Archive for July 20th, 2009

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) — California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and top lawmakers told reporters Monday evening they had reached an agreement to close a 26.3 billion deficit to balance the state’s budget, ending weeks of lengthy and often tense negotiations.The government of the most populous U.S. state, also the world’s eighth-largest economy, began its fiscal year on July 1 facing the massive shortfall due to a plunge in revenues propelled by the recession and rising unemployment.Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said during a press conference in front of his office that no tax increases would be included in the spending plan.The legislature’s top Democrats and Republicans said they would brief rank-and-file lawmakers on the agreement in the hope of holding votes in the state Assembly and Senate on Thursday.

Source:CNN

NEW YORK (Fortune) — Bondholders are throwing CIT a lifeline. But salvaging the small business lender could still test the company and its CEO, Jeffrey Peek. CIT Group (CIT, Fortune 500), the New York-based lender that came up short last week in its bid for a second federal bailout, lined up new financing from a group of creditors. The arrangement allows CIT to avoid what would have been the fifth-biggest U.S. bankruptcy filing, according to BankruptcyData.com, and continue operating as it prepares to restructure its debt. The deal represents a reprieve for CIT’s customers, many of whom would have had trouble lining up new credit in the event of a Chapter 11 filing. News of the financing agreement also provided a big lift for CIT shareholders. CIT’s stock bounced 80% Monday to about 1.25 — but that’s still well below the stock’s peak of about 60 from just a few years ago. It isn’t clear how long the relief will last, either. Analysts at fixed-income research firm CreditSights wrote Monday that a financing deal “does not fix the underlying problem” — which is that CIT has yet to find an alternative to borrowing in risk-averse credit markets to fund its loans to small and midsize businesses. “Depending on the capital markets for funding is problematic, to say the least,” said James Angel, a finance professor at Georgetown University in Washington. “This deal gives them breathing room, but their options are not a pretty picture.” Taking a big, costly loan from bondholders — CIT is reportedly paying more than 10% interest on the loan — isn’t likely to be the last change the firm makes. CIT might seek to swap out some debt for new bonds or shares in the company, in hopes of raising capital and cutting cash needs. The CreditSights analysts estimate the firm needs as much as 7.6 billion in new capital to meet Federal Reserve guidelines. CIT operated as a nonbank finance company until the credit markets collapsed last year, prompting the company to submit to Fed regulation in hopes of getting access to cheaper funding.Meanwhile, CIT owes 1 billion on maturing debt next month and 10 billion over the next year. Even should CIT succeed in making its finances more manageable, the firm remains vulnerable to another downdraft in the economy. The proportion of loans past due has jumped over the past year, and if unemployment continues to soar even a restructured CIT may have trouble making ends meet. 0:00
/3:57Saving CIT”It’s encouraging that bondholders are willing to make this deal work,” said David Ely, a finance professor at San Diego State. “But CIT is certainly still at risk if the economy doesn’t improve.” Up to PeekFor now, the job of reviving CIT falls to Peek, who has been the company’s leader for five years. He has sought to expand CIT beyond its traditional asset-based lending roots and into less economically sensitive businesses. But the collapse of the credit markets in 2007 has crushed the company’s stock. CIT has lost 6.5 billion of market value since Peek took over as CEO in July 2004. Peek has been well compensated for his time though. He has received 36 million in salary, bonus and other compensation since 2004, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Last year he made 5.4 million, including 800,000 in salary, 3.2 million in stock and option awards and 212,682 in personal use of company cars and planes.Though the stock’s performance hardly matches up with Peek’s sweet pay, CIT’s lenders have enough to worry about without taking on a rushed executive suite shakeup, Angel said. “Any change in management could end up further damaging asset values,” Angel noted. It would also be costly for the company to cut ties with Peek. CIT could owe him as much as 14.7 million were his employment to be terminated, according to filings.

Source:CNN

NEW YORK (Reuters) — Texas Instruments Monday posted a drop in quarterly profits as chip demand fell along with sales of cell phones and other electronics due to the weak economy, but it said sales would improve this quarter.TI (TXN, Fortune 500), a developer of chips for everything from cell phones to industrial equipment, posted a second-quarter profit of 260 million, or 20 cents per share, compared with 588 million, or 44 cents a share, in the same quarter a year ago.Excluding items such as restructuring costs, its profit would have been 25 cents per share versus analysts’ average expectation for 23 cents a share, according to Reuters Estimates.Revenue fell to 2.46 billion from 3.35 billion.Analysts on average had expected revenue of 2.4 billion, according to Reuters Estimates.The company, which competes with Qualcomm Inc. (QCOM, Fortune 500) in the wireless chip market, had forecast earnings per share of 14 cents to 22 cents on revenue of 2.3 billion to 2.5 billion.It forecast current-quarter earnings per share of 29 cents to 39 cents on revenue of 2.5 billion to 2.8 billion.

