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In the late Fifteenth Century, an Italian in a puffy shirt pitched a business plan. Again and again and again. Until finally somebody bit. What’s remarkable was not that this Italian wore a puffy shirt; it was the style in those days. And there was nothing strange about his pitching his investment ideas at the royal houses of Portugal, or Venice, or his hometown of Genoa. It wasn’t even that odd that he pitched his business plan to the king of England, and finally to the king and queen of Spain. All these monarchs heard investment ideas all the time....

“Take a look at this black belt I’m wearing people. You think anyone wants a roundhouse kick to the face while I'm wearin’ this bad boy?” It’s time for unemployed Americans to embrace capitalistic martial arts. It’s time to talk like Rex from Napoleon Dynamite. It’s time to give socialism a roundhouse kick to the face. If you aren’t already one of 14 million unemployed Americans, you’re probably concerned about joining them. The U.S. economy netted no new jobs in August. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Consequently, the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits in the first full week of September...

Society will survive and law and order will prevail. And it is within the realm of possibilities that some extremists will propose draconian measures requiring, for example, that offenders be corralled in their own neighborhoods behind concrete barriers and chain linked fences. This would be a pretty ugly America.

There are over 81 million young people unemployed worldwide. Not to mention tens — if not hundreds — of millions more that are underemployed. In the U.S., youth unemployment is just shy of 20 percent, nearly 40 percent of Gen Y has been either unemployed or underemployed at some point since December 2007 and college graduates are so poor that they are being forced to move back in with their parents and default on student loans in record numbers.

As graduation season rapidly approaches, black college graduates may face a greater burden in the job market than their white counterparts. Black college graduates are twice as likely to be unemployed as white college graduates. The recession has only worsened this problem. Unemployment among blacks is disproportionately higher than the rest of the population. Reasons for this trend include black students are not adequately prepared for the job market. They may have the degrees, but they lack the connections or professional skills to be successful in the workplace. Students may have the knowledge, but not the resume; or the resume,...

Meet a banker today, and you can be certain that within minutes he will be complaining about the epidemic of "banker bashing." How unfair it is of politicians and media populists to blame the financial industry for the Great Recession. Don't they understand what it is the bankers bring to an economy? Not just all the financial products, which grease the wheels of global business, but also all those jobs and all that wealth. Take a drive through Greenwich, Conn., the home of the hedge fund industry, and see for yourself what a formidable service the financial sector has done...

Folks, this is something I have been thinking about for a while but need some input from others.. Freedom is a relative term, so maybe the question should be: where is more freedom? My premise is that an entrepreneur wants freedom. Not all businesses are entrepreneurial as some like big govt and regulations. There have been postings here by individuals who have intentionally reduced their business and/or gone overseas. If you distil their actions down to the core, I believe they want freedom. Freedom to risk, fail, learn, help others, make a difference. I have presented to some economic development...

Regulators on Friday shut down a big community bank based in Chicago that has been known for its social activism but racked by financial troubles in recent months. It was the 114th U.S. bank to fail this year. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over ShoreBank, with $2.16 billion in assets and $1.54 billion in deposits. Urban Partnership Bank, a new institution comprised of several big Wall Street banks and a private foundation, agreed to assume ShoreBank's deposits and nearly all its assets... In an unusual move, the FDIC allowed some of ShoreBank's executives to continue running the restructured bank......

In 2007, a group of Georgia State students traveled to India to answer one central question – “Was the Indian government assisting or halting entrepreneurship?�Our findings were that there were plenty of opportunities to start a business in India, that the bureaucratic process often hindered the speed of a start up, and that the Indian Government’s best policy would be to get out of the way.A recent study on Entrepreneurial levels in India and China confirm these findings and added some very interesting information: Major motivation for Indian entrepreneurs is to be their own boss.Major motivation for Chinese entrepreneurs is to make...

How many Americans will never work again? Perhaps a lot. A close look at the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey raises some alarming questions about the prospects of significant parts of the American population. Thirteen percent of Americans twenty-five years and over without a high school diploma were unemployed in June (down from a peak of 17.9 percent in February, but much of that decline was due to a fall in the labor force participation rate from 62.4 percent in February to 61.4 percent in June). Ten percent of workers with only a high school diploma, were unemployed...

