When Chicago shuts down to save money then you know that things must be really bad for the windy city but is closing down the whole city of Chicago in order to save money really a good solution or just a short term, non-effective desperate measure. One could also ask whether the fact that Chicago shuts down to save money will turn into a regular trend for the city and if it is accepted perhaps will become a national trend.

When Chicago shuts down to save money today, which will mean almost a total 24 hour standstill of public services, it is estimated that the city will alleviate it’s somewhat gigantic $ 300 million budget shortfall. When Chicago shuts down to save money it will mean that all non-essential services such as trash collection, libraries, libraries etc. will all be closed in the first of three scheduled service reduction days. City authorities hope that when Chicago shuts down to save money it will save an estimated $8.3 million dollars which barely scratches the surface of the current deficit. This measure also calls for workers to take unpaid vacation in order to show support for this drastic measure. Chicago’s Mayor Richard M Daley said he greatly appreciated the sacrifice being made and that every dollar saved will lead to job creation for folks today and the future generations of Chicago. He also stated the steps require most folks to accept some form of cuts in order to deal with the current budget crisis.

Two more such days have already been planned in the “Chicago shuts down to save money” scheme which may have drastic results during the holiday period. The next such day is planned for 27th of November the day after Thanksgiving day and the final is planned for 24th of December Christmas eve. During these two following “shut down” days workers have been asked to take some unpaid days off and accept vacation without salary.

Chicago isn’t alone when it comes to tightening the belt as states throughout the U.S. follow suit in a bid to reduce costs and curb outlandish budget shortages.California, for example has declared a monetary emergency enforcing a three day a month public sector stste offices closure and Michigan plans to withhold public sector pay from it’s employees for the last week in September.

It looks like the “season of joy” could be anything but merry for a lot of folks across the U.S. this coming holiday season.

Today’s a pretty hot day, which of course is typical considering it is the middle of a late-starting summer season (go global warming). I decided to take a break today and research a side hobby of mine that has recently become an obsession, the business of search engines, namely Microsoft + Yahoo and Google. I had recently tried to comment on Matt Cutts’s own blog (www dot mattcutts dot com) but I felt perhaps that for the sake of objectivity, I would write my views here since I do not want people to say I’m for one side or for another. For the record I am for one side, myself and you, the user.

As many of you are aware, or at least not yet aware, Microsoft finally has struck a search deal with Yahoo. This deal involves giving all Yahoo searchers over to Microsoft, where now 30% of all searchers will now use Bing, versus Google’s 68%. According to Matt Cutts’s own blog, Google Caffeine is not a response to Microsoft Bing, but was a project that was in the works months ago (more on all this later). My personal view is that Jerry Yang, Yahoo founder and now Ex-Ceo of yahoo was the one person responsible for not allowing a search engine deal with Microsoft. It was well known that Jerry wanted a lot more money for Yahoo and this was right before the recession came in. At one point Microsoft was willing to pay up to $47.50 a share for Yahoo to buy out the company, which Yahoo rejected. Yahoo flounders around $14.56 a share at 4pm EST as of this writing. Needless to say, Yahoo shareholders must be really pissed off and well, that is why Jerry was outed (among other reasons).

Google is coming out with a next generation search engine codenamed “Google Caffeine” and it is currently in beta phase for United States google only, though Matt himself has openly declared that anybody can help beta test it. Google caffeine may be found at www2 dot sandbox dot google dot com. I myself have already performed some preliminary tests but I’d rather wait until it’s undergone more changes before I perform more tests. There is some debate that Google is rolling out Caffeine as a direct response to Bing (and it’s a pretty strong and good response mind you) and Matt himself said that it wasn’t because Google Caffeine was already in the works months ago, which I believe. Either way you look at it, it’s very good that Google had a product to solidify its core business, search.

