Small Business Trends

Links to very useful entrepeneur resources and up to date information about the Entrepeneurship and its World...


Small Business Trends

Feed of the Day

Feed of the Day: "43 Things steps up to the plate as Pluck's Feed of the Day. Surprisingly still unique - I'd expected a zillion knock-offs with added 'bonus features' - 43 Things is a public way of stating your goals, checking them off the list as you accomplish them (or give up), and seeing what others want to accomplish with their lives. The name itself is not tied to 43 Folders or getting things done. At least not as far as the developers let on. My guess is that it's a combination of Douglas Adams' answer to 'Life, the Universe, and Everything' and Spinal Tap's 'it goes to 11.'"


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How Prosperity Is Reshaping the American Economy

How Prosperity Is Reshaping the American Economy
Confidence is up, jobs are everywhere, and there's a new breed of entrepreneur

Leo Danushevsky arrived in New York City from Ukraine in 1979 with $900 and not much else. He worked as a machinist until 1989, when he borrowed $85,000 to start L.C. Mold Inc., a tool-and-die company in suburban Chicago. Last year, L.C. Mold did $5 million in sales. Danushevsky and his wife own $500,000 in stocks and just moved into a new home on 2 1/2 acres, complete with a spa. What's more, almost all of his 37 employees--most of them fellow immigrants--own their own homes and participate in a profit-sharing plan. ''Everything I read about America turned out to be true,'' marvels Danushevsky. ''If you work hard enough, you can get somewhere.''


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SHUTTLE PROGRAM BACK IN BUSINESS

Out of the depths of despair and into flightMore than two years after the Columbia crew perished, the shuttle program is back in business
By MATHEW INGRAM

Wednesday, July 27, 2005 Page A3

With a report from Jane Taber in Ottawa

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. -- Can an entire country heave a single, collective sigh of relief? If so, then that's what the United States did yesterday morning when the space shuttle Discovery lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 10:39 a.m. and soared skyward, 2½ years after an explosion destroyed its sister ship Columbia as it was returning to Earth, killing its entire crew and bringing the U.S. shuttle program to a screeching halt.

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~LeoTheMasteR~

A truly skillful and well planned marketing blog. I am truly impressed. A real inspiration from Leo...

~LeoTheMasteR~



Technorati tags: marketing,master,blog,blogs

StartupJournal | Small Talk

StartupJournal | Small Talk: "Small-Firm Payrolls Show
Little Rise in Hiring

By RICHARD BREEDEN
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal.

From The Wall Street Journal Online

Small-business hiring has been slow and average wages have dropped about 2.26% during the first half of the year, according to data from SurePayroll Inc., a Skokie, Ill., payroll firm serving more than 15,000 companies nationwide.

Employment during the first six month has increased only about 0.3%, and has been flat for June compared with May.

If second-half hiring continues at a similar pace, according to SurePayroll, then employment growth for all of 2005 would be about 0.6%. In 2004, the small firms' data showed an increase in employment of about 4.4%, the strongest job creation for the businesses since 1999.

Small businesses currently are confronted with a number of concerns, according to SurePayroll's President Michael Alter, including terrorism issues, oil prices, health-care costs and competition from global outsourcing.

Although the survey's data show a small increase in employment nationwide during the first six months, the Northeast enjoyed the strongest, with a first-half increase of 4.1%. The weakest region was in the Midwest, with a small-business job decline of 2.0% in the survey.

Only the South showed a rise in wages for the first half of the year at 0.6%, while average pay in the West fell by 2.6%.

Although average pay has declined each month from January through May, it did increase in June. Last year, according to SurePayroll's data, average check size decreased by 4.8%."

Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) - Forbes.com

Alfred Nobel (1833-1896) - Forbes.com: "Twenty Most Influential Businessmen
Alfred Nobel (1833-1896)
Forbes.com Staff, 07.18.05, 12:00 PM ET


Forbes.com readers and editors rank Alfred Nobel as the tenth most influential businessman of all time. (Read more to find out how Forbes.com ranked them.)


