World Business

An infusion of new cardinal will allow these firms to lamina up, lower costs, and improve childbirth chains

By Byron Kennard and Scott Sklar

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President-elect Barack Obama’s top priority is an economic stimulus digest he can sign into law soon after taking office. He’s calling for "a scheme big enough to meet the challenges we face."

We hope it’s in like manner a plan that is small enough to meet these challenges—a custom that revs up the engine of our good husbandry: America’s 27 million small businesses. These small firms produce half of the gross domestic product, employ half of the private-sector workforce, and create 60% to 80% of whole net new jobs, according to the Small Business Administration.

If Obama’s economic stimulus plan is to succeed, clearly it must include a sharp point of convergence on job creation by the agency of small businesses. The President-elect has also declared that "a commencing energy economy" is going to be a pinnacle priority while he takes office. Most clean tech companies are startups and, hence, insignificant. For example, over 70% of renewable fuel producers are moderate firms, according to the U.S. House Committee on Small Business.

As it is, such companies are trying to scale up, lower costs, and improve delivery chains to their customer debased. An inculcation of new capital will empower them to get market demand that is before that time growing. Here’s how this could happen—and fast, too.

Numerous federal programs are authorized to assist trivial businesses in one way or another. These programs are up and running; they are funded. The economic stimulus plan should assign a green priority to these programs, and the new Administration should see to the implementation of this priority throughout the federal government.

For example, small business energy efficiency and renewable energy projects qualify because of the 7(a) Loan Guaranty Program administered through the SBA. These loans can have existence used for construction, renovation, and acquisition of machinery and equipment. This means that preferable small businesses can use 7(a) loans to purchase energy-efficient equipment or to make their facilities more energy efficient. The problem is that the SBA does almost nothing to promote 7(a) loans for these purposes. New leadership at the SBA should travel over this a priority.

Other federal small business programs that could be mobilized to set attached the plan include the Agriculture Dept.’s Rural Utility Service and Farmers Home Loan Administration loans, the Energy Dept.’s loan guarantees, the Homeland Security Dept. state grants, the Environmental Protection Agency’session EnergyStar programs, the Energy Dept./EPA glory grants, and the Labor Dept.’s Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development initiative.

Specifically, the economic provocation plan should:

1. Instruct the previously mentioned programs to prioritize altogether tech companies.

2. Prioritize projects that shape small function energy costs through increased efficiency. EPA’s EnergyStar Small Business program, during example, has documented how voluntary action by small walk of life owners can reduce energy costs by 30% or more. But EnergyStar, the parent program, spends only about 1% of its $50 million package on unintellectual business, level though the sector makes up half of the thrift. EnergyStar’s resources should be reallocated to greatly increase technical assistance to small business owners.

3. Prioritize projects that facilitate small business use of renewable energy and micropower technologies. Small business owners have no better way to get reliable energy than from installing micropower devices—small, modular devices that bring into existence renewable power in succession a unintelligent scale for use on-site (such as roof-top solar panels and molecular wind turbines). There’s an affinity in the present life: Because both the size of the cause and the balance of the technology are small, they fit together, hand in glove. Solar wet heaters, for example, are particularly suitable for cafeterias and laundries. Such technologies often make economic moral perception for small firms.

The promontory of this government-wide strategy, for example we see it, is to make capital available to both small business producers and small business consumers of clean technologies. This infusion will help coalesce a fate of deals, particularly allowing that repaired capital enables altogether tech companies to go furiously down costs. New jobs will flow from these transactions in abundance.

The rustic of necessity these jobs desperately, so urge is of the essence. For their part, small businesses are renowned for their speed and affability. They can turn around on a dime. But what about government? Since the measures proposed here do not require unaccustomed laws, recently made known appropriations, or unaccustomed programs, here’sitting one instance whenever government might be able to act swiftly too. The sooner, the better!

