Business Finance Journal

Football legend O.J. Simpson was formally charged yesterday with breaking and entering into the secluded Cornish, New Hampshire estate of prize-winning novelist and world-famous recluse J.D. Salinger. Salinger, 88, apparently met with Simpson for over eight hours, discussing Lamborghinis, online education, and plasma televisions, among other things, Simpson claimed.

“He doesn’t have a tv, but I told him about my Hitachi plasma screen and he went totally ape,” O.J. insisted. “He doesn’t have the Internet, but he’s heard of it, and he expressed real interest in maybe getting a Phd in something, through online education,” continued the Heinzman trophy winner an an attempt to frame the argument, when pressed by reporters and police for details of his meeting with Salinger.

Claiming that he “didn’t break in,” and merely “accidentally tripped an alarm,” on Salingers’s sprawling walled property, Simpson went on to say that he was positive Salinger would come forward to clear him. “We clicked, him and me,” O.J. recounted, confidently. “Both of us have, uh , a similar aversion to the media, and I think it was good for him to make a new friend in the neighborhood as well,” Simpson added.

J.D. Salinger is perhaps most famous for his 1951 American coming-of-age novel, “The Catcher In The Rye.” Although well-known as a highly-talented writer, Salinger has become almost as easily-recognizable as one of America’s most famous hermits. He retired to his gated sealed-off home in 1965 and has not stepped outside since, to anyone’s knowledge.

“He looks good,” said O.J. “He was wearing Gap, and had a kind of Leo DiCaprio vibe,” Simpson elaborated.

This year my company gave me the special task of creating a company blog. I was to write daily posts about…pretty much anything at first, relating to our company life. The motivation for creating such a blog was the most popular reason people use for doing anything: everyone else was doing it. Welcome to the world of the office party blog.

What started out small has spawned a monster – now our office blog is linked to our company’s main office in Seattle, which is linked to our overseas branches. We’ve found that our daily office diary has found a larger following than we ever would have imagined.

What lies at the root of our minor fame? The search engine we’ve been utilizing through v7n gives us superior to none tech support. We’d tried some others before going with v7n. Before choosing v7n we had experienced mixed results. When we had questions we received prompt responses and helpful hints in the right direction. Hopefully, now that we’ve started using their directory, this year will see our company’s profile raised even higher in the blogosphere.

The economy is doing well, if you look at it in a certain light. It’s doing well if you live for today, and don’t care much about the future. I’m not being cynical – statistics show that most of us are doing exactly that; borrowing to spend. All that spending has kept the economy chugging along, and for the most part, any major job woes appear to have been staved off for the next President to have to deal with.

But a rosy economic future is in doubt. Why? In post-9/11 USA, someone, namely the esteemed Democrat Senator Ted Kennedy, has decided to give amnesty to the country’s twelve million illegal immigrants. I have nothing against immigrants; this country was built on immigration. My own family came here from Helsinki decades ago. But giving blanket amnesty to illegals only encourages more illegal immigration. At best it’s a band-aid solution. What can he be thinking?

He is thinking about votes. For the 2008 Presidential election. Visas for votes.

At the same time, quite amazingly, Senator Kennedy has the audacity to say such things as, “Our security is threatened in the post-9/11 world by borders out of control.” Kennedy’s solution to “borders out of control”? - open the borders. No borders, no problem. It really echoes the Democrat solution to the war in Iraq; according to what I understand most Democrats figure if we stop thinking about the terrorists, they’ll just cease to exist. Unbelievable.

Surprisingly, few senators of both parties are willing to stand up and oppose Kennedy’s visas for votes plan. One of the exceptions is Louisiana’s David Vitter. Vitter has lamented, “If the American people knew what was in this bill, there would be a massive outcry against it.”

Spread the word.

My son ruined our beach house last spring when he invited a few hundred college lunatics over for a “party.” Unfortunately I realized at that time that I and my wife Tomita had been unable to shore up real core values in Taro, our freshman son. I suppose we must bear some of the blame for his selfish, brute-like actions; we are after all, his birth-parents.

Yet the anger Tomita and myself felt towards Taro then has slowly transformed into a mixed pride as we’ve seen him excel in business college and graduate with diploma in hand. When I shook his hand at the end of his final semester, Taro even had the delicacy to call me “Mr. Matsumoto,” a term I’d long ago unsuccessfully requested he call me instead of the dreaded “Dad.”

Yes, as the seasons have changed, so has our young Taro. But old habits die hard. Once again, as the leaves had just begun to turn I was stunned to learn from our groundskeeper, Raoul, that Taro was planning to turn our treasured beach house into his own private rumpus room. Copies of the guest list supplied to Tomita and I by Raoul showed email addresses with provocative monikers ranging from “candyhotandheavy@ …, to hunkyfunkymunky@…

We were incensed.

