Articles Archive - Page 53 of 157 - Pittsburgh Quarterly

Each year in the summer issue, we ask a group of Pittsburgh’s leading investment experts to answer a question for our readers in 250 words or less. This year’s question: “The coronavirus has led to the first bear market in more than a decade with widespread uncertainty remaining. How are you positioning your client portfolios …

Positioning Client Portfolios: Fairview Capital, Shorebridge, PWA, WesBanco Read More »

Profiles

Vision and Action: A Remembrance of Paul O’Neill

by Douglas Heuck

I first met Paul O’Neill 23 years ago. I was running a project at the Post-Gazette called PG Benchmarks, which compared Pittsburgh to regions across the country with the goal of elevating Pittsburgh’s moribund trajectory. Aside from publishing statistics and stories, we held periodic roundtable discussions, the first of which was on the economy. I …

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Regional News

Pandemic Heats Up Housing Market

by Julia Fraser

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted business as usual in the residential real estate industry as it swept through the Pittsburgh region in March. It shut the doors on open houses, cancelled showings and stifled home inspections. But it failed to curb demand. A Howard Hanna real estate agent helped a seller stage a home via Facetime …

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Regional News

Pandemic Slams Pittsburgh Jobs

by Julia Fraser

The COVID-19 pandemic continued its attack on the Pittsburgh metropolitan job market in May with the region losing 175,800 jobs since May 2019, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. All of Pittsburgh Today’s 15 benchmark regions posted significant job losses in May. The seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area lost 14.6 percent over its jobs …

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Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast

Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast: Diamonte Walker, URA of Pittsburgh Deputy Executive Director

by Donald Bonk

Donald Bonk interviews Diamonte Walker, deputy executive director of the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Pittsburgh, as part of the Pittsburgh Tomorrow podcast series. The transcript is abridged and edited for clarity. View the episode archive here. Read Diamonte Walker’s full bio here. “A lot of folks didn’t believe that Pittsburgh would become what it is. …

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Region

VISTAs in Pittsburgh

by David M. Feehan

Editor’s note: This is part one of a three-part series. We came to Pittsburgh from all across the United States—from California and Oregon, from Minnesota and Michigan and Alabama, from Florida and New York, from big cities and small towns. We came to Pittsburgh with one mission in mind: To eliminate poverty. We were VISTA …

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Regional News

Breathing Bad Air

by Jeffery Fraser

Air pollution from traffic and industrial stacks finds its way to most places in Allegheny County. But minority and low-income neighborhoods are more likely to endure the highest levels and the health risks that come with not being able to find respite from bad air, a University of Pittsburgh study reports. Researchers mapped black carbon …

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Creative Capital

A Great Mind Ponders Grim Alternatives

by Greg Curtis

For readers who missed part 1 of this series of posts, I am summarizing a fictional novel written almost forty years ago. When George suggested that Grace Atkinson be summoned to the deliberations on the Eastern Shore, not everyone was enthusiastic. For one thing, Grace was recovering from a stroke. Moreover, as one Panel member …

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American Spirit

The Neighbors

by Kate Benz

The cookies had come out of the oven earlier in the week. Delicious and gooey and way too tempting. Free range brown eggs, Amish butter flavored with sea salt, and semi-sweet chocolate chips that had tumbled out of a shimmering gold bag from Ghirardelli, the same chocolate chips that had been pillaged from the shelves …

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Money

Positioning Client Portfolios: PNC, Confluence Financial Partners, J.P. Morgan, Huntington

by PQ Staff

Positioning Client Portfolios: PNC, Confluence Financial Partners, J.P. Morgan, Huntington Read More »

Nature

The Invincible Elder

by Daryln Brewer Hoffstot

“Judas was hang’d on an elder…” —Biron in Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost” “What shall we do with it?” Ron Weasley asked Harry Potter and Hermione in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows.” “It’s the elder wand. The most powerful wand in the world. With it we’d be invincible.” Who knew that the lowly-looking shrub perched …

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Business

Working in the Coronavirus Era

by Douglas Heuck

Q. How do you expect the aftermath of the coronavirus to change the working conditions for the American workforce? A. It’s definitely going to change working conditions. It’s also going to change the way we arrange work. Social distancing is going to change the workplace. The recovery is going to be gradual. I think you’re …

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Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast

Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast: Aaron Watson, CEO of Piper Creative

by Donald Bonk

We began recording the voices of Pittsburgh Tomorrow in January through early March as a new decade fueled excitement about the future of our community. We delayed publishing the interviews, however, during the pandemic shutdowns. Now, it is too soon to know how the virus, it’s economic aftermath and the recent protests and riots will …

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Regional News

An Eroding Anomaly

by Bill O'Toole

The economic fallout of the pandemic threatens to weaken long-struggling fire and ambulance services in southwestern Pennsylvania that were already strapped for cash. Although the way the region’s fire and ambulance services are structured varies, they share daunting challenges including a dearth of new staff and a perennial lack of funding. And social distancing restrictions …

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Creative Capital

The Plan That Would Have Changed the World

by Greg Curtis

For readers who missed part 1 of this series of posts, I am summarizing a fictional novel written almost 40 years ago. Gen. Willy Green sat staring at the file on his desk, still not quite believing what it contained. The second document in the file—the one right after the red-outlined official form that told …

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Culture

Pittsburgh in Crisis

by John Beale

Editor’s note: 2020 has been full of calamity and adversity and it’s only June. Whether the pandemic and unprecedented economic shutdown or the more recent protests that have erupted here and across the world, the ordeals have ushered in a year that’s been unrecognizable from any that preceded it. Photographer John Beale has captured images …

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Money

Positioning Client Portfolios: Federated Hermes, Northwestern Mutual, Bill Few Associates, Schenley Capital

by PQ Staff

Positioning Client Portfolios: Federated Hermes, Northwestern Mutual, Bill Few Associates, Schenley Capital Read More »

Regional News

COVID-19 Survey: Allegheny County Residents React to the Pandemic and Shutdown

by Pittsburgh Today Staff

Stay-at-home orders, business closures and other social distancing measures taken to slow the spread of the coronavirus in Pennsylvania were appropriate and necessary in the eyes of 70 percent of Allegheny County residents surveyed last week. More than two-thirds reported they’ve suffered no or only minor financial losses as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. …

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American Spirit

Happy Hour

by Kate Benz

The boxed wine seemed like a good idea. So did the cheese—smoked Gouda and Wisconsin cheddar that came in thick blocks and occupied all the real estate on a fancy cracker dusted with sea salt. So the place mats were arranged on the weathered picnic table that in another lifetime was painted a deep, forest …

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Opinion

Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste

by Douglas Heuck

By chance, in early January, I watched a Netflix series called “Pandemic,” so my sensors were attuned early for the virus news from China. I was initially surprised that people were slow to give it credence and that financial markets blithely reached all-time highs Feb. 19. Soon enough though, as virus news swept the globe …

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Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast

Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast: Michael McQuade, VP for Research at CMU

by Donald Bonk

Pittsburgh Tomorrow Podcast: Michael McQuade, VP for Research at CMU Read More »

Regional News

April Unemployment Nears 17 Percent

by Julia Fraser

Unemployment in the seven-county Pittsburgh Metropolitan Statistical Area reached 16.8 percent in April—just below the region’s peak unemployment rate in the early 1980s. For the first time since the collapse of the steel industry, fewer than one million people were employed in the Pittsburgh region, according to preliminary employment data from the Pennsylvania Department of …

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