Jay Hancock - baltimoresun.com

A business columnist bids farewell and looks back

Jay Hancock — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 05:01:00 GMT

It's not about more or less regulation; it's about the right regulation

There comes a time for every trader to tally the bets that paid off, revalue the stinkers and recalibrate assumptions according to changing facts.

Want to create jobs? Stop complaining and get to work

Jay Hancock — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:42:00 GMT

I located some job creators. Fells Point Wholesale Meats puts protein on the table every day at hundreds of restaurants and hotels from Cecil County to Northern Virginia.

Exelon gets tax cuts despite pledge to locate in Baltimore

Jay Hancock — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Among the many advantages Constellation Energy's headquarters gives Baltimore — Fortune 500 cachet, hundreds of well-paid workers, millions in charity — is this: The building pays sticker price on property taxes — $745,000 a year.

Electric deals often look good — until the contract ends

Jay Hancock — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 23:08:00 GMT

Your first job as a Maryland electricity shopper is to sign up for a good deal at a good price. I'll remind you how to do so later in the column.

Price funds grant small but exclusive Facebook entree

Jay Hancock — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Among the elite insiders who got to invest in Facebook before it goes public were several Silicon Valley venture capitalists, a Russian oligarch and the rock star Bono.

Holiday spending wasn't as spirited as reported

Jay Hancock — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:58:00 GMT

This shouldn't surprise you. The holiday shopping season was not gangbusters after all.

Obama plan not the biggest factor for U.S. factory revival

Jay Hancock — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Lion Brothers is outsourcing again. Unpaid child laborers will design one of the Owings Mills company's newest embroidered emblems.

New O'Malley wind farm proposal still a long shot

Jay Hancock — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 01:16:00 GMT

In its most important respects, Gov. Martin O'Malley's new proposal to build a wind farm in the Atlantic Ocean isn't different from the old one.

Queries about Romney's jobs record miss bigger point

Jay Hancock — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 05:00:00 GMT

Did Mitt Romney destroy or create jobs while running Bain Capital?

After urologists got machine, cancer treatments soared

Jay Hancock — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:49:14 GMT

Four years ago, doctors at Chesapeake Urology Associates started ordering the most expensive kind of prostate-cancer therapy for many more of their patients.

Cohen saved billions, showed health regulation can work

Jay Hancock — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:40:00 GMT

For years, Hal Cohen was director of the rate-setting Health Services Cost Review Commission

Hospitals gouge employers and insurance companies. Combining into powerful alliances, they raise prices almost at will, forcing carriers to pass the costs on to patients and the companies they work for.

Baltimore health deal reveals the future of Medicare

Jay Hancock — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:20:05 GMT

If you want to understand a major reason medical costs are out of control, breaking the federal budget and dividing the country, look at the types of people enrolled in XLHealth's Medicare insurance plans.

Millennial Media challenges giants in hot mobile-ad trade

Jay Hancock — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:58:00 GMT

In 1996 Robert H. Frank published "The Winner-Take-All Society," an explanation of why so few in the wired world do so well and why everybody else falls short. The intervening years have only strengthened his case that, in a networked economy, most sales, profits and other rewards go to a small group of companies and individuals.

T. Rowe Price fears high-frequency computer trading

Jay Hancock — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 02:38:00 GMT

Along with Europe's financial crisis, Middle East unrest and sluggish U.S. growth, mutual-fund seller T. Rowe Price has identified a 2012 economic risk you probably haven't thought about.

In the gambling arms race, Maryland to fall behind again

Jay Hancock — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 23:21:00 GMT

In the contest between marijuana and gambling to gain acceptance by generating new tax revenue, gambling just pulled three reels of cherries.

What to expect in business and financial news in 2012

Jay Hancock — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 05:00:00 GMT

What the year is likely to bring: Further housing price declines, more federal budget fights, the departure of Baltimore's only Fortune 500 corporate headquarters and computerized electricity meters that many seem to fear will read their minds and give them cancer.

Holiday layoffs another step back for Sparrows steel mill

Jay Hancock — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 21:40:00 GMT

Speculation about WCI Steel's bankruptcy started circulating early in 2003.

Plan your end-of-life care or others will do it for you

Jay Hancock — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 00:54:00 GMT

The way Dr. Dan Morhaim describes it, the hardware of prolonging lives is far more advanced than the software.

Mercantile discipline could make 1st Mariner shipshape

Jay Hancock — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 01:00:00 GMT

The winds of economic destruction blow as hard in Baltimore as anywhere else. But business brainpower tends to stay anchored to the land of pleasant living.

Work in progress, O'Malley energy policy yields results

Jay Hancock — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:14:00 GMT

As a connoisseur of the wide open spaces between what politicians say and what politicians do, I saw promise in Gov. Martin O'Malley years ago.

Exelon boss wants merger badly, and he's paying for it

Jay Hancock — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 04:01:00 GMT

John Rowe made no secret of the fact that he badly wanted a signature merger to top off his career as the chief executive of Exelon Corp. How badly can be seen in the settlement he just agreed to in Exelon's bid to purchase Baltimore's Constellation Energy.

Customers protest fund switch by Constellation suitor Exelon

Jay Hancock — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 20:34:00 GMT

The dismantling of Exelon Corp.'s Zion Station nuclear power plant near Chicago is setting several remarkable precedents.

Groupon: Baltimore restaurants hot and cold on deals

Jay Hancock — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 23:57:00 GMT

Has The Prime Rib, which requires waiters to wear tuxes and exudes "the intoxicating aroma of old money," according to Esquire magazine, got a deep discount deal for you.

City raises stakes, questions in convention race

Jay Hancock — Tue, 31 May 2011 04:00:00 GMT

If you want to win an arms race, minor escalation is not the way to go. Only after President Ronald Reagan started developing a wildly expensive and impractical system to shoot down enemy missiles did the Soviet Union give up the Cold War.

This time, Constellation takeover will go through

Jay Hancock — Sun, 01 May 2011 04:00:00 GMT

Sometime around May 2012, you will open your BGE statement and react with mild pleasure, perhaps, on seeing that your bill is reduced by $200 or so.