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Text “HAITI” to 90999  on your cell phone and $10 will be donated to the American Red Cross for earthquake relief in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation.  That $10 donation will appear on your next cell phone bill – a quick and painless way to speed relief to a country reeling in the face of […]

Compensation czar Kenneth Feinberg – officially, the Obama administration’s special master for executive compensation – believes that the pay reductions he mandated at seven taxpayer-rescued firms should become the model  for Wall Street and corporate America. “There is entirely too much reliance on cash and there’s got to be a better way to tie corporate […]

Apparently, the American housing market is not the only one experiencing difficulties.  In the United Kingdom, Lloyds Banking Group Plc has sold its unprofitable chain of 218 Halifax Estate Agencies, Ltd., a large British residential real estate brokerage firm, to LSL Property Services Plc for just £1 – about $1.60. According to Lloyds, the sale […]

Politics may make strange bedfellows, but it also reveals some interesting family trees. President Barack Obama not only has a supporter in the form of Berkshire Hathaway chairman and investment expert Warren Buffett – the two are also distant cousins. Genealogists at ancestry.com found a family connection dating back to a 17th-century Frenchman named Mareen […]

Manufacturing is gradually on the upswing, according to the December ISM Manufacturing Index, which rose to 55.9 from November’s 53.6 reading.  A gain to just 54.3 was expected, so the news is encouraging.  In terms of inflation, prices paid climbed to 61.5; an increase to 57.2 was forecast.  This is great news for a sector […]

Commercial real estate will begin its long-awaited recovery in late 2011 or 2012, according to the fourth-quarter Korpacz Real Estate Investor Survey, which questioned more than 100 real estate investors, including REITs, pension funds, private equity firms and insurance and mortgage companies.  Confirmation is provided by a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey, which notes that Washington policymakers are […]

The $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) cost $200 billion less than originally anticipated,  according to a new Treasury Department report.  That reflects faster repayments by big banks, as well as less spending on rescue programs as the financial sector recovers more quickly than expected. And it’s good news for President Obama’s new job […]

Tiger Woods’ extramarital escapades are costing shareholders in the companies he sponsors, according to a study by an economics professor at the University of California at Davis.  Victor Stango found that the market value lost to firms that had Woods as a sponsor is already $12 billion.  Woods is believed to earn approximately $100 million […]

I was recently asked to comment on CB Richard Ellis’ recent “EIG State Incentives Ranking Report”  as an Certified Economic Developer who has been practicing in Illinois for nearly 30 years. Click on the link and take a look at the map and state rankings list that’s generated.  Illinois, Indiana and Iowa are marked “competitive.” […]

Gold fever seems to be on the decline as the precious metal fell $90 an ounce in just two days after the commodity reached a high of $1,226 an ounce in early December.  The lion’s share of the blame for the decline was placed on newbie investors, who got skittish in their belief that gold […]