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Archive for August, 2011
When creating jobs, think green!
Thursday, August 25th, 2011One of the fun things I get to do from time to time is to write for The Street.com, a well-known financial website. This week, The Street is speculating about the jobs program that President Obama plans to unveil next month. The Street invited me to contribute an article and, lucky me, I [...]
Is it the end of the world, or did Congress just agree on something?
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2011These are exciting times we live in. By now you’ll have heard that Washington, D.C. and its environs were struck this afternoon by an earthquake that measured about 5.6 on the Richter Scale. The epicenter of the quake was actually closer to Richmond but, with characteristic D.C. narcissism, our news outlets are acting as [...]
What’s driving the S&P investigations?
Thursday, August 18th, 2011Standard & Poors’ decision to downgrade the United States’ credit rating has already made international news, playing havoc with financial markets and threatening to tumble the economy back into recession. Never let it be said, however, that the United States takes an insult lying down. According to news reports, the U.S. Justice Department [...]
Tell your customers what they need to know
Monday, August 15th, 2011Over the weekend, I had occasion to take my daughters to the “Build A Bear” store for a birthday celebration. The shop is in Tyson’s Corner Center, a Northern Virginia mall that’s grown to the point where it occupies two massive tracts of land about 1/4 mile apart. Not wanting to drag little [...]
Solve known problems!
Friday, August 12th, 2011Continuing my Friday series on keeping your business out of court, let’s focus on a mistake that many businesses make. Here’s where the trouble starts. Something bad happens - a visiting vendor falls on a broken step, an employee is bullied by a colleague, a customer’s complaint goes unaddressed because of an unnoticed [...]
Keep calm and carry on
Thursday, August 11th, 2011Watching internantional financial markets bounce like overinflated beach balls for the past couple of days, I’ve been reminded of a slogan once coined by the British government. History buffs know that, at the beginning of World War II, the Ministry of Information designed and distributed a series of posters designed to boost the public’s [...]
Don’t blame Standard & Poors
Monday, August 8th, 2011Late Friday afternoon, Standard & Poors downgraded the United States’ credit rating by one notch. The stock market is tanking, the Chinese press is assaulting our nation’s reputation around the world, and the politicians in Washington are pointing fingers left and right, if you’ll pardon the pun.
It’s not as though they couldn’t [...]
Economic woes reduce highway safety
Friday, August 5th, 2011Continuing my Friday series on how to keep your business out of legal trouble, let’s take a look at a recent survey report published by AAA. (That’s right, the nice people who come and tow you when your car breaks down in the middle of the night.) According to AAA, about one in [...]
Congress neglects American travelers - will airlines step in?
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011Members of Congress are undoubtedly patting themselves on the back over their 11th-hour passage of legislation to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. They can hardly call it a job well done, but the fact that they’ve made a collective joke of themselves and the legislative process apparently doesn’t bother them. They’ve already gathered up [...]
Would you do business with Congress?
Monday, August 1st, 2011So, we allegedly have a deal on the debt ceiling (unless, of course, the Congress votes it down between now and tomorrow). As usual, press reports are treating the whole mess like a horse race. All they seem to care about is who won, who lost, and who’s upset about it.
But wouldn’t it [...]