Darwin hit it on the nail when he wrote in ‘Origin of the Species’ that ” Unless profitable variations occur, natural selection can do nothing “.

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Home truths about the causes of the financial crisis

CNBC: The Kudlow Report — Crisis Economics: Discussing whether the recession is headed for a double-dip, with Nouriel Roubini, Roubini Global Economics chairman.  (Click for Video [6:48])   All rights reserved, Roubini Global Economics, LLC .

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Roubini on CNBC’s The Kudlow Report: Is the Recession Heading for a Double-Dip?

Winter Haven, FL June 28, 2010 DocuLex (www.doculex.com), creator of document and content management software, has received industry analyst Buyers Lab’s top 5-Star rating for the company’s flagship offering, DocuLex Archive Studio.

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DocuLex Awarded 5-Star Rating for Content Mgt Software

Historically, municipal bonds have been at the low end of the risk spectrum, but economic realities are changing that assumption. According to a May 28 article in CNNMoney by Sara Behunet titled “Three American cities on the brink of broke,” in 2009, 183 municipal issuers defaulted on $6.4 billion of bond payments – up from 31 defaults on $348 million in 2008. That’s an 1800% increase in dollars and a 590% increase in municipalities in default

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Municipal Bond Defaults Are Increasing

As Doug Webster mentioned in our first post on this topic , we’ve been considering how the TV viewing experience might evolve in four more years. I can also already imagine the likely enhancements that will transform the FIFA World Cup in 2014. I believe that in the foreseeable future the term “Television” entertainment may be equally associated with on-demand video streaming over the Internet as it is with traditional linear programming via broadcast channels.

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World Cup 2014: Imagine the HD TV Experience

Yesterday Eurostat released their annual comparison of food prices . It shows that the prices in Ireland are the second highest in the EU after Denmark. What is more worrying is that instead of coming down faster in Ireland than in other countries food prices were actually relatively higher in 2009 than in 2008 or 2007.

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Relative Food Prices Across Europe

When the G-20 met in London in April 2009, they produced a Communiqué containing just 688 words . And as the blog noted in conclusion, there was ” no sign of a ‘Plan B’ being developed “, in case the Stimulus measures failed to work

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More words than action at G-20 Summit

President Bashar Al-Assad of Syria initiated a diplomatic tour of Latin America yesterday with a visit to Venezuela, where he and President Hugo Chavez created a $100 million bilateral development fund and discussed how to build more unity between Arab and Latin American peoples. read more

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Venezuela and Syria Create Binational Fund, Advocate Latin American-Arab Unity

The curtains were drawn on the tenth Summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (Alba) in Ecuador last Friday with a declaration that proposed a new progressive economic trade agreement and a recognition of the importance of the indigenous and afro-descendant communities to the future development of the alliance. read more

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Tenth ALBA Summit: Hundreds of Activist Delegates Participate

A longer and more detailed analysis of this proposal of mine for an orderly restructuring of Greece’s public debt is available to RGE clients: Order from Chaos   From the Financial Times :  It is time to recognise that Greece is not just suffering from a liquidity crisis; it is facing an insolvency crisis too. Rating agencies have started to downgrade its public debt to junk level, while spreads on Greek sovereign bonds last week spiked to new highs. The €110bn bail-out agreed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in May only delays the inevitable default and risks making it disorderly when it comes.

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Greece’s Best Option Is an Orderly Default

The New York Times carries a lengthy article (plus plenty of photos in a slideshow format) on the Irish situation: you can read it here . A more accurate and comprehensive headline might have been: “Ireland paying a high price for boom-bust cycle in property sector and attendant banking crisis, amplified and abetted by procyclical fiscal policy and now requiring a sustained fiscal correction”  – but that is probably too long! Update:  Paul Krugman adds his view in this post .

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Ireland Paying a High Price for Austerity

A significant portion of the US food supply is produced by workers here illegally. A Google search for the phrase “ice raids” will produce numerous accounts of large food processing operations having to shut down for weeks because a large number of their workers were caught using fake SSN’s

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Importing workers or food supplies

Thirty-three members of Gross, Mendelsohn and Associates’s staff toiled in the 99-degree heat on Wednesday, June 23 to plant trees, install raised garden beds, plant hundreds of perennials, collect trash and spread mulch around the Sandtown / Winchester Community Center. The Maryland-based CPA firm partnered with the Parks & People Foundation on the community service project. Gross Mendelsohn is celebrating its 50th anniversary year in 2010 by taking on several large-scale projects like this one.

