Analysts are now saying the housing market has not found a bottom as summer sales dwindle. Summer is typically the busiest season for the real estate market, but economists believe a combination of high unemployment, low buyer confidence and tightened credit restrictions are keeping an estimated 40% of potential buyers out of the market. Given the persistence of the recession’s effects and an estimation that house sales would have to match those of 2002 at their peak to establish any traction for a recovery, it appears prices may fall even further before a recovery can begin. For more on this continue reading the following article from The Street. Disappointing data on housing prices and home sales even in the supposedly busy summer selling season underscores the ugly truth that still-high unemployment is keeping potential buyers out of the real estate market. T Complete article…

WASHINGTON – The American Academy of Family Physicians is warning its members that there may be a delay in the receipt of Medicare payments if an agreement on raising the federal government’s debt ceiling is not reached by the Aug. 2 deadline.

“We feel we have an obligation to at least inform our members in case there is going to be any kind of cash flow disruption for them pertaining to Medicare,” said Roland Goertz, MD, AAFP president.

The federal government has been locked in a battle over raising the debt limit and cutting the budget of the United States. The debt limit currently stands at $14.3 trillion. If Congress is unable to reach an agreement, the United States could default on its financial obligations, which could lead to catastrophe worldwide. It also

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Here’s a tip for how you can determine a store’s rewards level for cash back credit cards. It’s not a very good tip IMO, but it’s a tip. But before we get to that, let’s review the situation:

• Some cards, like the card I currently have listed as the best cash back credit card, the Chase Freedom card (FYI, $200 cash back bonus still available here: Chase Freedom® Visa – $200 Bonus Cash Back), offer increased cash back percentages for charges in certain categories.
• As I wrote in How to Determine a Store’s Classification for Cash Back Credit Card Rewards, making a “test charge” and seeing how a specific store’s charges are accounted for is (or at least I thought) the only way to determine what percentage cash back you’d get by charging there.
• But this seems like a huge waste. With the Chase Freedom card this means you’d make charges then wait a month to see what they yield.

Complete article…

IBM (NYSE: IBM) has long been respected as one of America’s highest-quality businesses representing all the best this country has to offer.

It’s also successfully navigated from being a technology hardware company to a software and consulting services company.

But IBM’s most startling transformation is how it became a global enterprise in terms of people, organization and revenue.

IBM still employs 105,000 workers in America, and this number is growing. But it also has more than 300,000 foreign nationals on the payroll.  Big Blue has spread decision-making authority across the globe:  Global procurement is based in China while data processing and accounting is in India, Brazil and the Philippines.

My, how the world has changed…

Multinationals Growing Faster in Emerging Markets

If you look at the companies that make up the S&P 500 Index, on average, about 45 percent of their revenue comes from overseas.

For IBM, the number is 66 percent and growing fast.  But IBM is not alone. Co

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BRITAIN’S economy faces serious economic headwinds, and the strain is showing. British economic activity grew by just 0.2% from the first quarter to the second, thanks largely to a big decline in output in production industries. Kash, at the Street Light, draws the obvious conclusion:

It’s not mysterious: when you raise taxes and cut government spending, growth slows. And when you do that during a very fragile and weak recovery, you can push your economy back into recession, or at best, choke off growth almonst completely. That’s exactly why, as has been extensively written about both here and elsewhere, austerity during a time of economic weakness is not a good way to beat a budget deficit, and will be largely self-defeating.

Given the debt panic sweeping the European continent, Britain’s decision to pursue a preemptive fiscal consolidation looks prudent (though the low level of yields on British debt indicate that austerity has been more aggressive than it needs to be, perhaps putting the economy at unnecessary risk).

Complete article…