Source:CNN

NEW YORK: The Census Bureau is breathing a sigh of relief after a problem-plagued project to go high-tech recently cleared a big hurdle.Census workers are finishing up the agency’s first use of GPS-equipped handheld computers to prepare for the 2010 population count. Instead of fanning the country with maps, employees used the devices to update the bureau’s master address list of 145 million residences.Though some experts feared technological breakdowns in the field, early reports say the handhelds worked well with just a few glitches. Some 140,000 workers were able to finish checking addresses in early July, a few weeks ahead of schedule. But not all went so well with the bureau’s leap into the computer era. Census had hoped to use the 600 million system from Harris Corp. to follow up with those who don’t respond to the six-question Census form next spring, when the actual counting begins. Major technological problems, however, forced the agency to return to the paper-based method, which is less efficient and accurate.This last-minute switch, announced in April 2008, could cost taxpayers up to 3 billion through fiscal 2013, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The increased price tag reflects the additional time and manpower the paper-based method requires, as well as added supplies and systems. “It really could have assured greater accuracy and it could have cut costs,” said Phil Sparks, co-director of The Census Project, a watchdog group made up of government, professional, research and civil rights organizations. “There’s no question the Census squandered hundreds of millions of dollars.” The 2010 Census is expected to cost up to 14.5 billion in total and is expected to employ 1.4 million people, the vast majority of whom will be hired next year.Using GPSThe bureau’s GPS saga began in 2006, the bureau hired Harris Corp. (HRS, Fortune 500), based in Melbourne, Fla., to develop 151,000 handheld computers equipped with GPS software, as well as the technical infrastructure to support the count. The company provides radio, wireless and other technology to corporations and government agencies, including the Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Administration.The computers offer many advantages over the former system, which involved sending workers out with maps to find and plot residences. The GPS system is more accurate in pinpointing homes and allows those in the field to electronically update the list if they find new dwellings or abandoned buildings. In rural areas, the technology can assist workers in finding homes.”A lot changes in 10 years,” said Mary Jo Hoeksema, director of government affairs for the Population Association of America, which represents demographers and social scientists. The technology also helped better identify which Census tract a home is in, a crucial fact in determining an area’s representation in Congress and the distribution of more than 435 billion in federal funds every year.Until now, the Census Bureau usually puts about 5% of residences in the wrong tract. With the GPS, it is aiming to reduce that error rate to 0.5%, said Daniel Weinberg, assistant director for the decennial census.As for how the Census Bureau’s first GPS effort worked, the agency says it must verify the recently collected data before passing final judgment.For its part, Harris said it was pleased with the computers’ performance and noted that it also provided data processing and networking services to the agency.”The handhelds are one only aspect of the significant technology modernization efforts the Census Bureau asked Harris Corporation to help with,” said Marc Raimondi, a spokesman for the company.Back to the old-fashioned wayThe Census Bureau last year had to jettison a major part of its plan for the handheld computers after problems arose during field testing. The plan was for workers to visit each household that didn’t respond to the 2010 Census and use online forms to collect the information. They could then have transmitted the data wirelessly to the bureau, eliminating the time and errors associated with collecting and scanning paper forms.In initial tests of address verification, workers encountered problems with slow data transmissions, freeze-ups, and insufficient capacity to handle data in densely populated areas. Concerned that just correcting the handhelds’ problems with address canvassing would take a lot of time and effort, the bureau decided to abandon using the devices for following up with non-responders.”It just didn’t work fast enough,” Weinberg said of the computers.So the agency went back to its standard paper-based method for following up with non-responders. Workers next summer will visit each home and either fill out the questionnaire at the time or encourage residents to complete it and mail it back in.By not doing this step electronically, the bureau is missing the opportunity to streamline its operations, said Hermann Habermann, a former deputy director of the Census Bureau. If workers had handhelds, they could more quickly receive updates on which residences have mailed back forms and more easily send back the completed online forms.”The whole process becomes more efficient and [the agency] gets the information more quickly,” Habermann said.The agency is now working to set up the costly paper-based system, and some observers fear that it won’t have enough time to properly execute it. Following up with non-responders is the most expensive and labor-intensive piece of the decennial count.Still, this should not compromise the quality of the data collection, experts said. “They know the work that needs to be done,” said Robert Goldenkopf, director of strategic issues for the Government Accountability Office.

