The perfect advertising technique

Just as you know, when you decide to run your own business it is extremely important that you pay some attention to the marketing strategies that you will be considering. Personally, I believe that the old technique of the printed T-shirts with some ads related to our business are still the best way of promoting any business! So, why don’t you have a look at this T-shirts printing website and see what you can do with the latest technologies?

Consumers gaining extra confidence

Consumer spending rose more than expected in January, after declining for six consecutive months, according to government figures released Monday.

The Commerce Department report showed spending by individuals rose 0.6% last month, after dropping 1% in December. Economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast an increase of 0.4%.

January's increase comes after several months of declines in consumer spending as rising unemployment has undermined house hold purchasing power.

Despite last month's rebound, many economists expect consumer spending to remain weak given the outlook for continued economic deterioration.

"The trend in real consumption, however, remains downwards, and the further decline in consumers' sentiment signals continued declines," wrote Ian Shepherdson, an economist at High Frequency Economics, in a research note.

The report also showed that personal income rose 0.4% in January, following a decline of 0.2% in the previous month. Economists had forecast another 0.2% decline.

The personal income figure was boosted by pay raises for federal civilian and military employees, as well as cost of living increases for certain federal programs, according to the report. Excluding these factors, incomes rose 0.2% in January.

Despite the increase in spending, personal savings rose $128.7 billion to $545.5 billion in January. The personal savings rate, expressed as a percentage of disposable personal income, rose to 5% in January, compared with 3.9% in December.

Last month, the government reported that consumer spending rose an anemic 3.6% in 2008, the smallest full-year increase in 47 years.

Managing our properties

As you know, properties tend to play a very important role in the economy of any country. As a matter of fact, if we could find a way of managing our properties and those ones that we are “stuck” with, then we could easily find our own way out of the current financial downturn.

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It's like winning the lottery, then being told you have just a week to spend it. And, oh yeah, don't waste any of it.

Under the nearly $800 billion stimulus package signed last week, some federal programs are set for an unparalleled increase in funding.

The example people usually cite first is the Energy Department's Home Weatherization Program, which is expecting a tenfold increase to its budget - with the stimulus package dumping $5 billion on a program that's currently running on $500 million a year.

But the weatherization program is hardly the only example. From the National Park Service to the Health Department to the Army Corps of Engineers, several agencies are getting a huge infusion of cash and a mandate to spend it quickly.

And that's got a lot of people nervous.

"'The federal, state and local bureaucracy just doesn't have the capacity to handle that decision making," said Rudy Penner, a senior fellow with the Urban Institute and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office. "There's going to be a lot of waste."

The Obama administration - which is responsible for managing the stimulus money - seems to understand the potential for waste.

They are promising an unprecedented level of transparency in doling out the money, and have created a board to oversee the process and a novel Web site - www.recovery.gov - that's supposed to allow citizens to track every dollar.

But experts say many of the federal agencies simply don't have the manpower or procurement procedures in place to oversee a such huge amount of money.

It's a shortcoming the Obama team itself acknowledges.

Pre-Sept. 11, 2001, the government awarded about $200 million worth of contracts a year, Earl Devaney, head of the Recovery Act Transparency and Accountability Board, said at a press conference earlier this week.

Now the government doles out more than $500 billion a year, but the number of procurement staff has stayed the same, said Devaney.

"That will be a major challenge for all of the (cabinet) secretaries to address," he said, "to make sure that the staff is available to make this happen quickly and to monitor it once it goes out."