Dollars And Nonsense

Consumers already know about debt consolidation. It’s been used for years to help people pay off debts by rolling all outstanding principles into one monthly payment. It can certainly work for those who have hard assets with which they can obtain a loan. For those who are already behind in payments and who can’t keep up, there are debt relief programs which can work better.

The debt relief programs available today work toward resolving debt but without the necessity of using bankruptcy as an option. they are special programs which allow pay off of debts while avoiding the long term damage that comes from using bankruptcy. while many consumers are so deeply in debt and so behind in payments that they feel bankruptcy can’t possibly hurt them, they are wrong. What bankruptcy does to a credit report lasts for ten years, and that is a very long time to wait to start rebuilding credit. There are faster methods.

In debt relief programs, the credit rating takes a distinct and hard hit, but the upside is that working through one of these methods is reflected on any report, and it shows creditors that an attempt is being made to pay of unsecured loans. when debt relief programs are finished, a ‘settled account’ notice is put on credit reports and that lets creditors know that the consumer repaid an agreed upon amount. It counts.

There is also an issue of privacy that debt relief programs offer. In bankruptcy, every single facet of a financial life is revealed. Everything is disclosed. this isn’t true in debt relief programs. the consumer can designate which outstanding principle he or she wants included in the programs, and can opt to leave some out that are under control. In these programs, it’s picking up a phone and signing a contract. a debt relief company sets up an account and goes to work. What the consumer wants to remain private, stays private.

Since there is no one method that works for everyone, it is up to the consumer to get on the phone and ask advice on what debt relief program is best for them. not all resolution companies provide all methods and if the consumer wants the best customized plan for themselves, they’ll do some legwork and research. There are options to bankruptcy, and they are out there for the finding.

Debt Relief Programs

LONDON June 14 (Reuters) – Franklin Templeton posted thebiggest net sales of funds in the European market in April,benefiting from sustained interest from investors infixed-income products, data from Lipper showed on Monday.

Financials

the California-based asset manager pulled in a net 4 billioneuros ($4.9 billion) in April, some 3.5 billion of which pouredinto bond products including its Global Bond LP40004094 andGlobal Total Return Bond LP65118854 funds which have emergingmarkets exposure.

HSBC (HSBA.L) ranked second in the month, with 3.6 billioneuros of net sales, while Aviva (AV.L) was third with 2.3billion of inflows from clients.

April was the second month in a row that bond fundsregistered more than 18 billion euros of net flows, their thirdhighest volume since Lipper FMI started collecting the data in2002. Equities funds, meanwhile, saw net flows halve from thelevel in March to reach 4 billion euros.

in the low interest rate environment, money was attracted toemerging markets, global currencies and high-yield bond funds.

Emerging markets products were the top-selling funds inApril, with more than 5 billion euros of net inflows.

Total net inflows were at 31.2 billion euros in the month,excluding more volatile money market fund flows. (Reporting by Joel Dimmock; Editing by Dan Lalor) ($1 = 0.8203 euro)

Templeton tops Europe fund flows in April – Lipper

Bangalore: Bangalore-based entrepreneur VR Govindarajan has developed personal finance management software Perfios, which lets you manage your financial portfolio and does your taxes for you.

Two years ago, IT veteran VR Govindarajan was chatting with a few friends, lamenting about the absence of a good accounting software that would help manage his investments, calculate expenditure and even help him with his tax calculation. the idea behind Perfios, a complete web-based accounting and personal finance management portal, originated there.

Two years and a year of private beta testing later, the software developed by Govindarajan’s Bangalore-based company is going on to a public beta. the software gives you a 360-degree view of your finances with real time updates of all financial transactions, empowering individuals to manage their own finances, which can otherwise be quite a daunting task. Perfios can do everything for you, unlike other softwares available in the market today that specialise either in bank transactions or the stock market alone. It is positioned to become the Indian mint.com.

This software works in three ways. “The first method is where the user enters login details of his bank account via a secure channel and the software picks up all the information and transaction details. the second method is one of our innovations. a user can upload his monthly bank statement and the software will automatically populate all the fields. the last method is manually entering all the info, says Govindarajan.”

Apart from calculating bank transactions, users can also avail details about their loans and investments.

This software is capable of automatically categorising all transactions depending on their nature. “It can learn which transaction was done where and categorises it accordingly. so you’ll be able to find out where you spent the most or get details about the kind of items you purchased,” Govindarajan says. the online app has both free and paid versions. the paid version calculates your income tax and has many more advantages to offer.

The company has placed a high premium on security.