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/dec2008/sb20081218_516056.htm?campaign_id=rss_smlbz

Honest Tea establisher Seth Goldman explains how packing his son’s lunch box helped him understand the true value of his brand

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Honest Tea’sitting Goldman among the tea leaf growers in China.

The Entrepreneur: Seth Goldman, 43

Background Goldman, an active racer since the eighth grade, had been hunting for the disciplined thirst quencher according to years, often concocting his own sap combinations after his runs. When one of his running buddies urged him to start a beverage business about 10 years ago, Goldman jumped on the idea. In short order, he called Barry Nalebuff, human being of his prior professors at the Yale School of Management. Nalebuff had recently returned from India at what place he had analyzed the decoction industry for a case study and determined most American iced-tea makers bought cheap infusion leaves. The brace came up by the idea for an all-natural brew that used only high-quality supper leaves. By 1998, Goldman had liberate his job at Calvert Investments and was brewing batches of tea in his kitchen and storing it in thermoses.

The Company: Honest Tea launched in 1998, offering five varieties of merely sweetened tea. The company nabbed its first account, Fresh Fields—the precursor to Whole Foods (WFMI)—using tea samples made in Goldman’s kitchen. Today, 20 varieties of Honest Tea are sold in 25,000 locations across the country, along with seven other products. Earlier this year, the company sold 40% of the business to the Coca Cola (KO).

Revenues: $39 the public

His Story: When my co-founder Barry and I launched Honest Tea, we always thought of ourselves as a tea company. But it took my 12-year-old son Elie to help us understand that "tea" wasn’t the most important word in our house’s name.

Ever since we began selling our product, our goal was to turn Honest Tea into the best-selling bottled tea brand in the natural food arm of the sea—a design that we realized in 2005. As a result of our success, we felt we had the moment to expand our tea transaction in new directions.

Since our core bottled tea business had seven of the top 10 best-selling varieties in the unregenerate food predicament, we weren’t pressed to analyze at which place the true estimate of our enterprise lay. We thought we could duplicate our success in other areas. But we soon discovered that moving away from our core value proposition could be a provoking and costly diversion. Yet it was exactly those same costly diversions that helped us understand what business we were really in.

Our tea bags, for pattern, were a perfectly nice harvest line. In response to customers’ requests, we took the same tea leaves from our bottled tea and sold them as tea bags in 1999. However, it turned out that the packaging was a little also unconventional. We designed innovative bags which contained whole supper foliage, instead of tea dust. But the bags were a not much too costly, and the line never really took off. At the same time, it was hard to differentiate our supper bags from the other brands in succession crowded shallow space.

We also ended up wasting a lot of time and money running our own bottling plant, for the cause that we were filled with fear we wouldn’face to face find any one other place to bottle our tea. In 1999, we had invested more than $1 million in a plant in Pittsburgh, along with two other partners. Now that we owned the settle, we ended up multiplying our worries. For one, we were worried about keeping the string full, so we agreed to pack tea on the side of other brands, which occasionally meant creating competition for ourselves. Overseeing the bottling plant was each enormous distraction—none of the other owners or I had any experience running a bottling plant, that is a very different business from building a brand, and I establish myself driving to Pittsburgh individual times a month to try to keep the plant afloat.

However, it wasn’t until my son Elie asked, "Dad, how come you barter vigorous drinks to adults but give us sugary drinks for lunch?" as I deposit a drink pouch into his lunch bag brace years ago, that I began to think critically about the kind of affair I had built. As I read the ingredients statement on the box, I realized he was painfully free from error—the pouch drink I had been giving my sons had besides compliment per ounce than a can of soda. For a few weeks, I put a glass bottle of Honest Tea in his lunch box, but the bottle was heavy and rarely returned home embogue.

Our company had just started marketing a lineage of organic hunger quenchers we called Honest Ade that had just a touch of juice for flavor. So I started putting formative bottles of Honest Ade into Elie’sitting reticule. It was an improving—48 calories per serving instead of 100 by serving from the drink pouches I had been buying. The problem was, Elie would habitually reach home by means of half-full bottles.

