For those of you who still believe that Ohio's economy will rebound on its own you may want to take a look at the U.S. News article, "Wave of Layoffs in U.S., Europe show severity of the recession." It is evident from this article that everyone is bearing the brunt as the international economy is taking nose dive.

During a time of crisis, it is those that embrace change and dare to try new things that come out on top.

Greater Ohio is working at the state level with Administration officials and legislative leaders to craft new solutions that will arrest these trends and restore prosperity to Ohio once again. We see that the drivers of prosperity can be boiled down into four buckets – innovation, human capital, infrastructure, and quality of place. We need to press at the state level for progress in all of those areas simultaneously.

The Restoring Prosperity to Ohio proposes policies recommendations that change the fundamentals of government by encouraging actions such as cluster development (geographic concentrations of interconnected firms/organizations); leveraging anchor institutions (universities and medical institutions); proposing a foreclosure action plan; transformative infrastructure investments; advancing workforce training; and governance reform to promote regional solutions. In order for communities to take advantage of the opportunities that come with this financial downturn, they will first have to take stock of their assets and then develop a strategy to build upon them. There are some communities in Ohio that are already on this path, such as Mansfield, Hamilton and Marion and it is vital that the rest of Ohio follow their lead before it is too late.