A Stern Glance

“Experience is the child of Thought, and Thought is the child of Action. We cannot learn men from books,” wrote Benjamin Disraeli in the 19th century. That’s an important consideration in the selection of public relations firm: Experience. Continue Reading »

Thanks to First Amendment for All

(Because of the Las Vegas Review-Journal‘s copyright litigation rampage, we have removed all posts from that newspaper and will no longer be reprinting any stories in any form from the Las Vegas Review-Journal.  Please refer to the Las Vegas Sun for coverage of these suits.)

Nevada Public Employee Pension Investment Return Exceeds Short Term Target But Unfunded Liability Still Growing

The market turmoil of late 2008 is now largely behind us, but the consequences for the U.S. financial system and economy continue. The fall of 2008 was marked by unprecedented levels of mortgage defaults, extreme risk aversion in financial markets and, finally, generalized illiquidity in global money markets. This chain of events ultimately led to the problems of a number of large, complex banks, bank holding companies, and non-bank financial companies, some of which were subject to prudential supervision and the FDIC’s resolution authority and some that were not. Taken together, these financial disruptions had a rapid and highly adverse effect on real economic activity here and around the world. The events led to unprecedented government intervention to restore order to the financial markets, including the bailouts of a number of large financial institutions both here and abroad. Continue Reading »

Nonfarm business sector labor productivity decreased at a 1.8 percent annual rate during the second quarter of 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today as hours increased 3.5 percent and output increased 1.6 percent.

The second-quarter gain in hours worked was the largest since the first quarter of 2006. From the second quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2010, productivity and output both grew 3.7 percent and hours were unchanged. Nonfarm business productivity increased at an average annual rate of 2.5 percent from 2000 through 2009. Continue Reading »

New orders for manufactured goods increased $0.6 billion or 0.1 percent to $409.5 billion in July, following two consecutive monthly decreases, the U.S. Census Bureau reported today. This followed a 0.6 percent June decrease. Excluding transportation, new orders decreased 1.5 percent. Shipments, also up following two consecutive monthly decreases, increased $4.4 billion or 1.1 percent to $417.1 billion. This followed a 0.5 percent June decrease. Continue Reading »

You don’t sit at your desk all day, waiting for a phone call from journalists. Similarly, reporters don’t sit at their desks waiting for news about your company. In fact, given today’s smaller news staffs, in part because of reduced advertising revenues as a result of the recession, and their increasingly busy workdays, there’s a very good chance reporters may not even see your news release.

While distribution of a release via a news release dissemination service will ensure that it reaches key news outlets, news databases and online news portals. But these services are simply the electronic equivalent of dropping a document on the receptionist’s desk, it does not guarantee that the journalists who actually report for the media important to your company will ever see your news release, much less appreciate its importance. Continue Reading »