Author: Serkadis

The simplest way to create more jobs is to allow small business and entrepreneurs  to  spend less time and money on lawyers and accountants and redirect that intellectual and financial capital to the core competencies of their business.

Any new government policy that requires the hiring of lawyers and accountants will not lead to new jobs, it will lead to time and money being wasted and fewer jobs being created.

Like the administration before it, the current administration seems to have no concept of what it takes to start, run and grow a small business. None.

Here is a hint. If you want to see more jobs created by Small Businesses and entrepreneurs REDUCE the amount of paperwork required. Dramatically simplify the tax code. In other words, if you REDUCE THE OVERHEAD of small business, you effectively create capital for them through reduced costs. Not only do you improve their financial position, but you reduce that great big time suck known as dealing with your accountants and lawyers. The more time wasted with “professional services”, the less time spent doing your job. This seems to be a concept lost on government.

One last thing. It appears to be a goal of the administration to free up loans to small businesses. For the sake of this comment, let me re-define Small Business as those companies with fewer than 20 employees. There are exceptions, but more often than not, the stupidest thing a business of this size can do is borrow money. Its stressful enough for a small business in these times to be profitable. Add to that stress the need to repay a loan and success becomes far more difficult.

If we want to accelerate the formation and growth of these small businesses we need to first reduce the costs imposed on them by the government (at all levels) and then  simplify and reduce the costs of raising capital.  Forget government loan guarantees.  Make capital gains on investments up to $1mm in small companies tax free. Make this process paperwork free for the small business and a 1 page form for the investor.

Thats how we will see economic and job growth in this country

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“Every single time someone takes their eyes or their focus off the road –- even for just a few seconds –- they put their lives and the lives of others in danger. Distracted driving is unsafe, irresponsible and in a split second, its consequences can be devastating.”

Those are the words of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, featured on Distraction.gov, the official government website for distracted driving.

Surprisingly though, new data suggests that driver cell-phone bans already in place have not reduced the number of accidents. The Highway Loss Data Institute compared insurance claims in four states that have bans versus areas where drivers can talk freely. The research found no significant difference in the number of accidents.

“The laws aren’t reducing crashes, even though we know that such laws have reduced handheld phone use and several studies have established that phoning while driving increases crash risk,” said Adrian Lund, president of the Highway Loss Data Institute.

The institute is an affiliate of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an influential nonprofit agency funded by the auto industry that crash-tests new cars to provide safety ratings for insurance companies and consumers.

Good Intentions, Poor Results

Bans against handheld cell-phone use are currently in effect in 17 states and the District of Columbia. At the same time, other states are considering limits on driver cell-phone use, and Congress is investigating the possibility of a nationwide texting-while-driving ban.

The institute said results from the new research weren’t intended to undermine such laws, but to point out that they may not have enough teeth.

The studies looked at claims in New York, Connecticut, California and Washington, D.C., both before and after the bans went into effect and compared them with claims in neighboring states with no ban. This method was intended to take into account factors not related to the…

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areview.co.cc: Shahid Afridi has been banned for two Twenty20 internationals after being found guilty of ball-tampering during Pakistan’s two-wicket loss to Australia at the WACA in Perth

Besides being one of the most popular singers on the planet, Beyonce has gotten plenty of accolades over her career. Now a veteran, she’s won a caseload of Grammys for her solo work and also with Destiny’s Child.

What she hasn’t won, however, is the prestigious album of the year trophy, despite being nominated once before. That may change on Sunday. The superstar is nominated for a leading 10 Grammys, including record of the year for “Halo,” song of the year for her anthem “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)” and album of the year for her multiplatinum third CD, “I Am … Sasha Fierce.”

Of course, she faces tough competition — especially from two newer divas.

Taylor Swift isn’t far behind in the Grammy nominee count with eight. She too is up for the evening’s three top awards: “Fearless” is nominated for album of the year, and her song “You Belong With Me” is nominated for both record and song of the year. Swift, whose country album became the most popular album of any genre last year, has captured top awards at just about every awards show she’s been at, from the Country Music Association Awards to the MTV Video Music Awards. The 20-year-old, who is only on her second album, could emerge as the top winner at the Grammys as well.

Lady Gaga is another relative newcomer up for top awards. Although she was disqualified from the best new artist category because her first single, “Just Dance,” was released last fall and nominated for a Grammy, the Recording Academy more than made up for her exclusion in that category. Gaga is up for five Grammys, and like Beyonce and Swift, is also up for record and song of the year, for “Poker Face,” and album of the year for “The Fame.”

Rounding out the album of the year category is the Black Eyed Peas’ “The E.N.D.,” and the Dave Matthews Band’s “Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King.” The latter album was the band’s first release since the death of founding member and saxophonist LeRoi Moore.

