From the everyday Joe on main street to auto workers in Detroit to traders on Wall Street, money seems like it much harder to come by, but there is money to be borrowed.

I see business owners everyday who are surviving the economic climate the best way they know how. Hard work. Its an American heritage that will never die More often than not, however, growing a business takes more than just working harder than the guy down the street. It takes getting more money to grow your enterprise through business financing.

Even in this economy, we have been able to secure personal and business loans for business owners in need. With the current economic black cloud hovering over the nation, this is no small feat.

Contrary to what most people think, the money is out there and depending on your circumstances, it’s a lot quicker and easier to get than you might think. When you work with a business financing company, it is important to have someone who has multiple connections to successfully securing the money that you need in an expedient manner.

Ask them for references, check out their Better Business Bureau record, and get to know them. You want to be treated like a valuable client, not just a number in line for a business loan.

As it stands, the plan outlines six big steps. The first is to “stress test” major banks, increase disclosure, and if needed inject more capital and encourage private investment. For me, despite my view that of some big banks deserve a lot of the blame for the mess we’re in, this idea falls in the “if I wasn’t laughing so hard, I would cry” category.

These banks are already totally stressed out and struggling to stay afloat. Another round of major regulatory reviews and disclosure requirements may not be the best use of anybody’s time or money in the midst of this financial crisis.

Step 2 is to create a “Public-Private Investment Fund” to allow banks to sell troubled assets to others in the private sector. In my opinion, the misstep here is that the new plan wants the assets sold at market prices. Heck, the banks can do that already, but they think the bids are too low.

Step 3 is to have the Federal Reserve (the Fed) to fire up the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), start buying consumer and business securitized loans, and then expand the program to commercial mortgage-backed securities and consider purchasing other assets as well. The plan calls for up to one trillion dollars in Fed lending. My concern here is that the size and flow of credit could become politicized. In any case, the Fed has been slow to get this program rolling.

Step 4 is a “Transparency and Accountability Agenda” which goes after banks requiring assistance; limiting dividends, compensation, lobbying and other restrictions. Some of the restrictions make sense; others, despite my anger over some of these institutions’ behavior, seem draconian.

Step 5 is to spend money helping folks avoid foreclosure and support housing. My heart is okay with this, but my head says it is not likely to be very successful. It is hard to help out homeowners that are in way over their heads. Sometimes it is just best to move on and live in something you can
afford. I guess it is worth a try, but I also wish I wasn’t paying for it.

Finally there is a “small business and community lending initiative” that allows the Small Business Administration (SBA) to make more loans and increase their guarantees on loans. This program seems okay, but I worry about defaults.

As I said earlier, there are no details yet, and given the decidedly tepid response from the stock and bond markets, I suspect there may be some significant changes in the plan over coming weeks. We will just have to wait and see.

I hope they go back and reconsider the model used to lift a lot of risk out of Citigroup and Bank of America late last year. That model was simple and uncomplicated. Although it seems to me that the government charged too high a price to guarantee the troubled assets, given those banks’ languishing stock prices, it would be pretty easy to change the two-page term sheet used in those transactions to fine-tune the outcomes.

A lot of big numbers are being thrown around in all these discussions, and it is easy to lose perspective. Bear in mind that while total U.S. debt outstanding was about $52 trillion at the end of Q3 2008, total financial assets, after substantial write-downs and losses, were about $146 trillion.
And remember that there are still a lot of companies in good financial shape.

Believe it or not, more and more kids nowadays are trigger happy when it comes to swiping credit cards and capitalists are just too happy to hear that news.

Good news is, you can actually start today and teach your kids simple lessons that might save your household from a financial disaster, your kids from capitalist sharks, and yourself from a lifetime of paying debt. So how do you do that? Well here are some simple ideas to put you on the right path.