But this isn’t about Google per say, as so much about Microsoft. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer have a huge archrivalry with Larry Page, Sergei Brin, and Eric Schmidt (founders and ceo of Google respectively). While I do not know the specifics of how this rivalry started, I do know that Google actively headhunts Microsoft’s employees (basically going up to Microsoft employees and offering them better a job, stock, environment if they come to Google) so Microsoft is always having to replenish their talent due to Google. Not only that, Bing is actually a good search engine, which if you’re in the internet marketing world, means a lot. Live and msn dot come use to be TERRIBLE for search, I could never find a damned thing there. It had recently gotten better and then Bing comes out, which is a lot better. The most startling is that some results are actually as good as Google’s and the Bing bot not only indexes more pages in some cases (take search word dog for example as of last week) they also have really increased the speed at which they spider and index and crawl websites, which is another big surprise.

And I know it’s not about the money for Microsoft because Yahoo will receive a whopping 90 something % of all the advertising revenue from searchers on Yahoo dot com; Bill and Steve are just after that all valuable market share. The United States Justice Department is also not very happy with Google at the moment so Google’s attempts to label Microsoft as “anti trust” will be much harder here in the states, if not backfire, so Google will have much bigger trouble blocking this deal.

When I was researching this deal, and allowed time for the internet’s users to chime in their 2 cents, what struck me the most surprising, aside from Bing actually being a good search engine, was how much Google hate there was. If you go to any authoritative blog or website with a lot of users, about 40% of all the comments are complaining and hating on Google, mostly because of the “oppressive” Adwords campaign prices. I haven’t used Adwords myself in about 5 years but I still do have my account which I use for keyword research mostly (great tool by the way), and I know that when keywords cost 5 to 10 dollars as your minimum bid despite putting in 1 penny, that has businesses livid. Many complain that Google is hiding behind their Adwords “auction rules” without explaining why keywords cost so much, even when there are no visible adwords ads on the keyword term, and because Google is so dominant in search, Adwords is the only real way to get your site traffic (if you cannot do seo). Many complaints I’ve read stated that they can’t rank for the words they want and that Adwords is all they have, and with the recent changes and the way they’ve been treated by Google Adwords, they’re going to lose a lot of money and their business. With this recession going on, I guess everybody is losing money and tempers are flaring left and right.

This is a prime opportunity for Microsoft, and they’re no doubt happy to accommodate these businesses, but they still need to provide the one thing companies need, organic search users. Shocking, Bing does just that. Even I find myself searching both Bing and Google, which is something I thought I would never do. It does however give me diversity of results to help me with whatever I’m doing at the moment. Which brings me to you, the user.

While I highly doubt Google will die or get killed or whatever some crazy opinions say, I can confidently say that Google is actually in trouble, which they can and probably will deal with. If they do slip up though, Microsoft is going to take at least 50% market share. I say 50% because if both search engines (which are basically all that there is, at least here in the western world) produce basically the same, relevant results, which they do, then users will keep using whatever search engine they’re comfortable with. That puts Google at a disadvantage because all Microsoft has to focus on is stealing users from Google. As time goes on all users realize that using either Bing or Google will net no real difference in search results (because both search engines will ideally be very good and very relevant) so they will just use whichever service they feel more comfortable with. People are lazy, like me, and we’re also generally quite smart, so if I were a disgruntled Adwords user, I would definitely switch to Bing because one, I would have felt ripped off and wronged by google due to my losses on Adwords, and two if search results are just as good, it’s best to help out Bing since my Bing-equivalent ads are running and I need to help contribute to the search engine that will get me paid the most and treats me the nicest, which in this case is Bing, not Google.

So, given the large amount of angry Adwords users, they will definitely switch to Bing, and with it their content, products, and services. Then Microsoft can come up with cheap tricks to steal google users, such as the ads you see for “use bing and get a free xbox 360 controller” or “buy windows 7 when it comes out at yyy% off if you use bing for z amount of time using this tracking software” etc. There are also some businesses who have been indexed in Google for the longest time and find themselves being deindexed for some reason. While they probably violated some of the Google’s Webmaster’s Terms Of Service, they likely will still be very angry, and will look for an alternative, which is Bing. I’ve personally seen stats and data on 1000’s of websites and pages that are indexed that show Bing is actually a big contributor of traffic where in cases Google give little to no traffic, and that is frightening.