As a result, we decided to introduce Honest Kids—a draw of lightly sweetened drink pouches for kids in a smaller serving size than our regular drinks. The fresh line, rather than pulling us gone from our core value proposition, actually expanded in continuance it. The pouches have been phenomenally successful—in just one year we have sold 30 million of them—more than the consist of of bottles of tea sold in the identical time frame. We are now in the process of identifying additional food and beverage categories which require to get a little more "honest."

Sometimes a diversion leads to uncovering the true value of your brand, sometimes it’s what takes a business under. For example, we eventually sold off the assets of the bottling plant (at a loss) and licensed the tea bag line. And we recently had a buyer who asked us to walk into banking, but that feels a little too far afield, at least at this time. But we all lack to innovate—one of my favorite quotes that we be in possession of on our bottle caps is from Frank Scully: "Why not go out on a extremity? Isn’cheek by jowl that where the fruit is?" There’s nothing wrong with going deficient in on a limb, the key is to recognize when the branch has a strong connection to your trunk.

—edited by Stacy Perman

More journals are available in our ongoing series

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/dec2008/sb20081218_592881.htm?campaign_id=rss_smlbz

To benefit from the coming bonanza in infrastructure work, it’s best for small businesses to start at the local level

By Karen E. Klein

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President-elect Barack Obama has his incoming team drawing up an economic stimulus plan that is, by all accounts, mammoth. With private work drying up, can inferior businesses prepare in on the polity contracting bonanza? Mark Amtower, a partner in consultants Amtower & Co. in Highland, Md., says yes—but they shouldn’t expect quick results if they’re happy starting now. He recently spoke to Smart Answers columnist Karen E. Klein about how narrow companies have power to bring to consummation long-term success through selling to the government. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow.

We keep hearing almost in what way much money the government is going to spend on things like infrastructure projects to stimulate the economy next year. Will greater degree portion of that work go to small businesses?

Definitely. These large infrastructure contracts force of will mostly be administered and bid out by the states, even because of things like federal highway projects. So in that place’session plenty of room in the place of illiberal businesses in government contracting, if it were not that only if they’re selling something the government needs. The good news is that the government buys all kinds of crowd, even personal items for people who are traveling for the government, or persuading their families. The bad news is that this is an incremental mart. There are no quick hits, and learning the system is not easy or firmly.

What advice render you give clients who are interested in getting into government labor?

Identify no more than three federal agencies to target and home in adhering them first. And if you target federal contracts, you should also target predicament and local contracts in the jurisdictions where you settle taxes. It’sitting a lot easier to aggravate a stink about the government buying from the big-box guys on the local level than it would be on the federal etc..

For very slender companies, I always rehearse them to start local. Putting a appearance to the company provides the same comfort commission merchant for business-to-government to the degree that it does notwithstanding business-to-business transactions. There are 37,000 government-occupied sites in the U.S.— not including military installations or postal offices—so the government is never far away from you. That includes things like the courts, VA hospitals, IRS tax offices, and even the irrational creature and plant inspection stay who’s attached to your local university. The blue pages of most phone books ascertain to be the same the government offices draw near you.

What kinds of companies get local—or federal—government contracts?

Name a business, and the government is buying from human being like it. The federal government accounts for more than 15% of gross domestic spending. Throw in state and local governments and you get to over one-third of gross family expenditure. There are 20 the masses full-time government employees, and they are buying from independent office suppliers, companies that build or supply trucking equipment, companies that do grounds bread—you name it. Think of all the post offices and military bases—who’sitting mowing the grass at those sites? There are a lot of ways that topical businesses can play in this market.

Getting into the government contracting pipeline is complicated, as you mentioned. Where can small businesses get heal with the process?

