Small-Business owners face even more financial crunch

 
By: Matthew Schoeneck
Due to the recent financial crisis, small-business owners are facing much tighter budgets than before. The crisis has forced small-business owners to have much tighter credit. As it has started to become harder and harder to get bank financing, small-business owners are going into to the direction of credit cards and personal saving accounts.
116 million [...]

Auto Lending Problem

By Tom Flynn
As we  all know already our economy has been on the downslide for quite some time now and there really are not a lot of signs that things will turn for the better in the near future.  Adding to this problem I have read an interesting article about some problems the auto lending [...]

More U.S. Bank Failures Coming

By Lanlan Liang
Many U.S. banks have been struggling survive the severe downturn in the housing market. However, the current situation for many U.S. banks was historically tough. “When the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized Washington Mutual Inc. last Thursday and sold the bank’s assets to JPMorgan Chase & Co. for $1.9 billion on this Monday, [...]

Understanding the Financial Crisis and Market Meltdown

 
1) FDR had it partially right when he said that “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” While we have other worries as well, the greatest obstacle to economic progress is the HUGE psychological impact of Americans watching the stock market plummet right in front of their faces. This is going to cause consumer [...]

The Demolition of Tiger Stadium by Michael McArdle

As the 2008 major league baseball season comes to an end, fans in New York have already bid their emotional farewells to Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium.  With their new parks opening in 2009 right next door to these historic venues, these parks will be dismantled since they will serve no future purpose other than [...]

Upside Down Mortages Causing Many Problems Among Home Owners

By Chad Ingalls

Many people in today’s housing market are in trouble because they have gone upside down on their mortgage. This means that they currently owe more on the principal of their home than their home is actually worth.
A home line of equity against the value of one’s home is one thing commonly used in today’s [...]

Your Money, Their Money: The election and what it means for your money by Adam Kirsch

There’s a lot at stake in this upcoming election, and whether you’re a political junkie like me, or couldn’t care less, we will all be affected in numerous ways by this election. First off, consider tax policies. How are income taxes effecting your parents? Is your family currently struggling? While taxes may or may not [...]

New Yankee Stadium Deal Criticized by Matt Wettje

 The most successful franchise in baseball history is the target of much political debate. It has been claimed that the New York Yankees and New York City officials have conspired to misrepresent the value of city land to the IRS in order to gain additional tax deals from the federal government for the construction of [...]

Innovation Economics and Entrepreneurship by Craig Nestler

This coming year is the year for innovation and creativity. It is obvious that the economy is not doing well, so people need to start thinking creatively. New and innovative ideas can give the economy the boost it needs to start to grow again. Politicians, including Barack Obama and John McCain, support innovative economics as [...]

Buffet steps up to the plate

Financial markets were tense Wednesday, with stocks fluctuating following investor Warren Buffett’s decision to invest in Goldman Sachs Group Inc. The credit markets showed added strain as investors await news about the government’s plan to rescue banks from crippling debt.
Berkshire will buy $5 billion of perpetual preferred stock that carries a 10 percent dividend. It [...]

Decreased Recruiting This Fall

   

          As the Whitman School of Management clearly knows, our fragile economy right now is hurting the recruiting from business schools this fall. Most other business schools are reluctant to comment on the decreased recruitment happening on campus, but some say hiring will fall by nearly 50% this fall with so much uncertainty in the [...]

Giants Stadium to Require Personal Seat License

 

By Josh Goodman
After the Giants won the Super Bowl they decided that they were going to charge their fans a fee for every seat in the stadium that they were building with the Jets. This would be called a personal seat license.  
 

 
The fans would pay $1,000-$20,000 each for a license which would be the right [...]

Lil Wayne’s Financial Illiteracy by David Levy

Multi-platinum hip-hop artist Lil Wayne, real name Dwayne Carter Jr., re-signs with the only label he has ever been a part of, the New Orleans based Cash Money Records.   This multi-million dollar deal adds to the exorbitant amount of money Lil Wayne has made from pursuing his rap career.  Wayne charges an average $100,000 per [...]

Why college football players should get paid by Alex Chung

 

 
       
            College football used to be consistent with the primary goal of a university to educate and provide the well being of student athletes. Today, it has become a multibillion-dollar entertainment industry. College football is no different to the NFL due to the entertainment industry, but there is the big argument of why college football [...]

Cost of living revisited by Jonathan Weinstein

 
 
 
 
Since I got so many responses on the cost of living calculator I am going to expand on it and use it for this month’s article. As previously mentioned I am a local and interned this summer in Syracuse at a large company called Lockheed Martin. I was looking into things however for this upcoming [...]

A New Era Begins on Wall Street: Life Changes FOREVER

And then there were none.
Federal regulators converted Wall Street’s remaining stand-alone investment banks – Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley – into bank holding companies Sunday night.
The move allows Goldman and Morgan to scoop up retail banks and to streamline their borrowing from the Federal Reserve. The shift also is aimed at removing them as targets [...]

