The Masters: Golf's Crown Jewel Now Sells Tickets

The Masters is a well known and highly repected golf tournament showcasing some of golf's greates players. In recent years The Masters has always maintained its traditional aspects but now decided it's time for a change. Because golf is big business in Georgia, where the tournament takes place, why not offer opportunities for regular patrons to come and witness such a historical event. With that oppotunity comes a price, 50$ for a day pass and 75$ for a tournament pass doesn't sound like too much. However you must purchase the tickets directly through The Master's website. With this being mandatory, The Masters will see quite a jump in their revenue and will directly benefit from this. People who are interested in such and event will have to submit an application to be considered eligible to attend such a prestigious golf tournament If people wish to buy tickets outside of The Masters, they will be looking at a much steeper price. The Masters essentially holds all the power in choosing who would be able to come and view such an event and because of this power they will gain popularity but could suffer minutely as far as revenue goes. Also, because many golf players shwocased in this tournament have sponsorships, those sponsors have to pay The Masters to allow the players to advertise their product on national television. The vice president of sales and marketing for Augusta, Georgia compares the reliance on Christmas that stores have is the same reliance that hotels and restaurants have on The Masters. Augusta being a small town greatly benefits from the tournament and the golf course itself takes on new inquiries for memebership, thus increasing its popularity.

Google to Spend Billions on War with Facebook

Two major internet corporations in Google and Facebook are currently at war with one another. Google is used to being the main search engine and answer for many Americans across the nation and people in other countries. You can usually type just about anything into the Google search engine and get an answer right back. This allowed Google to dominate the search engine world and surpass other companies like Yahoo or Bing. Now Google´s successes are being threatened by Facebook´s successes. As a result of Facebook´s newly gained popularity, Google feels threatened economically speaking. They feel as though Facebook is becoming the modern way to find out information leaving no need for search engines like Google. Because Facebook has a significant amount of workers less than Google, there is more money freed up to explore different avenues. More and more people are relying on Facebook now to get the latest buzz on things instead of running to Google. This issue is still maturing and neither company has seen any immense gain or loss due to this issue. Google os still the powerhouse and is still getting all the profit. Facebook is sneaking up and will slowly start to take over those Google lovers and convert them into Facebook lovers. Economically for both companies, it's a healthy dispute because it in turn forces the two companies to better themselves and give the consumer a better product in order to increase their profit.

U.S. Seeks to Reassure on Contaminated Food

News of high levels of radioactive wastes in fishes across Japan had Americans in shock and fear to buy any seafood. This was because Japan is a major source for seafoods and produce for the U.S. This scare had many seafood sellers and fishermen in need of some form of revenue since their major source was now being questioned. They suffered a major decline in their sales because of this incident. Just recently U.S. public health officials sought to reassure people that the food is safe. Also to ensure that there is no need to take drastic measures on the matter as it is being carefully handled. Japan suffered economically from this. As a result of this scare, many fish markets are looking elsewhere for the products in order to boost sales that recently were declined. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that Americans had nothing to be concerned about since the radioactive wastes have not yet been found in fish sold in the U.S.

President Obama reelection bid

President Obama is already starting his campaing for the 2010 election with a video that he made telling supporters that he will run for another bid and trying to gain more support.He says that the primary focuses of his 2010 campaign will be to improve the nation's healthcare system, fix Wall Street, and to get the U.S. economy moving again. His campaign won't be easy though. Because many of the economic decisions that he has made have upset many Republicans, they believe that he has held the recovery back. His campaign will have to address the national debt in order to gain any popularity. He also has to persuade the people that he is going to compromise some sort of plan in order to save the economy. He plans to jump start a massive fund-raising drive to raise money for his campaign by filing his legal paperwork in advance.

The iPhone 5 Surprise: No Intel Inside

In this article, Ross of Fiscal Times discusses the much awaited arrival of the iPhone 5. This new innovative device will be released in the summer of this year which is Apple's prime time of sales. The iPhone is already making waves because of its sleek design and news of new software. All iPhones produced last fall came equipped with software from Intel. The only downfall of this software was that in order to make the jump to Verizon in February, Intel had to create a brand new chip that would support the data in the Verizon iPhones that was different than the data in the AT&T iPhones. The new iPhone 5's will come standard with new chipsets from Qualcomm which is able to support both Verizon and AT&T's data networks. This loss for Intel was one of great magnitude and drove the sale of those iPhones down. But for Qualcomm it was a great benefit. The predicted sales will be very high for the new iPhone being released this summer. Also, the new iPad 2's being released will also contain this new Qualcomm chip and they have already seen great sales. With the release of the new iPhone 5, earlier generations of the iPhone will see a drop in price as they already have.
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2011/03/07/The-iPhone-5-Surprise-No-Intel-Inside.aspx