On the night of the shindig, Tomita and I steeled ourselves for a family confrontation. As Taro burst out of his room Tomita and I cornered him. Taro was wheeling a massive cape-covered object out the door when Tomita let loose with , “Just one second there, buster,” she screeched.

With the help of Nemo, my dog from my previous marriage, I got Taro down on the floor, while Tomita stripped the cape from the mysterious object Taro had been trying to smuggle out doors.

“Egads!” she shrieked. “What?! Is it a bomb?! I shouted back. But she was smiling, -albeit somewhat strangely. “Dad – Mr. Matsumoto – it’s an ATM machine,” Taro interjected from the floor.

He was telling the truth. The ATM machine, it turned out, had been bought with Taro’s graduation bursary from Cuttle Creek College. The party at the beach house, this time, had been organized in part with the help of another MBA student, Josh Logan, as a part of their business plan. How close we meddlesome parents had come to disrupting these boys first venture into garnering invaluable real-world business experience.

Luckily, the party went off, with 16 privately-owned ATMs arranged conveniently around key drinking areas. Josh and Taro came away with a gross profit of almost $16,000 US. Tomita and I came away with something too – a little more respect for our enterprising son.

Dan Walton is a twenty-something from Grand Rapids, Michigan. He’s a newly-married systems engineer with a dog named Sherbert, and a baby on the way. He always wanted to live in Northern California. Instead, he’s moving to Japan.

Carole Martin Meyer-Watson, a 41 year-old housewife, with two cats (as yet unnamed), works the night shift at Ye Olde Hefty Burger, in Camden, New York. She grew up aiming to pursue a career on the stage in London. But…she’s moving to Japan.

Vastly different people, with their sights set on equally divergent goals, all seem to hold one thing in common in the last few months – they’ve plunked down serious money to purchase land in the land of the rising sun.

“My brother was like, ‘Are you crazy? Because you’re talking like you’re one of them Klingons for Jesus, or something’”, stated Martin Meyer-Watson. “My friends couldn’t understand why I wanted to buy something that wasn’t in the neighborhood.”

“It is a risk,” admitted Don Walton, “I don’t speak Japanese. And I don’t really like Japanese food. But I guess I can always order in.”

Risk or no risk, the numbers are showing that Americans are turning Japanese more than at any time since the 1980’s. Only this time, it’s Americans who are buying up central Tokyo, piece by piece.

“Whether I actually get myself together enough to Pack up the cats, fly over there and start eating sushi, I’m not willing to place bets on yet. But, honestly, I think I feel good just knowing that I own a piece of it,(Japan). It makes me feel a little more…international.”

People who are apt to bash President Bush over Katrina, Iraq, illegal domestic wiretapping, failing our veterans, and the like, always seem to overlook one thing: Bush tax cuts worked. Since we live in America, shouldn’t we be grateful for having someone in office that puts America first? I think we should.

The Bush tax cuts more than make up for the odd bungle here and there in foreign policy, as far as I’m concerned. Besides, it’s not like Bush ran for President saying he was going to save the world. Whatever you may think about his scorecard abroad, George W. Bush has certainly lived up to his central campaign promise in both elections to keep taxes low.

By reducing the tax burden on the citizenry, Bush has been able to pump the economy full of the juice it so needed in order to fully recover from the flaccid economic slump witnessed during the Clinton years. It’s a shame that so many media pundits – even Conservatives – seem to focus more on the big picture in Iraq these days, while losing sight of the equally important smaller signs of Bush’s success. One need only look toward the rosy economic growth in this country to come to the conclusion that this President is far from rolling over and playing dead.

Frankly, I see signs of the President’s magic touch everywhere in my neighborhood. We’ve just put a new addition onto our garage, turning the once peeling, unused roof into a super party deck. Since creating the party deck there has been an unquantifiable lift in our living standard. Face it, doomsayers, Bush puts a smile on people’s faces.

Was I the only Republican to watch the recent GOP candidates Presidential debate and feel…somewhat less than overwhelmed? I mean…they all looked so…old. It wasn’t just the candidates, either. Even Wolf Blitzer (Yes, I admit, I tuned into CNN to see him interview Guiliani), looked like he was two inches away from dropping dead.

Face it – we need someone else in the race.

We need someone dynamic if we want to secure the White House in 2008. I like Rudy Giuliani, but honestly, he looks and sounds like a funeral director. As a nation, we have elected two other funeral directors who turned out to be good Presidents – Abe Lincoln, and Richard Nixon. But times have changed, and the reality is that if you want to be a contender these days you gotta look sharp.

Bloomberg has indicated he may run as an Independent, much as Ross Perot did, back in 1992. He would do well to recall that Perot lost. I’m all for Bloomberg throwing his hat into the race if he’s representing the GOP; as an Independent I think a lot of people would be back to considering Guiliani.

