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If financial crises occur like clockwork every five or 10 years, as JPMorgan Chase (JPM) CEO Jamie Dimon believes, the obvious solution is to raise taxes on risky banks.

Hey, who said that — that troublemaker Paul Krugman, or perhaps another fellow traveler, like Wall Street gadfly Simon Johnson? Nope — try Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota President Narayana Kocherlakota. In a speech yesterday, the former academic economist makes a strong case that we can limit the scale and frequency of such collapses by imposing higher taxes on financial institutions that pose a greater danger to the banking system:

[A] financial institution should be taxed for the amount of risk it creates that is borne by taxpayers.

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The conviction that the ‘trade creditor’ would come to the rescue and fund businesses may no longer be the case. Trade creditors are now scrutinizing their credit applicants. While banks just make up about 20% of the short term credit for small businesses, the other suppliers make up the rest (surveyed by Credit Research Foundation, a trade group in Columbia, MD). But with banks showing more friction towards lending, small companies have their eyes fixed on private creditors for loans. They are also pressing vendors for more time to make their bill payments and also asking for loans so that they can keep afloat until they receive payments from their clients.

“Small businesses have been forced to reach out to trade creditors and begin to utilize them as bankers,” says Lyle P.

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Clate Mask is CEO of one of the Inc 500’s fastest-growing companies, Infusionsoft.com. Ask him about how to build a successful business, and he’ll say, “There are three, and only three, factors that really have an iron grip on the profits of any marketing effort. The smartest marketing minds on the planet have boiled these factors down to this simple, but incredibly powerful, formula: The Right Message… To The Right Market… At The Right Time!”

The problem is, most businesses send out a message that’s only relevant to the company owner—that is, to people who are not in the market for their product or service, at a time when they are probably not interested in buying!

We often hear people say “I meant to get around to doing some marketing, but I just didn’t have time, so we just put something out there.” Or, worse, “I got a great deal on this program but I didn’t realize 90 percent of it went to people who don’t buy what I sell.”

Many small business owners spend money on “image” advertising, with no direct response offers included at all.

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It has been suggested following recent research that the economic downturn and financial meltdown that has been seen over the past couple of years has had a serious negative impact on pensions savings amongst consumers in the UK. Many have found themselves struggling to make ends meet financially, and this means that they have had to make other financial sacrifices, which for some has meant their pensions provisions.

Scottish Widows, the pensions and life insurance provider, carried out the research and according to the results of the study there has been a fall of around 6 percent in pensions savings over the past year, with the total now falling to 48 percent.

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Not long ago – before the advent of e-mail and text messaging – a postal address was a necessity, just as licking stamps to stick on an outgoing letter was a symbol of literacy.

Postal Corporation of Kenya, the State-owned company that runs mail-delivery, was so much in demand that it expanded to every corner of the country.

Then came the dotcom revolution with e-mail, which made communication faster compared to postal mail for those accessible to an internet connection. Add the mobile phone and snail mail’s goose was as good as cooked.

But stung by dwindling revenues as more people turn to e-mail, texting and other forms of instant communication, PCK is fighting back.

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