Obama Hanged In Effigy

In a State that held the largest political campaign rally during the primary season for Barack Obama, a crowd of 75K, but now an Oregon college is now infamous for a racist effigy. Welcome to George Fox University ...at a Quaker college, no less. The bigotry continues....

A Simple Explanation of What Went Wrong

I read this interesting Brookings paper yesterday, titled "A Brief Guide To Fixing Finance." The most intriguing part of the paper was this simple explanation of exactly how things managed to get so bollocked up in the first place.

The authors note the “domino-like” character to the financial crisis:

1. The bubble in home prices, fueled by the ready availability of credit, resulted in an underestimate of the risks of residential real estate;

2. The peaking of residential home prices in 2006, combined with lax lending standards were followed by a very high rate of delinquencies on subprime mortgages in 2007 and a rising rate of delinquencies on prime mortgages;

3. Losses thereafter on the complex “Collateralized Debt Obligations” (CDOs) that were backed by these mortgages;

4. Increased liabilities by the many financial institutions (banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and hedge funds) that issued “credit default swaps” contracts (CDS) that insured the CDOs;

5. Losses suffered by financial institutions that held CDOs and/or that issued CDS’s;

6. Cutbacks in credit extended by highly leveraged lenders that suffered these losses.

Sure, that's an oversimplification. But it is a good place for the layperson to begin trying to comprehend what exactly went wrong here . . .

Palin In Polling Free-Fall

You can fool some of the people ...

The new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll will be released at 6:30 pm ET, but here's an early look at one set of numbers: Forty-nine percent say that Palin is unqualified to be president if the need arises, compared with 40 percent who say she's qualified. By contrast, 64 percent believe Biden is qualified to be president, versus just 21 percent who disagree.

Business Ownership: How Sweet It Can Be!

For today's Economic lesson: Activity 1 Click Here!

Activity 3...Choose any one of the following Links to complete the seven questions.

Elise McMillan and her brother Evan co founded The Chocolate Farm in Englewood, Colorado, in the late 1990s.

Milton Hershey (more history here)broke ground for his chocolate factory near Lancaster, PA in 1903. It was the beginning of what would become Hershey Foods Corporation.

Forrest Mars, Sr. invited Bruce Murrie, an investment banker and son of the Hershey company president, to be his partner in M&M Ltd. The M&Ms we still eat today were first sold to the public in 1941. The letters in "M&M" stand for Mars & Murrie. Eventually, Murrie left the business but Forest Mars became the owner of Mars, Inc.

Wally Amos launched the Famous Amos Cookie Company in a Hollywood, CA storefront on Sunset Boulevard in 1975.

TIP: If a company has incorporated and is publicly traded, another source of information will be Hoover’s Online Directory.