SUV’s For Sale But No Buyers

Brian Hubbell
Couldn’t seem to post video but here is the link:
http://money.cnn.com/video/#/video/news/2008/08/20/news.smith.suv.sales.cnnmoney
 
High gas prices are filling dealer’s lots with unwanted big SUV’s. Many dealers are forced to pay more than they’re selling the SUV’s for in order to get them off their lot. This is due to the whole economy being wrapped around the current gas [...]

Do Schools Really Have Students’ Best Financial Interest? By Ben Kriger

BKriger
With each new semesters’ start at school I usually find myself asking why school is so damn expensive, and I am not just talking about tuition. It’s my opinion that schools really don’t care anymore about furthering their students as much as they do about making money.
Tuition cost rise every year, but why? Does that [...]

Too young to save, too afraid not to

t’s never too early to start putting money away for retirement, but that can be tough for a young person with a tight budget and a lot of pressure to spend.
Question: I just turned 24, and the constant pressure from financial advisers to “save save save” for retirement makes me anxious that I’ll never be [...]

The U.S. has caught up with Western Europe with Mobile Phones

It was a familiar refrain: The U.S., the birthplace of the Internet, was a wireless backwater. Even early in this decade, many viewed the U.S. as a developing market, fit mostly for hand-me-downs from the more advanced Europeans and Asians. Unlike unified Europe, the U.S. market was fractured by warring radio standards and dotted with [...]

Should The Feds Change their Method of Analysis for Troubled Firms?

By Syreeta L. McNeal, CPA, JD
Should the United States federal government bailout companies like Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and American International Group (AIG) or should some level of responsibility be given to the executive leadership of these companies?
Every time I view the latest news on our federal government’s bailout of these [...]

Crash and Burn 101: A Finance Professor’s Take on Our Economy

By Dr. Boyce Watkins
The United States is respected throughout the world for its powerful economy. We are also, unfortunately, becoming known for our arrogance and financial irresponsibility. During my tenure as a Visiting Scholar with the Center for European Economic Research, one of my colleagues could not understand why American consumers earn more than Germans [...]

Is Buying that New BMW in your 20’s Really Worth It? By: Jake Kuss

By: Jake Kuss
I found this question while looking over an article at CNNmoney.com:
Question: I just turned 24, and the constant pressure from financial advisers to “save save save” for retirement makes me anxious that I’ll never be able to retire. I contribute 10% of my salary to my 401(k) each year – some of which [...]

Oil Prices Down 35% Since Mid-July

By: Jeff Quinn
Oil prices have been dropping at a steady rate since mid July when prices hit a record of $147.27. As of Monday oil ended the day trading at $95.71. While this is good news for those of us concerned about the price of gasoline at the pumps, its drop in price is just [...]

More Class Materials You Might Want to Download

 
Make sure you are staying well-read in class.  If not, you will find yourself in a great deal of pain when the exam arrives.  Here are some materials to help you in your preparation:
 
Solutions to problems in Chapter 1
Chapter 2 solutions
Chapter 3 Solutions
Chapter 4 Solutions
 
Chapter 4 powerpoint slides

In Case You’re Wondering….This Is A Big Deal

Stocks prices fell sharply Monday as jittery investors struggled to digest one the of the biggest and most sudden upheavals in the financial system in decades — the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the agreement by Bank of America to buy troubled investment bank Merrill Lynch.
The Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 504.48 points, or 4.4%, [...]

Reaching the Rainbow

By: Hua Li
Some goals seem too hard to reach. But with a little courage, planning and creativity, you can go farther than you might think. Follow those four steps below, and you will make your career dream comes true.
Step 1: Define your vision and mission
         To have vision means to an idea about making the [...]

Social Entrepreneurship by Ahmed Madry

    
 
     I was recently introduced to the idea of social entrepreneurship in my writing 307 class and it completely changed the way I thought of business and entrepreneurship.  Social entrepreneurs create business solutions to society’s most pressing issues, whether for profit or non-profit.  Social entrepreneurs are like the renaissance men and women that fix our [...]

The Drama Surrounding Lehman Brothers by Stephanie Han

This summer I was awarded the opportunity to work as a Finance Summer Analyst at Lehman Brothers. It definitely was an experience that I will never forget. Times at the firm were tumultuous due to the mortgage crisis and the economy falling into a recession. Many significant events occurred during my ten weeks at the [...]

China’s “Secretive” Problems by Pierre Carras

Most of what I hear about China when I am in the US pertains to their rapid growth year over year and the carelessness they have when it comes to making children’s toys. I wanted to focus on certain problems in the economic development of China that we do not necessarily hear about every day.
1. State [...]