The press is focused on the pending “fiscal cliff” – the January 1st expiration of the Bush era tax cuts, the need to reduce Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits and the pending automatic cuts in defense and healthcare spending. We are at a critical point where we need to balance reducing the country’s debt level against support of an economic growth rate that is modest and slower than normal. Higher taxes would reduce funds available for spending which is critical in our consumer- driven economy. The end result if nothing is done by year-end is a financial superstorm, which all agree should be avoided if at all possible. We need tax reform, higher revenues and reduced government spending. We need long term entitlement reform and a significant increase in government revenues. Unfortunately, what we are likely to see is a postponement again while our politicians respond to this wakeup[more…]

Mary Bersot, MedShare Trustee and Western Regional Council Chair, was recently named a top-three finalist in the “Volunteer of the Year” category of the 2011 Community Leadership Awards presented by The Invest in Others Charitable Foundation and InvestmentNews.  As part of this honor, she traveled to New York on September 14 to attend the group’s fifth annual awards ceremony, and had the opportunity to ring the NASDAQ bell the following morning. Mary has been involved with MedShare since 2008, when we expanded to Northern California. Her leadership and fundraising efforts were instrumental in making this expansion successful during a recession, and she continues to build community awareness of our mission to responsibly recover and redistribute surplus medical supplies to those in need around the world.

The stock market is officially in a correction. Volatility has spiked higher and fear is gripping markets around the globe. Many large US companies are down 10% or more as the fundamentals improve. Wow! Yesterday was remarkable on many levels! This dramatic one day market decline is not about individual stocks or fundamentals. The day began yesterday as a fairly typical down day. Then, about 2:30 Eastern time the markets collapsed into free fall. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 700 points in a matter of minutes. The initial fall was blamed on a trader who entered an order with too many zeros. This triggered program sales and then, so the story goes, computer errors caused stocks like Procter and Gamble to drop over $20.00 per share. It was a perfect storm and frightening to watch.

The New York Times says high yield bonds will be maturing in record amounts over the next four years. Refinancing these bonds will cause problems for lower quality companies that took advantage of low interest rates. Will this cause another round of defaults and corporate bankruptcies? In 2012 $155 billion of higher risk bonds will come due and then in 2013 and 2014 another $ 558 billion will mature. This will happen at the same time the Government borrows record sums and interest rates are higher.