The financial and business chronicle of the Gem State.
Markets, banking, and the numbers shaping Idaho's growth.
A decade of in-migration has turned downtown Boise into a genuine banking hub, with three regional lenders now headquartered within four blocks of the Capitol.
A stronger-than-forecast tax season has left the state with a comfortable cushion. The debate over tax cuts versus infrastructure is only getting louder.
Institutional investors have quietly built sizable positions in Idaho real estate, agriculture, and manufacturing. The thesis is simple: durable growth at a discount.
Founded to serve potato-house workers, one Idaho credit union now manages billions. Its expansion is testing what member-owned finance means at scale.
Wages have risen, but housing and services have risen faster. For many longtime residents, the economic miracle feels like a squeeze.
The memory giant's fab expansion anchors a supply chain that is quietly turning Boise into a manufacturing economy, not just a lifestyle destination.
As national lenders push into the Treasure Valley, the state's small banks are wagering that local knowledge still beats scale.
New money and retiring boomers have created a booming market for financial advisers. The competition for clients has never been fiercer.
Idaho's agricultural ground has become a coveted asset class. The people who work it are increasingly bidding against the people who merely own it.
Coeur d'Alene's resort economy has become a financial engine for the whole panhandle — and a source of friction over who benefits.
A larger, wealthier population needs more coverage — and the underwriters are expanding to meet it, wildfire risk and all.
As the city's financial ambitions grow, some boosters dream of a regional exchange. The obstacles are more instructive than the dream.
Coastal salaries arrived in mountain towns, lifting some economies and distorting others. The adjustment is still underway.
Local founders long complained that the money ignored them. A new crop of funds is trying to prove the complaint obsolete.
The state's retirement system posted solid returns, but its managers are bracing for a harder decade ahead.
Fast-growing municipalities want new tools to fund infrastructure. The statehouse has been reluctant to hand them over.
With national laboratories at its doorstep, the eastern Idaho city is positioning itself as the financial center of advanced nuclear.
Idaho's prosperity is real, but its financial and civic infrastructure is straining to keep pace. The gap is the defining challenge of the decade.