Govindarajan says that their software does not store any private information in their server. “All primary information is stored in the user’s system, but is encrypted. the encryption key is stored in our server and so there’s no way a hacker can access personal information,” he adds.

The company has a user base of around 8-10 million in India and says that the software is targetedmore at individual users rather than corporates. they are, however, approaching individuals via corporates. Since it works completely within a browser, the company has also made a WAP version of the app, so users can check and update from a mobile phone. Users can also download all the reports on a monthly basis.

Another feature that the app comes with is in-depth analytics, which also lets you fit budgets and alerts when you overshoot it. so can this company with a 15-member team change the way we look at our finances? hopefully, yes.

Your anytime financial valet

The Woodstock Police Department has secured arrest warrants on two men involved in 15 entering auto cases.

An eight-month, multi-jurisdiction investigation has resulted in warrants being issued for Eddy Terry, 33, of Winder, and Alfred Caldwell, Jr., 30, of Lawrenceville.

On Aug. 18 of last year, Woodstock police responded to a rash of reported entering autos that occurred at several businesses on Highway 92. Items taken included GPS devices, car stereo systems, cell phones and credit cards. a short time later, the stolen credit cards were used at local gas stations.

Authorities were able to develop some leads from video footage and witness statements. a black Escalade and a red Tahoe were suspect vehicles. After the airing of a media release, tips were generated that helped authorities identify the owners of both vehicles.

Both men have been under investigation by other law enforcement agencies for eight months.

Terry is charged with six counts of criminal damage in the second degree, six counts of entering auto and one count of criminal attempt financial transaction card fraud. Caldwell is charged with nine counts criminal damage in the second degree, nine counts of entering auto, one count of financial transaction card fraud and six counts of conspiracy to commit financial transaction card fraud.

Caldwell is in Gwinnett County jail and Terry is expected to be picked up on these charges. Some of the stolen property has been returned to its owners.

“A collaborative effort by both the media and multiple law enforcement agencies helped to solve crimes in several jurisdictions,” Lt. Kevin Culpepper, criminal investigations commander for the Woodstock Police Department, said.

Woodstock Police secure warrants for 2 men involved in car break-in cases

Cerberus Capital Management paid GM $7.4 billion in 2006 for a 51% stake in GMAC. The private equity titans thought by freeing GMAC from its automaking parent, the profits and stock price would really take off.

ResCap was the nation’s sixth-largest mortgage originator when the bubble burst, credit froze and millions of homeowners defaulted on their mortgage payments.

Cerberus still owns 14.9% of GMAC, while the government holds 56.3%.

“I don’t think we’re going to see a turnaround in housing,” said David Lykken, president of Mortgage Banking Solutions in Austin, Texas. “The problem is we really don’t know what the real values of ResCap’s holdings of mortgage securities are.”

Eclipsed by bailouts

For the federal automotive task force in charge of saving Detroit’s automakers, putting GMAC’s house in order took a backseat to rescuing General Motors and Chrysler.

To its credit, GMAC, with government help, provided the credit to dealers and consumers, without which GM and Chrysler may not have survived their rapid trips through bankruptcy.

When few banks would lend to the automakers’ dealers and Chrysler terminated nearly 800 dealers last June, GMAC, at the government’s direction, absorbed 1,247 surviving Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge dealers and replaced Chrysler Financial as their main source of credit.

With auto sales at a 30-year low, GMAC was willing to finance some car purchases when most banks stopped lending altogether.

Online bank an asset

Fortunately for GMAC now, its federally insured online Ally Bank attracted new deposits that GMAC can lend to dealers and carbuyers.

Slowly, GMAC’s core business is healing. Last year, automotive financing lost $19 million, much less than the 2008 loss of $216 million.

Still, GMAC can’t be profitable and repay the government until it unloads ResCap.

In a report issued Thursday, the Congressional Oversight Panel questioned why GMAC and Treasury didn’t consider bankruptcy for all of GMAC or for ResCap separately.

One expert, Christopher Whalen, managing director of Institutional Risk Analytics, suggested that Treasury take GMAC into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and, as with GM and Chrysler, sell the healthy parts to the highest bidder and leave ResCap behind as a carcass to be divvied up among unsecured creditors.

GMAC’s mortgage arm will be tough to unload

The Tory attitude to this scandal says a lot about the party and its self-image as one born to rule

So now we know. He’s a non-dom.

As my colleague, Michael White, who is not easily shockable nor prone to getting over excited, says in his piercing analysism … “Wow”.

It takes the breath away.

And, to anyone hoping for more open and honest politics, it will be a profoundly depressing moment.