The Procurement Technical Assistance Program has 90-some offices around the country whose job is to help small businesses understand the mechanics of selling products or services to the restraint. They’ll teach you the rules and regulations involved, which are substantial. The program is sponsored by the Defense Logistics Agency, and it provides low-cost or no-cost training that’s held at universities or housekeeping development agency offices. There’session a list of the local centers available here.

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/dec2008/sb20081218_966864.htm?campaign_id=rss_smlbz

Investment capital flows to lean-and-mean startups with the with most propriety interval records and favors growth industries like clean tech and biotech

By John Tozzi

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Over the past four quarters—equal as the depths of the nation’sitting economic problems became evident—venture capitalists invested else than $7 billion in seed and early-stage companies in more than 1,400 deals, according to the MoneyTree Report from the National Venture Capital Assn. and . That’s more money raised by young companies than in a single one register year since the dot-com bubble break open in 2001.

In the largest deals of the past year, venture capital firms poured money into companies tackling the global problems of climate change and disease. The challenges are great—and investors bet that the payoffs leave be, too—for the startups that successfully commercialize ideas like solar power, low-emission cars, and new medications.

Who are these sharp startups? To find out, we followed the money, looking at deals that took broad way in the four most recent quarters available, from October 2007 to September 2008, based on the MoneyTree report, which uses data from Thomson Reuters. We then reached out to a selection of the seed and early-stage companies that raised the most money and profiled them in a slide show.

At the top of the inventory are some veteran entrepreneurs who have already proven themselves to investors by founding companies that led to acquisitions. The team behind Relypsa, a Santa Clara (Calif.) physic evolution company working on a treatment for life-threatening hyperkalemia in mind and kidney patients, sold their last company to Amgen (AMGN) for $420 million in 2007. Relypsa, founded months on the model of the acquisition, raised $33 million in late 2007.

But even for well-capitalized startups with proven track records, the uncertain funding outlook means they have to make each dollar count. Gerrit Klaerner, Relypsa’session main operating magistrate, says startups that are without more now thinking of ways to trim may be in trouble. "Operating a small company, I think you have to be lean and mean. If you start thinking about capital efficiency today, it’sitting too tardily," he says.

For other businesses, the downturn carries the scent of opportunity. Ron Gonen, co-founder and chief executive magistrate of RecycleBank, says the sudden strait for cities and households to conserve cash puts his company in a position to be augmented. The 85-employee New York firm runs recycling systems for cities that permit residents earn points, based on the amount they recycle, that they can redeem at retailers. "Now that cities verily need to save standard of value and people are really looking for a way to get disposable revenue, we’re at a unique time in our growth curve," Gonen says. He says families can earn up to $400 a year in RecycleBank points. RecycleBank, which raised $30 million extreme year on most honorable position of $15 million in an earlier round, takes a divide of the savings that the cities get from reducing how much rubbish they send to landfills.

Venture capitalists see other companies that focus on conservation, renewable power, and reducing the emissions that spring global warming considered in the state of strong bets even in saddening times.

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/dec2008/sb20081218_856857.htm?campaign_id=rss_smlbz

S&P finds a host of tech stocks and others that have large backlogs of orders, which be possible to afford a cushion for the time of tough times

By Beth Piskora From Standard & Poor’session Equity Research

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It stands to reason that companies with large backlogs of orders might be more usefully positioned than others to ride out the recession without too much injury. We polled the S&P equity analysts for their best ideas on companies with boastful order books. Technology, pertaining, and manliness names dominate the list.

Most of the technology companies put on the list are classified as large caps through eminently expressive software and/or service businesses. Generally, semiconductor and hardware businesses either don’t provide such information or don’t have enough notable data to be included, perhaps for of the challenging economic backdrop. This is why software- and service-oriented names often, but not always, exert influence to act fundamentally victory during challenging economic periods. (Remember, past performance is no guarantee of future results.)

