Chat with Free Press reporter M.L. Elrick
Detroit Free Press - My understanding is that the home in financed by Quicken Loans and that the finance deal was in return for Kwame giving Dan Gilbert the keys to the city. (I think Steve Wilson from Channel 7 is already looking into this). Pete I’ve done a tiny

Canadian finance minister to demand Chinese yuan flexibility at G7
MSN UK News - Canada’s finance minister said Friday he would push for a stronger message on Chinese currency controls coming out of next month’s meeting of economic leaders from the world’s richest countries. Jim Flaherty stated he couldn’t talk for all ministers

Republicans trade harsher charges as top Democrats wrangle over
International Herald Tribune - Gee, we don’t have anyone that knows squat about the economy,finance or business. Oh darn, they have that financial/business whiz- kid Mitt Romney. Oh no, he also has successful executive experience in the public and private sectors. Holy mackerel

Former chairman of China’s No. 2 oil company faces corruption charges
International Herald Tribune - Hong Kong newspapers also reported last year that Chen’s case might have been a factor in the sudden resignation in August of Finance Minister Jin Renqing, also officially “for personal reasons.” Jin has also dropped from view since his departure, which

China Finance to team with China Telecom
Boston Globe - NEW YORK— China Finance On the internet Co. said Friday it will partner with China Telecom, a wireline telecommunications and broadband services company, to provide financial information services to China’s broadband users through a new Web channel. The two

Fannie and Freddie expansion not certain
MSN MoneyCentral - Republican senators are gearing up to resist a provision that would give a more massive role to government-sponsored mortgage-finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying it poses too much risk to the U.S. financial system. A deal reached Thursday

Living La Vida Rebate: Americans Plan for Refunds
ABC News - The checks aren’t in the mail yet, but plenty of Americans already seem to know what they would do with the rebates proposed by Congress and the White House. Under the economic stimulus plan announced yesterday, most tax filers would receive refunds

French Premier Chides Noyer on Societe Generale Delay (Update1)
Bloomberg - Fillon ordered Finance Minister Christine Lagarde to complete an investigation in eight days. Noyer was will testify in a Senate hearing Jan. 30 and will be called to appear in the lower home of parliament in the coming weeks, said the head of its

Spur US economy with public spending? Many say yes
Forbes - I believe, and I know a lot of mayors concur, that the best way to pump money into the economy in the short-term and get something out of it in the long-term is to finance immediate infrastructure projects that cities and states can’t afford,” New

Don’t spend your rebate just yet
CNN Money - It is remarkable that the world’s leading economic power can’t get checks out the door faster than that,” Peter Orszag, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, told the Senate finance committee on Tuesday. “But it’s a reflection of the fact

D.A. Davidson & Co. Announces New Northwest Public Finance Team
Forbes - D.A. Davidson & Co., the largest full-service investment firm based in the Pacific Northwest, this day announced that a highly experienced team of public finance professionals has joined the company’s Fixed Income Capital Markets Group in Seattle

Even CFO Thinks Microsoft Not Recession-Proof
Street.Com - For his “Business Press Maven? column on how business and finance are covered by the media, Fuchs was named best business journalist critic in the nation by the Speaking Biz website at The University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass

Management Secrets From Inside GE
US News and World Report - There might come a day when you hear your colleagues in engineering, finance, or some other division having an animated conversation that you don’t really comprehend. Queasiness and alarm should strike. You need to get back into the conversation

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Filed under: Deals, Management, Marketing and advertising, Entrepreneurs, Small business

Monday-morning quarterbacking. Locker room speak about the ideal investment you’ve ever made. We all do it to some extent. How many of us would like to hit a true homerun?

Following up on a post I had earlier in the week on some of the changes in the music industry, I encountered an exclusive on Bloomberg this morning. The article, titled “Want to Be a Motion picture Producer,” plays right into our fantasies about making homeruns with our investments.

The article profiles a new investment firm, called IndieVest, that targets movies. Individuals who pay an annual fee can choose investments from a menu of films to be developed, produced, and distributed by the company.

Investors, wealthy individuals who must meet minimum net worth requirements, are guaranteed at least 50% of the profits after getting back their initial investment (along with a premium), with 40% going to the makers of the film and the remaining money, of course, to IndieVest.

Who knows, maybe you’ll strike it rich by going long the next Alvin and the Chipmunks?

Zack Miller is the Managing Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com and a former equity analyst for a leading multinational hedge fund.

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Filed under: International markets, Forecasts, Products and services, Management, Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, eBay (EBAY), Amazon.com (AMZN), Marketing and advertising

When we took a look at eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY)’s fourth-quarter earnings last night, we also made note that long-time CEO Meg Whitman would be stepping down, to be replaced by John Donahoe. We wondered what changes Mr. Donahoe would be bringing to his new position, and some of those answers have come quicker than we expected, as Donahoe has already announced a few changes that we can expect to see.

One thing consistently on the mind of eBay users is the website’s fee structures. Since last year, users have been openly voicing their disappointment with what they consider to be abnormally high selling fees, and it seems like Donahoe will swiftly look to address these concerns.

Donahoe stated that within a few weeks, we will be seeing a brand new fee structure from eBay. In response to what users are demanding, eBay is planning to lower its upfront listing fees, but at the same time will be raising final selling fees. These final fees are only paid once an item has been successfully sold, and I’m sure that users won’t like to hear this too much, but they should be happy to hear that the initial listing fees are going to be reduced.

