The economic crisis has caused a myriad of problems for consumers and corporations, as well. Because consumers have cut back on their donations to government organizations, the non-profits have received twenty percent less donations this year.

As we watch the number of homeless people increase and jobs decrease, one would wonder how the U.S. government is going to handle the the projected increase in homeless people in the next two years. Homelessness is a worldwide problem as there are about just as many homeless people in te United States as there are orphans in Kenya. However, Kenya has a smaller population, approximately 37,000,000 as opposed to over 286,000,000 in the United States.

Many believe that the situation in our own country demands attention. People are sleeping in cars, under bridges or in homeess shelters as many people are losing their homes because of an inability to pay mortgages and car loans which increased or because homeowners lost jobs.

In the midst of all of this, the U.S. government has agreed to give more aid to GMAC, the largest provider of loans to Chrysler and General Motors. Recall, CIT Bank, the largest provider of loans to retailers, just filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy a few months ago after having received money from its shareholders to restructure their business.

This may be justified to help save jobs which may be lost if GMAC goes out of business. Will history repeat itself in the wake of the CIT Bank woes? As we begin a new year, we may not be out of the recession if GMAC goes bankrupt. It had to turn to the government because of its inability to seek funding from private investors.

Because of the Bernard Madoff scam, many donors have decided to give locally instead of on a federal level. As a result, many of the non-profits have expereinced a decline in the amount of donations. This resulted in a cutback in services to the underserved populations.

The economic crisis has caused a complex set of problems to the United States. It was great to see that people resumed their spendiing for the holidays and hopefully this will increase as we enter a new year. If you enjoy the content on this blog, subscribe at the top of the page to keep up on the new posts.

It is important to pay close attention to what the banks are charging you for fees on your checking account. I recently opened another checking account with my bank and just desposited a check which I had received from a client. I was intending to use this account just for one line of business. The bank had advertised “totally free checking,” but after I had written a few checks, all of a sudden the checks started bouncing. They said that I had failed to wait the required time to write checks.

To make a long story short, I eneded up paying $295.00 in fees. When I asked for the account to be closed, they said they could not close it and they would continue to charge fees daily until it was closed. I was in shock. I had been reading about the problems that others were having with their credit cards and bank fees. I finally paid off the fees and closed the account.

When looking around for a checking account, read the cntracts carefeully. Often in a rush to open the accounts, some people fail to ask about and read about all of the charges. In my case, the contracts were online. I don’t know if there is a way to avoid all of the chharges, but ask about all the fees before opening a new account, especially a business account.

It seems the banks are looking for ways to make up for losses on the home mortgages that went bad. This should end when the new credit card legislation goes into effect in February 2010. But between now and then be very careful about your banking habits.

Just when we thought small businesses were going to experience harder times than major retailers, Goldman Sachs comes to the rescue with a plan to educate and finance small businesses. Their impressive plan to funnel $500 million dollars to provide management education, mentoring, and access to capital to small businesses is the largest of its kind in history. Warren Buffet, who bailed out Goldman Sachs early in this economic crisis, will assist Goldman Sachs in providing theses resources to small businesses.

Major retailers have experienced a loss of funding due to CIT Bank having to eliminate their factoring loan program. Factoring loans were very popular around holiday time for financing Christmas inventory. Retailers now have to finance their own inventory.

Critics say that Goldman Sachs is using this opportunity to improve its image and bad reputation as a result of receiving bailout money and improving its financial position. It would help small businesses to know how to research grants and loans if they would like to take advantage of this opportunity to grow their businesses.

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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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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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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.

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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.

I thought you might find this video interesting. I invite your comments.

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.