Source:CNN

WASHINGTON: The top cop tracking the 700 billion bailout program said Monday that he’s concerned federal officials are ignoring his proposals for preventing tax dollars from being wasted or pilfered. Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, released a 260-page report detailing a long list of concerns about government efforts to prop up hundreds of banks, Wall Street firms and auto companies.The report criticizes the Treasury Department the most for its unwillingness to adopt some of his recommendations.Barofsky cites two examples: He wants Treasury to force bailout recipients to keep track of how exactly they are spending TARP funds. He also wants officials to erect a “firewall” to prevent private investment managers — the kind hired to manage and invest taxpayer dollars — from taking advantage of insider knowledge.”Although Treasury has taken some steps towards improving transparency in TARP programs, it has repeatedly failed to adopt recommendations that SIGTARP believes are essential to providing basic transparency and fulfill Treasury’s stated commitment to implement TARP ‘with the highest degree of accountability and transparency possible,’ ” the report stated.Barofsky is set to testify about the report Tuesday morning before a House panel.The special IG’s office, which was established as part of the TARP program enacted last fall, has also launched 35 criminal and civil investigations into a range of allegations from accounting and securities fraud to insider trading and public corruption, the report said. Some of Barofsky’s investigations have already led to criminal and civil charges against those accused of fraudulently benefiting off the government’s bailout program.

Source:CNN

NEW YORK: Call it the Bobby McFerrin market. Investors are no longer worried. They’re happy. All those concerns about the economy heading into July seem to have subsided for now. The S&P 500 surged 7% last week and was up again Monday on reports that troubled business lender CIT Group (CIT, Fortune 500) was about to get a short-term lifeline to keep it from bankruptcy. If Monday’s early gains hold, the S&P 500 could wind up closing at its highest point of 2009. And if it finishes above 950, it would be the first time since November.So is this Christmas in July rally really an indication that investors are sensing the worst is over for the markets and the economy?Mike O’Rourke, chief market strategist with BTIG, an institutional brokerage firm in New York, thinks the rally could continue. He notes that a lot of investors who remain unconvinced about an economic recovery are left with no choice but to buy stocks as the market heads higher or they’ll be left behind. O’Rourke pointed to the fact that the weekly level of investor sentiment from the American Association of Individual Investors showed that the percentage of people considering them bullish, while up from the nearly two-decade low set in early March, is still a relatively low 38%.As such, O’Rourke said he would not be surprised if stocks gained another 20% or so from current levels. “I still get a lot of negative feedback from people about the market. There still is a lot of bearish sentiment out there,” he said. “But that means a lot of people are being forced to play catch-up and chase performance.” But at the end of the day, sentiment is going to be fueled by corporate profits and economic data. Bulls could morph back into bears in a heartbeat if the numbers start to look ugly again.Talkback: Do you feel more confident about the economy than you did four months ago? Leave your comments at the bottom of this story. Investors celebrated healthy earnings from a slew of banks and tech companies last week, and investors are hoping for more of the same once some other big blue chips, including Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500), Coca-Cola (KO, Fortune 500), Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) and Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500), report their latest quarterly results this week. In addition, there were some encouraging macroeconomic signs last week, most notably a much bigger-than-expected drop in weekly jobless claims to their lowest level since early January. So Wall Street will be watching closely this Thursday to see if claims dip again, or if last week’s report was a fluke.”We are still in a battle between the economic bulls and the skeptics. Last week, the bulls got the upper hand,” said David Joy, chief market strategist with RiverSource Investments, a money management firm based in Minneapolis. “That’s encouraging but this market is still jittery. A couple of bad data points could take stocks down even though the evidence is building toward an economic recovery.”Be optimistic, but realisticWhile this may be a good time for some guarded optimism, investors shouldn’t ignore some of the big risks that remain. CIT may be getting a private “bailout,” but the fact that it came thisclose to collapsing shows that there are still some ticking time bombs in the financial sector.Corporate profits also need to be scrutinized more closely. While many companies did post better-than-expected earnings, a fair number of companies did so thanks to lower expenses, not increased demand for their products.”A lot of the better earnings results were due to cost-cutting. That suggests that businesses are stabilizing, not that they are getting better,” said Bruce McCain, chief investment strategist at Key Private Bank in Cleveland. “Companies are on the fence about expanding their businesses since they want evidence that the consumer will come back and sales are going to flow again.”Joy said that investors have been willing to tolerate declining sales in this quarter but that won’t be the case in the latter half of the year. If this really is an economic recovery, the market will want to see companies reporting increased revenue.”Everybody knows the economy is not yet robust. So you can’t fault for companies for reporting no top line growth this quarter,” Joy said. “Investors won’t have continued patience for a lack of sales growth though. They won’t be as forgiving in the third and fourth quarter.” Watch out for inflationBut many feel the consumer may not come back until there are concrete signs that the job market is improving. So that creates a conundrum for many businesses. 0:00
/3:14Strong earnings? So what.Companies can continue to lay off people — or hold off on hiring new workers — to meet profit targets. But by doing so, they just make matters worse for consumers and could make it that much more difficult for a sustainable recovery to unfold.”If companies are still looking to cut operating expenses, they are not going to be doing a lot of hiring,” said Romeo Dator, manager of the U.S. Global Investors All American Equity fund in San Antonio. “And in an economy that’s based on consumption, if you don’t have job growth that’s going to be a problem.” Inflation hawks are squawking rather loudly as well. The dollar continues to weaken against the euro and other global currencies. The yield on the 10-year Treasury is inching back toward 3.75% and the price of gold is hovering around 950 an ounce. And as countries around the globe seek to stimulate their way out of this worldwide recession, Dator thinks inflation is inevitable. For that reason, he said he’s more interested in investing in energy and basic materials companies and less so in banks, technology and consumer stocks.McCain also said inflation could be a concern over the next year, but he thinks that investors will probably overlook some of the warning signs for now. That might not last forever though.”I’m pretty confident about the potential for this rally lasting up until the early part of next year, but worried about long-term growth being hobbled enough that the economy could sink back later next year,” he said. “Investors may need to have a well-defined exit strategy if things start to fade.”In other words, it’s OK to feel more optimistic. But keep an eye out for any potholes on what’s certain to be a long road to recovery.Talkback: Do you feel more confident about the economy than you did four months ago?