Alcohol Nutrition Facts Brewing a Stir

A federal agency run through the Treasury Department called the TTB(The Alcohol and Tobacco tax and Trade Bureau) made it a law that nutrition facts be visibly posted on the bottles of alcoholic beverages. While at first glance one might think this a disadvantage, it is also a huge advantage for those healthier drinks. Companies like Guiness who have healthier beers than other beer companies will be able to showcase their nutrition facts and their profits will increase from this. With this government regulation taking place already in California, many other states will soon catch on as companies benefit greatly. We have seen this sort of situation at fast food restaurants such as McDonalds. McDonalds was regulated by the government to post nutrition facts on the food wrappers of their foods. This was all in a plot to prove to the FDA that they wouldn't lose profit.However, profits slowly decreased but as McDonalds improved their menu to include many more healthier foods, profit increased. If the beer and wine and spirts companies want to save profit, it would be vital for them to produce healthier beverages. With those healthier beverages, they will draw in a new crowd of people who maybe didn't drink alcohol in the past because of being unaware of the nutrition facts. This new breed of consumer will prove to be beneficial to alcohol companies across the nation.
http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2011/02/18/alcohol-nutrition-facts-brewing-stir/

Costly gas fuels wholesale prices

"U.S. wholesale prices shot up again in January, largely owing to higher gasoline costs, the government reported Wednesday."

In this article, the increase in the cost of goods before they reached consumers saw a dramatic increase from the previous month. The cost of wholesale products in turn made the cost of consumer goods increase at an immense rate. This increase could possibly limit the amount of one particular good a person can buy at a time or limit the spending of households all across the nation. With the rise in wholesale products comes a raise in consumer cost. Often times though, in a weak economy, those high-profit producers have to lower their prices at the consumer rate to even get any kind of business. This is because in a weaker economy there are more leakages than money being put into the economy, causing it to suffer and in turn becomes weak. Many people across the nation face threats of rising prices of commodities that they need in order to live comfortably. This is an attempt to strengthen the economy, as there will be a lot more money coming into the economy than leaving it. The constant rise of the prices of corn products could affect the prices of other food products that utilize corn in their recipe. With this rise, you may see an alternative to corn byproducts. Maybe something that looks and taste like corn byproducts but is offered at a lower price. Alternatives may be the way that consumers get around these sudden increases and still live life comfortably. While there is no alternative for the surging energy costs in things such as home heating and a/c, consumers may see a subsiding of gas prices in the future.

Facebook's Focus in 2011 is Mobile Presence

"Mobile is our primary focus for our platform this year"

The social networking giant, Facebook has proven itself to be highly successful on the web. As the mobile networks continue to improve their systems, so do the apps that they associate with. The innovation and improvements in technology have made it possible for more accessibility on their mobile devices. This increased accessibility will provide more revenue for Facebook as there will be a higher demand for their mobile app. 'Mobile usage of Facebook is the fastest-growing part of the social network', says Bret Taylor, the chief of technology at Facebook. With 200 million members, I'd say they're doing pretty well. Facebook still needs to improve their mobile app to make it more cohesive with the actual website and the Facebook network. That is where the new HTML5 web standard comes into play. This new web standard will improve the overall quality of Facebook and will fix many problems that users may have experienced previously with the app. This future expectation will certainly appeal to more consumers and will increase its membership. The demand for the Facebook app will increase. This will cause the availibility of the app to become more apparent because of the demand being so high. Facebook will see much revenue from this new web standard and will benefit greatly from it.

