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Feature
Inflation: Why the Past 10 Years Should Define
the Next 10
In August
2004, the Wall Street Journal's Monthly Economic Forecasting Survey
asked this question: "What price for crude oil, if sustained
for a meaningful period, would tip the U.S. back into recession?"
The reality of crude prices holding well above $50 for nearly two
years is instructive indeed in showing that while the perceived
inflation threat is one thing, the reality is another. Obviously
this includes the perception of experts, given that U.S. Gross
Domestic Product has held above 3 percent in six of the past seven
quarters (including 4.8 percent in Q1 of 2006).
No economic
absolutes
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DeKaser's
Financial Market Outlook
The Three Bears
Our best judgment for the economy's performance
over the next year is popularly known as the Goldilocks scenario:
not too hot, not too cold, but just right. In this central banker's
paradise, idle resources are at a minimum and inflation is generally
tame. As with the fable's heroine, however, the economy will contend
with a few "bears" - or downside risks.
Will this story have a happy
ending?
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Business Planning & Strategy
Moving Up
In a
progressive country," Benjamin Disraeli once said, "change is
constant." And how. In this year's ranking of Best Places for
Business and Careers, perennial top 10 metros like Atlanta, Austin
and Washington, D.C.-Northern Virginia fell from the highest perch,
hurt by slowing income growth. Newcomers include Houston, riding
high on oil profits, and Phoenix, lifted by a housing
boom.
Which new metro areas ranked as
winners?
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Legislative &
Regulatory
Keep Internet Disclosures
From Costing Your Company
The
Internet opens pathways to doing business that could scarcely be
imagined a decade ago, and it also presents increasing dangers to
public companies in the form of new liability risks. The
instantaneous nature of the Internet can be both boon and bane to
companies seeking to harness it to provide information to, and
create goodwill with, shareholders. It doesn't take much imagination
to see how this modern communications wonder spins a web of
potential liability for companies, especially in light of
SOX.
Keeping pace with the Web
evolution
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Human
Resources & Benefits
There's Been a Change of
Plans
As more
employers opt to freeze their defined benefit plans and shift
workers into defined contribution vehicles, displaced DB
participants must reconfigure their retirement planning to make up
for lost benefit accruals. A recent study released by the Employee Benefit
Research Institute details the realities of this shift in terms of
hard numbers.
Estimating
the relative
impact
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Finance & Treasury
Simplifying Accounting Is No Simple
Task
In an exchange that highlights
some of the challenges facing the Financial
Accounting Standards Board's drive to reduce accounting
complexity, experts from Standard and Poor's have said one of FASB's
latest proposals is likely to create more confusion. In January,
FASB proposed giving companies the choice of using fair value
accounting when booking certain financial assets and liabilities,
rather than historic cost accounting or other
methods.
Fair value measurement is too
complicated
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Personal Investing
Asian
Stockmarkets: Mercury Rising
On May
3rd Asian stocks rose to their highest levels in 17 years. This
broad measure of Asian equities has jumped by 131% in the past three
years. Asian stocks are a play on today's healthy global economic
growth, of which the dynamism of China and India are the most
obvious examples. They have also benefited from low worldwide
interest rates, which allow international investors to borrow at
home for investment in riskier but potentially higher-yielding
assets abroad.
Investors
making plenty of money in
Asia
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Economics
What Could
Spoil The Fed's Slowdown
Investors
are betting heavily on the Federal Reserve's forecast of slower
growth, tame inflation, and less pressure on the labor markets and
production capacity. Back in February, the Fed expected the economy
to grow about 3.5% this year, with core inflation holding at 2% and
the unemployment rate ending the year between 4.75% and 5%. If the
Fed believes those numbers, then the quarter-point hike in its
target rate, to 5%, on May 10 might be the last for a while. The
trouble is there's not much evidence that the Fed's forecast is
playing out the way policymakers would like.
How much faith to put in the Fed's
projections?
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Sales &
Marketing
The Power of
"We"
Value-added selling is a
business philosophy that transcends a sales training course. It is a
course of action for the entire company. It is an integrated sales
and operations model for delivering on the great promise of your
value proposition. The sales force may sell the first experience
with your company, but it is the total experience with your company
that brings customers back.
What
good is promising without
delivering?
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International &
Trade
Oil and the Tenuous Global
Balance
High and rising levels of
oil prices have been around long enough to give cause for concern.
As measured by the price of West Texas Intermediate crude, that
level reached $75 to the barrel on April 21 and has remained above
the $70 level since. Spot prices of Brent Crude have risen by more
than 40 per over the year ending April 21. This has changed one
feature of the oil price scenario during much of the last decade:
that high nominal prices conceal the fact that the real price of oil
is far lower than that which prevailed during the
1970s.
The burden of the redistribution of global
income
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Trends
& Technology
Due Diligence, Quick
and Clean
Before the Internet
became widely used, companies on the selling block hired outside
lawyers to store the documents needed for due diligence in rooms at
their firms. The old storage method involved cumbersome tasks that ranged
from keeping prospective buyers separate to ensuring that no one
stole documents from the room. To be sure, many companies still host
physical rooms. But by the mid-1990s, technology companies began to
offer the "virtual-deal room," also known as a "data room" or a
"clean room," and the process began to change.
Spawning
shareholder
value
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Small
Business
Conquering Credit Card Debt:
It Can Be Done
Credit card debt is one of the most common debt issues that
small business people face today. Many of us have learned the hard
way about the credit card trap. You know what it is too, right?
Charging or taking cash advances, getting stuck with a huge bill,
paying the minimum, watching the interest grow every month, and thus
ensuring that the balance is never paid off. It's a trap because you
are caught in a predicament that is difficult to get out of.
Caught
in a
predicament
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Women
Business Owners
Failure /
Success
When it comes to business,
failing is often much more prevalent than succeeding. Ask any
successful entrepreneur, and she'll tell you that she has made her
share of mistakes and even had failures along the way. We spoke with
entrepreneurs and experts to get their take on making success out of
failure.
Advice
for moving from failure to success
Woman
Business Owner of the
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