All are expected to perform on Sunday’s show, to be aired on CBS from Staples Center. But the show won’t be all about the nominees. There will be a special 3-D tribute to Michael Jackson; a video clip he made of “Earth Song” will be shown, as Usher, Carrie Underwood, Celine Dion, Jennifer Hudson and Smokey Robinson sing along.

Mary J. Blige and Andrea Bocelli will celebrate the 30th anniversary of “Bridge Over Troubled Water’s” Grammy wins with a special performance of the classic song, which will be made available on iTunes. The proceeds will be donated to Haiti relief.

American carmaker announced new incentives for its customers, offering current Tundra, Tacoma and Sienna owners an additional $1,000 trade-in bonus cash with the purchase or lease of any new Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge car or Ram truck.

"The 2010 Ram Heavy Duty is Motor Trend magazine’s ‘Truck of the Year’ and the Ram 1500 is our most awarded truck ever," Fred Diaz, President and Chief Executive Officer-Ram Brand and Lead Executive for the Sales Organization, Chrysler Group, said in a relea… (read more)

This Tuesday, the more than 240,000 members of the state’s two major education employee unions can be difference-makers.

By showing up Tuesday, members of the Illinois Education Association (138,000 members) and the Illinois Federation of Teachers (103,000 members) could decide close races in a low turnout election.  Tuesday’s forecast calls for freezing temperatures and snow.

Democratic primary for governor

IEA and IFT are backing Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes in the Democratic primary for governor.

IEA President Swanson disusses Hynes in a brief video.

Republican primary for governor

On the Republican side, IEA is backing State Sen. Kirk Dillard for governor.

President Swanson discusses Dillard in a brief video

Rep. David Miller for Comptroller

In addition, IEA and IFT are recommending Rep. David Miller for Illinois Comptroller in the Democratic primary. VIDEO:  President Swanson on David Miller

What lies before us in the next legislative session is a huge budget deficit and energized public education opponents hoping to exploit dissatisfaction with the economy by pushing bad ideas such as vouchers and unfair and unwarranted “pension reform.”

Every IEA member, Republican, Democrat and Independent, has reason to vote for candidates recommended by the IEA Board of Directors.  A list of all the recommended candidates can be found here.

Encourage your friends and family to support these candidates as well.

Your future is at stake.

Follow IEA on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/ieanea

Filed under: Plants/Manufacturing, Earnings/Financials

After gathering real-time transaction data from 8,900 automotive franchisees across the U.S., J.D. Power and Associates predicts new-vehicle retail sales will have declined for January 2010 compared to one year ago. January’s new-vehicle sales are expected to come in at 500,900 units, which represents a seasonally adjusted annualized rate (SAAR) of 7.9 million units. In January of 2009, the SAAR was 8.8 million units. December 2009 was a particularly strong sales month – thanks to heavy marketing and aggressive incentive programs – making it a tough act to follow. To wit:

“January is typically a weak selling month, but this month is particularly impacted by December’s strong close and extra selling weekend,” said Jeff Schuster, executive director of global forecasting at J.D. Power and Associates. “However, the sales pace has been improving as January continues, which is an encouraging sign for the recovering industry.”

Not to be confused with new-vehicle retail sales, fleet sales are expected to increase significantly when compared to the same slow period last year. When fleet- and new-vehicle units are combined, the month’s outlook is more promising. According to J.D. Power, total sales for January 2010 are projected at 659,000 units, up nine percent from the same month last year. Carried forward, the global marketing firm is predicting 2010 total vehicles sales at 11.5 million – and these numbers may be even higher as the industry recovers, thereby loosening credit and improving leasing availability. Check out the press release after the jump.

[Source: J.D. Power and Associates]

Continue reading J.D. Power data suggests January U.S. new-vehicle retail sales decline from last month

J.D. Power data suggests January U.S. new-vehicle retail sales decline from last month originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 11:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The city with the world’s tallest building now has one more claim to fame: the only Bloomingdale’s outside the United States.

Dubai’s crown prince inaugurated the first international branch of the Manhattan institution, famous for its “big brown bag” totes, in the Middle East’s biggest shopping mall Sunday.

Bloomie’s Dubai outpost includes a 146,000 square foot (13,600 square meter) clothing and accessories store and a nearby 54,000 square foot (5,000 square meter) home furnishings store. Both stores are in the Dubai Mall, next to the world’s tallest tower, Burj Khalifa.

The Dubai Bloomingdale’s is a 270 million dirham ($73.4 million) joint venture between the department store chain’s Cincinnati-based parent, Macy’s, and Dubai retailer al-Tayer Insignia.

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Having a biology background, we’ve always viewed the laws of economics as natural forces, similar to the laws of physics. You can only defy them for so long before reality has to hit.