And that brings me to the point of this post. If Google continues to do whatever it is that keeps pissing off a certain segment of their search users, they will most definitely migrate to Bing, if they haven’t done so already. They haven’t had much choice to vent their frustrations because Google was basically the only game in town with their great search engine. But now that Bing is actually good, these frustrated people now have a choice once again (Google is technically a monopoly in the search market). You might say that these users are either spammers or small in a number, and while that is a very crude way to look at it, it is probably true, excepting that some people who are getting hurt are legitimate website owners. This is probably contributing to the rise of people thinking of Google as more and more of an “evil” company rather than the benevolent underdog that we all saw it as almost a decade ago. Once this sentiment spreads, it’ll affect other people who will change their behavior patterns and ultimately actions, as a result. That action will be to use Bing and Microsoft knows that, and they are absolutely capitalizing on it. While I enjoy competition and Google, I feel a little better knowing that I can ultimately have my choice of either Google Caffeine (when it launches) or Microsoft Bing.

US sugar supplies ‘running out’ because of the import limits being imposed on manufacturers by the American government. These curbs are causing a scare among makers of sugar based products who say that if the current rules stay in place that it could lead to a scarcity in US sugar supplies. Read the full story

The worldwide economic meltdown has begun to take toll on banks worldwide with bank collapsing around the world. The Wall Street Journal in a latest article headlined, “Nigeria Plans $2.6 Billion Bank Bailout, Ousts Top Executives” by Will Connors revealed that Banks in Nigeria, despite being a big petroleum exporter and Sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest economy has lent heavily during the oil price boom which triggered borrowing and investment bonanza in the country.

That left many banks overexposed when commodities prices turned around, the world sank into its current economic slump and Nigerian shares fell. The Nigerian Stock Market has declined roughly 60% from its highs early last year.

On Friday, Nigeria’s newly installed central-bank governor, Lamido Sanusi, cited high levels of nonperforming loans discovered by audits being conducted at all 24 of Nigeria’s banks. Five other banks have passed audits.

from The Wall Street Journal.

In the United States, Examiner dot com today revealed that this year alone, 72 banks have collapse and according to Bloomberg, Colonial Bank, the biggest, with a asset horde of $25 billion dollars, is being taken over by BB& T, making it the largest bank to collapse.

a federal judge ruled that Colonial Bank cannot transfer any of its assets. The judge stated, “Viewing Colonial’s contractual breach in conjunction with the fact that Colonial is on the brink of collapse and is suspected of criminal accounting irregularities, the potential for immediate substantial injury to Bank of America is clear.”

Colonial Bank was one of the primary lenders in the state of Florida during the recent building boom. With many mortgages and lenders depending upon the bank, the fall out would be huge. Colonial Bank has 355 branches throughout five states, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and Texas.

from examiner.com

As compared to more developed countries, smaller and lessor developed countries seems to be holding considerably better during this economically troubled times. No reports of bank collapse have been reported but this might be due to the fact that in, smaller and poorer nations, Banks are watched over by the Government, so they are kind of protected from collapsing.

Developed nations have frowned upon this practice of protectionism citing that it is against the basics of a free economy whereby a nation’s wealth is determined by free market forces and not by a protective shield casted by the Government.

These nations have however, argued that if they don’t protect their economy, speculators with cash reserves that exceeds the foreign reserves of many smaller countries, will and can have a filed day with their currency speculation like what happened during the 1997 economy crisis in Asia. During that period, many banks did collapse and it prompted countries to take stringent measures to protect their economy from future attacks.

However this does not mean that these countries are not feeling the intense heat of this current economic meltdown. The world is a borderless one these days. Whatever happens in one country, will inevitably and virally affect another until it goes global. Especially if a super power like the United States is reeling on it’s knees. There used to be a saying that goes, “When the US sneezes, the whole world shakes” Well, this time, she has developed a terrible whopping cough and there don’t seem to be a cure for it.

