This data was last updated on: 2/3/12 3:24 PM PST
This IDX solution is (c) Diverse Solutions 2012.
Source: http://www.frisco-tx-homes-for-sale.com/is-landlording-a-better-alternative-to-selling/
chester mcglockton chester mcglockton arsenic los angeles weather big ten acc challenge scott disick kourtney kardashian
How small-business issues are shaping politics and policy.The Agenda
The big United States banks have come under withering criticism for not lending enough to small businesses, but this week brings word that Citigroup, the parent of Citibank, will participate in a novel program to steer capital to small businesses that have an especially hard time getting it: those located in economically distressed areas. What?s novel about the program is that while Citigroup will provide most of the capital, it will not disburse it. Instead, it will rely on Next Street, a self-described ?merchant bank,? to underwrite loans to businesses that Next Street deems capable of rapid growth. If the initiative succeeds, it could serve as a model for similar programs around the country.
Next Street, with offices in Boston and New York, helps arrange financing for small-business clients, often from third-party sources, while at the same time providing the sort of tactical and strategic advice normally beyond the reach of those companies ? particularly businesses based in what are politely described in community development circles as low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. The newly formed Next Street Opportunity Fund will loan $30 million to established businesses in such communities.
To qualify for a loan, companies will have to have between $3 million and $60 million in annual revenue and a history of at least five or seven years. Individual loans will range from about $1.5 to $2 million and carry terms of five to seven years, at interest rates ?comparable to a traditional loan with commensurate risk,? said Tim Ferguson, a Next Street co-founder and partner.
At the same time, borrowers will be expected to retain Next Street as a consultant, if they haven?t already. ?Small businesses need access to high-level strategic advice, and we would argue that the strategic advisory piece is as important as the capital,? said Ronald L. Walker, Mr. Ferguson?s partner. ?The advice mitigates the risk.? The monthly fee for that advice ranges from $5,000 to $25,000.
That?s one distinction between an Opportunity Fund loan and a conventional loan. Another is the purpose of the financing. Mr. Ferguson said that when banks offer traditional forms of capital, like lines of credit and term loans, it is ?based on past performance, not growth. They?re not offered growth capital, from capital markets.? Next Street, by contrast, will pursue ambitious targets for Opportunity Fund borrowers. ?We do expect these companies to double in size,? Mr. Walker said. ?We?re talking about sustained growth over three to five years. And that?s top-line as well as bottom-line growth.?
Under the terms of the deal, Next Street is essentially borrowing the money for the fund from its investors, led by Citigroup, which is providing $25 million, and will then re-loan the money to its clients. Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit organization that supports affordable housing in 30 cities across the country, will contribute $2.5 million. The remainder will come from wealthy investors.
The Citigroup official overseeing the bank?s investment, Andy Ditton, conceded that the fund?s prospective borrowers were a difficult market for the institution to reach on its own, in part because traditional banking is not conducive for financing strong growth. But more than that, ?I don?t think the kind of businesses they?ll be lending to are the kinds of businesses any bank will lend to,? he said. ?The businesses they?re lending to are struggling, and they?re struggling because of their business strategy.
?The only way you can grow that business is to do the consulting, working with management for contract expansion and new relationships,? said Mr. Ditton, who helps manage Citigroup?s program for investing in disadvantaged neighborhoods, which is required under the Community Reinvestment Act. ?And that?s not the role a traditional banker would play. A bank lends money ? it?s not a series of management consultants, let alone Web page designers and that sort of people. It?s better for us to use people who have that expertise already rather than us trying to develop it.?
Half of the businesses working with Next Street are owned by women or minorities ? the population that finds it hardest to get any kind of credit at all, said John Taylor, president and chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, which advocates for banking services in disadvantaged communities.
Mr. Taylor said that the aspect of the collaboration that is most appealing about the Opportunity Fund is that ?they?re providing growth capital without taking an equity position. There are VCs out there who?ll give you money, but they?ll take your fist born. You?re giving out the wealth of your business.?
But, Mr. Taylor added, the value of Next Street?s efforts would hinge on whether the fee structure is fair and whether the technical assistance provided is truly useful. ?If both of these things are true, it?s wonderful,? he said, ?because there is really a dearth of access to small business credit in general, particularly equity-type credit, and particularly for people of color and women.?
