THE WEEK THAT WAS
WINNER: Tampa Bay housing market
Median prices here have climbed year-over-year for 30 of the past 31 months. June sales reached second-highest level since the bust.
LOSER: Tampa Bay cruise ship market
New mega-ships cannot fit under the Sunshine Skyway. The local cruise market will decline dramatically without a new bridge or a new terminal.
"Starting more than a decade ago, the (auto) industry began recalling on average more vehicles every year than it makes. "These (surging recall) numbers suggest sloppy production by carmakers, but data gathered by J.D. Power and Associates and Consumers Union … show the opposite: steady improvement, year after year," Popular Mechanics reported. Actually, what owners are being caused is undue trips to the dealership so they can be sold new cars. As Automotive News explained to its own readers in March: "The word 'recall' tends to grab a car owner's attention. Some dealerships have tried to take advantage of that, sending out mailings that look like vehicle recall notifications but are really advertisements designed to drum up sales or service appointments."
— Holman W. Jenkins Jr., Wall Street Journal