If you have a young child, it is best to let him or her discover the real value of money on their own by letting them work hard for it. It’s a well known fact that kids are more likely to give more value towards things that they worked hard for. If they’re a little older, try telling them to work or start their own business, like setting up their hobbies for Oregon craft shows. Believe me, this idea works like a charm.

Tell them to save up. Try and convince them that saving a portion of their allowance or their earnings isn’t a bad idea and definitely not a sign of deprivation. Sit down with them and talk about opening up a bank account. Most banks even have special savings programs for kids and teenagers. It’s a great idea to have savings account and to teach our kids how to save, even at an early age.

Show them how to budget. It’s important to always have a plan to keep everything in order. This may be a bit frustrating, especially if our children tend to lose on some of the budget’s aspects. Good thing, you’re there to give support and teach them how to rectify financial woes, young as they are.

These are just a few ideas on how we can make responsibly spending adults out of our kids. You’ll never know, they might thank you one day for it all.

You may or may not know it, but more and more kids these days are oblivious to the global economic dilemma we’re going through and are spending their money, or rather their parents money, on useless and expensive junk. There’s an increasing number of kids out there who are falling for marketing tactics designed especially for the youth, who seem to be more gullible when it comes to buying stuff.

You can stop excessive shopping and save you, your kids, and your whole family from a lifetime of debt and a house full of useless garbage by teaching them how to handle money more responsibly. If you don’t know what you’re doing, fret no more, because here are a few useful tips to get you started on your lessons on saving.

If your kids feel like they need an allowance increase, instead of giving them the extra cash outright, why don’t you suggest a job for them. Having a job teaches discipline and responsibility. And if they’re differently inclined, try to tell them to open up a business of their own, perhaps in North Dakota craft shows where they can sell the products of their hobbies. Children are more likely to value money that they worked hard for, so show them how to.

Open up a savings account for them. You can discuss opening up a savings account at a local bank and talk to them about how banks work. Make sure to point out the advantages of having a secure and safe bank account so they can save some of their money for future use. Point out how saving is also very useful in a pinch and how they could buy bigger and better things in the future if they save today.

Teach them how to budget. The best way to show them how to set aside proper amounts of money on different aspects of their living is a great way to teach them to plan ahead. It makes them more responsible and it also lets them be prepared for anything that might happen in the future.

However old your child is, so long as he knows that money means stuff and more money means more stuff, it’s always best to teach them how to spend it wisely. You’ll be surprised at how much difference it could make if you think about it.

Stephanie Pomboy is the founder and president of MacroMavens, a New York firm that forecasts macroeconomic trends for institutional clients and thinks the outlook is bleak.

“I expect that we’ll just have a prolonged period of sub-par growth,” she says.

Of course everything isn’t bad. Ms. Pomboy claims that there’s a very good chance that investors will move away from various Treasurys, whose performance has been very strong this year, and begin buying debt and equities. She also feels investment-grade corporate debt look “much more attractive than stocks.”

In the longer term, Pomboy believes  that consumption will drop as consumers try to shore up their balance sheets and rebuild shrunken savings accounts. She predict that will lead to annual gross-domestic-product growth in the neighborhood of just around 1%.

Ms. Pomboy has been quite bearish for a while on the housing market. “First, it was the incredible expansion in lending on housing,” she says. “I was also focused on the share of household income that was actually spendable money, and it was puzzling how consumers could sustain consumption when their income certainly wasn’t supportive of that.”

The problem is that consumers are unwilling or unable to borrow as much as they did previous to the credit crunch. So now the federal government is taking a proactive role as “the spender of last resort.”

Ms. Pomboy worries about how investors will be able to preserve their capital. And she frets about this vicious circle where “as consumers spend less, companies make less money, and they cut back workers,” she says. “The unemployment rate continues to rise. It is very hard to figure out how you break out of that.”

Source: barrons.com

Over the past four months, as frightened investors all around the world fled from risk, the dollar recouped over two years worth of losses against a broad group of international currencies.