Next Street?s founding partners said neither concern was warranted. ?Our fees are always commensurate not only with the work that we do, but the opportunity in the business,? said Mr. Ferguson. And notwithstanding the minimum revenue and age requirements for borrowing businesses, in practice, he said, ?most will be $10 to $20 million in revenue, will have been in business for 10 to 15 years. And they have the capacity to absorb the fees.?
To questions about the quality of Next Street?s advice, Mr. Ferguson said, ?we wouldn?t have worked with over 100 small businesses if we weren?t adding value to these enterprises.?
The Next Street partners, and their backers, described the Opportunity Fund as a pilot project with rapid growth potential of its own. ?The perception is that the risk in the inner city markets for these type of small businesses is much greater than in the broader business lending marketplace,? Mr. Ferguson said. ?But what we?ve found from the limited amount of data that we can see, and from our own experience, is that the default rate is much lower than for the broader corporate marketplace. This pilot, if successful, will have people recognize that there is an opportunity to lend to these types of businesses, provided they couple it with the sort of advisory services that we?re talking about.?
Mr. Walker added that there are more than 25,000 similarly situated businesses in the country?s largest inner cities that could potentially take advantage of this type of financing. ?Next Street?s model has always been that there?s a need for this model nationally,? he said. ?This is a national opportunity.?
Citigroup?s Mr. Ditton agreed. And he said that if the project succeeds, other organizations would likely begin pairing strategic consulting with financing, and that the bank would be open to supporting those efforts as well. ?Our hope is that this $25 million is going to go out the door very quickly and show that there?s real interest in this, and that the companies they?re targeting will accept the help and the advice that Next Street is providing them and use the capital to grow and expand,? he said. ?If that all plays out, we hope to expand this to hundreds of millions of dollars nationally.?
Source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/citibank-tries-a-new-approach-to-small-business-lending/
patriots broncos game new orleans saints saints willis mcgahee willis mcgahee ship aground off italy nfl playoff schedule 2012
T Mughal / EPA, file
Pakistan's Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani (center) waves to supporters upon arrival at the Supreme Court for a hearing in a contempt-of-court of notice, in Islamabad, Pakistan, Jan. 19.
By msnbc.com news services
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's Supreme Court decided Thursday to charge the country's prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, with contempt for his failure to reopen an old corruption case against the president, a move that could oust the premier from office and land him in prison if he is convicted.
That could create political turmoil within Pakistan, the last thing the government needs as it struggles to deal with an ailing economy, a violent Islamist insurgency and troubled relations with its most important ally, the United States.
Pakistan and NATO officials downplay Taliban report
The U.S. is likely watching the case closely since it wants Pakistan to focus on pushing the Taliban to make peace with the Afghan government so that Washington can withdraw its troops without a civil war breaking out in the country.
The Supreme Court ordered the government two years ago to write to Swiss authorities requesting they reopen the graft case against President Asif Ali Zardari, which dates to the late 1990s. But the government refused, claiming the president enjoys immunity from prosecution while in office.
Pakistan, NATO officials downplay Taliban report
"After the preliminary hearing, we are satisfied ... there is enough (of a) case" to proceed further, the seven-member bench ordered Thursday. "The case is adjourned until Feb. 13 for the framing of charges. The prime minister will be present in person."
Gilani, speaking in Davos, Switzerland last week, had suggested a three-month period of high political tension in the country, including a standoff with the military over a mysterious memo, had eased considerably.
But Thursday's order and Gilani's anticipated appeal are expected to ensure a continued achingly slow-motion duel between the Supreme Court and the government, which has squared off with the judiciary almost since Zardari took office in 2008.
BBC: Secret report reveals Pakistan-Taliban ties
"He has the constitutional, legal right to appeal," his lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan said. "It would be my recommendation to my client to appeal. He will then decide."
If convicted, Gilani could face jail and lose his office.
The legal tussle stems from thousands of old corruption cases thrown out in 2007 by a controversial amnesty law passed under former military president Pervez Musharraf.
Zardari is its most prominent beneficiary and the main target of the court, which voided the law in 2009 and ordered the re-opening of cases accusing the president of money laundering using Swiss bank accounts. He remains the chairman of the Pakistan People's Party, which leads the coalition government.
