Business Markets

The US national debt equals out to about $42,000 for each person and grows at a rate of more than $4 billion a day. With 14 digits and four commas, it’s a number almost too big to fathom. But a new report by CNNMoney gives us reasons to care about America’s growing debt. Not only is it a burden being passed on to our children and grandchildren, it’s creating problems for us as well, according to experts. Here are a few of those problems:

Slower Economic Growth

Economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff say they’ve uncovered a connection between high debt and slow economic growth. According to CNNMoney the pair have examined data from dozens of countries over the past two centuries and what they found is that when gross national debt hits 90% of the country’s economy, it loses about one percent of growth every year. The US will hit the 90% point this year. Slower gr

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I’m getting out there on the road in a pretty big in June with trips to New York City, Las Vegas, Orange County, Colorado and Indianapolis slated for now. I always love to meet my readers so I’ve listed the open events below in case you attend an event and say hi.

• June 6-7 – AICPA Practitioners Symposium – Las Vegas
• June 8 – Enterprise Council on Small Business Summit – Las Vegas
• June 11 – Vertical Response User Conference (giving away my new book at this one!) – New York
• June 17 – Teaching Your Business To Market Itself (giving my new book away at this one!) – Chapman Univ. – Orange County CA
• June 25 – My daughter gets married in Colorado!
• June 30 – Private event – Indianapolis
• July 10 – eBay On Location – Chicago
• July 12-14 – Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference – Washington DC

In a fitting follow-up to yesterday’s post about unchecked privacy I thought I would a tool that makes keeping track of evolving privacy settings from Facebook “privacy is dead” point of view.

As Facebook wrestles with how far to change its policies regarding public and private a number of organizations have seized the opportunity to provide open and independent information about the best ways to evolve with Facebook. ReclaimPrivacy.org has even created a tool that scans your privacy settings and warns you about settings that might be unexpectedly public – most notably the new Instant Personalization feature that everyone was opted into by default. (Th

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Mortgage interest rates for 30-year loans fell to their lowest point of the year, according to Freddie Mack and a report on MarketWatch. Mortgage interest rates are currently at 4.93% with an average .7 point. That’s down from 5% during the last period and 4.86% compared to a year ago. “The National Association of Realtors reported that median house prices are recovering in more local areas in the latest quarter. On a year-over-year basis for the 152 areas the association reports on, 91 metropolitan areas had positive growth in the first quarter of this year. This compares to 67 areas showing positive annual growth in the fourth quarter of 2009 and only 30 cities in the third quarter of last year,” said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac chief economist, in a statement and reported by MarketWatch.

This news coupled with the fact that banks are repossessing homes at a faster rate means it could be a great time to buy a bargain. Realt

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Over the past few years the number one item that effected the increased cost of California health insurance has been the increasing cost of medications.

There is no doubt that the cost of health care is a huge drain on our national economies health. When health care change was recently debated, congress blamed insuranceanies for rising costs. But if you look at the facts, pharmaceuticalanies played a much larger role in the increasing cost of health insurance.

Drug manufacturers are constantly devising new and perhaps better ways to treat illness. Their development of new drugs with a huge price tag for America. Are all these new medications worth the increased costs?

Testing the effectiveness of any new drug takes a lot of time and careful study. Yet the long term effect of any new drug will only be known over a lengthy research period. 

Take Statin medications for example. Statin prescriptions have been one of the fasting growing medications of late.

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We offer free and instant quotes from Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of California. Theseanies are leaders in California for health insurance for individuals, families and small businesses. The “Blues” have been in the health insurance business for decades and have the most doctors and hospitals contracted in our state. They also offer the most innovative plans at the best prices.

There are health insurance plans for students, like TONIK from Anthem Blue Cross or the VitalShield plans from Blue Shield.

For families and businesses there are several PPO options and low cost HMO plans for small employers.

Bothanies also offer Medicare Supplement policies for those over age 65 or disabled under age 65.

All you need to do to see what plans are available, their costs and benefits, is to go to our site, .First, plug in your information and we will send an email with options from these industry leaders.

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The once golden child of Hollywood Lindsey Lohan is now tarnished with controversy including drug addictions and massive debt. CBS reports that Lohan is currently holding about $600,000 in credit card debt. A new movie that would have given her a substantial paycheck ended up getting cut short. Celebrity site TMZ reported that she was fired after executives felt she was no longer “bankable.” “She had that special gift,” observed Michael Levine of Levine Communications to CBS, “magnificent potential, extraordinary talent, kind of a timeless quality that had a really almost unlimited potential.”

But Lohan isn’t the only bad role model in Hollywood when it comes to finances. Other errors include not having well-prepared estates in place which happened to Michael Jackson and slain NFL quarterback Steve McNair. “The reality is we’re a celebrity-based culture, for better or worse,” Danielle Mayoras, an estate planning attorney, said in a report by the Detroit Free Press. “The celebrity-goss

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