PhillyInc

The Census Bureau is gearing up to conduct its 2007 Economic Census. The last was done in 2002. Evidently to stoke participation, it has launched a new site called business.census.gov to "help businesses understand the economic census and how it benefits them." It says the site includes economic snapshots of selected industries, and business facts and ratios about every industry. Yes, but the site's pulldown list of ratios actually is just an image, not a pulldown, that links to a chart that's hard to read. And the link to "Information about Your Local Area" doesn't include any local information, from what we can tell.

The bureau did manage, however, to get a blurb from Ben Bernanke and pasted it on the site: "The Economic Census is indispensable to understanding America's economy." (No mention of rates.)

- Thomas Ginsberg