it was
obviously important information.

We invited Pat Barkey and Paul Polzin back again this year, as
we have every year, to provide analysis and update their Winter
Outlook series.

The Bureau of Business and Economic Research
also conducted registration for us. We greatly enjoyed
working with them on this expanded series.
Our sponsorship of the program was significantly up this year,
too, with the following series sponsors: BlueCross BlueShield
of Montana; Davidson Companies; Glacier Bancorp; Liberty
Northwest; Montana State Fund; Northern Broadcasting
System; and NorthWestern Energy. In addition, the following
companies sponsored individual locations: Burlington Northern
Santa Fe Railroad; Montana-Dakota Utilities; Qwest; and Washington
Corporations. We were also happy to work with the local
chambers of commerce in each location to get the word out.
In case you missed it, here’s the basics:

• Montana’s “hit” from the “Great Recession” is significant,
but much less than the national average. However, it was
worse than we expected a half-year ago;

• While construction was and is still hard hit, retail got hit
harder than expected and mining actually did better than
expected;

• Recovery appears to have begun, but it will be slower and
weaker than hoped. The U.S. Chamber is actually sounding
alarms about double-dip recession, now;

• Federal deficits will be huge;

• Rural Montana has done better than “urban” Montana.
Space prohibits going into much more detail, but please check
out our website for further information. And mark your
calendar for July 29 and the following couple of weeks for the
2010 Update series!

Please note Chelsea Fagen is now Chelsea Culpon, married
August 15th. Congratulations and best wishes to her and Chris!

By Webb Brown

President/CEO

Montana Chamber of Commerce

Full Newsletter: http://www.montanachamber.com/uploads/docs/Website%20pdfs/September%20EYE%202009.pdf

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