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Maui County
The Maui 10
Who's the county's most powerful player?
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October 12, 2006
RANK PREVIOUS COMPANY
1
3 Maui Electric Co.
2
1 Tesoro Hawai`i
3
2 Maui Land &
Pineapple Co.
4
7 Weinberg Foundation
5
4 Alexander &
Baldwin
6
5 Makena Resort
7 6 Dowling Co.
8
8 Wailuku Water Co.
9
9 Monsanto Hawai`i
10 10 Hawaiian Telcom
OIL DROPS
Tesoro is in a bad spot, which is why it drops a notch this week.
You know, they're making less money these days because the price of gas
is dropping—a lot lower on the mainland than here, to be sure, but it's
dropping nonetheless. And it looks to drop even further, given that the
price of crude oil dropped below $60 a barrel last week. Oil for less
than $60 a barrel?! Credit Suisse reporting that it doubts oil will
rise above $70 in the next three or four years!? What's so big about
Big Oil if the stuff is so cheap? And how's a company like Tesoro
supposed to fight off rumors that it's manipulating the price of oil in
a brazen attempt to make the Republicans in Congress look good if it's
losing so much money?
BUILDING COLLAPSING?
More bad news for the island's biggest landowners and developers
accounts for the further dropping of ML&P, A&B, Dowling and
Makena Resort. "Hawai`i's construction cycle is at a turning point,"
reports the University of Hawai`i Economic Research Organization,
according to an Oct. 6, 2006 Honolulu Advertiser story. "With home
appreciation largely over and affordability much eroded, the real
volume of residential construction activity will being to recede
gradually." Home appreciation largely over? Affordability much eroded?
Turning point? Can things really be that bad? While one of the UH
economists says that things aren't that bad—"We're not talking about
something that will derail the economy," he told the Advertiser—the
paper was quick to point out that most analysts thought 2007 was going
to be a growth year. Uh oh… MTW
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