It seems like on a daily basis now we are hit with a barrage of bad economic news. Although most experts do not expect a true double-dip recession to hit, many sectors of the economy have certainly slowed. Given this reality, we thought it might be a good idea to share some sage advice we came across recently on how to survive an economic slowdown. Both Thor Harris, president of the PR firm Percepture, and Carol Tice of Entrepreneur.com have come up with a few great ideas on this topic. [Read more…]
Charitable Giving Points To A Recovering Economy
In past articles, I have examined a number of pieces of economic data as “key economic indicators” of continued recovery. These have ranged from employment data to seaport shipping activity and retail sales to name only a few. Today we add a new one: charitable giving.
As you can imagine, giving to charities is really, in most cases, a very discretionary item. Though we are admonished to keep giving faithfully even during difficult times, unfortunately for many of us, when tough times hit, we either dramatically reduce the amount we give or we stop giving all together. And charities really feel it when we do.
So I was pleasantly surprised to recently learn that after a two-year drop, charitable giving in the U.S. was up in 2010. [Read more…]
More Positive Economic News: U.S. Exports Hit Record High
Too often entrepreneurs are so focused on running their businesses that they ignore the bigger, longer-term picture. As we have indicated before, one of the goals of our articles is to ensure that the middle-market community is aware of the turnaround in the economy.
Clearly almost every business in the U.S. was negatively impacted by the recession that we are still recovering from. It will take a long time to erase the memories of that downturn. So it is not surprising that many middle-market business owners, still reeling from the recession, do not “feel” like the recession has ended.
But the reality is more and more of the data points attest to the fact that the economy is recovering. This was reinforced earlier this month when Reuters released an article indicating that “U.S. exports hit a record high in March, buoyed by the weak dollar and strengthening global demand as U.S. trade returned to levels last seen before the global financial crisis.” [Read more…]