US Finance World

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation reported a modest bit of good news from the banking world on Tuesday.

In the second quarter of the year, bank failures were down, troubled banks were fewer and bank profits were up. And the F.D.I.C. said that loan portfolios grew for the first time in three years. According to the agencys release, the bulk of the lending growth came in commercial and industrial loans as well as loans between banks.

Ah, business lending, then, is back! Well, not so fast. Yes, top-line commercial lending is up, but a closer look shows one segment of loans that did not increase: those to small businesses. According to the F.D.I.C., while the nations total commercial and industrial loan portfolio grew by $34 billion, or almost 3 percent, total outstanding loans to small businesses actually fell by $2.5 billion, or 0.4 percent.

Small-business loans are defined as those of $1 million or less, but exclude agricultural loans and loans secured by farmland.

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As you know, HR 2359: The Safe Cosmetics Act of 2011 is now pending in Congress. What you may not know if that some states are quite active in the cosmetics regulatory arena, namely California and Florida. Last year, we worked together with industry to defeat a Colorado bill that would have unnecessarily put thousands of small companies out of business. In order to better coordinate our efforts at the state level, to crowd source best practices, and inform the public and industry, I launched State Cosmetics Laws on FaceBook.

I am pleased to have the support and rolled up sleeves of two of the industrys most influential leaders in this effort. Kayla Fioravanti, co-owner of Essential Wholesale and Lela Barker of Bella Lucce in South Carolina. These women have been an integral part of our advocacy efforts since the FDA Globalization Act of 2008 was first circulated, and they continue to do an extraordinary job of running their companies as they work tireless to help me preserve a playing field on which small cosmetics companies can compete fairly.

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Youve heard me talk about consumer-business owners, that is, people who are at once consumers and business owners. They are consumers because they consume in a traditional sense. They have a traditional job, they buy things, they provide for their families. They are business owners because, in addition to a job, they also sell a product or service that provides for their families and supports the local, national and/or international economy. There was a time when consumers could be neatly categorized. They were not direct producers of anything, except for what they produced on behalf of an employer. That was then. This now.

Felicia Joy knows what Im talking about. Shes the author of Hybrid Entrepreneurship: How the Middle Class Can Beat the Slow Economy, Earn Extra Income and Reclaim the American Dream, and in this podcast, she offers tips and insights to help you successfully pursue hybrid entrepreneurship.

For a high level overview of what Felicia shared, read this post.

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Eight years ago, we made a mistake that weve only recently stopped paying for. As mistakes go, this one was hardly disastrous, and in some ways it even helped me clarify my understanding of why mistakes happen and what we can do to avoid them. I have found that most mistakes fall into one of three categories: planning, procedures, or performance. Its important to understand what kind of mistake has been made before you try to deal with it.

The mistake Im referring to involved the custom shopping bags I have printed for my picture-framing business. I order them in pretty big quantities a three years supply at a time to get a good price, and the savings are substantial. Once we worked out the design, pricing, and quantities we wanted, it became a pretty routine task to reorder the bags when we needed them. So far so good.

At the time of the mistake, my framing facility was operating out of a four-floor loft building.

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• Earn 50,000 Membership Rewards (MR) bonus points after application and spending $10,000 in your first five months of Card membership. That is enough points to convert to enough frequent flier miles (50,000) for two airline tickets or $500 in gift cards. Actually, after spending $10,000 and earning a point per dollar, youll earn a total of 60,000 MR points for another possible $100 in gift cards to retailers like Gap, Home Depot, Zappos, Olive Garden, etc. As a backup, you can use 50k points to buy $350 of anything from Amazon.com. Existing American Express OPEN Gold Card members are not eligible for this offer.
• The annual fee is $0 for the first year of card membership, and $175 thereafter. This way you can try out the card for a year for free, get the 50k points, and then decide later if you wish to keep it.
• Triple points on airfare. What makes this card new is that you can now earn triple points on airfare as well as double points on advertising, shipping, and gas purchases on the first $100,000 of eligible purchases in each category each calendar year.

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