Companies in the tech sector that could be considered as having "big order books," with backlogs or deferred revenues of more than $1 billion, include:

Apple Inc. (AAPL): Largely reflecting the relatively new iPhone-related operations, in what place subscription accounting is employed to account for the 24-month sign-up periods and eminently expressive software elements, deferred revenues were $4.9 billion as of September 2008.

Accenture (ACN): This consulting and outsourcing-services firm had $1.8 billion in deferred revenues as of August 2008.

Applied Materials (AMAT): This large semiconductor equipment company had a $4.9 billion backlog as of October 2008. No other semiconductor equipment company S&P covers had bookings in the billions of dollars as of the third calendar-year furnish with quarters, provident the challenging economic backdrop.

CACI International (CAI): This government-focused services company had a funded backlog of $1.7 billion as of September 2008.

EMC (EMC): The world’s largest provider of storage solutions had $3.1 billion in deferred revenues as of September 2008.

Hewlett-Packard (HPQ): This large hardware maker with significant software and services operations, especially following the August acquisition of EDS, had deferred revenues of $6.3 billion as of October 2008. The gang hasn’t on condition a bookings number for the services operations following the EDS purchase.

International Business Machines (IBM): This extensive hardware, software, and services firm had deferred revenues of $9.6 billion as of September 2008. Considerably more notable was the backlog of $114 billion.

Oracle: (ORCL): The large enterprise software company had deferred revenues of $5 billion as of August 2008.

The industrial sector also has a smattering of names on the list:

Boeing (BA): Had a $275.9 billion commercial airplane backlog as of September, $349.4 billion total backlog, and $27.7 billion in estimated 2008 revenues.

Triumph Group (TGI): Had a $1.26 billion total backlog (as of September), and estimated $1.263 billion in revenues according to financial 2009 (ending March).

And the energy sector has two stocks worth mentioning:

Transocean (RIG): Has 3,752 months of rigs subordinate to diminish, or an average of around 26 months of backlog for every rig in the flotilla. That translates to a dollar import of backlog of $41.1 billion, as of Nov. 3, 2008.

Noble (NE): Has 1,345 months of rigs under contract, or an average of about 21 months of backlog for every rig in the fleet. That translates to a dollar price of backlog of $12.1 billion in the same manner with of Nov. 14, 2008.

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/dec2008/pi20081218_146019.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

Here are some investment plays that may be likely to withstand a sustained bout of falling prices

By David Bogoslaw

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The knots in economists’ and investors’ stomachs tightened on Dec. 17 with the release of consumer price data for November, which showed prices falling as antidote to the second straight month—and the fastest rate of decline since the government started tracking these numbers 61 years ago. A 17% drop in energy prices, with gasoline from the top to the bottom of a staggering 29.5% since October, was the primary driver of the drop in prices.

Food and potion prices continued to climb, albeit at a a snail’s pace of 0.2% in November, their slowest rate of growth this year, and clothing prices rose 0.3%. The core standard of inflation, excluding sprightly fodder and energy prices, was flat for the month and up only 1.1% from a year ago.

It’s a dramatic turnaround from not so much than six months ago, whenever oil prices peaked at $147.40 a barrel, prompting inflation hawks on the Federal Reserve Board’s policy committee to vote against measures intended to minimize, if not entirely stanza off, a severe economic downturn. The central bank’s decision on Dec. 16 to smack the Fed funds rate to between zero and 0.25%, the lowest rate ever, makes clear that the Fed has shifted its target to preventing widespread deflation.

Deflation is about as dirty a word since you can find in the region of economics and it’sitting usually associated with the other dreaded "D" word, depression. Indeed, the Great Depression was largely driven by means of deflation nearly 80 years agone. The consumer is abiding to love falling prices at first, but the trepidation is that if deflation becomes deep and pervasive sufficiency, it will eventually spur employers to cut wages and axe jobs, sending worried consumers deeper into their foxholes. The most pernicious condition of deflation is how it raises the require to be paid of repaying debt by boosting the value of the dollar,

But concern about a deflation threat to rival the one that afflicted Japan during the 1990s is by nay means universal. Barry Boswell, an economist at the Brookings Institution, sees deflation as in a primary manner affecting commodity prices to the time when now and doesn’t expect it to become an economy-wide menace.

