Bankruptcy protection may be needed for the city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. It's just a sign of the times in a down economy, right? Dauphin County, which is a guarantor of Harrisburg bonds, has given permission to a bond trustee, TD Bank, to sue the city over $35 million it owes on bond payments for an incinerator project, the Central Pennsylvania Business Journal reported Thursday.
These days, mixed economic news is as good as it gets and the U.S. economy seems balanced, which is to say teetering -- on a cycle of quick ups and downs.
Unexpectedly, the Institute of Supply Management said Wednesday that manufacturing expanded in August with the headline index climbing from 55.5 to 56.3. New orders were down slightly, but production increased, as did employment, which has grown for nine consecutive months.
Automatic Data Processing Inc. countered that with its monthly private-sector job report. It said jobs, not including government jobs, were down by a net of 10,000 in August on the loss of 40,000 goods-producing jobs and the addition of 30,000 service-oriented positions. On Friday, the government is expected to announce the unemployment rate rose to 9.6 percent last month, up from the current 9.5 percent.
Auto sales were also down in August, on average 21 percent compared to August 2009, when the government was spending a portion of a $3 billion "cash for clunker" allocation, which eventually helped spur the sales of about 677,000 new cars.