Google to hire more than 6,200 workers this year

"At this stage, the number of opportunities just vastly exceed the number of people we have at the company," said Alan Eustace, Google's senior vice president of engineering and research. This change, brought on by President Obama's plan for more jobs, will be the biggest expansion in Google history. This growth will fuel a workforce that already grew by 23 percent last year. While this expansion is welcomed by Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, it will not enthuse investors on Wall Street. Most investors on Wall Street would like to see bigger returns but simply cannot because of the way that Google is going about their spending. The increase in the workforce will decrease the amount of spending that Google will be allotted by those investors. They will have to pay more workers more money. However, Google executives are not worried about their spending money becoming scarce. They have a plan to hire only the "smartest computer engineers and most persuasive sales representatives" in order to stay ahead of the competition and make back some of that money. Also, Google has future endeavors to expand their horizons into other services such as telecommunication, media and computing. Another beneficial factor about this expansion is the amount of jobs that will be opened up in other countries also, not only in the United States. Google will become more efficient with this growth also. Being able to provide great service in many countries in many different languages will increase its popularity Even at their peak of employment, Google will still be behind the competitors at Microsoft. The folks at Google are looking to see a 25 percent increase in overall employment at the company, which will take into account other factors as well. The amount of pay for existing employees will most likely decrease in order to offer the new engineers more money. This is caused by a change in the number of employees at the Company requiring a paycheck. Google will most likely never lose popularity and will continue to see progress from this expansion.

Radio Shack's Plan B For Kiosks Is A Smart Move

"Companies get knocked down all the time. It's how they bounce back that matters."

Radio Shack has been a powerhouse in their sale of electronics and electronic goods. They have been able to be so successful because of the aid they have received from companies such as Sam's Club who have allowed them to set up numerous kiosks throughout stores across America, and sell their merchandise. The convenience of having those kiosks located in the Sam's Club drove sells out of the water. However in recent news, Radio Shack reported that the contract with Sam's Club has been terminated. The profit that Radio Shack once saw from the sale of those products is predicted to decline any where from 10-15 million dollars this year.

How does Radio Shack plan to deal with this declination? They didn't waste time sulking about their losses. Instead, they have already jumped the gun and began the process of teaming up with another retail giant, the Target Corporation. As reported in August of last year, Radio Shack had 850 mobile kiosks up and running, already twice as much that existed in Sam's. The amount of customers and the demographics of Target appeal greatly to the reasoning behind the contract agreement. A Target customer is more likely to purchase Radio Shack electronics than a Sam's customer is. Radio Shack figures that if the majority of people shopping in a Target store are more likely to stop and spend some money at an electronic kiosk, the future revenue will have double the revenue that they lost in the contract termination.

T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T are the only wireless companies that Radio Shack carries. This could potentially be a problem because of the increased popularity in the iPhone and Verizon's new deal of selling them could destroy AT&T's selling of the iPhone. It would be smart of Radio Shack to conjure up a plan in order to get Verizon on their side. While it may seem as if they have everything figured out, they are still suffering a decline in sales of accessories, modern home and personal electronics. They plan to solve this dilemma by "selling the entire solution", says CFO of Radio Shack Jim Gooch. Their motive is to up sell so that when a consumer comes to their kiosk only wanting to buy a phone, they will also leave with a matching hands free bluetooth, phone case, and car charger to complete the package ultimately receiving more revenue means more money. Wireless sales account for 2/3 or revenue for Radio Shack and they have already seen a 15 percent increase in net income since the switch. Things are looking up for Radio Shack.

http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/01/18/2778240/radio-shacks-plan-b-for-kiosks.html

Why The Tucson Massacre is Destined to Happen Again...

"They’re sitting at home, brooding, reading extremist websites and polishing their guns." "This will happen again. And again." http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-tucson-massacre-will-happen-again-2011-01-10 Reasons why the Tucson Massacre will occur again



While unemployment hits many of us hard, it certainly takes a toll on men who are used to providing for their families and being the "bread winner". Coincidentally, the same day that the shooting in Tucson took place, the U.S. Labor Department published its monthly reports on unemployment. While unemployment and violence have no relation with one another, one could in turn be the effect of the other. The scarcity of jobs for people these days is at its peak compared to times before the recession hit. Because there is never scarcity amongst people, we will continue to see these issues arise. These stresses amongst others can drive people to do some pretty hainous things. As a result of the increasing amount of men without jobs, there becomes a great amount of people with way too much time on their hands. In addition to unemployment rates amongst men being high, gun purchases are sky rocketing like crazy. While these purchases do benefit those who distribute guns and their parts, it is hurting our society. Studies suggest that men are more likely to buy a gun than women are. The amount of people who obtained a check last year was 14.4 million or one for every 14 adults. With about 30% of men being unemployed the amount of checks made this year suffered a decrease. That then leaves a big gap in our nation's income rate making it to be 10 million checks for about 100 million men that are being spent on buying guns. Those same men without jobs are the same ones who are out there spending money that they don't have on guns. The dilemma then exists that we have way too many guns out there amongst men who don't have a care in the world. Because of the factors of scarcity amongst jobs, scarcity with the amount of checks coming in, and a scarce amount of men who are working, these same massacres will just repeat themselves, sadly.