Schumpeter 2.0 By Richard Swedberg and Thorbjørn Knudsen Wednesday, June 23, 2010 Filed under: Big Ideas, Economic Policy A great thinker’s contribution not only appears in his or her finished works and arguments, but also within the rich intuitions or core ideas that underlie the arguments. During the last decade or so, the theories of Joseph Schumpeter have gone through a revival, and much attention has been devoted to his work. By now many economists and commentators value his work highly, especially what he says about entrepreneurship and creative destruction. While this work on Schumpeter is very valuable, one might...

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/statement-press-secretary-visit-president-medvedev-russian-federation-white-house Home • Briefing Room • Statements & Releases The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release June 11, 2010 Statement by the Press Secretary on the Visit of President Medvedev of the Russian Federation to the White House President Obama is pleased to welcome President Dmitriy Medvedev of the Russian Federation to the United States on June 22-24. Over the last eighteen months, the United States and Russia have made significant strides in resetting relations between our two countries in ways that advance our mutual interests. Since first meeting...

Some people are born wealthy enough to take the massive risk which funding a new business entails. Others get seed money from brilliant pitches, luck or connections. And then, there's the rest of us. Funding a business, or more precisely, risking losing money when starting a business, is the single largest obstacle for most entrepreneurs. Even good ideas can take time to fine-tune or pan out. That's why I have the most respect for the 'street-stall entrepreneur' one finds in developing countries. This is the individual who starts out with absolutely nothing, and shamelessly sells any product they can from...

There's a growing consensus, particularly on the right, that the United States is going the way of Europe. The evidence supporting such a claim is, in some ways, strong given the recent passage of "universal" health care, jobless benefits lacking an endpoint and an explosion of government spending that continues to rise in terms of GDP. Considering the increasing cost of government alone, it's perhaps easy to see how the future in some ways looks bleakly European. Happily, however, the basic supposition is a flawed one, and it's one that ignores the makeup of individuals in the U.S. To put...

Unemployment in America is hovering at just below 10 percent, so President Obama hosted a "Summit on Entrepreneurship" in Washington, D.C., in an effort to boost economic development ... in Muslim nations. The president thinks more U.S. investment in Muslim lands and exchange programs that will bring Muslim women to America so they can work as interns will enhance U.S. prosperity and, thus, change Muslim attitudes about the United States. Pigs will fly first. The U.S. has been more than generous to Arab and Muslim nations in direct foreign aid, military assistance and other ways. Egypt receives about $2 billion...

Note: The following text is a quote: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-presidential-summit-entrepreneurship Home • Briefing Room • Speeches & Remarks The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release April 26, 2010 Remarks by the President at the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center Washington, D.C. 6:05 P.M. EDT THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. Everybody, please have a seat. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to Washington. In my life, and as President, I have had the great pleasure of visiting many of your countries, and I’ve always been grateful for the warmth and the hospitality that...

Obama to beam message to Irish Muslim entrepreneurs 25 April 2010 By John Burke, Public Affairs Correspondent US president Barack Obama will address Irish-Muslim businesspeople and community leaders during a two-day entrepreneurship event this week. Obama’s message on the benefits and opportunities of enterprise will be broadcast over the internet from Washington to a gathering in Dublin of Irish Muslims from the worlds of trade, investments and markets. During the presidential entrepreneurship summit, the president will speak about developing closer links between the Muslim community and providing the capability and funds to develop new business and co-operative networks.

President-of-the-World Obama is at it again. Apparently, he feels that the problems in this country are too small for him, or else they have all been solved. His wisdom and greatness are too important to be squandered on only one nation. They must be made available to save the entire world. In his latest initiative, Obama takes “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you” across national borders. The White House recently “announced a ’summit on entrepreneurship’ to build economic ties with the Islamic world, part of President Barack Obama’s outreach to Muslims.” It has invited participants from...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The White House on Friday announced a "summit on entrepreneurship" to build economic ties with the Islamic world, part of President Barack Obama's outreach to Muslims. The White House said it has invited participants from more than 40 countries over five continents for the April 26-27 conference in Washington.

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/statement-press-secretary-a-new-beginning-presidential-summit-entrepreneurship Home • Briefing Room • Statements & Releases The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release March 05, 2010 Statement by the Press Secretary on A New Beginning: Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship President Obama, together with the Department of State and the Department of Commerce, will host the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C., on April 26 and 27. Participants from over 40 countries on 5 continents have been invited to participate. The Summit will highlight the role entrepreneurship can play in addressing...