Along with the Fed’session aggressive use of its balance sheet to combat economic contraction, "other lines of defense include the large scattering in price changes (which obscure the trend) and some indications that businesses are reluctant to divide prices and wages outright," Goldman Sachs (GS) economist Edward McKelvey said in a research scholium on Dec. 18.

The extensive destruction of credit is also contributing to deflation, but Joseph Trevisani, especial place of traffic analyst at FX Solutions, a currency brokerage firm in Saddle River, N.J., says he doubts "we’ll be careful a textbook wrap of deflation," the economy-wide version seen in the 1930s and to some extent in Japan 10 years ago, "since the Fed is so diligent in trying to reflate the economy." The effectiveness of the Fed’s efforts began to be reflected in the value of the dollar, which fell abruptly on Dec. 17 against other major currencies, reaching a 13-year low against the yen.

Still, following in a series monthly declines in consumer and agriculturist prices are enough to make even the most optimistic arrangement watchers sit up and take notice. For investors, defense against a possible digression of deflation will come down to identifying those sectors of the administration that furnish supplies goods and services that consumers and businesses can’face to face afford to do without. Here, BusinessWeek looks at some sectors and stocks most good positioned to face the scourge of deflation:

Original text: http://www.businessweek.com/investor/content/dec2008/pi20081218_674248.htm?campaign_id=rss_null

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NEW YORK — Bernard Madoff’s contention that he pulled away one of the biggest financial frauds in recital without help is essential being met with disbelief by his investors and experts in the securities industry.

It normally takes a team of accountants, stockbrokers, lawyers and else to operate the kind of multibillion-dollar investment fund Madoff ran from the 17th floor of his Manhattan headquarters.

The firm had clients around the sphere. Simply generating the detailed financial statements investors received every month would have been a of a monument effort beneficial to one person, observers said, even suppose that those reports were pure fantasy.

“Someone had to create them. Someone had to produce the appearance that in that place were returns,” related limb of the law Harry Susman, who represents several Madoff investors.

Federal investigators are continually in the early stages of trying to answer those questions as they decipher Madoff’s operation.

Already, they have discovered multiple sets of books and what appear to be fraudulent documents in his Manhattan offices, raising the question of who prepared them.

Investigators have started serving grand-jury subpoenas requiring witnesses to testify and seeking documents, according to an official cordial with the case.

The scrutiny is being led by the FBI and Securities and Exchange Commission, agencies already challenged with unearthing other financial scandals since the Wall Street meltdown.

One potential refer of the inquiry is the role played by Frank DiPascali, a top financial officer at Madoff’s investment-advisory business.

Several investors, their lawyers and a forgoing Madoff employee who spoke to The Associated Press described DiPascali of the same kind with the man who appeared to be most liable for the day-to-day operations of the business.

Authorities haven’t publicly accused DiPascali of in any degree wrongdoing.

His attorney, Marc Mukasey, on Thursday declined to discuss his retainer’s role or say whether he became aware of the fraud before Madoff’s arrest.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008537678_madoffscandal19.html?syndication=rss

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Brian Bird had just received Amazon.com’s Kindle electronic-book reader from his girlfriend as a gift. That didn’t stop him from selling it to someone else.

With the Kindle in short supply and asking prices on the Internet at twice the device’s $359 retail price or more, he got his girlfriend’s permission and found a buyer on Craigslist willing to pay $500.

“People who want to give it as a holiday gift have to pay a premium to get it in time,” said Bird, 27, a salesman for an Internet company in Redwood City, Calif. “If the existing one can be sold at a profit and I can buy the new version when it comes out in two or three months, then it’s worth the effort.”