NEW YORK (Fortune) — Is the financial system stable enough yet to fix itself? Can the government take off the training wheels? That’s the significance of CIT Group’s crisis, beyond its role as a lender to about 1 million small- and medium-size businesses.The government’s decision to let CIT careen toward bankruptcy was contrary to the serial bailouts that Americans have come to expect over the past year. But that gamble looks like it may pay off by showing that parts of the financial system can operate without Washington support.CIT’s board has reportedly approved a deal for a 3 billion short-term loan from a group of its largest bondholders, including Centerbridge Partners, PIMCO, and Silver Point Capital. The bridge financing should give CIT the time it needs to try and pay down or renegotiate the money it owes these lenders. And it significantly increases the odds that CIT will make good on the 1 billion debt payment due to its bondholders this August.CIT had already received 2.3 billion last fall from the government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program; that money would have been lost if CIT had been forced to declare bankruptcy.The New York-based firm’s ability to craft its own rescue deal could help reassure those people worried that the banking system would forever need Uncle Sam’s support in order to function.0:00
/0:49CIT news boosts Asia markets”This was the Obama administration drawing a line in the sand,” says management consultant Peter Cohan. “It wouldn’t be that difficult to spend a few billion from the TARP, a paltry amount compared to the money spent on Bank of America, Citigroup, or insurer American International Group. But we needed to see that the financial system could clean up its own messes again.”The deal would indicate that the bondholders are strong enough to aid a crippled peer and make money at the same time. The lenders, by extending money to a troubled company, will make a return on their investment commensurate with their capital at risk. The Wall Street Journal reports that the bondholders will charge 10.5% interest, a lucrative rate given that the Federal Reserve’s target overnight lending rate is near 0%.Now CIT has a window of time to get rid of the debts that could push it into bankruptcy by persuading bondholders to swap debt for equity in the company or for bonds that mature at a later date.But the company might still have to file for bankruptcy if it can’t solve its debt problems, which would provide yet another gauge of the health of the financial system. In order for CIT to reorganize in an orderly fashion, it must obtain a debtor-in-possession (DIP) loan, which would give it the money necessary to operate while it reorganizes.Since the credit crunch began, foundering companies have had a hard time getting DIP loans, because banks have been too weak or too wary to provide higher-risk loans. But Cohan thinks a stronger bank like JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) would consider providing DIP financing, which would be another indicator that the system is more resilient and less in need of government aid.”Companies once believed they could run the risk of failure and worked like hell not to fail, but then we established the idea that politically connected or too-big-to-fail businesses would be given a government safety net,” says Charles Ortel, managing director of research firm Newport Value Partners. Now that safety net is being withdrawn.The ability for companies to successfully restructure under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection is the economy’s way of picking up the pieces of a failed business and putting them to better use.”There is still value in CIT that can be picked out if the company files for bankruptcy,” says Sylvain Raynes, a co-founder of R&R Consulting, which advises on securitization, debt financing, and project finance. “In that scenario, it should work the same as always. The shareholders get nothing, the bondholders are paid, but likely less than the value of their bonds, and then another firm buys the assets that are worth something and grows its business.”