Lemonade Day introduces kids to entrepreneurship! This city-wide event encourages kids to start a lemonade stand and sell their lemonade to the entire community. Schools, community groups and businesses get involved to make this all happen.

The White House didn’t invite the firms that will create new jobs to its “job summit” — dominated by the CEOs of big firms, Ivy League economists, and union officials — because they weren’t available. Many of them don’t even exist yet. Our economic gospel says that small businesses create most jobs, although size doesn’t matter as much as age. In a new study on job creation, the Kauffman Foundation found that “from 1980–2005, nearly all net job creation in the United States occurred in firms less than five years old.” The ultimate source of jobs is the vast, chaotic...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ___________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release October 23, 2009 White House Announces Global Technology and Innovation Fund During his speech in Cairo on June 4, the President announced that the United States would "launch a new fund to support technological development in Muslim-majority countries." As the latest step in delivering on this commitment, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation announced this week a call for proposals for a Global Technology and Innovation Fund. This fund will help catalyze and facilitate private sector investments that promote...

In a column a few weeks ago, I wrote about "smallsourcing" and how U.S. workers are competing for jobs that small companies haven't chosen to outsource. Some of these jobs are in the very areas where the doomsayers said the U.S. had no chance of competing, such as information technology, Web development, and graphic design. That U.S. workers have been competitive in these fields underscores my belief that the nation's workforce can be more competitive in other fields than is broadly understood.

The United States will eventually recover from the current deep recession and then the overriding concern will become the resumption of growth. Will we return to the high growth and productivity rates of the post-1995 decade? Or, in a gloomier scenario, are we in for a sustained period of sluggish growth like what afflicted most developed countries from the early 1970s to the mid-1990s? The primary determinant of which path we take is our level of entrepreneurial activity. In terms of job creation, innovation, and productivity, entrepreneurs drive growth. A major worry is that the basic demographics of the United...

Koenigsegg, the Swedish luxury sports carmaker set to buy Saab Automobile from US firm General Motors, is confident that the company can be rescued, the firm's co-owner said on Saturday. GM, which has now filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States, placed Saab on the market in February as part of its attempts to slim down its brand range and return to profitability. A Sveriges Television (SVT) report on Thursday said Koenigsegg and a group of Norwegian investors had signed a letter of intent to buy Saab. Bård Eker, whose holding company Eker Group holds a 49 percent stake...

Sporty Swedish car maker Koenigsegg has teamed up with a group of Norwegian investors to buy Saab from General Motors, according to state broadcaster Sveriges Television's news show Rapport. Koenigsegg has signed a declaration of intent with regard to the purchase, with more detailed negotiations set to continue over the coming months. The sports car maker, based in Ängelholm in southwest Sweden, has secured the backing of Norwegian investors, according to Rapport. Koenigsegg has long been named as one of the parties interested in snapping up the ailing Swedish auto giant. Earlier on Thursday, the Swedish trade ministry indicated that...

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, June 10, 2009 – The fruit and vegetable bounty of Afghanistan’s Panjshir province may make its way to grocery stores around the world someday, thanks to a provincial reconstruction team program. For many women in the Bazarak district of Afghanistan’s Panjshir province, a new food-processing center provides their first opportunity to work. The women learn to process produce into jars of preserves and bottles of juice. U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Ashton Goodman  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. A food-processing program recently introduced into the Panjshir Valley is bringing economic prosperity, education, leadership...

He sleeps under a bridge, washes in a public bathroom and was panhandling for booze money 11 months ago, but now Larry Moore is the best-dressed shoeshine man in the city. When he gets up from his cardboard mattress, he puts on a coat and tie. It's a reminder of how he has turned things around. In fact, until last week it looked like Moore was going to have saved enough money to rent a room and get off the street for the first time in six years. But then, in a breathtakingly clueless move, an official for the Department...

Tibco Software chief executive Vivek Ranadive said the worst of the tech recession is behind us as he addressed the TieCon conference — an annual event in Silicon Valley heavily attended by the South Asian, venture capital and entrepreneur communities. Palo Alto, Calif.-based Tibco, a company with market value of $1.1 billion, makes software that gives real-time insight into the operations of a company and thus it has insight into the enterprise market, which has been pummeled by the recession during the last couple of quarters. Echoing other optimists such as Intel CEO Paul Otellini and Cisco CEO John Chambers,...