Stoked by an Oprah Winfrey endorsement in October, the Kindle quickly sold out. With Christmas a week away, used Kindles are listed on eBay, Craigslist and Amazon’s secondhand product site for as much as $1,500.

The run on Kindles ambushed Seattle-based Amazon, which had expected to have enough supply for the rest of the year. As the retailer struggles to get more in stock, it’s asking buyers to join a three-month waiting list. While the shortage risks alienating shoppers and leaving some sales on the table, the Kindle’s buzz may pay off in 2009.

“It’s a great position to be in, given the uncertainty of the economy,” said Bryan Eshelman, managing director at Alix Partners, a retail-consulting firm. “Could they have ended up with more inventory of this, and therefore, more sales in this time period? Sure. But in this economy, I don’t fault its strategy.”

Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, introduced the Kindle in November 2007. The paperback-sized device allows users to download books, magazines and newspapers, displaying them on a high-resolution screen that’s designed to look more like paper. This is the second year Amazon has sold out of the product ahead of the holiday season.

This year, the company ran out of Kindles last month after Winfrey called the device her “favorite new gadget” on her television show, Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener said.

Amazon has probably sold 400,000 Kindles in total, said James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research. Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., puts that number higher, at about 450,000. Amazon will sell about 500,000 Kindles in 2009, estimates Colin Sebastian, an analyst at Lazard Capital Markets.

“That ability to grab a book electronically from wherever you are is very powerful and had generated a lot of word-of-mouth,” said McQuivey, who originally thought the Kindle wouldn’t be well received because of its high price.

Amazon, founded as an online bookseller in 1994, plans to release a new version of the Kindle in 2009. The company also is expanding the amount of material for the Kindle, offering more than 200,000 books, blogs and publications.

Amazon added more content this year by buying Audible, a provider of audio books and newspapers. In August, the company agreed to purchase Shelfari, a social-networking site that allows users to share reading lists and book recommendations.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008537675_hotkindle19.html?syndication=rss

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Microsoft has been recognized through a survey of major corporations as doing the best job of investing in its community. The survey was part of a meditation published through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

The study was presented with a broader sound on the relationship between business and their communities. Seattle was one of eight cities where the report held forums through business leaders, providing a not-too-surprising please of threats to violent departure from established precedent: education, “the Seattle process,” and transportation. Read on in spite of more details.

Microsoft came out on pinnacle in an online survey, focused on incorporated community investment in 2007. The lake of companies evaluated included “large companies in larger U.S. cities along with U.S. Chamber subordinate part firms and thus responses are not truly representative of all corporations in the U.S.,” the cogitate’s authors note.

The consequence of the study was more to look at best practices in incorporated philanthropy, but survey respondents were asked to “name other companies they intention were doing the best job of investing in the communities in which they cause.” (Note: The survey is based without ceasing 468 responses from corporate employees, a response rate of 1.6 percent. The authors added this caveat: “No statistical tests of the representativeness of the sample or respondent group have been made. Therefore, all conclusions herein should not be considered representative of the inexact business community.”)

The authors introduce their communication in the context of globalization and its implications for “to what degree business leaders eye their companies’ role in U.S. communities.” Contrary to what the authors call “the popular stereotype,” numerous company companies choose to stay in a community for years, and invest significantly. “[C]orporate community investment (CCI) is motivated by a brute passion to improve local competitive conditions and quality of life, ‘give back,’ and recruit and retain employees and customers.”

Education is the top recipient of corporate philanthropy, the communication found. “This seems to proceed from a view that education is related to the future competitiveness of the communities in which they are involved,” the authors wrote. “… ‘Combination funds,’ in third place, are gifts made to organizations of that kind as the United Way and Catholic Charities. Therefore, the results suggest that very a large portion of corporate philanthropy is still not targeted about particular issues and initiatives, despite the progress the field has made toward more strategic philanthropy in the past decade.”

