Business Loan Options Blog

Image via Wikipedia

There was a time when big box chain stores and malls were basically all you could see across America.  It seems the pendulum is swinging in the other direction, now that the economy is slowly climbing out of the financial meltdown. Read the rest of this entry »

Image via Wikipedia

1-800-Flowers is still dealing with the clean up after their catastrophic letdown towards an ocean of customers.  This disaster occurred on the second largest day for flower deliveries.   What adds even more fuel to the fire is that “Customer-No-Service” attitude. Read the rest of this entry »

Image via Wikipedia

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission has its hands full.  It is investigating the downfall of MF Global, the 8^th largest corporate bankruptcy here in America, after a disastrous bet on the debt of Italy and Spain.  MF Global had cherry picked customer accounts because of its bad business decisions and found themselves unable to pay its own obligations.

A few days ago there was an update on various information regarding MG Global, but none on the most pressing question: were exactly is the missing money?  Officials were hunting for $1.2 billion in customer money, however some are now saying that we can add another $400 million to the total.  14 lawyers and 60 forensic accountants have used terms such as “vaporized” and “money heaven”, while regulators say that they know where the funds went but have been unable to recover the money.

The law requires that brokerages need to keep the money of clients set aside and kept safe, therefore to be in segregated accounts to protect the money in case the company did go bankrupt.  The monies were as required in those separate bank accounts; however, they were also abused through illegal transfers to buffer trading positions as well as to repay creditors.  One creditor being JP Morgan.

The recovery of the funds has been very difficult.  The main factor being the very unusual way in which the bankruptcies of MFGH and MFGI were implemented.  If it were to be done correctly, the customers segregated funds would always have had the absolute priority over any of the other creditors.  In this case, MF Global was filed under the SIPA liquidation, although the majority of the accounts were commodity accounts.  Those accounts are not protected by SIPC.  This is suspious, considering that the assets under the control of MF Global were not frozen immediately, and compounded by the fact that the company was permitted to continue operating under the rules of Chapter 11.  This cleared the way to allow billions in assets to flow into the pockets of a few individuals and numerous hedge funds for rock-bottom prices.

It appears that the era of greed isn’t over; once it’s all over and done, it remains that customer funds were stolen more than just once.  First by the illegal looting of the custodial accounts by MF Global, secondly by the fraudulent way in which the bankruptcy was structured so it could skirt around the priority status of the customer in the distribution of MF assets.

Image via Wikipedia

Any day now Mark Zuckerberg and those who have worked with him the longest, will be partying like never before.  After all, it’s not very often that companies go public for billions and billions of dollars!  Read the rest of this entry »

The Great Recession has changed a lot of ways we conduct business. Big box stores have been crumbling one by one. We have come to understand that the sluggishness of the economy just might be the new normal. One example being on how businesses are evolving and adapting can be seen in the ingenuity, freshness and new approach some entrepreneurs have been taking. Read the rest of this entry »

Image via Wikipedia

The National Federation of Independent Business has done a survey and reports that small business owners are currently feeling much more optimistic at the moment.  For the past five years small businesses have been trying their darnedest to survive.  Read the rest of this entry »

Image via Wikipedia

Occupy Wall Street has flexed its muscle for financial disdain, but Occupy CF Hardware was all about generating a financial windfall for a local hardware company. Read the rest of this entry »

Image via Wikipedia

JC Penney has come up with a pricing strategy that might spell then end of the type of bargain basement sales that shoppers during the recession have come to expect.  Instead, the company has revealed that it is opting for an “every day low price” strategy similar to Wal-Mart by cutting 40 percent off all its merchandise every day. Read the rest of this entry »

Image via CrunchBase

Everyone online knows that landing on the first page of Google can reap some heavy income in Adsense revenue because of the larger audience seeing your offers. However, landing on the first page of any social news site, like Digg.com, can also lead to huge exposure and better earnings in the long run. While Search Engine Optimization strategies work with Google, other soft skills are required to land the first page at Digg.com and other sites. Here are a few things to consider. Read the rest of this entry »

Image by Dimitry B via Flickr

A centuries old French bank has decided to do the unthinkable: Forgive old debts.  The Credit Municipal de Paris, also known as the Mont-de-Piete, has a 375-year history of offering loans to the poor who pawn their items to the bank for an ethical loan that averages 4 to 8.9 percent interest per year.  Anyone could use the bank to get quick cash in desperate moments by bringing in an item, and notables like Claude Monet and the third son of King Louis-Phillipe were clients along with thousands of Paris’ poor.  In celebration of that 375-year history, the bank has sent out notices of debt forgiveness to some of their poorest clients and told them to come in and pick up their valuables for free. Read the rest of this entry »