I haven't spent this much time thinking about economics since college, when it was my second major. I have dedicated the last 15 years primarily to my first major, computer science, and my first love, entrepreneurship. But that has changed in the last six months, although my primary concern still remains entrepreneurship. I was invited by Tim Kane and Bob Litan of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the world's largest foundation dedicated exclusively to the cause of promoting and fostering entrepreneurship, to a small conference of economics bloggers held in Kansas City recently. About 30 of us spent a stimulating...

The passage of the $787 billion stimulus bill has so far failed to stimulate anything but greater market pessimism. This suggests to us that the strategy behind the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act is wrong -- and worse, that the weapons it is using to fight the recession are obsolete.

Amid the financial crisis, some 40,000 of New York's 185,700 Wall Street jobs could be lost. The bailout is not exactly offering a great deal of confidence to the financial markets. We are all losing a lot of money. Fear runs through the system like a chilling shiver in the middle of the night. But is there a silver lining in this nightmare? I have long been troubled by the fact that Wall Street recruits some of the most highly educated talent in America into jobs that do not involve "building" or "leading." Rather, these professionals spend their lives "trading"--buying...

30 years ago, huge corporations dominated the business world...the seismic shifts that turned America into a nation of entrepreneurs. entrepreneurship has become a popular aspiration. A September 2005 Baylor University study reports that since 1980, more than 5 million jobs have disappeared from Fortune 500 companies, while 34 million new jobs were created at small businesses. Also, the number of small businesses increased from 14.7 million in 1977 to nearly 32 million last year, according to IRS tax returns. Today, one in 12 adults is actively involved in starting a business, and more than 60 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds...

The entire world seems to be heading toward points of inflection. The developing world is embarking on the digital age. The developed world is entering the Internet era. And the United States, once again at the vanguard, is on the verge of becoming the world's first Entrepreneurial Nation.

Ashley Qualls doesn't sound like a typical high school student. Maybe that's because the 17-year-old is the CEO of a million-dollar business. Ashley is the head of whateverlife.com, a website she started when she was just 14 — with eight dollars borrowed from her mother. Now, just three years later, the website grosses more than $1 million a year, providing Ashley and her working class family a sense of security they had never really known. It all started with capitalism 101, the law of supply and demand. Ashley became interested in graphic design just as the online social networking craze...

Being broke need not mean social death in Sweden - as long as you are well-educated. But for Americans and Russians having a good all-round education is no substitute for having cash, according to a new survey on status symbols in the three countries. The international survey by analysts United Minds asked 1,000 people in each country what values confer status. 'Bling' items such as expensive jewellery and designer clothes come well down the list for Swedes, while featuring more highly for Americans and, particularly, Russians. "Sweden is the only country where you can be penniless but well-read and still...

It has long been known that dyslexics are drawn to running their own businesses, where they can get around their weaknesses in reading and writing and play on their strengths. But a new study of entrepreneurs in the United States suggests that dyslexia is much more common among small-business owners than even the experts had thought. The report, compiled by Julie Logan, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Cass Business School in London, found that more than a third of the entrepreneurs she had surveyed — 35 percent — identified themselves as dyslexic. The study also concluded that dyslexics were...

New Swedish companies are bursting with ideas in IT and biotech. It's time for international investors to sit up and take notice, says leading entrepreneur Johan Staël von Holstein.

America is the greatest entrepreneurial nation in the world. But there are really two kinds of entrepreneurs here -- product entrepreneurs and financial entrepreneurs -- and only one of them truly builds the economy. Product entrepreneurs find new ways of satisfying customers. Financial entrepreneurs find new ways of ... well, making money off money. Problem is, financial entrepreneurship is becoming more and more dominant in the economy. Thirty years ago, finance was the handmaiden of American industry. Now industry is run by finance. For every budding Steve Jobs or Bill Gates there are now thousands of aspiring private equity or...

