Central Payment Corporation's Notes
When marketing your business on the internet it is important to make sure you are getting the maximum use out of the website. There are ways to make the site more profitable. Networking online involves being able to allow others to network on your site so that they will benefit, spread the word about your site, and gain more visitors, which in turn will result in sales.
Being able to market to others on your site involves knowing your target market and what attacts them. Taking the time to discover what will attract your target marke will ensure that you are not wasting your time. One way of allowing others to network on your site is to provide a newsletter with information which is useful to your target market. Providing advertising space on the site enables other businesses to network with your visitors.
The content in the newsletter, as with blogs and articles, is very important. It must be written well and it must engage your audience. This will ensure a following that will draw more visitors to your site. Once business owners design and write the newsletter, they can then search for an e-zine to advertise the availablility of the newsletter and the advertising costs.
Business owners can be as creative as they want with providing advertising. They could advetise an event and sell ad space for the event on the website. They could opt to network with local businesses or businesses who are members of a trade association. The possiblities to advertise are only limited by the creativity of the owner of the site.
Of course providing a newsletter involves time and business owners should not commit to writing a newsletter unless they have time. If necessary, someoe other than the business owner should write the newsletter.
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CIT has been unable to convince bondholders to finance more of their debt. This coupled with the fact that investors would lose money on the a pre-packaged bankruptcy, including the U.S., has caused the company to seek bankruptcy protection. The U. S. stands to lose $2.3 billion and opted not to supply more funds.
The only investor which seems to gain anything from this is Goldman Sachs, who will keep open its $2.3 billion loan in spite of the bankruptcy filing. CIT received a $4.5 billion dollar loan which will keep the company going during the bankruptcy proceedings and will not put the retailers at risk during the holiday season. CIT expects to emerge from this filing in a stronger position.
Many retailers have either gone out of business or cut back on their current operations as a result of the problems which CIT has had during the economic crisis. Retailers have depended on their support for factoring loans to purchase inventory. Many retailers, as a result are relying on their own money to keep their businesses open.
Once again this debate has surfaced, but now the President and a new Merchants Payment Coalition are taking this issue very seriously. The retailers and business owners want the priviledge of negotiating interchange fees with the banks.
In view of the recent new credit card Legislation, this issue will probably not go away. The Merchants Payment Coalition was formed to represent 2.7 million businesses and over 50 million employees in having a voice in the assesment of interchange rates. They claim to be helping to protect the interest of the consumer. The interchange rates are the rates that retailers and other business owners pay to accept credit cards at their establishment.
In addition to the Merchants Payment Coalition, President Obama and Representative Peter Welch of Vermont are conducting studies into the rates. This issue has been a long standing one with the retailers, who believe their rates are too high. The current economic crisis has hurt many businesses and the retailers feel lowering or at least being able to negotiate rates with the banks could help their sales.
Ananlysts have argued that if the banks are ordered to lower thir fees, the consumers could face rate higher rates and fees on their credit cards. Australia has gone through this process and consumers did not save any money as a result.
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The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is seeking private equity firms to buy out troubled banks so as not to put an unnecessary strain on their budget.
Many more banks are slated to fail in the coming months because of defaults on real estate loans. It will not be easy to find private equity buyers as many are reluctant to take on the losses of these failed banks.
Out of the seventy-seven banks that have been closed, sixty-nine buyers have been found. The danger of exhausting the FDIC’s fund has caused Walter Buffet to comment on the need for the U.S. to cut back on the amounts of money it has been pumping into the economy to rescue it from economic disaster.
The U.S. spent $180.7 billion in July 2009, the most it has ever spent in one month in U.S. history. If the FDIC’s funding is exhausted, the U.S. will go to taxpayers to finance the FDIC’s loan sales and short-term obligations.
In view of France’s experience in establishing a bank and making John Law the owner, the U.S. must be mindful of not repeating France’s history and putting unscrupulous individuals in charge of these banks.
Photo by Eduard Traq
No doubt you have heard about the debate over whether we are in the midst of another economic bubble. Economists and financial experts say there are ten problem areas for us, and we need to pay attention to them.
Economic bubbles are not a new phenomenon. They have been occurring throughout history aand mankind never seems to learn the lesson associated with them. It seems people are prone to looking for a “pot of gold” at the end of the rainbow only to find out it was not what they thought. This was the case in the economic collapse of France caused by John Law in the eighteenth century.
The ten problem areas are: the Chinese economy, the “Green” bubble, the Gold bubble, the Federal Reserve bubble, the Trash (junk) bond bubble, the Education bubble, the Subprime bubble, the Life Insurance Securititation bubble, the Commercial Real Estate bubble and the Emerging Markets bubble.
It is interesting that the issue of increased gold prices is now an issue with the Chinese and Russian governments. The price of gold often increases when paper money is devalued by printing paper money.
It will be interesting to see how the Obama administration handles this challenge. We are fortunate that we have acces to research and technology which could help us out of this problem before it gets out of control.
In case you have not heard, I have expanded my business servicees to include website design, SEO, and children’s book illustration. I have decided I would use more of my skills. I am not giving up any of my current services, but this means I will have more to share with you.
I have spent many years in financial sevrices and just as many, if not more in developing my creative side, which started out as a hobby. You will se some of my works on my website.
Consumer demands are changing and shopping habits have changed. I am pleased theat the economy is showing signs of economic recovery. I will continue to keep you posted on important developments. Thanks for your faithful following. I have enjoyed the comments.
Photo by Jay Lopez
Hackers recently targeted 7 Eleven stores and Hannaford Brothers customers for identity theft and secured information from 130 million credit card and debit card accounts. Fortunately, Albert Gonzalez of Miami was arrested. Gonzalez apparently cooperated with federal investigators on other cases of identity theft in the past. This is the largest case of identity theft so far.
Restaurants often fail to update their computer viruses and other security systems. If you are an owner of a restaurant, it would be wise to investigate your system to make sure it is updated. Since identity theft continues to be a problem in the U.S., you as a buisness owner cannot afford to be negligent in this area.
These hackers used a device to tap into wireless processing and read the customer accounts as customers entered the stores.
