Government, Politics and the Economy Congress Urged to Raise Debt Limit Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has saddled Congress with the task—for the second time this year—of quickly increasing the maximum amount of money the federal government can borrow, something increasingly unpopular with the American people. WSJ.com Management and Operations Are Your Employees Ever Really Off? n the age of online social networking, when the goings-on in your business tweeted or written on Facebook walls, the after-hours activities of your employees may count as much as what they're doing "on-the-job." ManageSmar... [Read Full Article]

You want your money, the earnings from your business, to work for you, but the question is, how do you know you have found a good financial planner who can make that happen? The key—at least most of the time—is to make an informed choice from the start. True, there are people out there who will fool you, Bernard Madoff comes to mind, but if you make an educated choice from the start, and stay on top of your account, your position will be far better than otherwise.  /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} According to financial expert Steve Merkel, you need to do your... [Read Full Article]

  Government and Economy Has the US Become the New Russia? In the May issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the IMF and a professor at the Sloan School of Management at MIT compares the “financial oligarchy” running US policy with the business elites in emerging countries. FT.com SBA Lending Assistance Stalling T he parts of the federal government's stimulus program aimed at small-business owners aren't working as they should, say local owners and small-business experts who are trying to figure out what to do about the problem. Management and Fina... [Read Full Article]

You have seen them, those emails saying that you are owed a piece of President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus package and that, for a small fee, the senders of said email will be happy to secure your money and send it right along to you. It is a lie. Really, there is no other way to say it. Like all scam emails—the one where some bank needs to “verify” your information, or the one where the sweet dying old lady in Nigeria has picked you to inherit her fabulous wealth, etc.—it is a lie to hook the shady, or the desperate, and with the economy the way it is, there are plenty of both. The FTC Statement The Federal Trade Commission is working on this problem and has issued the following statement. Please read it carefully. The FTC is warning consumers that they could get stung by an economic stimulus scam.  The scams come in different forms.  Right now, on the Web and in e-mail, scammers are tellin... [Read Full Article]

  Government and Economy When Will the $730 Million in SBA Funding be Spent? The Small Business Administration is getting a much-needed financial shot in the arm from the stimulus bill, but local leaders and business owners are still waiting to see how that funding might help them. Bradenton.com Nation’s Economic Woes Likely to Spur Climb in FraudKroll Global Fraud Report says companies with high employee turnover and weak internal controls are more vulnerable, while high-risk business ventures also lead to more corrupt business practices. WorkForce Management Management and Financial Issues [Read Full Article]

  Government and Economy SBA Warns of Fraudulent Attempts to Obtain Bank Account Information from Small Businesses The US Small Business Administration has issued a scam alert today to small businesses, warning them not to respond to letters falsely claiming to have been sent by the SBA asking for bank account information in order to qualify them for federal tax rebates. US Small Business Administration [Read Full Article]

Those who have followed my meanderings over the last year know that I have a special place in my heart—not to mention a very special place in Hell—for Internet scammers. Most of the time, their poorly-worded little bombshells are caught by my spam filters, but sometimes they manage to worm their way through into the actual Inbox. I received the following over the past couple of days so I thought I would share them with you. They are not all by any means, but they are quite representative. There are the mundane, the cleaver and one—my personal favorite—that should have every Soldier, Marine, Sailor and Airman in this country’s armed forces sufficiently ticked off to hunt them down. One word of warning: Do not click on any links in the following examples. I have left them active so you can mouse-over them and see that they are, in fact, fakes. So, without further a due, enter the scammers! The Bank Scam... [Read Full Article]

As if the economic meltdown, the dog-and-pony shows from Detroit and Wall Street, and the Federal Government’s ham-handed attempts to regain control over the nation’s finances were not bad enough: Former NASDAQ chairman and respected money manager Bernard L. Madoff, has for years been running what is possibly the largest Ponzi scheme ever--$50 billion. When I read about it, I was not surprised. Madoff’s crime was merely one of the various crimes and crises that have afflicted Wall Street over the last decade. It was not the first to come to light and I promise you, it will not be the last. The SEC Surprise What was a surprise was a story on Yahoo News that reported: On Tuesday night, [Securities and Exchange Commission] SEC Chairman Christopher Cox ordered an internal investigation of what went wrong and offered a scathing critique of the conduct of his staff attor... [Read Full Article]