The latest realty studies report for the Phoenix resale home market showed that the typical fall downturn began as expected in August. The 8,790 sales recorded were a decline from the 10,860 recorded at the peak in March, but this August was slow even compared to August 2009.

If you grew up in Arizona you probably remember learning about the five C's, an easy way of remembering the major components of the state's economy at the time.

The recession has caused all sorts of difficulties for CFOs: falling earnings, tumbling stock prices and, occasionally, knotty negotiations with lenders. For most of them, it has also brought tougher targets for earning their bonuses.

On August 16 the Japanese Cabinet Office announced that Japan's second-quarter GDP was for the first time smaller than China's. A media frenzy ensued, and analysis firms raced to predict when China would surpass the U.S.

Home prices in Phoenix have been on a welcome upswing for several months, but preliminary data for July shows no change from last July, according the W. P. Carey School's Karl Guntermann, who calculates the ASU-Repeat Sales Index (ASU-RSI).

Before a bank offers you a mortgage re-fi, or a credit card company dangles a low interest rate before your eyes, some information-systems worker has probably pegged you as a promising prospect. He most likely used predictive modeling to do it, and it wasn't a quick, easy task.

High foreclosure rates and negative equity continue to haunt real estate markets across the nation. In fact, a new report states that about 20 percent of mortgages nationally are under water.

A cynic might say that information systems consultants shortchange their clients. They can, for example, promise more than they deliver. Or they can tarry and delay. Or they might ask, on the back end, to bill for "unanticipated" work.

Companies like IBM, PetSmart and Marriott have been proving that enormous success, and enormous profits, can be found in services. Yet services have always been difficult to get your arms around — difficult to understand.

The small increases in Phoenix housing prices that began this spring will likely continue for only a month or two longer, then flatten out for "an extended period," said Karl Guntermann, a professor of real estate who calculates the ASU-Repeat Sales Index (ASU-RSI) at the W. P. Carey Sc