Alfred Nobel didn't just invent dynamite, he capitalized on his idea by founding 16 explosives plants in 14 countries. When competition arose among them, he merged them. Two holding companies--the first of their kind--were formed, coordinating everything from production to sales to acquisitions. Historian Ragnhild Lundstrom credits Nobel's creative fusion of his businesses as a template for how to organize a global empire. Dynamite had an enormous impact on the world, both for good--facilitating the construction of tunnels, railroads and canals--and for ill--high-explosive shells dramatically increases warfare's carnage. But perhaps Nobel's most enduring legacy is the annual prizes given in his name for peace, physics, literature, chemistry, economics and medicine. "

Please note

I have been compiling definitions and explanation to the most common and most used Economic terms. There is a link to each explanation if you just click on the hyperlink of the word that is highlighted. Beacause of the law of diminishing marginal returns, I will discontinue providing this assistance. If you want to find out what a term means, highlight the word or phrase and do a quick search on one of the major search engines. I like using Wikipedia as my preliminary web search. I find their definitions fairly accurate and simple, but you can use other encyclopedias, depending on how much more you want to learn on a particular word or definition.

U.S. Economy Continues To Expand--For Now - Forbes.com

An easy to read article from Forbes magazine talking about the state of the economy, economic indicators and other important economic data.

Oxford Analytica
U.S. Economy Continues To Expand--For Now
Oxford Analytica, 07.15.05, 6:00 AM ET

The U.S. economy enjoyed its eighth consecutive quarter of expansion above 3% from April to June 2005, the longest period of such robust growth in two decades. Indeed, growth in the second quarter was revised upwards this month from 3.1% to 3.8%, indicating that the economy is more resilient than was earlier anticipated. At least in the short term, the economy will continue its robust expansion.

In early 2005, it was widely perceived that the massive U.S. trade deficit would encourage a further major dollar devaluation this year in order to set the stage for current account improvement. However, the currency had rallied by nearly 10% against the euro and also enjoyed gains against the yen and other currencies.

The dollar's appreciation indicates that the current account deficit could expand to $900 billion during 2006. While the dollar's rally demonstrates that global financial markets are more capable of sustaining large payment imbalances than most economists would have imagined possible only five years ago, concerns about the currency will eventually re-emerge.

According to the latest Congressional Budget Office forecasts, the strength of the economy will help reduce the federal budget deficit to $325 billion in fiscal 2005. However, the current account deficit will remain large because the household savings rate is still less than 1%, and the corporate savings rate will decline as capital spending increases. The critical factor determining demand for the dollar will probably be the performance of the economy. If steady growth can be sustained with stable inflation, there will be sufficient demand for U.S. financial assets to fund an expanding current account deficit. However, if monetary tightening tips the economy into a downturn, confidence will erode and the dollar could suddenly plunge.

The economic outlook thus centers on two main issues. Firstly, in terms of the monetary policy outlook, it is likely that the Fed will increase short-term interest rates to at least 3.5% by August. However, the fact that yields on ten year Treasury bonds are still only about 4.1% demonstrates that many investors are quite complacent about monetary policy. Bond market bulls believe the economy will lose momentum during the next few months and force the Fed to halt tightening. They point to the sharp slowing of personal income growth during May and the recent weakness of durable goods orders as evidence of faltering growth. They also interpret the flattening of the yield curve as a sign that policy has become restrictive and growth will soon slow.

However, the economy does have considerable underlying strength. On the basis of new government data, wage and salary income is now growing at a 7.5% annual rate. Such rates are likely to sustain consumption, despite the low savings rate in the household sector. The resilience of profits, coupled with strong corporate balance sheets, points to further steady gains in business investment.

The Fed is likely to continue increasing interest rates, because it perceives that the economy enjoys solid growth momentum and that the risk of inflation is increasing. The core Personal Consumption Expenditure (the average measurement of consumer prices minus food and energy) deflator is now 1.6% above its level one year ago, while broader measures of inflation have risen into the 2% to 3% range because of high oil prices. The government's new income data also indicates that wage growth is accelerating at a time when productivity growth is eroding. The Fed is comfortable with an inflation rate of 1% to 2%, but will not perceive monetary policy with such an inflation rate as neutral until the funds rate increases to 4%.

Secondly, in terms of the housing market outlook, the sharp rise in sales and home prices has pushed the value of real estate transactions up to $160 billion per month, compared to $340 billion per month for retail sales. Housing transactions are thus equal to half the value of retail sales compared to only one quarter in 1995. The ownership of housing is also much broader than the ownership of assets such as equities. The government's data on consumer wealth indicates that the top 1% of households own one-third of the value of all equity, while they own only one-eighth of the value of housing. The concern about housing reflects evidence of increasing speculation in the market.