Along these lines, Marginal Revolution wonders whether economic concepts could even be applied to biology:

Marginal Revolution: Can there be a Keynesian business cycle in the pond? i.e. Could animal spirits drive a natural business cycle? It’s harder for me to see exactly how this would work. We would need “money” or something similar to generate a rush to liquidity and a decline in investment. We could perhaps get a coordination type business cycle (ala Roger Farmer) with herd behavior. Interestingly, the trend in biology–as I read it at least–has been to think of herd behavior as optimal for the herd but this is not necessarily the case. We know that slime molds self-organize and aggregate during times of stress could this process be set off with no or little exogenous shock? Could a natural system provide a model for business cycle behavior? It would be odd if only people had animal spirits. Biology and economics have much to offer one another.

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See Also:

• The Economist: The Recession Was Nothing, Here Comes The Real Pain
• Risk Of Double-Dip Recession Is Rising, Says Krugman
• Rosenberg: This Isn’t A Recession, It’s A Depression

Editor’s note: This is a guest post penned by Ethan Nicholas, developer of the million-dollar iPhone game iShoot and the newly released Kim Rhode’s Outdoor Shooting. Before the iPad was even announced, Nicholas was already conceiving his next game with the tablet device in mind.

The Internet is a funny place. After Apple announced its new iPad, I cringed at the hate being directed its way on sites such as Slashdot and Digg. Even the guys at Penny Arcade, whom I normally agree with, said “that iPad presentation had to be the worst thing I’ve even seen on on the Apple stage” and that Apple had failed to make a case for the device.

If you believe them, the iPad is going to be a massive flop.

Well, the unwashed masses on the Internet also predicted that the iPod would be a failure. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now.

The iPad is a computer for people who don’t like computers. People who don’t like the idea of upgrading their 3D drivers, or adjusting their screen resolution, or installing new memory. Who don’t understand why their computer gets slower and slower the longer they own it, who have 25 icons in their system tray and have to wait ten minutes for their system to boot up every day.

For what most of these people need a computer for, the iPad is perfect. It doesn’t do as many things as a “real” computer does, but the things it does do it does in a way even non-tech-savvy people can figure out, and there are far fewer ways to screw it up. So if you have managed to convince yourself that the iPad is a useless, locked-up DRM-laden failure of a ‘computer’ before even touching one, I have two words for you:

My mom.

My mother is a lovely lady in her sixties who is… well, “not computer savvy” is probably a good way to put it. I regularly have to figure out why her computer is running incredibly slowly, or why it won’t print, or any of the million other random things that happen when people who don’t live and breathe computers sit down at one daily.

The iPad is perfect for her. It does exactly what she needs. It will let her watch movies and listen to music and read books on long flights. It will make using a computer fun instead of an annoying chore.

But it also won’t allow her to install umpteen news and weather gadgets that start up on boot and slow her computer to a crawl. It won’t suddenly forget how to talk to a network, or get so confused by all of the software installs and uninstalls that you finally have to break down and reinstall the system from scratch. In other words, my mother’s next computer is going to be an iPad, and I dream of the day when I can finally throw off the oppressive chains of being the one guy in the family who knows how to actually keep a computer working.

And you know what? There are millions upon millions of people just like her out there. They outnumber us. And they finally have a chance to become productive, self-sufficient computer users instead of constantly asking family members to fix their computers or, even worse, keeping the Geek Squad in business.

No, the iPad isn’t for everyone. But I’m going to go on record as saying that, for non-computer-geeks everywhere, the iPad is going to redefine computing.

(Image courtesy of Flickr/Scott Chang)

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Renault F1 Team has just made two huge announcements prior to the start of the off-season testing period in Formula One this winter. First of all, the new Genii Capital-controlled outfit revealed to the world their new single-seater for the 2010 F1 season – namely the R30 – and secondly, they confirmed Russian driver Vitaly Petrov as Robert Kubica’s teammate for the new campaign.

But first, let’s share a few thoughts about the car. The new challenger will no longer have the ING logos and colo… (read more)

Yes, we realize that it’s hard to provide too much visual differentiation between tablet PCs with large, ebony bezels, but we can’t help but think that this 8.9-inch multitouch tablet looks a lot like another, recently announced 9.7-inch multitouch tablet. Nevertheless this one’s quite different on the inside, delivering “the web without compromise,” meaning full browser support with flash courtesy of Windows 7 on an Atom N270 at 1.6GHz, with 2GB of DDR2 memory and a 32GB SSD with SD expansion. Yeah, those specs are familiar too, and while we’re not thinking this will deliver the sort of snappy performance seen on the iPad, it will certainly be a lot more functional. Battery life is only four hours, but at last it user-replaceable, and a price of $599 matches the 32GB iPad. Likewise it will be available in March — or you can get a non-multitouch prototype for $780 right this very moment. If, that is, you speak enough French to manage the order page.