Miscommunication and bad maps contributed to the deaths of 24 Pakistani troops in a NATO airstrike last month, a military investigation concluded Thursday. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports.
Zardari's is the longest-running civilian administration in Pakistan's coup-marred history, but has become deeply unpopular, seen as both corrupt and incompetent.
Political instability and brinkmanship has consumed the nuclear-armed country in recent years, preventing it from addressing crushing poverty and other economic ills, or containing a rampaging insurgency that is endangering the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
More from msnbc.com and NBC News:
lee corso thanksgiving appetizers greg jennings thanksgiving recipes thanksgiving recipes mashed potato recipe mashed potato recipe
A primary reason for lawmakers? reticence is that, for decades, the most visible advocates of looser weed laws have been, well, weed smokers?and what serious politician wants to be associated with a bunch of stoners, man? Earlier this decade, wealthy liberals like George Soros and Peter Lewis (once busted for pot-smoking himself) recognized that problem and shifted the debate to medical marijuana, giving the movement a more sympathetic public face: an ailing grandmother rather than a dreadlocked coach potato. Several states have since passed medical marijuana laws, but they don?t address the bigger issue at play here. It?s recreational users, not glaucoma patients, whose money fuels the illicit drug trade that finances criminal gangs.
Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=a84aad1e9176a04f67b8d6ea0f31846d
death penalty gary busey the x factor execution execution facebook music facebook music
Miami, Florida / PRBuzz.com / February 1, 2012 -- Convergia, a US and international telecommunication, voice and data service provider, announces the addition of new business phone systems with an IP extension feature, to its broad portfolio of business telephone system solutions.?
PBX business phone systems with IP extension features offer paging, music on hold, and power failure bypass. With customizable voice prompts, call forwarding and more, companies of any size can project a polished, professional image to customers every time without ever missing an incoming call.?
Alejandro Bitar, Convergia's President explained, "With Convergia's IP PBX business phone systems , small and medium sized companies can save money on their office phone lines, while at the same time streamlining their communications systems. A PBX phone system with an IP extension feature gives small and medium sized companies all the advantages of Unified Communications traditionally used by larger corporations. With the features of traditional telephony networks and VoIP combined into a single, user-friendly device, office phone system communications are streamlined seamlessly and cost-effectively, helping to make companies more efficient and productive."?
Bitar continued, "IP PBX phone systems enable companies of any size to grow, without the expense of moving to a larger office or hiring additional employees. By ensuring that customers always get through when they call and are able to reach the right person every time, companies can increase their sales and save money, while keeping customers happy and maximizing the efficiency of their office communication systems. Convergia's IP PBX business phone systems make it easy for businesses to project a more professional image, while also saving money at the same time."
For more information about Convergia's customizable office phone solutions for small businesses, visit Convergia.com???????????
About Convergia?
Convergia is a world-class provider of telecommunication, voice, data, and Internet services, with a wide range of domestic and international long distance phone service plans?for residential, business and wholesale customers.? Founded in 1998, Convergia is a part of a seven billion dollar group of companies with over 6,000 employees located in over 50 countries, with a cutting edge fiber optic network spanning over 50 countries across 4 continents and connecting more than 150 points of presence. Convergia offers a wide range of voice and data services, including local analog and digital phone lines, long distance, cellular services, VOIP business phone services, SIP trunking, hosted PBX, dedicated PRI and T1 voice circuits, ADSL, high speed static IP Internet, MPLS networks, domestic and international toll free, audio and web conferencing, computer softphone, global travel calling cards, and prepaid services, Convergia has developed into one of the largest privately held global end-to-end telecom networks in the world.?
For further information, please contact:?
Customer Care
http://www.convergia.com/
Tel.:?? 1-866-863-3301
E-mail: corporatesales@convergia.net
?###
read full article
geoffrey mutai wes welker fred davis fred davis fracking fracking drosselmeyer
LOS ANGELES ? Blake Griffin's jaw-dropping one-handed jam over Kendrick Perkins sent Los Angeles Clippers fans into a frenzy, fired up his teammates, lit up the Twitterverse and burned the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Griffin had 22 points to go with Chris Paul's 26 points and 14 assists in a 112-100 victory Monday night that snapped the Thunder's four-game winning streak in a matchup of division leaders.