So how about it, Mike? Can you do for the country what you did for NYC? Think about it – if for no other reason than to save us from that other NYC pol, Hillary Clinton.

Enigmatic current Chairman of the Board of Governors of the United States Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke, has made clear his opposition to the so-called “glow-in-the-dark” money, proposed recently by former Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. Greenspan proposed the money, which glows eerily in the dark, as one method in which the Reserve could contribute to “greening the economy – environmentally.”

As is well known in financial circles, Greenspan, for years during his term as Chairman, nurtured a personal ambition to steer the Fed towards more active participation in saving the environment. As acting Chairman, Greenspan felt too constrained to overtly advocate his views, but since Bernanke succeeded him, Greenspan has occasionally popped up on talk shows, pushing his “glow-in-the-dark” cash idea.

It works like this:

The Fed agrees to, over the course of ten to twenty years, phase in a certain amount of coins and paper currency, which feature imbedded illuminating cells, (or IIC’s). The higher the currency value, the higher the illumination of these cells. An approximate value table, issued by Greenspan’s office, lists a ten dollar bill as containing one hundred IIC’s (about 100 watts of electric power).

As the Fed gradually introduces more and more illuminated money into the system, state energy companies are expected to begin cutting power to consumers during evening hours.

Bars, restaurants, racetracks, and pretty much any place where changes hands are expected to be lit up naturally, from the light emitted from the “glow-in-the-dark” currency. “And…,” Greenspan has boasted, “It encourages people to spend; if they want some light to read by, the easiest thing is to whip out that twenty.”

Bernanke has been slow to warm to his predecessor’s brainchild.
“It’s the product of a mind that’s read a little too much science fiction, I think,” he said, “No offense to Philip K. Dick.”

I don’t think of myself as a complainer; I know there’s a war on and we’ve all got to pitch in. And I know that it is no mean feat to fund research, exploration and drilling for new mineral resources. And I know that summer’s coming, and that’s the equivalent of Christmas for the people at our country’s oil and gas companies.

But buddy, these current gas prices are killing me!

If you’re about to stop reading this post because you’re thinking I’m about to start in on blaming the President for all this, think again. But answer me this: Did we or did we not invade Iraq so that we could have cheaper access to their oil and gas supplies over there? There’s no doubt in my mind that we did. And instead, what do we get? Prices are so high right now that even I’m thinking of buying a Toyota – and I used to work at Ford.

Where I live, up here in the mountains, a car is indispensable. I drive to work; I drive my kid to his business seminars and meetings with his parole officer; I drive into the city to meet my barrister and get weekly check-ups done on my sensitive teeth and swollen thighs. If I stopped driving, my son would receive a summons for missing his parole meetings; my finances would unravel; and the aches I used to suffer from in my legs and molars would flare up. In other words, I’m being forced by these high gas prices to choose between one set of incapacities and another.

So what can we do if we want things to change?

I think we need to really act to secure those oil and gas reserves in Iraq. Stop pussyfooting around, Mr. President – Let’s focus, and get the job done. The American people are behind you!

Your web site is your public face to the world, and it says a lot about you and how you conduct business. Much like a job interview, you want to dress to impress. You wouldn’t show up to an important interview in ripped jeans and a t-shirt, so why on earth would you think that a shoddy website would earn you any respect or business? To earn the respect of your visitors, as well as their business and continued visitation of your site, it is important to understand that your web site’s design can literally make or break their entire experience.

Today, discerning web surfers tend to have very strong feelings about web design. If your site is visually unappealing, it may drive visitors away. On the other hand, if it is attractive and well-organized you’re likely to keep visitors around longer and pique their curiosity. Clearly, the latter is your objective.

If you have the technical and artistic skills to construct your own web site, that’s great. However if you’re like most people, you might want to hire someone to do it for you. You can usually find a good web designer by asking around, checking references, and viewing potential designers’ portfolios to get a feel for their work. V7’s web design service is a great example of a quality web design firm.

Here are some basic rules that you’ll want to abide by in the construction of your web site:

• Know your target demographic. If you have to, do some market research to see what most appeals to this group.
• Respect the accepted standards. Following the current web standards will make it much easier for you upgrade in the future, and will help ensure that it will work with most browsers. It will also make it more accessible for those with disabilities and special needs.
• Design your site for Internet Explorer first (the majority of users use it), and then make sure it works in other browsers.
• Your navigation should be intuitive and easy for visitors to use. Don’t make them hunt all over to find what they need.
• Keep it simple. The more stuff that you cram into a page, the more stuff that the viewer has to take in, and the more likely they are to be overwhelmed.
• Your design should be consistent. When a user goes to a new page on your site, they should know by the design that they are still on your site. Don’t have drastically different designs on different pages; it will confuse people.
• Choose your colors carefully. Read up on color theory, and try to pick colors that not only match and go well together, but also those that project the image that you wish to convey.