[Thanks, Jean-Baptiste]

8.9-inch ExoPC Slate has iPad looks, netbook internals, Windows 7 soul originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 10:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Don’t let your economic beliefs get in the way of free money lying on the ground, as just happened in Davos:

Slate: This afternoon, while walking into the Congress Center, the main hub of Davos, I noticed a piece of gray paper on the floor. It looked like it might be currency of some sort—certainly not a dollar, but perhaps Swiss francs or something else.

…

But I’m a connoisseur of economic irrationality. And so I bent down and picked up the paper. On one side, the grim visage of Queen Elizabeth. On the other, Charles Darwin. It was a 10 pound note, worth about $16.25. Just lying on the floor, unmolested by Nobel Prize-winning economists, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and financial journalists.

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See Also:

• Bloomberg Totally Misses David Tepper’s Joke About Efficient Markets
• Forget Davos, You’ll Have Way More Fun At Brazil’s Shadow Economic Conference
• The Only 10 Important Things Said Today In Davos

BMW Sauber has shown their Formula One challenger for the 2010 season at the Ricardo Tormo Circuit in Valencia, becoming the 3rd team from this year’s roster to unveil their new car. Despite keeping the BMW name in their official team designation – for now at least – the new C29 will be the Swiss outfit’s first ever car powered by a Ferrari engine.

The first thing that catches the eye with Sauber’s new car design is the shark fin engine cover, which resembles the one showed by McLaren Mercede… (read more)

As the recall crisis threatens to further damage the company’s sales and delay an earnings recovery, Toyota President Akio Toyoda apologized for the recall of millions of vehicles around the world due to so-called "sudden acceleration," while speaking on Friday during the World Economic Forum in Davos.

"We’re extremely sorry to have made customers uneasy," Toyoda said. "We plan to establish the facts and give an explanation that will remove customers’ concerns as soon a… (read more)

Hace escasos días se concedió el galardón de coche del año de Castilla La Mancha en donde tal preciado premio recayó sobre el nuevo Ford Fiesta. Dicho premio es concedido por los lectores del medio manchego “La Tribuna“.

El presidente de la Comunidad de Castilla La Mancha, José María Barreda, fué el encargado de entregar dicho premio a la delegación española de Ford en un acto de lo más concurrido.

Por otra parte, el presidente de Ford España, José Manuel Machado, dejó las siguientes palabras tras recoger el galardón:

En España a pesar de la actual situación económica se han fabricado 170.000 unidades de Ford Fiesta y se han vendido en toda Europa más de medio millón de coches. El reconocimiento del público no se ha hecho esperar dado el buen hacer del vehículo en el mercado español. Además, agradezco el claro apoyo a la industria del automóvil por parte de la Comunidad que desde el primer momento apoyó los planes de incentivos de compra gubernamentales.

Related posts:

1. El nuevo Ford Fiesta es todo un éxito en Estado Unidos
2. Ford Fiesta Sedán, fotos espía
3. Ford confirma un nuevo coche policial para Estados Unidos

An interesting study highlighted by the New York Times proves something we long suspected was true.

Republicans tend to be overly pessimistic about the economy when the Democrats are in power, while the Democrats tend to be similarly too Pessimistic when the republicans are.

Clearly pundits on both sides like to spin the economy in whichever way that discredits their opposition and supports their party.

For example, right now republicans have an incentive to make the economy look as bad as possible, in order to discredit the current administration. The Democrats had a similar incentive when Bush was around, especially ahead of the last election. The worst thing you can do is believe them. For example, many Republicans might have missed the 2009 rally as a result of this bias. Just as Democrats might have missed 2003.

Investors need to be ever-vigilant that they aren’t skewing their economic outlook due to underlying political beliefs. You may love or hate the guy in charge, but if this makes you too bullish or bearish, you’ll likely underperform your less politically-biased peers.

NYT: The researchers don’t take a position on whether these portfolio shifts, in and of themselves, are a good or a bad idea. Their point is that, regardless of the intrinsic merits of any of these shifts, individual attitudes toward them often change with the political climate. In other words, objectivity is rare.

The researchers did detect another pattern, however, that is classically self-destructive: Investors tend to trade more actively when their preferred party is out of power. In an interview, Professor Kumar speculated that this could be traced to reduced confidence about the stock market, which in turn causes investors to shun a buy-and-hold approach.

The researchers found that this more frequent trading resulted in inferior portfolio performance. Primarily for this reason, investors, on average, performed better when their political party was in power — about 2.7 percent better a year.

Continue reading at the New York Times >

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See Also:

• If Obama Isn’t Firing Tim Geithner, Why Is Paul Volcker Selling The New War On Wall Street?
• It’s Official: Barack Obama Is Just Another Reaganite
• Obama Never Seemed Stupid… Until He Coughed Up The Spending Freeze