The Money Slant - Page 3

Better Business With Age; America’s Underrepresented Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs

We live in a youth-oriented society, as evidenced by the media’s rare profile of older entrepreneurs; Mark Zuckerberg is far more interesting according to the media. Americans aged 35 or older enter the ranks of the entrepreneur far more frequently than the successful youth plastered across prime media outlets, despite the average age of the beginning entrepreneur hovering around the 39 year mark.

The trendy business incubators who attract the media’s stereotypical “entrepreneur” appear to miss the backbone of America’s entrepreneurship – the mid-career professional. The general inability to see the potential of the mid-career professional leaves companies with unrealized potential (translation lost innovation and profit) right in front of them.

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Why Canada’s Real Estate Market Is Becoming Too Big to Fail

Canada Real Estate Market Too Big to Fail

TORONTO — It was all about to come crashing down.

That’s the conclusion one would draw from reading the Canadian business press in the spring of 2017, which, after giddily cheering the housing boom, now heralded an inevitable bust.

A favourite theme: Canadians appeared to have lost their minds over houses the same way their American cousins had ahead of the financial crisis of 2008. Nondescript detached homes in hard-luck Hamilton, Ontario, were selling for $1 million. In Vancouver, prices had climbed 50 per cent in only three years heading into 2016 — great if you happened to own property, not so great if you didn’t. Institutions such as the Bank of Canada had started talking in more detail about the perils of debt. To keep up with those surging house prices, Canadians had mortgaged their futures like never before, prompting the central bank to worry about financial stability.

There was another particularly bad omen. Home Capital, a smallish mortgage lender, had cast a dark shadow over the real estate market. A couple of years earlier, the firm realized that a few dozen brokers it worked with had been filing false mortgage applications. Home Capital insisted the issue was minor, but its executives couldn’t make the problem go away. If you saw The Big Short, you know that rampant fraud was at the heart of the U.S. housing collapse in 2006 and 2007, and alarm bells were sounding.

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Government Shutdown – Minimal Impact for most Americans

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Government Closed

* Op-Ed

 

Everyone calm down.

WASHINGTON — From an economic perspective, the shutdown of 2013 led to a GDP decrease of 0.25%.  It’s true that hundreds of thousands of federal employees received no pay, or late pay as a result of the previous shutdown, that inconvenience merely impacted their discretionary spending.  While contracted employees may not be impacted, the ability of the government to enter into new contracts, the execution of existing contracts may be impacted, and could lead to increased costs for follow-on research and development type efforts.

Tourism related industries are affected by the shutdown, as national parks closed, museums gift shops sat empty, and there were additional costs labeled as “lost productivity.”

But for the most part, a short shutdown would have minimal impact for most Americans, at least in the immediate term.

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