Griffin downplayed his monster move after the game, a sly smile only briefly breaking his serious expression.
"CP commands so much attention out there. He came off the pick-and-roll and he hit me in stride," Griffin said.
Paul added: "I told Blake after the game, `Thanks for letting me be part of that.'"
DeAndre Jordan grabbed Griffin from behind in a celebratory bear hug as the basket got replayed over and over in the third quarter.
Jordan, who had 11 points and 11 rebounds, couldn't help himself.
"I was shocked. I didn't know what to do, so I just grabbed him. I hit him kind of hard," he said. "I'm going to go home and watch it again. It's probably going to be the screensaver on my phone."
Griffin said he knew he'd made an impression judging by the crowd's raucous response. Then he felt Jordan behind him.
"He armlocked me," Griffin said. "I couldn't breathe."
The reaction on Twitter came fast and furious.
Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald tweeted: "Blake Griffin just made one of the top dunks of the season. Maybe even his career. (hashtag) Beast."
Tracy McGrady of the Atlanta Hawks weighed in with "yo, crazy crazy dunk by the dude Blake Griffin."
Even Shaquille O'Neal's ex-wife was impressed.
Shaunie O'Neal tweeted: "OMG!!! Did y'all just see Blake Griffin dunk!!!!! Daaayyyummm!"
Paul had 26 points and 14 assists, Caron Butler also had 22 points, Chauncey Billups scored 13 and Mo Williams 12 as the Pacific-leading Clippers dunked with high-flying abandon against the team with the NBA's best record at 16-4. They won their third in a row to follow up a 109-105 victory at Denver a night earlier that began a stretch of five games in seven nights.
"We're not going to read too much into it," Paul said of the back-to-back wins. "It let us know what we're capable of. We can explode offensively."
Kevin Durant had 36 points and 13 rebounds, and Russell Westbrook added 31 for the Northwest-leading Thunder, whose league-best road record dropped to 8-3. They had won 11 of their previous 12.
"Chris Paul was running around, getting what he wanted to get on the floor and making passes to guys for wide-open dunks and 3s," Durant said. "It's tough to stop."
Griffin's monster mash had everyone talking and tweeting, but the Clippers put together a stunning sequence going into halftime.
They shocked the Thunder with four consecutive 3-pointers in less than a minute to lead 64-46. The flurry by Williams (two), Butler (one) and Billups (one) stopped the Thunder's 11-2 run that had drawn them within six points.
"I told Mo that might have been the greatest exchange I have been part of since I've been in the NBA," Paul said. "That got the crowd into it. Four 3s in under a minute is unbelievable."
Jordan said: "We were just hot. It really didn't look like it was real. We were on a high, but we knew we had to come out in the third and knock them out flat."
The Thunder bumbled their way into the half, with Westbrook and Durant combining on three straight turnovers that led to the Clippers' long-range fireworks. Williams and Butler had two steals in the run.
"That doesn't happen, and it probably won't happen again the rest of the year, that a team will make that many 3s in a minute," Thunder coach Scott Brooks said. "But they made the shots. They started the game with a lot of urgency and they had us back on our heels."
Los Angeles shot 71 percent from long range in a half that also featured a series of huge dunks by Jordan, Griffin, Durant and Westbrook, although both teams missed their share of dunks, too.
Daequan Cook was the only other Oklahoma City player in double figures with 12 points. Durant and Westbrook scored all but two of the Thunder's 25 points in the third quarter, which the Clippers ended on a 3-pointer by Paul to lead 90-70.
Durant and Westbrook began the fourth on the bench, although they both stood up when Cook hit his second 3-pointer of the period to get the Thunder to 95-81. Griffin then scored five in a row, capped by a two-handed jam that extended the Clippers' lead to 100-81.
The Thunder outscored Los Angeles 30-22 in the fourth, but never made a big run to get close.
The Clippers made 13 3-pointers ? just off their season high of 14 against Denver on Sunday.
They made 10 3s in the first half, led by four from Butler, who connected from his favorite spot in the left corner.
The Thunder's only lead was four points to start the game.
