Gold Prices Falling

Ok, I know it has been like 4 months since my last post, come on give me a break its hard being a MBA student. But, none the less i have something to set straight. My last post in December was about the sky rocketing gold prices, well now that is not the case. With the US dollar finally gaining strength and a Chinese official expressed its countries buying of gold will become limited. This means the price of gold will and is falling, to where?? Who knows some reading predicts a 35% decrease by end 2010 but other think this is very pessimistic .

GOOD as GOLD

With all the troubles the market has been facing, one thing is preforming better then ever; GOLD. Gold was been out preforming the S&P 500 for about 5 years, so why haven't I invested, I don't know. I feel like i have been living under a rock.
Watch this video and see what you have been missing if you have not invested in gold.

MBA STUDENTS PLEASE READ

As MBA students we have taken the extra step to try and better ourselves, by gaining further education of the business

world. We have sacrificed time and money to one day have a great paying job working for a company we love, but will

it happen as easy as we think? Right now the answer is no. Please take the time to read the article below, as a MBA

student I did not find the article shocking, but it did leave me with some concern.

Must Read For MBA Students

Are you ready?

This Video was brought to my attention by one of my MBA professors, so i thought i would share it. This one makes you stop and think how communication and business will be in the next 10 years. Also, makes you wonder if even with a undergrad or MBA will we be ready?

Do you have a doctor's note???

I know it has been sometime since my last post, but illness took its toll on me. From the sickness however a topic did come to mind.

Should Workers be Required to Have a Doctor’s Excuse When They are Out Sick??

For argument sake I am not talking about full time employees that have sick time. What I am talking about are the part-time people with no benefits. As a college student I hear many of my friends talking about how they were sick and had to go to the doctor not because the illness was so server they felt like they couldn’t overcome it, it was because their employer required a doctor’s note to excuse the absent. As a former manager of a large company requiring doctor excuse was not in our P&P, we acted as described in the solution below, and it worked great.

The problem.

Suppose the employee had a stomach virus or a viral infection, nothing a doctor can do, the employee will be better in a day or two. Let’s take it a step further, suppose the employee does not have insurance and has to go to the doctor. From an organizational stand point we have just made a worker with no insurance go wait for hours at a doctor’s office (when they should be resting), to pay an outrageous bill all over a stomach virus. But the worker had to this to keep their job, all to prove that they are honest and truly sick.

The Solution.

It simple, trust your employees, if you cannot trust them they should not be at your company anyways. If you are trying to protect the best interest of the company require a doctors excuse if the employee is out 3 or more days saying that they are safe to return to work. Give the employees the time they need to recover and spare them the unnecessary cost of unneeded doctor visits.

Social Networking

Instead of boring news I thought I would share some free advice with you today, which still relates to business. We have all been asked to become fans of many companies on Facebook or asked to follow them on Twitter, but do we really care what they have to say? I do not want to see an advertisement for these companies every time I check facebook or my Twitter going crazy to remind me of the companies operating hours.

Do Away With Twitter and Facebook?

NO, is my answer to that question. Use them to your advantage, if you have a company put out post that benefit your friends and followers. I am talking about advice that relates to your business, if you’re a sports store talk about sports, a pet store give advice to train your pet, or a golf course talk about the weather. The key is not to push your costumers away, give them something they can use and your company will then become top of mind without beating your customer over the head with advertising.

FDIC GOES FOR BROKE?

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp may ask healthy U.S. banks to lend billions of dollars to restore the health of the depleted fund that safeguards bank deposits, the New York Times reported, citing senior regulators.

Does anyone else see a problem with this? Yes it is true, the link is posted below. The FDIC who is responsible for insuring that our funds in the banking system are safe needs to borrow money. The fact that the FDIC needs a loan is not all the worrisome to me, what worries me is that they are asking the banks for the loans. With this I have I would like to point out:

If the FDIC borrows money from the banks that the federal government bailed out it is going to be like the government taking their money back but instead they are going to get charged interest on the money that was theirs in the first place. Ok here would be the flow of money:

China---> US Government---> Banks ---> FDIC.

Let’s keep in mind that the FDIC is the agency that insures our financials in our monetary system. If they cannot protect their cash flows, who can. As a business person I know cash flows are the indicator of the stability of a company, as a investor I would never invest in a company with hazardous cash flows, so something is not right at the FDIC.

Furthermore, read the statements below:

FDIC will consider a plan in October to raise the premium rates banks pay into the fund, a move that will further squeeze the industry.

The agency also plans to charge banks that engage in risky lending practices significantly higher premiums than other U.S. banks, Bair said.

I hope you see the problem here. A federal agency is going to squeeze the industry it has spent millions to help. It is also going to punish banks for taking part in the programs of risky lending that they encouraged some years ago. I wonder if they, them, us, or who ever knows what is going on??

The Link