Crucial Advice on Your Branding - Web Presence and Social Media

By Karen Leland

The Week of April 4th is Explore Your Career Options Week. If you want to keep your career options open, be aware that a strong personal brand on social media can help or hurt. According to a recent CareerBuilder.com poll, 52% of employers use social networking sites to research candidates, and 35% of those same employers reported that they were less likely to interview job candidates who didn’t have an online presence. In addition, 51% use search engines to dig up details on a job candidate. So that picture of you chugging back a beer on your Facebook page may not be such a good personal brand move for your future career prospects. Take advantage of all your career options by making sure your social media is up to par with these five easy, but often overlooked, tips. [more...]

What Small Business Owners Can Learn from Yahoo

By Michelle Seiler-Tucker

Yahoo just can’t catch a break, and they deserve not to. Running a business is hard, no matter the size, but some people fail to see when they are making mistakes, and more often than not, someone is ready to capitalize on those mistakes. Yahoo’s management and board can’t seem to make any good decisions regarding the ailing tech company. Given that their core company is theoretically valued at zero dollars, you would think they’d have made big plans to right the ship. But no, they considered selling certain major assets, but to no avail. Now, activist hedge fund group Starboard Capital is launching a proxy war to take over Yahoo’s entire board. Yahoo wants to sell its core business due to failures to stay competitive in the tech market; Google (Alphabet) and Facebook are two major threats Yahoo can’t fully handle. For Starboard, this isn’t enough, and the hedge fund wants a whole-sale replacement of the board. Luckily for Yahoo, the company has until the end of June to work out a deal, so not all hope is lost. At the end of June comes Yahoo’s annual meeting, where if things don’t improve, they could see Starboard take over the entire company. [more...]

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly of the U.S. Economy

By Michelle Seiler-Tucker

The U.S. economy is currently floating in limbo. Consumer data suggests economic recovery, while markets indicate greater hesitancy in U.S. monetary policy and the global economy. On the good side of things, we have consumers. Americans kicked off 2016 with a bang, showing increases in retail sales across the board. Online sales, clothing and automobiles were all up. Auto manufacturers have dirt cheap gas to thank for the increase in sales. Consumers are no longer being discouraged by expensive gas. Household purchases, which make up the bulk of consumer spending, further bolstered retail numbers. Despite setbacks in the oil industry, U.S. employers added 151,000 jobs in January – another step in the right direction for a strong economy. But what’s the bad news? [more...]

The Link Between Falling Markets, Falling Political Establishments and Rising Gold

By Lowell Ponte

We may be witnessing a revolution to restore integrity to both our money and our politics. Stock prices since the start of 2016 have been plummeting, and gold is soaring, as people lose faith in the powers that conjured a fake prosperity based on paper money, politicized markets and zero interest rates. Voters in the U.S. are rejecting candidates of the old ruling elites in both major political parties. Candidates who promise to overthrow these elites, such as businessman Donald Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, are winning big. [more...]

Where is Rock Bottom? Oil Slides Back Erasing Friday’s Gains

By Michelle Seiler-Tucker

After ducking under $28 a barrel earlier last week, oil rallied back into the low 30s with Brent, a benchmark for oil prices, closing 10% up Friday, north of $32. However, what was initially billed as a potential recovery of the gutted oil market is seeing a reversal once again. Monday, both Brent crude and US Oil slid back over 4% on Friday’s gain, hovering just above $30 for the time being. While OPEC officials stated the organization wants to see prices rise, Saudi Arabia, the dominant player in OPEC, continues to pump oil into the market. [more...]

2016 Economic Projections

By Michelle Seiler-Tucker

First things first: Puerto Rico is turning into America’s Greece. The island territory is laden with debt it can’t pay, and what’s worse, Americans are the ones holding the receipts. About 50% of Americans over the age of 40 hold Puerto Rican debt in some way in California, New York, and Florida; nearly 100% of the over 40 population is exposed in some way. Puerto Rico’s debt comes from a laundry list of issues: over 60% of its population is on Medicare or Medicaid, importing energy is wildly expense, and, not unlike Greece, its government can be rather stubborn. The way I see it, no one knows what Puerto Rico will do, but the options are: 1) default (this is bad for everybody; 2) The U.S. grants Puerto Rico the ability to declare Chapter 9 bankruptcy; or 3) The U.S. gives Puerto Rico a $70+ billion bailout package. None of this will go well for anyone, and frankly there is no way to tell what will happen; but we will see a decision in 2016, and it could put a dent in the U.S. economy. [more...]

Will Fossil Fuel Go the Way of the Dinosaurs?

By Michelle Seiler-Tucker

For years, oil companies in the U.S. could count subterranean, untapped oil reserves as assets in their financial statements, which lead to highly inflated numbers. Now, with oil around $40 a barrel, the cost of pulling it out of the earth is greater than the sale price (at least for fracking), so the SEC is requiring companies to remove these fictitious assets from their books since investors cannot gain any value from oil that won’t be touched. With billions of barrels of oil disappearing off books overnight, already tense investors are growing more fearful of a complete oil collapse. [more...]