Embattling Obama takes resort to new tax plan, jobs

Obama announcing tax relief plan

President Obama’s last year predictions about economic revival have proved wrong.  Extending the tax cuts, the US president has tried to compensate for the mistakes, the democrats did last time. This is also a step to appease the Republicans in exchange of approval for unemployment benefits, reduction in payroll and other taxes.

The White House has taken a complete ‘U’ turn in its policies. The Health care Bill and financial laws have lost their glories after the hollow noise of economic recovery and the US administration has tuned back to realistic goals now.

However, all the Democrats have not welcomed these moves very warmly. Seeing positive forecasts for economic growth and jobs, the Democrats have no option but to accept the transformation of economic policies.

The midterm poll victory for Republicans gave a clear message to the Obama administration about people’s disappointment with the government. Had Obama changed his strategies on economy before the elections, the result would have been less negative for the Democrats. Even the recent changes are not expected to bring much change in the current unemployment level very soon.

What American expected from President Obama was much more than what has been delivered.  Cutting employee’s portion in tax has not done much advantage to employees.

The new extension to the tax cuts will definitely help economy but would not benefit the Democrats politically.

Forex Euro Stabilized Gains

Tokyo, Japan: After more than 2 months of constant rebound, the Euro trades stabilized but retained its gains on Friday.

Yesterday the EUR/USD currency pair advanced through 1.3200 from 1.3085. Despite the press conference from ECB’s president Trichet which disappointed the forex market for not committing to speed-up the pace of its bond buying program, the single currency was able to rebound off 1.3059 lows on Thursday.
However the GBP/USD cross has been performed poor, falling behind the purged US Dollars. According to Nirmal Keelery a forex trader involved in forex morning trade, as the foreign exchange market moved into its close GBP/USD was still slightly struggling but stable near 1.5600 from lows of 1.5512.

Foreign Exchange Ponzi Scam Uncovered

Bradley D. Eisner from New York who was operating a foreign exchange ponzi scheme was sentenced for five years probation by U.S. District Judge Dora Irizarry in Brooklyn. Eisner who defrauded his customers of $66 million, came forward reported himself about the ponzi scheme run under Razor FX.

According to Federal guidelines such a financial fraud called for a prison term up to 15 years and 8 months. According to Eisner’s lawyer, this is an extraordinary case where the court rewarded the defendant for showing the courage to stop a big financial scam and his willingness to admit being guilty.

Eisner and his partner MacCaull allegedly used the Razor FX investors’ money for their personal expenses and fabricated account statements when they returned millions of dollars to earlier investors with funds from new investors.

Investors should be aware of the various scams going on in foreign exchange market. Before of any get quick rich schemes including managed forex accounts and fraudulent brokers. While they are not entirely scams, do your research properly before you buy any software like Automated Pips or applications that offer easy way of doubling your investments.

Fedex Will Cut 1700 Jobs

Fedex FreightOn Thursday FedEx announced that it would cut 1,700 jobs in its United States freight business despite earning $380 million in the first quarter. According to the company the move is to offset losses in US freight business unit. Earlier FedEx announced that their first-quarter net income doubled as a result of strong international shipping.

FedEx profit mainly came from the international air shipments which has grown approximately 25 percent in the last quarter. However the US freight business unit has been unprofitable for four straight quarters and made a loss of $16 million.

The 1,700 job cuts represent 5% of total freight business employees. FedEx says the move to cut 1,700 jobs, along with other cost reduction plans, will ensure the freight business to be profitable next year.

CFTC Relaxed Forex Leverage Rules

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) scrapped a proposal to reduce the amount of borrowed funds that currency traders can use to trade forex contracts to 10-to-1.

In retail forex market people can open an account with any of the forex brokers and invest on speculation of price movements of one currency agaist another. The use of leverage allows the traders to speculate on mutiple times the actual deposit to greatly increase profits, but this can also result in magnified losses. At present the existing allowed leverage is 100-to-1 for major currencies. That means you could invest $5000 in your forex account and trade a notional amount of $500,000. This was also a cause of many forex scams and the CFTC proposal was to reduce this to 10:1 leverage.

However the CFTC proposal was opposed by most of the forex brokerage firms as well as traders. The reaction resulted in massive number of comments and feeback. As a result the CFTC scrapped the earlier proposal and decided to go ahead with a new rules where the firms can’t offer a ratio of more than 50-to-1 for major currencies or 20-to-1 leverage for the more exotic variety.
The new rule seems to be a more balanced option to give traders enough opportunity to gain profits yet protect them from fraud.

Accroding to the CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton the final rule represents a compromise on the leverage issue. On Tuesday he said, “I think we did a good balancing act in the final rule,” he said. “It protects investors from fraud and abuse yet allows legitimate business activity to continue.”

The new proposal should be a happy new for traders, brokers as well as those who are releasing new forex tools (see Forex Bulletproof ) especially because forex market is booming. Wall Street Journal reported that during April the foreign exchange market hit the average turnover of $4 Trillion on a single day.

