Business Blog: Using the Internet to gather financial info
Column by William L. Crosby
Submit guest columns: freepress2@ntelos.net
The information superhighway is lined with financial companies and investment experts ready to provide advice for the asking. The good news: information abounds. The bad news: sometimes, it’s hard to tell the good guys from the bad guys.
Just as the Wild West offered opportunities to those who traveled in that direction during the late 19th century, the information superhighway, better known as the Internet, offers opportunities to investors who surf the many websites that offer financial information.
The best opportunities are those where the risk is low. For example, taking the advice of self-proclaimed market gurus willing to share their so-called expertise for a price is not a low-risk opportunity. But gathering educational information that will make you a more well-informed investor certainly is. Read more
Editors’ Business Blog: 10 tips to profit from the Home Show
Column by Jim Blair
www.jimblairassociates.com
The Home and Garden Show arrives at the JMU Convocation Center on Friday, April 16 – 18.
What a great opportunity for exhibitors. It may be the single largest source of leads and profitable business for an entire year. Many of my clients have said so.
Some exhibitors do well. Some not so well. What you do before and after the Show makes the difference.
How do you maximize your return on investment? Read more
Editors’ Business Blog: A foreclosure perfect storm
Guest column by Gary A. Poliakoff and Ryan Poliakoff
Submit guest columns: freepress2@ntelos.net
The worst housing crisis and economic crash since the Great Depression have created a dangerous financial storm that threatens to destroy thousands of Shared Ownership Communities (condos, co-ops and HOAs) throughout the United States. The danger is quiet, but staggering—over 60 million Americans live in SOCs, or almost 20 percent of the population.
SOCs rely on maintenance payments from owners to pay for a host of municipal-type services provided to residents, including landscape maintenance, security, infrastructure improvements and even social services. But many owners, hit hard by the financial crisis, have chosen not to make these maintenance payments, pushing the responsibility for this “bad debt” onto their neighbors. As a result, maintenance costs in some neighborhoods have doubled or even tripled, forcing a small, hard-hit cadre of well meaning residents to cover the costs of operating an entire community. Read more
Editors’ Blog: Networking, Chamber stuff, TV/radio interviews
Blog by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
Networking: A busy day for me on Wednesday – as if every day isn’t at least somewhat busy. I was invited as a guest to a BNI networking group meeting in Harrisonburg, which for me meant a 45-minute drive one way, thus a commitment to block out half my day when you factored in the time for the meeting.
It was well worth it, as I expected. The group that I guested with is 30-plus members strong. I was able to connect with another guest, actually, from Staunton who we might ask to take care of our bookkeeping.
I was also able to make a pitch for advertising in The New Dominion Magazine and AugustaFreePress.com – and talked up the new AFPBusiness.com website. That was sort of a Trojan Horse for me. The site has news and also everything you could possibly want to know about our web design, graphic design, book design and book publishing and marketing and PR services and more. Read more
Editors’ Business Blog: 88 percent?
Blog by Chris Graham
freepress2@ntelos.net
I’ve always considered myself a Keynesian – the shorthand referring to the idea that the federal government needs to adjust its spending policies in accord with the economy by deficit spending during a downturn to spur economic activity and then balancing budgets whe the economy is running strong.
Chuck Kelly, the author of Farewell Fantasyland: Time for Economic and Political Reality, is Keynes on steroids, in a manner of speaking.
“The reason World War II got us out of the Depression in a sense is that it gave Democrat politicians the moral authority to raise taxes on the wealthy and put working-class Americans to work,” said Kelly in an interview for The AFP Show news podcast on our sister website, AugustaFreePress.com.
Kelly argues that it was policies like the move in 1941 to raise the top tax rate to 88 percent and the move to implement an excess corporate-profits tax that brought the country out of the Great Depression. Read more
Editors’ Blog: Breaking down the Chamber controversy
Blog by Chris Graham
AFPBusiness.com
I know a lot of the behind-the-scenes details behind what we all see happening with the bad public breakup between the Greater Augusta Regional Chamber of Commerce and its former president and CEO, Ben Carter. And from my vantagepoint, the public nature to the breakup that appears to be intensifying with the movement being led by people with partisan motivations who are good at drawing attention to themselves and their causes is not going to be good for anybody involved.
The morning papers in their Tuesday editions tracked down what a lot of us on the inside knew already – that the effort to overturn the Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors’ decision to fire Carter is being led by local businessman and stalwart far-right conservative Republican Scott Sayre with some help from former Waynesboro City Councilman Reo Hatfield.
Officially, it’s Sayre who is organizing the meeting being held at the offices of Reo Distribution today to hear from Carter about his Jan. 28 dismissal, according to what Hatfield told the News Leader for a story in today’s print edition of the paper.
Or we could credit Carter himself, since the e-mail inviting people to the meeting came from his personal e-mail account, while referring to Carter awkwardly in the third person.
Whoever wants to take credit for getting things organized, it seems clear what is going on here. Carter was a lightning rod in his tenure as Chamber president and CEO, pushing the organization into territory uncomfortable for some members, including me as co-owner of Augusta Free Press Publishing, which decided against renewing our membership in 2009 in protest of the direction being taken by the Chamber under Carter on local, state and national political matters. Read more
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