The key factor likely to dampen the housing market is rising interest rates. Despite a year of monetary tightening, mortgage rates have not increased because ten year Treasury bond yields are still close to 4%. If bond yields rise into the 5% to 6% range, the cost of mortgages will increase and dampen housing demand. However, rising short-term interest rates will not threaten the housing market without rising bond yields.

Providing that core inflation remains below 2%, the Fed's goal is to fine-tune a soft landing to a Gross Domestic Product growth rate close to 3%. However, it cannot control the level of bond yields that are now so critical to the housing market. If the bond market experiences a major correction, housing will cease to be a growth locomotive, and the growth rate of consumer spending could slow sharply. The outlook will thus depend heavily upon how bond investors, not just the Fed, perceive the economy's tradeoffs between growth and inflation.

U.S. Economy Continues To Expand--For Now - Forbes.com

SoYouWanna meet the top ten richest people in the world, pt IV

SoYouWanna meet the top ten richest people in the world, pt IV

[top ten],[rich],[richest],[news],[wealth]

Employment Strategies for 50-something -- ThirdAge

A while ago I found this article on my Thirdage.com subscription and I thought it apropiate to blog it. I have been subscribed to Thirdage.com for a couple of years now and find the site to have a lot of interesting features, forums and ideas that you and I can use regardless of age. If you decide you want to start to do some of the things suggested, please leave a comment and we'll see that you receive the help you need or want. Or just visit and explore the site and see for yourself...

Employment Strategies for 50-something -- something

Technorati tags: economics,thirdage,employment help

MSN Careers - 10 Dead-End Jobs - Career Advice Article

Just in case you did not know... MSN Careers - 10 Dead-End Jobs - Career Advice Article
Planning and preparation are the best tools to use in todays dynamic and changing economy...

BBC NEWS | Business | Shares pick up as optimism grows

And... I sure like good news... I am also providing readers with a variety of sources for easy to understand terms and definitions, all links within the article were carefully researched for the most practical and easy to understand terminology...

Export destination

And the economic data too proved encouraging in the US.

Industrial production was up 0.9% in June, twice what many economists had expected, while consumer sentiment also beat forecasts.

Best of all, inflation - a key worry amid sky-high oil prices, and one reason for the US Federal Reserve's month-by-month boost to interest rates - stayed subdued, both wholesale and retail.

"The economic data that we got continues a string of very positive reports indicating sustained economic growth and low inflation," said Michael Sheldon at Spencer Clarke LLC in New York.

Good signs for the US economy tend to support stock market movements elsewhere, since the US is a key market for most industrialised countries' goods.

BBC NEWS | Business | Shares pick up as optimism grows

Thoughts from Thoughts.com

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
-----
John Stuart Mill


courtesy of Thoughts.com

Unsolicited policy advice for the Democrats

On July 14, 2005 Mr Mandel wrote:

Unsolicited policy advice for the Democrats
Michael Mandel

Democratic pollster Ruy Teixeira considers how the Democrats could use new ideas
about the economy. He writes:

1. Those ideas should sum up clearly and
simply what the party stands for
and where it proposes to take the country.
2. Those ideas should be few in
number and easily reduced to a key principle
or two that can be transmitted
to voters--otherwise voters are unlikely to pay
much attention.
3.Those ideas should actually work in practice, so that
voters will see the
benefits of having the party in office and reward it with
additional
electoral success.

I fail to see how "cutting the budget
deficit" fits any of these criteria.

Do the Democrats really want to sell themselves as the party of fiscal rectitude and hairshirt economics?

Do the Democrats really want to sell themselves as the party of "we will raise your taxes and cut your benefits?"

And most important, the only real economic effect of a smaller budget deficit is to induce a bit more capital spending...maybe. Most economic models show that cutting the budget deficit actually depresses consumption for years. Do the Democrats really want to sell themselves as the party of "more business investment and a lower standard of living?"

Is there something here that I'm not getting?

I do not get it either, as historically, the US government has run on a deficit and the debt we owe to ourselves anyway.

Economics for You and Me

This is the first attempt at blogarizing my Economic mind, and translate to plain and simple English news, events, theories or humor about the world of economics, business, money, finances and other such topics.