Madoff
When Elaine Dine sold her attorney head-hunting firm about a decade ago, an employee told her about a seemingly solid investment called Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. “He closes the books day to day,” the employee told her. “It’s like having cash.” So Dine, a South Coast resident for the past five and half years, Read More →
Sorry to be bearer of bad news: the market hasn
After attending the Santa Barbara Association of Realtors meeting at the Montecito Country Club along with about 200 other people on Feb. 5, I decided I didn’t want to do it again. I didn’t want to come back to this column with more depressing statistics, more somber quotes and another bleak outlook. But it seems Read More →
Ways to encourage small business in the Tri-Counties
You might say the economic stimulus bill currently before the Congress represents the best thinking by Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill. It’s a combination of old fashioned prime the pump spending plans with Kennedy-Reagan era tax cuts to give the public more money. On top of that, banks and large auto makers have gotten Read More →
Old-school newspaper man learns new media tricks
George Cogswell III would appear to be an unlikely figurehead for the daily newspaper industry in the Tri-Counties. The publisher of the Ventura County Star has been on the job for just one year. He’s had to bite the bullet and make sweeping job cuts. He’s not a newsman by training. He doesn’t even sit Read More →
Forecast XIII: Region
The Ventura County office of CB Richard Ellis hosted its 13th annual Commercial Real Estate Symposium on Jan. 30, where speakers reported that the county’s commercial real estate vacancy rates skyrocketed during the fourth quarter. Mark Schniepp, director of the California Economic Forecast Project, joined a panel of three CB Richard Ellis brokers to present Read More →
UCSB stem-cell research looks for gains
During the presidential campaign, we heard a lot about hope and change. So much so, in fact, that the words nearly got ground into meaninglessness. That’s politics. But scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, are optimistic about the prospect of an actual change in federal policy: lifting the Bush administration’s limitations on federal Read More →
Meltdown shows what happens when trust disappears
It’s becoming clearer that the events of September 2008 will go down as some of the worst in Wall Street history. Consider, if you will, recent comments by a couple of people who represent some of the best thinking on this subject. Writing in a note to investors, David Decker, portfolio manager for Janus Contrarian Read More →