David Cameron’s new Tories have promoted themselves as transparent and different.

They present Cameron as the new broom, ready to sweep old ways out of Westminster.

Dodgy expenses, dodgy money: never again.

But their Ashcroft admission shows that Cameron is, in fact, prepared to tolerate exactly the opposite: old ways, old-style deceits, and deliberately misleading ways.

On Lord Ashcroft, Cameron’s Tories have treated the press and public – and MPs and peers from other parties who cared to question them about his tax status – with contempt. we have been made to feel like inferior idiots, nosy, uncouth intruders in private matters, for daring to ask.

They clearly thought we would get bored with their obfuscation and leave the subject alone. they thought too that the public would not care and would not understand.

So it seems they hid the fact that their most influential donor was a non-dom at the same time as Cameron insisted over and over again that he believed it wrong that anyone in either house of parliament should be avoiding paying full UK tax. Legislators should not be non-doms yet there was Aschcroft being one and they would not say.

When Sir George Young recently blurted out that Ashcroft was a non-dom on Newsnight he was “corrected” by a spokesman for the party who said Sir George had “miss-spoken”.

No – it now turns out – he hadn’t.

The correction of Young was a lie perpetrated not by the spokesman, who would merely have been taking orders, but by the people at the top.

Young spoke the truth because he is a good man.

But the truth was not convenient in Cameron’s “transparent” new operation, where there is a view that Tories are destined and (as he put it yesterday) have a “patriotic duty” to rule, so a few untruths along the way don’t matter.

This announcement means that the man who more than any is responsible for the Tory party’s campaign strategy at the coming election, who runs his own nerve centre at party HQ with a staff of dozens and who accompanies the shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, to policy meetings to shape future Tory relations with the world on a regular basis, has all along been exactly what Cameron says UK legislators should not be. a non-dom.

Oh, the top Tories protest, but so are several Labour donors like Lord Paul! Er, yes, but we have known about their status for some time, and Paul, while his non-dommery is not to be applauded, does not have the extraordinary power in the Labour party that Ashcroft has in the Tory party. he is not shaping policy, running strategy, influencing the likely future foreign policy of the land. More on this in coming weeks.

I had lunch with two members of Cameron’s team last week and neither could really articulate what the problem with Ashcroft remaining secret about his tax status was. I had to tell them.

That was shocking. it said something about the party and its self-image as one born to rule.

They clearly had not really thought about it – despite all the fuss in the press. it was not an issue “on my radar”, said one.

Both were hazy on details and sure it was all fine. well, they were wrong.

Pathetically they trotted out the line that Ashcroft is not a big donor to the Tories any more. what do they take journalists and the public for?

Today’s admission has nothing to do with a sudden rush of openness. it was forced upon Cameron because the polls are closing and he is in a panic and the issue would have dogged him until polling day. Transparency, sadly, did not come naturally. it was the result of political desperation.

The whole matter will do Cameron damage, and so it should.

And it is not over yet because the Electoral Commission is still investigating whether Bearwood Corporate Services, Ashcroft’s company, is a permissible donor. That should be a fairly simply thing to assess. yet it has already taken more than a year for the EC to reach a decision. If it rules that Bearwood is not a permissible donor then the Tories may have to pay Ashcroft’s money back. That would be financially disastrous for them – and taint them, perhaps fatally, during an election campaign.

Factory figures buoy markets' recovery hopes | Business and …

Irvine, CA, February 09, 2010 –(PR.com)– Spectrum Commercial Lending, Inc. a leader in the owner-user commercial lending industry was please to provide their client with a rate of 5.95% on an approximate $2MM 504 1st Trust Deed. The client’s business was in need of a 2nd location and had identified a new 50,000 square foot industrial building which was perfect for providing the extra space that their business needed to continue to grow. The SBA 504 loan program was a perfect fit for their situation. they were looking for a loan that allowed them to minimize their down payment in order to preserve working capital and still provide them with an extremely competitive fixed rate financing product. Spectrum was able to provide the borrower with a 25 year fixed rate loan with a rate of 5.95% on their 1st Trust Deed and a SBA 504 debenture in 2nd position. The borrowers were extremely pleased with the financing for their new location as well as the service they received from Spectrum.

Spectrum Commercial Lending, Inc. is located at 2070 Business Center Dr., #285 Irvine, CA 92612. for more information on Spectrum Commercial Lending, Inc. please contact Mike Muetzel at (714) 841-5255 x54 or email at m.muetzel@contactspectrum.com.

