Risky Business
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Why Sarbanes-Oxley Is A Small Business Issue
Continue reading… 1 CommentYesterday Thomas Friedman mentioned the idea of revamping Sarbanes-Oxley to make it easier to start a small business. But what does a law aimed at requirements for public companies have to do with starting a small business? Read my post at Capital Commerce.
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Liquidators Get A Boost From The Recession
Continue reading… 10 CommentsLiquidations are back in the news again, with this AP story tracing where alleged Ponzi schemer R. Allen Stanford's furniture ended up. AMC Liquidators of Fort Lauderdale, Florida has been selling his stuff off:
Michael Grimme is the owner of AMC. His business specializes in emptying hotels, offices and stores of unwanted furnishings and then reselling them. Business is up in recent years due to bankruptcies and downsizing. AMC is among many companies that have flourished during the downturn because even the wealthy have fallen on hard times. Repossessors take back yachts, planes and luxury cars, and even pawn shops have seen a rise in rich folks selling items.
Related to this topic are going-out-of-business and liquidation sales, the latter of which are run by companies like AMC. Companies going out of business like Circuit City turned to liquidator companies when they were clearing out stores a few months ago. Consumers saw that there wasn't much reason to rush to these "deals." Check out my article on what consumers should know about these sales and similar ones.
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Topless Coffee Shop Burns Down In Suspected Case Of Arson
Continue reading… 4 CommentsPerhaps the strangest small business I've ever blogged about is no more. Yesterday morning, the small-town Maine coffee shop that made headlines for its revealing staff burned to the ground, CNN reports.
Authorities say it was an act of arson. There was no business insurance to cash in on. Was this the work of some crazed pyromaniac? Someone trying to make a political or moral statement? Both?
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Musings On The GM Takeover, And The Biggest Boom Industry
Continue reading… 1 CommentOver at Capital Commerce, check out how the federal government is driving jobs in U.S. cities, and some more thoughts on the GM takeover and the meaning of "socialist" policies.
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How Does The Credit Card Bill Affect Young People?
Continue reading… 4 CommentsOver at Capital Commerce, I muse about the credit card bill Obama just signed into law.
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Capital Commerce: Time For A New Industrial Policy?
Continue reading… 1 CommentPeople are calling the government takeover of GM an example of renewed industrial policy. Good thing or bad thing?
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Capital Commerce: A Libertarian Republican Party?
Continue reading… 0 CommentsSee my post over at Capital Commerce.
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Times Are A-Changin For The Risky Business Blog
Continue reading… 3 CommentsJust when I began writing this post, I realized that it's been a little over a year since I started this blog. It's been a fun year covering the wild world of entrepreneurship and small business--the most exciting aspect of the U.S. economy, I think. But with the departure of my former Dear Leader James Pethokoukis from U.S. News., I've been given the task to fill his shoes at the Capital Commerce blog, which has been on hiatus for the past few weeks.
So this is NOT a farewell post. In fact, I fully expect to make many posts about the small business sector and entrepreneurship at Capital Commerce. It's impossible to adequately cover political economy without talking about them. I'll also still update Risky Business, but not as frequently.
So think of it more as a rebranding. Instead of focusing on entrepreneurship and small business exclusively, I'll be blogging about the whole range of economic policies and political debates that benefit or harm entrepreneurs.
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GM Bankruptcy: Where Both The Left And The Right Can Agree
Continue reading… 35 Comments(Note: consider this post a preview of the kind of posts I will be making at the blog I am taking over, Capital Commerce. More on that very soon.)
Robert Reich had an interesting op-ed on General Motors in the Financial Times yesterday. It's interesting because despite the fact that Reich is one of the country's best left-leaning pundits, some parts of the op-ed taken out of context would not read out of place on the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
The purpose cannot be to create a new, lean, debt-free company that might one day turn a profit. That is what the private sector is supposed to achieve on its own and what a reorganisation under bankruptcy would do.
