Nugget Market, a family owned business that started in 1926 in Woodland, CA, is number ten on Fortune Magazine’s list of the top one hundred best companies to work for in 2009.  Nugget Market has nine locations in the greater Sacramento area, and the corporate headquarters is in Woodland. 

In the middle of all the gloom and doom we’ve been hearing about businesses closing, job cuts, unemployment, foreclosures…….and on and on…..it’s good to hear a positive note ring out.  Congratulations to Nugget Markets and all the Sacramento folks that work there!

Nugget Market One of Fortune's 100 Best Places to Work

Forbes.com has ranked Sacramento number two housing market to watch in the U.S. because of rising home sales.  Mark Feder, CEO of Radar Logic, in an interview with forbes.com said that it is a positive sign that home sales are up, but that doesn’t guarantee that the market has hit bottom.  The increase in activity is because motivated sellers (mostly banks) are slashing prices; approximately two thirds of the homes sold in Sacramento in 2008 were foreclosures.  In December, 2,485 new and existing homes sold in Sacramento County. A dip in the county’s median sales price to $176,000, lowest since May 2001, drove 2,148 existing-home sales to the highest for the month since 2004. 

Is this good news or bad news?  According to all the experts it’s a little of both.  The record number of foreclosures (the bad news) has driven prices down so that more people can actually afford to buy a house (the good news).  The distinction of being the number two market in the country to watch is a big responsibility so hopefully we will live up to these big expectations and the sales will continue.

Maybe all the experts are wrong and the reason home sales are up is that everyone has found out that Sacramento is really a great place to live.  Sounds like a slogan for advertising, maybe I should try to sell it to the new mayor……..”Sacramento, a great place to live!” 

Sacramento Real Estate Market

I know this doesn’t affect Sacramento directly, but some things just make us feel so outraged that we have to step up on the old soap box and clear the air.  The former Merrill Lynch CEO, John Thain, was abruptly ousted Thursday amid talk that he rushed to give billions in bonuses to Merrill Lynch executives and spent over a million dollars decorating his office just before his company went under and was taken over by Bank of America.  This company was laying off thousands of workers because of losses and the stock market slide meant thousands more people were losing a large percentage of their retirement savings, also handled by Merrill Lynch, while their CEO was spending crazy money like $1400 for a trash can for his office.  That million dollars that he used to decorate his office would have kept 20 people working at a salary of $50,000 for a year; wonder how many mortgage payments that would have paid or foreclosures might have been avoided, not to mention the $4 billion in executive bonuses he pushed through before the Bank of America bailout.  This is just one example of the reason our tax dollars are being used to bail out Wall Street.  I’m not naive enough to think that the purchase of a few golden trash cans would wreck our economy but the crazy bonuses paid to CEO’s and executives as a reward for reckless investment and spending practices and then bailing out their failing companies is hardly a good example for getting our country back on track.

I say good job Bank of America for saying goodbye to John Thain.  I hope other companies take a look at some of their spending practices too, and now I can step down from my soap box and get on with my day. TGIF!!!

Former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain