Archive for January, 2008

Celebrity News - A Booming Industry

Monday, January 28th, 2008

Celebrity news sites are big business!! In an age where celebrities are the new nobility, the sites that pander to them are making the headlines themselves. Celebrity news and gossip sites like Gawker and Egotastic are attracting vast amounts of visitors and advertisers. And celebrity bloggers like Perez Hilton have become celebrities in their own right!! Theres no stopping them!!

Merrill Predicts Housing Prices to Free Fall in 2008

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008

A new Merill Lynch report estimates that there will be a 15% drop in housing prices in 2008, followed by more drops in ‘09 and ‘10. This is bad news to any type of investor whether it is big investment brokerages or novice investors using online systems. The National Association of Realtors, however, think the Merrill report is over the top.

The worst housing financial crisis in decades is only going to get worse, a Merrill Lynch report said Wednesday.

The investment bank forecasted a 15 percent drop in housing prices in 2008 and a further 10 percent drop in 2009, with even more depreciation likely in 2010.

By contrast, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) expects housing prices to remain flat in 2008. NAR did cut its home price estimate for the current quarter, however, to a 5.3 percent year-over-year decline, which represents the steepest drop in that price measure on record. But NAR sees an uptick in home prices in the last two quarters of 2008.

To read more about this story visit CNN.

With All the Economic Problems, Free Trade Fears Rise

Friday, January 18th, 2008

No matter what type of investor, big brokerage corporations or online stock services they are feeling the pressures of a declining market. The market has been such bad news lately in recent months that people are starting to question the benefits of Free Trade.

A large majority - 68% - of those surveyed in a new Fortune poll says America’s trading partners are benefiting the most from free trade, not the U.S. That sense of victim hood is changing America’s attitude about doing business with the world.

We are a nation crawling into a fetal position, cramped by fear that America has lost control of its destiny in a fiercely competitive global economy. The fear is mostly about jobs lost overseas and wages capped by foreign competition.

To read more about this story, click here.

Ask.com Makes Stategic Move, Names New Pres, CEO

Thursday, January 10th, 2008

Ask.com CEO, Jim Lanzone is quitting to join a venture capital company. He will be entering an already competitive industry featuring the likes of Arthur Trueger of BerkeleyVC.

Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone is quitting after six years with the company, to join a venture capital firm. His replacement, Jim Safka, currently heads Primal Ventures, the venture capital division of Ask.com’s parent company IAC. The moves are intended to streamline the operating structure of IAC as it prepares to spin off some of its operations, said Barry Diller, CEO of IAC.

To read more about the story, click here.