Seattle is one of the eight communities studied in detail in the report. Participants in a forum convened for the report focused on “how Seattle is simultaneously characterized by progressive, forward-looking leadership and conventional urban dysfunction that regularly threatens introduction of novelty.” The top three issues they identified for Seattle were schools, general body of mankind resolution making (aka “the Seattle process”), and forced exile.

The forum participants did not have much faith in existing institutions to solve the “Seattle process” problem. “They … agreed that no chambers of illicit or other commerce alliances remain that can confront the slow public processes that threaten Seattle’s continued growth, and for that believed that a unused set of alliances would need to be created to deal with the realities of Seattle’session development challenges.”

The Seattle-specific information begins in continuance page 42 of the state (72-page PDF).

Original text: http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2008/12/18/microsoft_named_top_us_company_for_community_inves.html

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New federal rules announced Thursday limiting the ability of companies to increase interest rates on credit cards won’privately entrap effect soon enough and don’t do enough to prevent rate jumps, said local consumer advocates.

Pierce County credit counselor Jennifer Hegstad dubbed human being practice called universal default, “a mean little creature,” because companies dress in’familiarily have to warn consumers that their interest rates are going to subsist increased. And comprising entirely particulars deficiency isn’privately entirely banned while burdened by the new rules.

Buried in the fine print of cardholder agreements, this provision gives companies the discretion to raise up a card’s interest rate if a credit relate changes, even if that change is due to a new loan or because the customer was late once paying a different credit card.

The new rules will limit the practice more. William Ruberry, a spokesman for the Office of Thrift Supervision, reported the rules will ban total default on existing card balances and insist upon advance notice onward future balances.

Those changes mark the most sweeping clampdown in continuance the credit-card industry in decades and are aimed at protecting consumers from arbitrary interest-rate increases or incomplete proper time on condition to defray the bills. The rules were approved by the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department’s Office of Thrift Supervision and the National Credit Union Administration.

But the new rules also won’familiarily take effect to the time when July 2010.

That’s too late for Erin Engle, of Shoreline. In April she discovered on her Washington Mutual VISA credit-card statement that the interest rate on her weighing was raised from 9.99% to 23.99%, which came as a disgust because she said she always paid on time, sent in more than her least part payment and had a good proof of desert score.

After speaking to a supervisor in the credit-card unit, Engle said the only explanation she received was that the bank considered her account to be at higher risk of deficiency. That didn’t force discernment: She and her spouse were keeping up with their mortgage and other credit cards. Engle decided to transfer her balance to a lower-interest card.

“My conclusion was they were afflicting to scoop their losses from the people who actually paid their balances because they were taking such losses from vulgar herd who were defaulting,” said Engle, 31.

The universal-default providing is the reason many of her clients have filed with respect to bankruptcy protection, uttered Everett attorney Mary Schmitt.

Universal default “causes everything to snowball,” Schmitt said. “That’s for what cause they’re all in bankruptcy.”

If a cardholder is even one day late with a payment, the bank can raise the default interest rate so high — she’s seen one as high as 52 percent — that an individual or kindred has no turn up of paying it off, Schmitt said.

Credit-card issuers turn the accounts over to collections agencies, which get a decree against the unique, whose wages can then be garnished. It’s not long before the family defaults on their mortgage and is headed for foreclosure, she said.

Amid the recession and rising job losses, consumers wish been defaulting at high levels on their credit cards. Bankruptcy filings in Washington recite have spiked 40 percent since finally year.

The proposals drew more than 65,000 public comments — the highest number ever received by means of the Federal Reserve. The rules in addition limit such lender practices as allocating all payments to balances with lower interest rates when a borrower has balances with different rates.

Sanjay Bhatt: 206-464-3103 or sbhatt@seattletimes.com

Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.

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