Since the beginning of August, the U.S. dollar has strengthened about 23% against the Euro, 34% against the British pound, and even greater returns against some currencies in the world’s developing countries.

As a reminder, the U.S. dollar has been on a decline since 2002. The recent upswing is encouraging but still has way to go to recover all its losses. But the fact remains, it still represents a significant turning point for a currency whose years of weakness had turned it into a source of amusement and embarrassment for Americans.

The weak dollar has had a significant impact on Americans as the cost of imported good rose and traveling overseas was made almost impossible except for the ultra rich..

But a strange thing happened as the world economy sufered. The increasingly wide scope of the financial crisis has also assisted the dollar’s rebound. It quickly became apparent that the U.S. is far from the only country with economic woes and struggling banks.

But for currency investors, the resurgence of the dollar may be a huge challenge. Some experts feel the dollar’s rebound may be short-lived, due to the  enormous challenges facing the U.S. economy. But then there are others who say it’s likely to hold its gains far into 2009 as economies around the world continue to fight global slowdown.

But for the moment, it’s a good sign for U.S. consumers. The stronger dollar is a big hit for Americans traveling overseas. They have tired of seeing their hard earned dollars buy less and less on each trip.

But for some companies, it is far less desirable. A stronger dollar does mean that the goods and services of American exporters are more expensive for foreign buyers. The result is it reduces their competitiveness. Another factor that is a negative for American multinational companies, their overseas earnings will now be worth much less after being exchanged back into U.S. dollars, hurting both their sales and profits.

There are storm clouds on the horizon. Once the U.S. economy begins to recover, the huge injections of cash by the Federal Reserve could cause rampant inflation. This is bad news for the dollar because it will erode a currency’s worth.

Some experts say the Fed will cut back liquidity before that happens, by raising interest rates or through other measures. For now, the Fed is focusing on the bigger problem – trying to prevent deflation, a vicious cycle of contracting credit and falling prices.

In the back of their minds, investors also worry about another scenario, where foreign investors lose confidence and scale back or stop buying U.S. assets. That would send the dollar plunging and interest rates soaring.

For investors, the dollar’s latest surge and murky future present a number of choices. For example, if you believe that, in the long run, the dollar is likely to weaken, one strategy to consider is owning stocks or bonds denominated in other currencies. Then if the dollar does lose ground, the returns will be worth more when converted back into dollars.

It’s all a gamble, so bring out your crystal ball and see what it tells you.

The government recently asserted itself again with the Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the FDIC announced a second round bailout of Citigroup (Citi) that signaled a restart and a major change of direction for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

Instead of the Treasury solely buying troubled assets, as was considered earlier, the term sheet gives the government much greater control over management of the securities with loans being guaranteed, executive compensation, and dividend payments, and provides for substantial up-front deductibles from Citi in the event of further loan losses.

By including all three government entities in this new TARP process, it appears to be beneficial and this model should be a more workable one for lifting risk out of other faltering banks.

The FDIC has experience with troubled loan management, while the Fed has basically unlimited resources to guarantee asset pools. If the government can remove a net of more than $250 billion in risk off the bank’s balance sheet for a lower upfront cost of $20 billion, then if needed they could lift more than $4 trillion in risk out of the banking system with the $350 billion second tranche in the TARP.

The move was positively received by the distressed U.S. equity and credit markets. Have we hit rock bottom and move up from here? Of course, nobody knows for sure, but many seem encouraged by the new policy actions and see both the incumbent as well as the incoming Administration as demonstrating renewed determination to do whatever it takes to resolve this financial crisis and limit the damage to the economy.

As we enter this holiday season, additional bad news on the economy will likely outweigh the good news for a long while. The current recession will be difficult and trying, espcially during a holiday period that should be filled with happy times.

The financial markets will likely remain quite volatile and major swings in both directions will not be uncommon. Although there are lots of things that are broken, we can clearly see many policy actions are already underway to help fix them.