Source:CNN

NEW YORK: As a small business in a small town, we rely heavily on phone-book advertising for our law firm. We have recently expanded to create a Web site. We have tried to keep it informative to draw in potential clients. We currently use Google AdWords and are listed as a member of the AARP Legal Services Network. Can you make any suggestions as to how we can improve our Web site to attract people who are using the Internet to search for an appropriate attorney in this area?- Myra Hollifield, Conroy & Weinshenker, Concord, N.C.You start off with one big advantage: targeting a well-defined audience.”Attracting local search traffic is much easier than optimizing a Web site for a national or international audience,” says Pamela Swingley of Savvy Internet Marketing in Orinda, Calif. “Local search is starting to really heat up.”There are three key elements you’ll need to focus on: content, search-engine rankings and design.You’re off to a good start with content. “The best thing to do is to step back and think of the top three things a client would want to see on the site,” recommends Tom Grant, executive Web producer at Blue Ray Media in Denver.Your site highlights the areas of law that your firm practices, but you should build upon that to give visitors more information. “Potential clients will want to know if you have handled situations like theirs. The site should help them answer that question,” says Grant. “Some areas of the site start to answer that question, but each could go further by offering details of each area of practice.”Your “Bankruptcy” section, for example, explains what it is and how it affects people. But other topic areas, such as “Estate Planning,” provide no such information. Grant thinks you should bring each practice-area page up to the level of your bankruptcy section — then take each a step further by creating a topical “client stories” page. There, you can give prospective clients a sense of what a typical case you handle looks like.”This will help them see where you were successful, giving them a better chance to call you if the case sounds like theirs,” he says.Expert tipsAnother way to build out the practice-area pages is by providing articles for each. Many in need of legal advice will first try to find answers on their own. If you publish articles, potential clients will appreciate the free information and also have a higher regard for the lawyers who wrote them.”They think, ‘If she writes about this stuff, she must know what she’s talking about,’” says Grant. “You position yourself as an expert.”Talk back: Share your adviceLinking to useful resources will also help build your credibility. Your “Bankruptcy” page links to a recommended credit-counseling class and explains the process of obtaining a completion certificate. That’s a great model to follow on other pages. For example, you can link visitors to the site where they can pay local traffic tickets, or to a page with detailed information on North Carolina’s divorce laws.To keep the content fresh, try to update at least one article each month. That has a bonus advantage: It tells search engines that your information is timely and relevant. You could also repurpose your articles into content for a newsletter sent out regularly to subscribers.”Your tagline is ‘a law firm for life,’ so you should make sure your services go beyond serving prospective and existing clients,” Grant says. “Some clients may not realize you have these other areas of practice, so this will keep them aware that you’re still there.”Helping the search enginesExpanding your content will also enhance your search engine optimization (SEO). That’s because your articles and links will be full of key words that search engines look for when ranking sites.Grant’s firm, Blue Ray Media, has worked on many law firm Web sites and has tracked the “points of entry” into those sites. “We found that articles with statistics and stories are typically where people jump into the site, particularly with the law firms that update their news and articles regularly,” he says.You can also beef up your SEO by reorganizing your site’s pages. For example, your “Practice Areas” pages are the most informational part of your site. In order to emphasize their importance to both search engines and visitors, Grant suggests listing all of them in a sidebar that appears on every page of your site, including the home page.Keep in mind, however, that broken links on any of your pages will both deter clients and trip the search engine crawlers that read your site. Right now you have several broken links — and the “News” link in the navigation bar is the same as your “Contact Us” link, which is confusing.”It looks like you don’t care and that you’re not