It appears that the forces running the universe have an eternal sense of humour. That’s really the only conclusion I can reach after taking a look at what the hurricane season appears to have in store for the American energy sector.
If you’re in big business, home business or any other type of business, what you’ve discovered or possibly already knew over the course of the last year is that the entire business world is built on the back of cheap energy and that when that energy ceases to become cheap, the business world has the tendency to slow down. While this is something that is not that shocking to people that understand how their businesses work, it is something that the country as a whole found out about in a rude awakening when hurricanes pummelled the gulf energy sector, destroying many energy sources along the way.
Many of the businesses claimed to have learned from this lesson however and for that reason energy companies were awaiting the storm of Gustav with baited breath, hoping that the changes they made were enough to sustain them and the rest of the business world along with them. Gustav will have the final verdict on that matter however and it is something that we have to wait for in order to see.
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In the previous article regarding the failure of the Georgia-based bank, I mentioned that the real estate fiasco that is currently going on in the United States is a great illustration of how the US economy is different from every economy on Earth. In the interests of clarity, I’d like to expand on that idea a little more.
The US business world is based entirely on the idea of extremes. It is essentially the closest thing to a pure free market that exists, but at the same time it is also not exactly a free market in many different cases. The US economy however is not as regulated by the government as most of the other developed nations of the world and that means that the business extremes are more pronounced in the US than they would be anywhere else.
During the good times, this is a fantastic thing because it means that businesses boom in the US to levels that the rest of the world could not hope to match. It is also what allows the country to generate the massive amounts of wealth that it has. However, during the bad times, the businesses and the individuals suffer a lot more than they would in other countries and this is what we are witnessing now. Without casting aspersions or praise on this method of doing business, I will say that it is an interesting difference that the United States has.
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The real estate lending business is an interesting beast and it really illustrates how the American economy is different from every other economy on Earth. What was once the most secure way to do business is now as treacherous as can be. There have already been nine banks claimed by the treacherous waters of real estate lending gone bad and today the business world was aghast at the news that a tenth bank had fallen.
The unlucky number ten was the Integrity Bank based in Georgia. The ironically named Integrity Bank had risen from nothingness to big money holdings through the business of real estate lending and when those deals went bad, it found itself fighting for its life almost from day one. It’s something of a minor miracle that the bank lasted this long, but it’s finally thrown in the towel and divided its assets between the Regions Bank of Alabama and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
The bank had about $974 million in deposited money that is split between deposits that were insured and deposits that were not. In both cases, the deposit load has been assumed by the Alabama-based bank, while the FDIC assumed the rest of the assets and reported that the failure of the bank resulted in a $250 million loss for the government corporation.
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For people that are interested in business news, there is something on the horizon that could make you too depressed to work on your home business. It’s called Hurricane Gustav and if things go in a way that is extremely poor luck for the American business community, we could see devastation to the Gulf economy once again.
The first place that this devastation could fall is in the tourism sector and there are many reasons for this. The first is that there are many residents already vacating the gulf coast even though an evacuation hasn’t officially been called yet, the details of which can be
found at this website. With so many people leaving the gulf coast, it’s very unlikely that the coast will be able to capitalize fully on the peak period of its tourism year.
If we’re lucky in the business world, the hurricane will be dealt with in a competent way and tourism will be back to normal within a week of the hurricane hitting. If we’re not lucky however, there could be devastation on a large scale and at that point no business plan will be able to salvage this quarter for the gulf tourism industry. That could cause a downturn in a sector of the market and as we of course know from the last two years, downturns tend to be infectious in the modern economy.
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For people that are interested in telecommuting as a way of solving their gas price problems, there is one thing that is going to be required of you immediately. That thing is the installation of a dedicated phone line. While the internet has created many methods of communication far superior in nature to the conventional landline, it is also important to realize that the business world does not move quickly and for that reason conventional phone conversations are still the way most things are done in industry.
Therefore, the dedicated phone line is something that you need to have installed right away, sometimes even at the expense of the company. This phone line is one that you will only use for work purposes and because of that it will be one that is always free when you are not using it for some part of your work. Most bosses are reluctant to allow telecommuting because they feel it will detract from the actual work being done and a dedicated landline will go a long way towards convincing them otherwise.
Installation of a dedicated landline is just one of many telecommuting trips that can serve to make your at home work experience just as authentic and productive as the one you had when you commuted to work in the conventional manner.