Lessons on Entrepreneurship from Warren Buffett

Warren BuffettImportant Lessons on Entrepreneurship from Warren Buffett

In 2008, Forbes named Warren Buffett as the world’s richest man with his fortune estimated at $62 billion. At 15 years old, he purchased his very first pinball machine and his good fortune began there. He was known to have invested in the stock market and buying different companies; thus making himself very well known in the investment world. Despite it all, Warren Buffett remained a well-grounded man. He found no reason to forget his humble beginnings and this made him truly respectable in the field of entrepreneurship; and he imparted twelve life lessons that people can draw some inspiration from.

12 Life Lessons from Warren Buffett

Embrace your talent. The world is ever changing; and these changes will bring about so many obstacles not only to the world but also to your life. Economies will go through years of suffering and it will recover in time; through that bout, your saving grace will be your talent and your passion. You should be able to find a way to channel your inner talent, especially during the hard times. You can easily make use of your talent to open doors for; therefore embrace it and do not be afraid to use it.

The end does not justify the means. Many are blinded by their hunger for money, success and power. A lot of people are too blinded by their hunger that they are willing to break the rules and hurt people in the process. They compromise relationships for their eventual gain, thinking that money is the only thing that matters in the world — but that is not true. The end does not justify the means; you cannot celebrate success if it is obtained in a very dishonest way. Do not destroy yourself in your journey towards success; the easy way is not always the right path.

Live life with passion. Passion is the purest form of motivation and no one can steal this away from you. If you follow your passion and you do things that you most passionate about, you will realize that everything will naturally fall into place.

Do not expect the world to grant favors for you. It is different to put your hopes on yourself and to set your hopes up, expecting the world to give you everything you need. Set your expectations to a lower level, so you will be constantly surprised. Do not be unrealistic about your hopes and keep things simple.

Offer things that your customers need. There are so many things that you can sell, so many services that you can offer to the people, but not all of them are exactly right for them. Know the people who you wish to deal with and find out what they need. Do not offer something that you do not believe in, yourself, because it will hurt you in the future. As an entrepreneur, your priority is to provide service to the people around you.

Open yourself to learning new things. There is no better way to improve your situation but to constantly live life moving forward, and attaining to learn new things all the time. Treat the day before, as a learning experience, and wake up tomorrow smarter than you are now.

Never trade your reputation for money. At any point in your life, you will face failures. Losing a lot of money can be downright frustrating, but at the end of the day, it is nothing. Money can easily be earned again and you can step back up. A good reputation, on the other hand, is harder to regain once you have stained it; therefore never trade your reputation just be able to acquire a big fortune. In the end, the reputation that you have established for yourself will be the one thing that will see you through it all; so treasure it.

Do not be afraid to be different. Nothing is wrong with wanting to be yourself; and doing things your way. Just because the rest of the world does not approve of what you do, does not mean that you should start worrying. Staying on the less road traveled, as a matter of fact, gives you more room to shine. Give yourself a chance to explore things on your own and open yourself for some excitement.

Be in competition with yourself. It is nice to be competent because it will drive you to do better, but it can sometimes be unhealthy to focus your attention on keeping up with what your competitors are doing. Instead, be in competition with yourself and train yourself to keep your pace up, all the time. The truth is, it does not really matter what the other people do or think, as long as you are in control of what you are doing.

Anticipate failures. No one can predict the future but you can assume that failures and mistakes are inevitable. When you are drawing out plans for yourself; try to list the things that can go wrong and think about ways to deal with it. Although it may be truly impossible to predict the future, you can easily cushion your fall by preparing for the pain to come.

Do not be afraid to leave your comfort zone. Take risks. Do not be afraid to let go and to go forward because doing that will only limit your chances of succeeding. There is so much outside that you can experience, but you need to first be prepared to take the challenge on. You may make mistakes, and things can always go wrong, but your courage will be rewarded in tenfold. If you make mistakes, treat them as learning experiences and endeavor to stay away from it in the future.

Find your own path. Do not let others dictate your actions for you. Define what is right and wrong and do not let others influence you. You can easily find your own path to success; you do not need to follow the crowd to be able to get there.

Success is sweet and everyone who starts something on their own wishes to achieve success for themselves. Warren Buffett was a simple man who began to dream without realizing that his dreams can come true. Do not be afraid to join the race and take things one step at a time. There is so much that you can do, but first of all, you need to be able to prepare yourself for it.

Nokia Siemens Aquires Motorola

Nokia Siemens will pay more than a Billion to aquire Motorola wireless network. In statement the company said on Monday that Nokia Siemens and Motorola reached in an agreement of US$1.2 billion.

Nokia Siemens and Motorola
Nokia Siemens will acquire manufacturing operations of Motorola for all the major wireless systems, including GSM, CDMA, WCDMA, WiMax and LTE. However Motorola wireless network will hold its wireless patent portfolio and to its iDEN trunked wireless system, used by U.S. operator Sprint Nextel. As a part of the deal more than 7400 employees from Motorola will join Nokia Siemens Networks.

Nokia Siemens and Motorola expects that the deal will be completed by the end of this year.