Maria Contreras-Sweet, the founder and board chairman of a Latino-owned community bank in Los Angeles, will be the new head of the US Small Business Administration. Good news for small business entrepreneurs and especially Latinos. New Head of SBA
In our continuing discussion of what money is (and are bitcoins money) resident guru Lloyd McAulay weighs in with these thoughts:
When a government prints money to the point where we can not rely on it, then the “money” no longer performs the money function and those affected find another money to use as much as possible (USDs or Zimbabwean dollars in Zimbabwe and Euros in Greece). Those affected might forego the convenience of paper and use gold as the medium of exchange.
If one is willing to accept the assurance of the Bitcoins program, then Bitcoins does function as money. If not, then not. Bitcoins are not yet money for me.
Most governments will replace worn out or defaced money. What happens if something goes wrong with Bitcoins? Can something go wrong?
Attached Empirical Measures in the Federal Reserve an analysis of money.
The US is an anti-intellectual country. You can’t discuss the pleasure of learning although good teachers can not help but convey enthusiasm. We are focused on two main goals. One is to get everyone up to speed at a practical and necessary level in mathematics (or arithmetic) and reading. This goal is commendable, although not at the sacrifice of enriched classrooms full of books and charts and maps.
The second part of education is tied to the job market. There are plenty of jobs in the US, despite high unemployment figures. But the jobs that go begging are for engineers, and at the very least symbol manipulators. In Germany, companies train their employees. It is politically incorrect to say in the US that any student should not go to college. Yet any one who has taught knows that it’s easy to assess who is not going to benefit. To charge our already overburdened educational system with leveling the playing field at the core and preparing the mass of students for the jobs of the present and future is really too much to ask. The ensuing chaos reported in the Economist was predictable. Education and the Core in the US
One of the biggest hurdles I went through was from the Muslim community. One of the biggest obstacles was trying to get through to my community is that a woman can be something other than what is defined for her. Our community is a long way from practicing the empowering guidance that our faith teaches us. Islam teaches an individual to be independent, powerful, strong on a moral, political, intellectual level. But we’ve missed a lot of it in our lives. Muslim Women Entrepreneurs
Leading entertainer Beyonce says so in an article on Maria Shriver’s new Report.
By Beyoncé Knowles-Carter
We need to stop buying into the myth about gender equality. It isn’t a reality yet. Today, women make up half of the U.S. workforce, but the average working woman earns only 77 percent of what the average working man makes. But unless women and men both say this is unacceptable, things will not change. Men have to demand that their wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters earn more—commensurate with their qualifications and not their gender. Equality will be achieved when men and women are granted equal pay and equal respect.
We have a lot of work to do, but we can get there if we work together. Women are more than 50 percent of the population and more than 50 percent of voters. We must demand that we all receive 100 percent of the opportunities. The Shriver Report available for free until January 15 at amazon.com
Tim Schafer, developer of the game, says he went to Kickstarter because he was tired of dealing with big corporations. A sign of the future?
Schafer announced that Broken Age, Act 1 will be made available on Jan. 14 to those who backed the game on Kickstarter. Backers will be able to download the game from Steam.
Broken Age made a lot of headlines in 2012 with its extremely successful Kickstarter campaign, surpassing its initial goal of $400,000 with a total of $3.3 million from 87,142 backers.
Singapore is Asia’s largest private banking center with offshore assets of about $850 billion, Boston Consulting Group data shows. Singapore is the second largest offshore center trailing only Switzerland which remains the world’s largest offshore financial center with about $2.2 tn of assets.
Switzerland is expected to remain the largest single offshore center globally, with about 25 percent of total offshore wealth by the end of 2017, compared with 26 percent in 2012. Singapore, in second place, is expected to increase its share from 10 percent to around 12 percent, according to the BCG report.
According to research on global financial trends from WealthInsight, Singapore will overtake Switzerland to become the world’s biggest offshore wealth centre by 2020,
Is the DOJ asking the obvious question: What makes Singapore attractive for offshore asset investments?
More about on :
Corruption Reports
Offshore Assets and Disclosure
Draw a Venn diagram of finance and news and where the two meet and overlap is Stocktwit, a twitter-like platform that hedgies have come to use. The entrepreneur who developed the company describes the intersection as a rich niche. Between the Trade and the Twitter
The number of $10-million-plus women-owned firms increased by 57% — a growth rate nearly 50% more than $10-million-plus firms overall.
While the number is still small — nearly 20% of angels in 2012 invested in women-led businesses — the percentage grew more than 40% from the previous year, Even venture capitalists have increased their support of women-led companies. It’s still paltry, but the percentage of VC deals going to women-led businesses was 13% in the first half of 2013. That’s nearly a 20% jump over 2012.
There is room for improvement, but the U.S. ranked #1 among 17 countries on having the conditions that foster high potential female entrepreneurship. These conditions include entrepreneurial environment, entrepreneurial eco-system and entrepreneurial aspirations. The Year of Woman Entrepreneur
A study by Prudential comes to these conclusions:
