Here are this week’s news items for business and the economy, including the financial crisis in Greece and the Euro zone, banking reform, Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting, and important economic data that will be reported this week. Read on for details, including charts and a video report:

Here is a list of prevailing mortgage rates, updated daily. If these rates are significantly lower than your current mortgage, or you currently have a variable rate mortgage, you may want to refinance to a lower fixed rate.

The new credit card rules that were enacted last year finally took effect on 2/22/2010. Unfortunately the credit card companies had plenty of time to do whatever they could to existing customers, but the new rules do finally offer some protections to both new and existing customers. See the full article with a video report provided courtesy of msnbc at http://physicianentrepreneur.com/?p=712

Tracking airline flight status is easy with this online tool. Enter the airline code and flight and see the real-time status of that flight, or see the all flight data for an airport or a route between two airports.

Here are some ways to save time, money, and aggravation if you want to park at an airport. Why hassle with hunting and hoping to find a spot to part at the airport when you can get a reserved spot and free shuttle service to your terminal at significant savings? I’ve collected some of the better off-airport parking reservation sites for you, which cover most of the larger airports and some of the smaller ones.

Help a Reporter Out, or HARO, is a phenomenon that sprung up from one entrepreneurs mailing list of contacts between reporters and experts, and has grown into a global phenomenon.
You can leverage HARO – as an expert fulfilling source needs, or as an expert looking for anecdotal or contrasting information. Continued - click here >>

Business credit bureaus provide reporting on the creditworthiness of business clients. It’s funny how businesses who extend credit to an individual will routinely run a credit check, but they will extend credit to a business without taking the same precaution. Here’s how you can run a credit check on a potential business client:

Here are some simple steps that you can take to improve the chances you will be paid in full while maintaining a good relationship with your clients.

Getting paid on time is just as important as any other aspect of running a business because, without payment from your clients, you will soon run out of the cash you need to run your business, pay your suppliers, your employees, and yourself. See the full article at http://physicianentrepreneur.com/?p=797

Here are some simple steps that you can take to improve the chances you will be paid in full while maintaining a good relationship with your clients.

Getting paid on time is just as important as any other aspect of running a business because, without payment from your clients, you will soon run out of the cash you need to run your business, pay your suppliers, your employees, and yourself. See the full article at http://physicianentrepreneur.com/?p=797

I have been following the Michael Jackson story and have waited until the sensationalist coverage has died down and enough factual information has come out to run an article that paints this tragic story as a cautionary tale for physicians. I offer a strategy for lowering risk to the patient and for lowering your own professional risk, and invite you to add your own ideas and comments at the end of the article.

The phone can be a great tool for getting things done or it can be a time vampire, depending on whether you use it effectively or whether it uses you. We take the phone for granted, so we assume that what we’ve been doing for years is the only way way to use it. Here are some tips for getting more done in less time by using the phone more effectively (see the full article at PhysicianEntrepreneur.com/?p=762 )

Here are some tips you can use to do better when purchasing your next car by avoiding the financing pitfalls that await the unwary.

Goal setting is one of the most important steps you can take toward accomplishing anything in life, but success depends on setting goals that are achievable and following through until your reach your goals. Here are some tips that can help you get there – see the full article at http://physicianentrepreneur.com/?p=674

Here are this week’s news items for business and the economy, including the financial crisis in Greece and the Euro zone, banking reform, Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting, and important economic data that will be reported this week. Read on for details, including charts and a video report:

The Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure (C.A.R.D.) Act of 2009 is designed to protect new credit card users from unscrupulous practices. In protecting consumers, this act adds some key rules and regulations that protect consumers without encouraging unsound credit practices. See the full article at PhysicianEntrepreneur.com for details.

The popular Cash for Clunkers program ends Monday, August 24 2009 at 8 PM Eastern Daylight Time. The program is reportedly associated with over 450 thousand trade-ins of lower-mpg vehicles for new vehicles with significantly higher fuel efficiency. It looks like the program is about to exhaust the $3 billion that Congress allocated, so the administration had made this advance announcement to give shoppers a few more days to make their purchases. See the full article at PysicianEtrepreneur.com for details.

In our last article on Help a Reporter out (HARO) we talked about leveraging expertise to create a brand for yourself via expert requests.
This article focuses on leveraging the expertise of others to create an expert platform for yourself. Continued - click here >>

Help a Reporter Out, or HARO, is a phenomenon that sprung up from one entrepreneurs mailing list of contacts between reporters and experts, and has grown into a global phenomenon.
You can leverage HARO – as an expert fulfilling source needs, or as an expert looking for anecdotal or contrasting information. Continued - click here >>

Getting the media to pay attention to your business may be about the hardest thing you’ll ever undertake for advertising any business. It’s even harder to effectively promote your multiple businesses to the media, but here’s how you can do it:

Business credit bureaus provide reporting on the creditworthiness of business clients. It’s funny how businesses who extend credit to an individual will routinely run a credit check, but they will extend credit to a business without taking the same precaution. Here’s how you can run a credit check on a potential business client:

In this video, Larry Hicks from O’Sullivan Creel explains some of the depreciation tax breaks that you can take thanks to the 2009 stimulus package. See http://physicianentrepreneur.com/?p=666 for the full video and for more business and personal planning topics.

With all the bad news about the economy it sounds like this is a terrible time to start a business, but if you keep track of current trends and understand how to leverage them, this may turn out to be a good time to start certain businesses.