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Gross Mendelsohn Volunteers Make Baltimore Community Center Cleaner, Greener

So far, our series of posts on the hiring process has covered writing good job descriptions , finding innovative ways to identify candidates , screening applicants and interviewing prospective employees . Now that you’ve chosen a final candidate and preparing to make an offer, it is important to consider conducting background screening and a drug test.

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Background Checks and Drug Screenings

WINTER HAVEN – City Manager Dale Smith announced today that a conditional offer of employment has been made to Gary Hester to serve as the City’s next Police Chief. It is anticipated background checks will be completed and Hester will begin work with the City of Winter Haven August, 16, 2010.

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Hester is Offered Haven Police Chief Position

According to the Volkskrant , each World Cup match of Oranje costs the Netherlands economy 130 mln euro — essentially because people sit around watching telly instead of working. Oranje has yet to sparkle, so there was limited joy to offset the loss in productivity. Thanks to Henry, Ireland’s economy was spared a similar fate — although the Boys in Green certainly would have put in a better performance than les Bleus

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The Hand of Henry

Bryan Caplan of George Mason University and blogger at EconLog talks to EconTalk host Russ Roberts about two books: Eugene Richter’s Pictures of the Socialistic Future and F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom

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Caplan on Hayek, Richter, and Socialism

Given that parents are letting their kids play in the oil , please note that the American Academy of Pediatrics has released the following statement on the Gulf oil spill: Children should be directly supervised and should not be allowed to play in or around areas where the water or beach contains oil or sludge . Children, and whenever possible teens, should not be involved in clean-up efforts but should only return after the area is cleaned up. Children should be the last group to return to areas impacted by oil or other toxic substances

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American Academy of Pediatrics: Children Should Stay Away from Oil

The blog is a great believer in the retail sector’s ability to help us forecast chemical industry trends. McBride is Europe’s leading ‘own brand’ in the household and personal sector. Its profit warning on Thursday of ” weak retail sales across Europe “, therefore rings alarm bells.

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McBride warns of "weak retail sales across Europe"

In today’s Business Post , Colm argues that “smart” should be defined broadly if it is to stimulate economic growth, rather than the narrow focus on gadgets that the government is currently following Others and I have argued roughly the same, in different words, but without much traction I guess that in ten years time, when an independent expert will evaluate the lack of return on investment in the smart economy, politicians will argue no one had warned them at the time

Link:
Colm Kearney on the smart economy

The winner of WinWeb’s Pitch of the Week competition this week is Student Aid, who have targeted the student demographic with their Student Aid boxes with fantastic results. Read more about Student Aid here and if you would like to enter WinWeb’s Pitch of the Week competition visit our Facebook page for more information – you could win superb free publicity for your small business! winweb.com – Software and business services online to start and run a small business – free trial and 100+ free business ideas

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WinWeb Pitch of the Week – Student Aid

Samantha Reinders for The Wall Street Journal: A street vendor in Cape Town, South Africa, says his knock-off soccer shirts are his biggest sellers. The World Cup is gaining steam as group play is almost over and the remaining teams are getting ready to duel in the elimination rounds.  [Annoying for many, but not for me] vuvuzelas (have you checked out the new youtube vuvuzela button yet?) are not the only fan feature of the tournament.  As with any other major sporting event – it is hard not to notice the many hundreds of thousands of fans clad in their national teams gear. However, you have to wonder how those jerseys, hats, t-shirts, scarves, and other memorabilia are making their way on the backs, heads, and shoulders of the fans?

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Counterfeit World Cup

It’s crunch time for financial reform, and Wall Street banks are lobbying hard to keep a central pillar of financial reform from becoming law, and, at the same time, are planning ways of getting around whatever financial reform restrictions do become law, according to a recent New York Times article by Eric Dash and Nelson D. Schwart titled “Banking Lobbyists Make a Run at Reform Measures.”

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Wall Street Intensifies Efforts to Thwart Financial Reform as Greed Trumps Common Sense

For the first time, the Securities and Exchange Commission is seeking to enforce a provision of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, enacted in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandals, which provides that any CEO or CFO shall pay back any bonuses or incentive-based compensation whenever the company is required to prepare an accounting restatement necessitated by misconduct – but not necessarily the CEO’s or CFO’s own misconduct.

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SEC Seeks to "Clawback" Benefits from an "Innocent" CEO

Reznick Group’s Baltimore office spent Friday, June 11th giving back to the community as part of its 4th Annual Community Outreach Day. Community Outreach Day is the Baltimore office’s largest annual community service event. “As a recognized leader in the accounting profession, we also take pride in being a leader in the area of community service,” said Bill Riley, Principal in Reznick Group’s Baltimore office and Vice Chairman of the Maryland Chamber.

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Reznick Group Sets Community Service Example