The Whole Foods boycott is all the rage right now on the internet, it seems like very site is running its own poll or requesting readers to sign some sort of petition agreeing to boycott Whole Foods. I’m not sure if Whole Foods CEO John Mackey was aware of the potential fallout when he wrote his op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal or if it was a calculated move to generate controversy that would be worth millions in advertising value. Read the full story

Active since around July 1st, the cash for clunkers voucher program was designed to help American auto manufacturers by providing incentives to car buyers around the country. Initially, the government set aside a Billion dollars for the program but the program almost got suspended when concerns arose that the billion was already spent! what did our astute politicians do? They allocated another 2 Billion, effectively tripling the original budget.

So how does this cash for clunkers voucher program work exactly? Well, there was some controversy about that for a while, but from what I can tell, you would be elegible for between a $3500 and a $4500 voucher if your car meets certain conditions. First of all, your car must be in drivable condition. You can tow it to the dealership. Even though, as I drive up and down the highway, I’ve seen dealerships advertising the cash for clunkers voucher program by posting signs on complete wrecks with messages like “This vehicle worth $4,500!!”. Despite auto dealerships marketing nonsense, the car must be drivable. In addition, it must hae been insured to the same owner for at least a year prior to trading it in. That means you can’t go buy your grandfathers old Buick monstrosity for ten bucks just so you can trade it in for a new Toyota tiny car. The car needs to be no older than a 1984 model which means they don’t want Dad’s old Ford Fairlane from the 50s either! And finally, the car needs to have a fuel economy rating of 18 mpg or less which kind of sucks because there are tons of big old gas guzzlers out there that supposedly get 20 to 25 miles to the gallon in theory, but in actuality get 15 – 18 mpg, but it is what it is.

Also, make sure you CHECK to see if your car is eligible since some cars that previously qualified have been removed from the list. You don’t want to get a deal going and then suddenly find out that your car has been excluded. Why has this happened? the EPA has suddenly decided to revise their fuel-efficiency ratings, so some cars have become ineligible.

One good bit of news, the new car you choose doesn’t have to actually be on the lot to qualify. The Transportation Department siad that people can purchase cars that are not yet on the lot and still be eligible for a cash for clunkers voucher.

If you want to find out if your car is eligible for the cash for clunkers voucher program, visit cars.gov for more information.

We all know and heard of the legendary Warren Buffet. We all know he is the world’s second richest man, and earned most of his money through investing in stocks, especially the United States stock market.

It’s only natural to ask if you’re an aspiring investor, “How do I make money in the stock market, Mr. Buffet?” In the past, he would always say things like “Buy and Hold”, “don’t trade the stock market”, and buy “stocks with a moat around their intellectual property and brand name.” Well, this sounds like good advice but is it really? There are 100’s of institutions here in New York City that spend every waking morning, afternoon, and night, doing exactly the opposite. They probably make a crap ton of money trading but is it really the road to riches? Does anybody consistently make money off the stock market or is it one giant legalized Ponzi scheme? Read the full story

If you think you can get paid to drive and make tons of money you are dreaming. The facts are that most of the companies that provide a get paid to drive program pays on the high side about $300.00 which is basically a small monthly payment to rent ad space on your car never mind the fact that you will be a driving billboard every where you go. Now I do admit if you are having a tough time making your monthly payment of your car this would definitely help out I mean you will not get rich with a get paid to ride program but you could probably pay the Kia with out a problem.

FreeCar Media is probably one of the most known programs out there in there sales copy for there get paid to drive program they say that the max pay out could be as much as $900.00 a month which of course if they claim it they will back it up but you must understand that just like traditional advertising where the size of the space and the placement is value so will it be here so expect your car to be a van and you better be in a driving zone where you will be getting top exposure for it to be of value for the advertiser.

I guess my main point here is that get paid to drive programs are just like every supposed easy money programs out there it might be a cliche but there is no such thing as a free lunch. Even though you might be making $300.00 dollars a month you better make sure you are not required to be driving more then you would normally be after all what is the use of $300.00 if you will need to spend that money and another $300.00 on the wear and tear of your vehicle. Read the full story