urbanSTL

Bloomberg........a conservative-leaning business journal attacking St. Louis - a Democratic-run city for over a half-century.

Pay attention to the jabs. Consider the source.

I am sooooooooooooo tired of this sh*t talk about the loss of corporate HQs.

I also get tired of this bullsh*t about St. Louis is shrinking and "contracting".

Some journalists are LAZY asses who simply do not do their homework or they simply want to attack.

While the City of St. Louis is "contracting" (although more slowly), the metro area's population hasn't contracted nor has the metro GDP. Both are growing albeit slower than the national average.

Additionally, despite some global/corporate HQ losses, St. Louis has CONSISTENTLY had about the same amount F500-F1000 for the last 10 years or greater ...................and................. the firms are LARGER than they EVER have been.

The first five F500 ALONE for Missouri are St. Louis-based and represent about $172-billion in revenues. There are 18 F1000 firms based in the St. Louis area.

Express Scripts alone had revenues of nearly $102-BILLION in 2015. No company in St. Louis history nor Missouri history - has ever had this volume of revenue.

Express Scripts is homegrown. Centene moved from Wisconsin when it was a start-up, but it too is practically homegrown. Monsanto, Ameren, Edward Jones, RGA, Emerson, Graybar, Peabody etc. That's just the F500.

Sigh......I will say that although some big HOUSEHOLD names are gone i.e. A-B, TWA, McDonnell, Southwestern Bell etc. Other big firms have come to fill the gaps. Other cities have not been so fortune. Cities lose HQs. M&As (Mergers and Acquisitions) in business happen. Chicago, New York, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh (Heinz), Kansas City etc. etc. etc. have all lost corporate firms through mergers, relocations, bankruptcy etc.

St. Louis is no exception.

Further, Lambert was a major primary hub airport. Lambert, in my opinion, has been "right-sized" although it could use some additional international flights. The only reason Lambert was so big was because TWA used it for its primary hub airport. Other cities have lost hub status or hometown airlines - and are worse off - in many instances. The only reason the 30% flight reduction in Cleveland seems better is because Cleveland was not a major primary hub for Continental (now United). The cuts in Cleveland are (were) actually worse. Today, Lambert does almost twice the traffic.

Keep some things in perspective:
1. Manufacturing has dipped in metro St. Louis, which helps to explain, I think, challenges in GDP growth. The local economy is transitioning.
2. Overall, GDP has risen in metro St. Louis.
3. Population has risen in metro St. Louis.
4. Corporations (public and private) have increased in number and revenues.
5. CORTEX and T-REx, which were not mentioned in the horrendous, lazily-written article, is responsible for creating THOUSANDS jobs in the city thus far.
6. Since American's decapitation of Lambert, Lambert is now more vibrant and busier than it has been in recent years thanks mostly to Southwest Airlines.
7. St. Louis' pre-recession employment numbers have recovered and now are at an all-time high.
8. St. Louis is consistently ranking as a top start-up scene.

Despite hits it has taken, how long must St. Louis keep debunking this bunk that it is dying?

http://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/j ... -boomtown/

arguably the single-biggest favor the federal government can do for St. Louis’s startup scene is to change its policies on antitrust enforcement. For more than thirty years Washington has allowed corporate mergers and acquisitions to take place largely unimpeded, to the point where a handful of huge companies dominate market after market. Most of those behemoths are located in places like New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and LA. And most startups today, especially in the technology fields, never expect to grow their companies, but instead hope to get bought out by one of the big boys. This makes for a useful “exit strategy” for investors. But it also leads to less competition: startups seldom get big enough to challenge the incumbents. And it means that smaller cities like St. Louis that have painstakingly nurtured startups are likely to see most of them skip town after getting gobbled up by the Googles, Facebooks, and Pfizers of the world. In that scenario, instead of competing in the big leagues, St. Louis would become an uncompensated farm team for San Francisco and Boston.

Bats!!

I like the idea of a St. Louis city state the size of Iceland.

^And like St. Louis, Iceland has an awesome flag!!