FEW people in Africa would get to see Al Gore and his troupe of rock-star ecologists strutting their stuff last weekend - because most have neither television nor electricity. That's just as well, because they would be aghast at LiveEarth's bizarre message. In Africa, we have much more serious things to worry about than climate change. Indeed, if they achieve their objective, the concerts will have done harm to the people of Africa. Britain's former Secretary of State for the Environment, David Miliband, recently said that the rest of the world cannot aspire to the UK's standard of living because:...

Here’s something humorous for you. A new World Economic Forum report has stated that the United States is no longer the global engine of technological innovation, but instead has been relegated to 7th place, behind Denmark, Sweden, Singapore, Finland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. The report authored by a Paris business school measured 122 economies around the world. The ruler for these measurements: “technological advancements in general business, the infrastructure available and the extent to which government policy creates a framework necessary for economic development and increased competitiveness”.Caution breeds stability where infrastructure is concerned. More infrastructure can always be created if...

If the United States is exceptional because of our entrepreneurial culture, then our natural allies may not be in Continental Europe, in spite of its democratic governments and high levels of economic development. Instead, we may have more in common with other nations of the Anglosphere, as well as such entrepreneurial outposts as India, Israel, and Singapore. "The movement that built the first national democracy was not triggered by an uprising of the masses; nor was it led by intellectual theorists. It was led by entrepreneurial men of means...In fact, starting a business develops precisely the traits that make...

ATLANTA When Rajat Gupta could not find a decent job in India after earning a degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi in 1971, he did what many of his compatriots did. He moved to the United States. ...(SNIP)... "There is a huge demand for Indian executives," said Rana Talwar, the former chief executive of Standard Chartered. ...(SNIP)... Part of what makes Indian graduates desirable is their willingness to move for a job, said Ajay Banga, chief executive of Citigroup's $18.3 billion Global Consumer Group International in New York. "My boss said 'Ajay, you've got...

A CHINESE entrepreneur who once tried to sell land on the moon is hoping to cash in on China's obsession with the World Cup by offering fans bags of stadium air. Li Jie, who describes himself as chief executive of the Lunar Embassy to China, is selling his "World Cup air" for 50 yuan ($8.60) a bag. "The air was packed at the World Cup venues while the workers were cutting the grass before matches," Mr Li told the Beijing Daily Messenger. "You can still smell the grass." Mr Li suggested soccer enthusiasts unable to make the trip to Germany...

"You can never be optimistic about anything in our country because it will likely end up badly," is the sentiment of the old-timers in Russia. Youngsters who do NOT remember the Soviet times do not share this sentiment-- nor do they have the aversion to capitalism that their parents and grandparents no doubt have. Young girls wear spike-heeled boots and tread carefully to keep the mud off. They also manage bank branches that specialize in giving small loans to entrepreneurs. Start-ups were few and far between just a few years ago-- bank portfolios have tripled and clients doubled in some...

President General Pervez Musharraf said on Saturday that high growth and friendly policies had made Pakistan an ideal destination for world entrepreneurs. He said that the country’s economic reality was far better than “distorted perceptions”. In a keynote address to OPEN Silicon Valley’s annual business moot in California through videoconference, Musharraf said the country was shaping up through the construction of Gwadar Port. He said that a network of infrastructure was in place to serve as trade and energy corridor for the landlocked Central Asia, South Asia, the Gulf region and China. “Pakistan today is in an altogether different league...

Bangalore's flourishing outsourcing companies, including Infosys Technologies and Wipro, have attracted worldwide attention with their global clients and tens of thousands of workers. Less known are the many technology start-ups, like Read-Ink, that have taken root here in recent years. The new firms are drawn by the region's big pool of engineering graduates, many of whom have expertise in esoteric new technologies. That advantage, coupled with labor costs much lower than those of Silicon Valley, is starting to turn Bangalore, long a center for lower-end outsourcing services, into a center of higher-end innovation. Some of these firms are self-financed, others...

A report from cross-border trade group InterTradeIreland shows that there are 324,000 entrepreneurs on the island of Ireland. "Entrepreneurship in Island of Ireland", published in conjunction with Enterprise Ireland and Invest Northern Ireland, shows that 253,000 are based in the Republic and 71,000 in Northern Ireland. These figures include owner managers of existing companies and new entrepreneurs. 'These figures show a very high level of owner managed businesses on the island with 9% of the adult population involved,' said Dr Eileen McGloin of InterTradeIreland, one of the report's authors. She said this figure was one of the highest in the...