Another big change for eBay will be the emphasis the site places on fixed-price items. Historically, eBay has mostly been about one simple thing: user-to-user auctions. Now that the company finds itself in some steep competition with rival Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), the company has decided to put more emphasis on its fixed-price items, bringing a much greater “Amazon-like” experience to eBay.

While the new changes might ring positively for eBay users, it will more than likely lead to lower revenues for the company in the short term. As a result, the company was forced to lower its guidance for the current quarter as well as its full year 2008 outlook, which has resulted in shares falling in today’s session. The stock traded down to a new 52-week low of $25.75 earlier in the session, but has bounced a bit from the lows up to $26.70, which is down 7.6% with about an hour left in the trading session.

Looking down the road, it is anyone’s guess how the new changes will impact eBay’s business. I assume that the lower initial listing fees should result in more listings on the site, but will it be enough to get eBay back to its glory days? Time will tell, and until we get more details on the upcoming fee structure, it’s just way too early to predict what reaction eBay users will have to the new changes.

Other changes that some industry insiders are calling for Donahoe to consider are structural changes to the company. Will Donahoe look at the possibility of selling off Skype? How about the option of spinning of its popular PayPal business into a separate company? Both of these options are choices that Donahoe will undoubtedly be forced to consider once he takes over the reins a few months from now.

Michael Fowlkes has worked as a stock trader for seven years and spent the last four years working as an analyst for the on the internet investment advisory service Investor’s Observer

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Filed under: World wide web, Productivity, Web services, Google, web 2.0

Earlier this month, Google Docs added a bundle of new features to kick off 2008. Apparently the feedback the team got was good, and they’ve been busy adding even more features that people have been requesting to the mix.

And today, some very in-demand features have gone live on Google Docs. Most of the new goodies are for presentations - much like the last update.

You now have the option of saving your Google presentations as PDF files, as well as being able to do PDF-style printing - allowing you to select up to 12 slides to appear per page. And, if you like peppering your presentations with visual flair, some basic drawing tools and vector shapes have been added to give them that extra impact.

Unfortunately, the option to save as a PPT file is still not an option, but hopefully we’ll see something of the sort in the near future.

[via Google Blogoscoped]

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Asian stocks follow Wall Street higher
International Herald Tribune - In Australia, banks like Macquarie Group have pushed the S&P/ASX 200 index up more than 2 percent. Japanese government bonds retreated from multiyear peaks this week as investors piled back into stocks, hoping the rescue package could give the banking

Australian shares close higher for second day in a row on US gains
CNBC - The major banks led the recovery, with National Australia Bank surging 1.34 dollars or 4.1 percent to 33.75 dollars, Australia & New Zealand Banking Group up 80 cents or 3.2 percent at 26.02 dollars, Commonwealth Bank 88 cents or 1.8 percent higher

Falcons hire Jaguars’ Smith as new coach
Miami Herald - In this pic released by the NFL, Jacksonville Jaguars defensive coordinator Mike Smith is shown in 2007. The Atlanta Falcons have offered their head coaching job to Jacksonville defensive coordinator Mike Smith, a person familiar with the search

Making the ideal out of the Olympics curse
International Herald Tribune - Fan Cheuk Wan, a buy-side analyst at Credit Suisse, suggests investors take the stock market’s first-quarter weakness as an chance to build portfolios, banking on a come-back in the second quarter. Some might argue that Chinese stocks are still

Dodd seeks ‘ambitious’ financial rescue plan
Financial Times - Christopher Dodd, the Senate banking committee chairman, insisted on Wednesday that any economic stimulus package for the US must go beyond short-term measures, proposing a new $10bn-$20bn fund that would buy outstanding mortgages at steep discounts

Colbert raises $171,000 for charity
Miami Herald - $171,525 is a lot of money for a joke to raise. That’s how much Stephen Colbert’s “WristStrong” bracelets have raised since the mock talk show host began selling them as part of his “wrist awareness” campaign, started shortly after he broke his left

Sovereign wealth funds seek balance against Western regulation
International Herald Tribune - Michael Klein, chairman of Citigroup’s markets and banking operations, which last week announced major losses and stated it would raise $14.5 billion with the help of the governments of Singapore and Kuwait, put it this way, “The greatest single

Report questions Detroit mayor testimony
Miami Herald - Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick exchanged romantic text messages with a top aide, contradicting their denials in court that they’d romantic ties, a newspaper reported. The county prosecutor’s office declined to comment on the legal implications of

Rest. Our economy isn’t manic depressive
Times On the internet - This has produced excesses in banking, asset values and financial innovation that’ll take years or decades to unwind. Economies addicted to easy credit will be devastated if their banking systems suffer a long-term decline, which is what Mr Soros

8 police killed in Afghan clash
Miami Herald - At least eight policemen were killed Thursday during an operation by U.S.-led coalition troops in central Afghanistan, an Afghan official said. The officers died in the village of Ghariban in Ghazni province during an operation that included U.S

Singapore shares higher sharply higher at midday on Wall Street’s
CNBC - Banks were higher, with DBS Group up 70 cents up 18.50 dollars, United Overseas Bank up 86 cents at 17.88 dollars, and Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp up 23 cents at 7.84 dollars. Chinese stocks traded in Singapore also rallied after the Monetary

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