Notes: Butler reached the 10,000-point mark on his third 3-pointer in the first quarter. ... Durant and Westbrook have scored at least 25 points each 37 times in their four seasons together. ... The Clippers improved to 10-2 at home. ... It was the Clippers' 12th consecutive sellout this season and 24th in a row overall dating to last season. The crowd of 19,404 included Larry King and Los Angeles Angels pitcher Dan Haren.
jodie fisher zooey deschanel michael jordan ryan braun yvette prieto hypertrophic cardiomyopathy kaye stevens
MINOS detector, courtesy Fermilab
Fermilab is dead. Long live Fermilab!
The Tevatron at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., which had been the top U.S. particle collider?and for many years the most powerful such machine in the world?shut down last September. The collider?s physics breakthroughs, including the 1995 discovery of the top quark, were so eminent that it was easy to think of the Tevatron and its host institution as one and the same.
But even though protons and antiprotons no longer course through the six-kilometer loop of the Tevatron, life at Fermilab goes on. Physics World editor Margaret Harris reports on a recent lab visit:
The end of the Tevatron does not, however, mean the end of Fermilab. ?We have 10 accelerators here on site,? says Fermilab physicist Steve Holmes, with the merest hint of irritation. ?We turned one of them off, okay?? Like several scientists I spoke to, Holmes was keen to point out that colliding high-energy beams of particles is not the only way of discovering new physics with accelerators.
The U.S. has surrendered the ?energy frontier? to Europe, Harris notes: the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, outside Geneva, is designed to accelerate particle beams to seven times the energies achievable in the Tevatron. New and ongoing projects at Fermilab, Harris writes, are focused on physics questions that do not require a gigantic, world-beating collider. Many of these projects depend less on energy and more on intensity?producing beams with copious amounts of particles to look for rare decays or interactions.
Take neutrino physics, for instance. Neutrinos are slippery subatomic particles that can only be seriously investigated with an intense particle beam. They interact so rarely with ordinary matter that for every 1,500 or so neutrinos registered by a massive, specially designed detector, billions more will pass right through. So you need to create a lot of them. Neutrinos, already mysterious, became even more so last fall when a European experiment called OPERA (Oscillation Project with Emulsion-Tracking Apparatus) found that neutrino pulses appeared to make the journey from CERN to an underground lab in Italy a bit faster than the speed of light, in violation of one of the central tenets of modern physics.
Fermilab has its own cutting-edge neutrino experiment that should be able to confirm or (as most suspect) refute the OPERA claim?as well as probe other puzzles of these particles. MINOS (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search) shoots a beam of neutrinos through two detectors, one at Fermilab and one in a Minnesota mine some 735 kilometers away. In addition to clocking the neutrinos to determine their speed, MINOS is investigating an odd phenomenon called neutrino oscillation. Occasionally one of the particles oscillates between ?flavors? on its journey across the Midwest, so that a muon neutrino becomes a tau neutrino. A planned project called NOvA will succeed MINOS, extending the baseline of the neutrino experiment to about 800 kilometers and adding a much larger detector on the Minnesota end.
Then there?s the proposed Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment, or LBNE, which would send neutrinos on an even longer interstate journey of 1,300 kilometers from Fermilab to a subterranean detector in South Dakota. LBNE, Harris reports, would be able to compare the flavor oscillations of neutrinos to those of their antiparticles. A major question about neutrinos is whether they are their own antiparticles. And a proposed multibillion-dollar lab upgrade called Project X would add new proton accelerators to increase the intensity of the beams feeding LBNE and other Fermilab projects.
As the memory of the Tevatron fades, all eyes are on the high-energy pursuits of the Large Hadron Collider, which has a good shot of finally discovering the long-sought Higgs particle this year. But no one lab, however powerful, can do it all. Older particle labs remain vibrant centers of discovery?places such as Brookhaven National Laboratory and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory were also once known primarily for their particle colliders but have since developed diverse research campaigns. If Fermilab can convince Congressional funders that the intensity frontier is worth exploring, this new direction may yield U.S. physicists a few surprises.
?This is an opportunity for the U.S. to establish a leadership position in this very important area of physics that will last for decades,? Fermilab?s Holmes told Physics World. ?If we do it right, we?ll just blow away the competition.?
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=e580817eb5b118c427294bc1dcc97a84
san francisco earthquake san francisco earthquake nextdoor premier fitness dan uggla kryptos student loan forgiveness