detail-oriented,” says Grant. “I definitely want my attorney to be detail-oriented.”Cornering the local marketYour site’s “meta” tags describe its content. A good first step to capturing local traffic is to include your town — Concord, N.C. — and your nearest metro area, Charlotte, in all of your keyword and title meta tags.You are listed in the Super Pages and Yellow Pages online, and in local search tools from Google Maps and Yahoo Local, but you’re not ranked very high in any of those places. To boost your visibility, you’ll need customer testimonials and more “inbound” links to your page from other sites.You can go beyond the traditional search engines by establishing yourself on locally-focused sites like Yelp, Judy’s Book and Citysearch.”When it comes to selecting something as important as legal services, references are key,” says Swingley. “It’s critical that you monitor what others are saying about your services and that you help your reviews along. Do all you can to encourage your clients to write a review.”Swingley suggests reciprocating links with any community programs and associations you belong to, including the Chamber of Commerce or the local Better Business Bureau. Also, try building relationships with local bloggers and your local TV station’s site.”You can never have too many quality links,” she says. “If the firm is mentioned in the press, ask for a link to the site. Exchange links with professionals that refer business to you and include your Web site link whenever you answer a question on boards such as Yahoo Answers or law-related forums such as InjuryBoard.com.”DesignThe job isn’t over once you get traffic to your site. All the links and information in the world won’t score you a client if your site looks messy and unprofessional.”The overall design doesn’t do the firm justice,” says Grant of your current site. “Pick a simple theme and stick with it.”Your homepage is bland. It’s the “cover” for the rest of the site, and it needs to shine. The first problem Grant notices is the color scheme. You use a lot of colors — gold, black, blue, gray, yellow, white and red. “Stay clear of the heavy, dark layers,” he advises. “Try to stick to two or three colors, such as a blue with white and gold highlights.”Jazz it up with some images, and reorganize the information you present there so that clients can jump straight from your homepage to the information they’re seeking.”The homepage has basically no hierarchy. Nothing is more or less important than anything else,” says Grant. “It’s a jumbled mess graphically and there’s no emphasis on what people might want to do on the site.”Grant noticed only one image on your site, the courthouse pictured on the “Contact Us” page. He recommends simplifying that image and using it on every page, perhaps along with the C&W logo. This will provide a consistent theme and a context to help people relate to your firm.Also, make sure that top navigation tabs don’t disappear as visitors move through your Web site, as currently happens in a few places. Also, keep the tabs on it consistent on every page of your site.On the secondary pages, try to include images where they’re relevant, especially next to the bios on your “About the Firm” page. “It’s generic without any people on it,” says Grant. “Photos of attorneys and staff can make it more memorable.”Fix those bio pages so that you give visitors what they expect. It looks like each hyperlinked employee name will lead to a bio page, but right now, only the attorneys have actual bios. The rest of the names lead to a page full of empty boxes.When the aesthetics are fixed, you can add elements to your site that will help the visitors start a relationship with you. For example, create a contact page with a standard form for visitors to fill in. Let potential clients choose an area of law from a drop-down menu and then type their questions and contact information in other fields. That type of form will provide you with client leads while cutting down on the spam you’d get by listing only a contact e-mail address.Swingley suggests touting a marketing deal right on your site, such as a half hour of free consulting or a discounted first meeting. Add this offer to your meta-tags description to increase traffic.”The first thing that goes through most people’s minds when they think of engaging with an attorney is that it is going to be very expensive,” she says. “Make it easy to get started.” In our “Website remedies” feature, CNNMoney.com enlists Web marketing and search-engine optimization specialists to analyze small-business Web sites in need of an overhaul. Could your site use a makeover? E-mail us at smallbiz@cnnmoney.com. Plus, share your tips for improving our featured sites in our discussion forum.

