Archive: January, 2011
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
It’s been a year since President Obama set a goal of doubling the nation’s exports by 2015.
That would mean going from $1.57 trillion in exports in 2009 to $3.14 trillion five years later, which would be phenomenal unless we double imports at the same time.
However, it’s also unlikely to happen without more small businesses jumping into global markets. After all, how many more Boeing 737s, John Deere tractors, and Caterpillar backhoes can the world absorb?
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
The chief executive officer of Lehman Bros. Holdings Inc. can still pack a room, although these days that room is more often than not a bankruptcy courtroom.
But there was Bryan Marsal, a self-described “old workout guy,” speaking to several hundred people Tuesday at La Salle University’s Economic Outlook event at the Union League of Philadelphia.
Marsal operates in a world “where the economy intersects with corporate success and failure,” Paul R. Brazina, dean of La Salle’s business school, said in his introduction.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
How prevalent are those tax incentives for movies and TV series?
A compilation by the National Conference of State Legislatures has 45 states and Puerto Rico providing them. Pennsylvania has an active program. New Jersey suspended its for fiscal year 2011.
Here's a link to the full list, in case you're scouting locations to make your next movie.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
I think I can guess your reaction if I told you that, on average, just 2 percent of chief executive officers of Fortune 500 companies are fired annually.
That’s not enough! Off with their heads!
And it would be a natural sentiment even if we weren’t muddling through our 19th month of economic recovery. We’re impatient with anemic job growth and persistent long-term unemployment.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
Businesses and other employers in Chester County, who appeared to be in a no-win situation earlier this month, have gotten a reprieve from the Tax Man.
While all Pennsylvania counties will change how they collect local earned-income tax in 2012, Chester County has pushed to be an early adopter, making the changes effective Jan. 1, 2011.
The problem is that the official state forms that employers needed to provide to their workers in order to document the correct withholding weren’t ready. Sounds like just a paperwork shuffle, right?
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. may have collapsed in September 2008, but that doesn't mean it's gone.
Once one of the biggest investment banks, Lehman "lives" on in bankruptcy court as its current CEO tries to unwind the tangled mess that was the one of the nation's largest investment banking firms.
Bryan Marsal, who is also a founder and co-CEO of Alvarez & Marsal, a turnaround firm, will be the featured speaker at La Salle University's 10th annual Economic Outlook Forum at the Union League of Philadelphia on Jan. 25 at noon.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
The debate over inflation - even at a time when the major economic barometers detect little if any of it - will never abate.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said Jan. 14 that the Consumer Price Index for December rose 0.5 percent. Economists like to focus on the core index, excluding volatile food and energy, which rose just 0.1 percent.
That exclusion irks a lot of people who call me. Their receipts from the grocery store and gas station tell a different story. Food and energy costs them more now, and they can’t exclude either from their core budgets.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
The swoon may be over for the venture capital industry nationally with the number of deals and the amount invested rising in 2010 for the first time since 2007. But regionally the action was more subdued.
The PricewaterhouseCoopers/National Venture Capital Association MoneyTree Report, released Friday, shows some improvement for an industry that has never returned to the manic heights it reached during the days of Internet Bubble 1.0 in 2000.
The question is: With nosebleed valuations of $50 billion for Facebook and $15 billion for Groupon being bandied about, are we in the middle of another Internet bubble?
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
While business activity is expected to pick up in 2011, poor sales remain the biggest worry for companies, according to a new survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
The local Fed surveyed the members of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce during the first half of December.
Jason Novak, the Fed research and policy support manager who presented the survey's results at a chamber economic outlook event Wednesday morning, said the results may reflect a "downward bias" given the uncertainty of tax policy and other issues at the time that survey was conducted.
Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Columnist
Order the coffee and chill the energy drinks. Startup Weekend Philly is almost here.
Most small-business owners probably think every weekend is start-up weekend. But this 54-hour event at the University of the Arts’ Corzo Center on South Broad Street on Jan. 28-30 will be the first local version of a kind of hackathon held around the world since June 2007.
Organizer Brad Oyler assured me participants do get to sleep. These aren’t dance-marathon rules, after all. But if it follows the script of other Startup Weekends, the Philadelphia edition might just produce demo versions of products or services that form the basis of new companies.
Mike Armstrong blogs about Philadelphia corporations and business-related topics. Contact him at 215-854-2980.
Reach Mike at marmstrong@phillynews.com.