Spectrum Commercial Lending, Inc. Closes Large SBA 504 Loan in January

Want to give away free stuff and earn 35-55 dollars per gift? if that sounds too easy to be true, you are not alone. I thought so too, until I tried it, and immediately started making money online consistently for the first time.

A friend referred me to Market Health, the #1 health and beauty product promoter on the web, and since my affiliate sales weren’t exactly setting any records, I thought I would give it a try. after filling out a short questionnaire, I was quickly approved, and started learning how to drive traffic to CPA offers. I found that it is not difficult, since the word “free” opens most doors, especially when it is attached to a product that will make the recipient more healthy, more physically attractive, and ultimately happier.

Although free advertising will bring a lot of clicks to the offers, most are tire kickers and don’t convert well, but hey, at an average of around $50 per conversion, from free traffic, what’s wrong with a 1% conversion rate? the targeted traffic comes from search marketing such as AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing, and can bring conversion rates of 10% or more if done right. Think there might be a profit to be made at those conversion rates?

Like most CPA marketing sites, Market Health frowns on e-mail marketing, but if you have a good enough list, you can get approval to e-mail market most of the offers. It’s spam that will get your account shut down quickly, after all, they have a reputation to protect.

A landing page or “squeeze” page is recommended, after all, building your list is important, and a little pre-sell can’t hurt, but direct linking works almost as well for most offers if you are not concerned with list building or don’t know how to build squeeze pages.

Article marketing is an effective way to drive traffic, as well. All it takes is some research of the product, most of which can be done by reading articles and putting your own spin on the information gleaned from them.

All in all, CPA marketing is the easiest, best way to earn money I have yet discovered in 4 years of striving to make a living on the internet and I am happy to have discovered Market Health, which has the highest payouts and the easiest entry requirements of any CPA network I have seen yet.

Give Away Free Trials and make Money in CPA Marketing

State School Superintendent Paul Pastorek got what he wanted last week a favorable vote by BESE and 28 schools systems willing to say they were willing to try and that was enough to put Louisiana in the hunt for federal race to the top money. enough, at least, for now.

The Obama administration has been flashing $4.35 billion in federal grant money at the states, and the lure of quick cash has been enough to catch the attention of many Louisiana school systems. Easy money … that’s why lotteries are popular.

But race to the top enthusiasts in Louisiana ought to ponder this: U.S. spending on K-12 education increased from $553 billion in 2006-07 to $667 billion in 2008-09, according to Education Department. That’s an increase of $114 billion in just a couple of years, making race to the top look like chump change in the greater picture. Federal spending under President Bush increased by a third. So, how much did America’s schools improve in recent years? And is federal money and federal mandates really the cure for what ails public education around the country?

We don’t blame school systems for being skittish about this federal initiative. Introduced last February, it was alarmingly short on details; a more complete revision of the particulars, released in November, drew some favorable response but still leaves thoughtful people wanting more specifics.

In short, the program seems to be evolving. Commit now, fill in the details later.

Wary school leaders see the devil lurking behind those scant details. they fear long-term financial commitments that may dwarf the short-term infusion of cash flow. they suspect a loss of control by the state and by the individual school systems. And they wonder about the federal government’s track record for education initiatives.

“I still have a strong belief that public education should be under local control and not driven by Washington, D.C.,” said Guice, who once served as superintendent of a very successful rural system in Catahoula Parish. we agree.

Race to the cash

By Carol Reiter | Merced Sun-Star

MERCED, Calif. — The tomato shortage seems to be easing, if prices and stock at local grocery stores offer any clue.

a shortage was noticed by shoppers over the holidays, who also faced high prices. Some sandwich shops across the nation took tomatoes off the menu because they couldn’t find any quality produce at a decent price.

According to the president of the Tomato Farmers Commission, the problem was that California fresh tomatoes were done harvesting early this year, before Florida tomatoes came onto the market. Ed Beckman said there was a gap when there was a shortage of the ripe red fruit in the United States. About 60 percent of tomatoes sold in the U.S. go to restaurants.

A check at a couple of Merced stores Monday showed that for Roma tomatoes, the price was back in an affordable range. At Save Mart, they were on sale for 49 cents a pound, and at Raleys were 99 cents a pound.

Other tomatoes, both vine-ripened and on the vine, at Raleys were $2.99 for the vine-ripe tomatoes, and $3.49 for tomatoes still on the vine.

Merced County is a robust tomato-growing county, with 10,000 acres of fresh tomatoes grown in 2008. Combined with processing tomatoes, tomatoes ranked eighth in value in 2008, worth more than $114 million to local growers.

Read more at MercedSunStar.com

Tomato prices drop, putting the 'T' back in the BLT | McClatchy