Source:CNN

(Money Magazine) — After three decades of dominating the political conversation, free-market thinking is out of style. The new conventional wisdom: It’s time to go back to the pre-Reagan era of strong government and secure jobs. But Brink Lindsey of the libertarian Cato Institute (a think tank that provided a lot of the intellectual ammunition for deregulation) wants you to know that the good old days weren’t as good as you might think. He’s not just talking dollars-and-cents economics. Lindsey says it’s no coincidence that markets blossomed alongside social freedoms we now take for granted. Contributing writer David Futrelle talked to Lindsey about all that – and about whether his side is really to blame for the mess we’re in now. The financial crisis has been widely blamed on government putting too much faith in the market. Is it a tough time to be a free-market advocate? We’re definitely on our heels at the moment. But the idea that this crisis shows that government is smarter than markets is wrong. Clearly there were private-sector failures. But to the extent that public policy was weighing in, it was weighing in as hard as it could in favor of ever-broader home ownership. What’s your take on the new financial regulations President Obama has proposed? Generally, the Obama approach is based on the predictable – but mistaken – premise that the crisis occurred because of insufficient regulation, so we need to give regulators new powers. But regulators, using existing authority, could have done something about the steady deterioration in mortgage underwriting standards, and they chose not to. They could have done something about the use of securitization to get around capital requirements, but they chose not to. The idea that the government can prick these bubbles in their infancy is a fantasy. When bubble psychology takes over, it affects everyone – and that includes the regulators. Are there any steps you think would help? Eliminating the tax deduction for corporate interest payments is worth considering. Excessive leverage was obviously a major contributor to the financial crisis, and our current tax system pushes in that direction by favoring borrowing over issuing stock. You say we’re in the grip of “nostalgianomics.” What does that mean? Both liberals and conservatives pine for the 1950s. The only difference is that the left wants to work there, and the right wants to go home there. The left looks back fondly to the days of a heavily unionized workforce, to a time when there was a predictability in economic life and people could look forward to working 50 years on the line. On the right, meanwhile, there’s nostalgia for the Ozzie and Harriet family. Given how insecure everyone feels now, isn’t some of that nostalgia justified? Sure. During the golden 25 years from the end of World War II to the early 1970s, we saw consistently high growth in per capita income. Everybody was doing well, and the people at the bottom gained more than those at the top, so there was declining inequality. Contrast that with the boom from the early ’80s until last year. The economy did well in this period, but we never approached the high productivity growth of the postwar years, with the exception of the late ’90s and the early 2000s. Meanwhile, we’ve seen income inequality grow in recent years. The people at the top were doing much, much better, but the lot of the rest of us was improving much more slowly. Can’t we go back to high wages for all? The successes of the postwar years were driven by specific historical circumstances. There was pent-up demand from the Depression and war and an acceleration of technological change because of the war. The poor South and the underdeveloped West had a huge burst of growth as they caught up with the rest of the country. Meanwhile, competition from abroad was much meeker than it is today. Europe and Japan were smoking ruins. We prospered in spite of, not because of, the specific policies that the left is nostalgic about. You say the success of women is one reason America looks more unequal. How so? As women have gone into the workforce, we’ve seen their wages starting to catch up with those of men. People increasingly marry those with a similar background, so high-skilled men marry high-skilled women and double up on their income gains. And so the unintended consequence of the feminist revolution has been to expand the gap between the skilled and the unskilled and to exacerbate income inequality between households. You’ve also argued that going back to a 1950s economy would mean going back to a society most liberals would hate. In the ’40s and ’50s there was a much bigger emphasis on an Organization Man, and it was unseemly to go chasing around in the marketplace for the highest dollar. There was a culture of promoting from within in corporations. And it was tough to break through. So the good old days were good if you were a white guy. Not so good if you were a woman. Not so good if you were black, and not so good if you wanted to immigrate to the United States to make a better life for yourself.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — An index gauging the U.S. economy’s prospects increased for a third straight month in June, suggesting the recession was drawing to a close, a private research firm said Monday.The index of leading economic indicators, which is supposed to forecast economic trends six to nine months ahead, rose 0.7% in June following a revised 1.3% gain in May, the New York-based Conference Board said.Wall Street economists had forecast a rise of 0.5% after an initial 1.2% May increase.Over the first half of the year, the index has increased at a 4.1% annual rate, the research group said.”The recession has been losing steam since the spring, although very large job losses continue,” Ken Goldstein, a Conference Board economist, said in a statement. “Nevertheless, confidence is slowly rebuilding.”"If these trends continue, expect a slow recovery this autumn,” he said.

Source:CNN