Posted by Linda H on 5:26:00 PM
Posted by Linda H on 3:40:00 PM
Posted by Linda H on 1:40:00 PM
Posted by Linda H on 8:00:00 AM
President Barack Obama said Friday that he will exercise his executive authority to elevate the head of the U.S. Small Business Administration to a cabinet-level position.
The announcement came along with a broader proposal from Mr. Obama to combine the SBA with five other government offices that would become a single, streamlined agency. Under the Obama plan, the SBA administration would no longer be in the Cabinet once the reorganization is complete.
The move was greeted with applause by small-business owners who were at the White House Friday.
“As of today, I am elevating the Small Business Administration to a cabinet-level agency,” Mr. Obama said. “Karen Mills, who’s been doing an outstanding job leading that agency, is going to make sure that small-business owners have their own seat at the table in our Cabinet meetings,” he said.
Posted by Linda H on 6:30:00 AM
Sara Ferguson, one of the teachers who volunteered to work without pay if the Chester Upland School District ran out of money, has been invited to join First Lady Michelle Obama at tonight's State of the Union address, the White House said this morning.
Ferguson, who grew up in Chester, has taught at Columbus Elementary School for 21 years, following in the footsteps of her mother, aunt and grandfather.
Posted by Linda H on 6:05:00 AM
The United States may be on the verge of bringing back manufacturing jobs from China.
Many companies, especially in the auto and furniture industries, moved plants overseas once China opened its doors to free trade and foreign investment in the last few decades. Labor was cheaper for American companies – less than $1 per hour according to the BCG report. Today, labor costs in China have risen dramatically, and shipping and fuel costs have skyrocketed. As China’s economy has expanded, and China has built new factories all across the country, the demand for workers has risen. As a result, wages are up as new companies compete to hire the best workers.“The tilt is now getting lower,” Sirkin says. “We think somewhere around 2015 it’ll look flat and may start to tilt in the U.S. favor at that point in time.”
By 2015, it will only be about 10 percent cheaper to manufacture in China.
Posted by Linda H on 4:05:00 AM
Posted by Linda H on 3:05:00 AM
Despite the controversy surrounding his appointment, Richard Cordray is barreling ahead with his work as head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — and he’s starting with the very event that led to the creation of his agency: the housing crisis.
On Wednesday, the new bureau released its guidelines for regulating the practices of mortgage lenders across the country. Regulators are instructed to examine whether lenders offering subprime loans, for example, closely assess whether potential borrowers are actually able to repay the loans and factor in the risks accordingly. The CFPB will also determine whether lenders misrepresent the terms and conditions of their loans — another practice that helped contribute to massive defaults — warning them to “avoid using fine print, separate statements, or inconspicuous disclosures to correct potentially misleading headlines.”
Apple Needs to Make it in America
