January 22nd, 2012 
Emily Young 
The State of Oregon enacted a new bill affecting motor carriers. The new law is titled SB 259 and states that provisions in motor carrier transportation contracts requiring party or their surety or insurer to indemnify or hold harmless the other party against accountability for death, injury, or damaged property caused by negligence are invalid.
Archive for the ‘Financial Team’ Category
Oregon Motor Carrier Bond Update
Tags: Carrier, Motor CarrierThe Management Team – While Building The Business
This is the third and final post on the subject of the management team. The final phase of company development I am going to cover is “building the business.” Building the business largely means building the management team. They are one and the same.
Many founders are naturally talented at building product and building the user base. But building the company comes harder to them. I once discussed this with Roelof Botha and he made a fantastic suggestion. Founders should think of the business as yet another product they are building. It is the ultimate product they are building because from the company can come any number of additional products and any number of additional initiatives. The company, if built correctly, will be more important than any single product it can create.
A Call for Action: Conditional Inflation Targetting
From an article by myself and Jeffry Frieden in the newly released Foreign Policy:
[We need] inflation — just enough to reduce the debt burden to more manageable levels, which probably means in the 4 to 6 percent range for several years. The Fed could accomplish this by adopting a flexible inflation target, one pegged to the rate of unemployment. Chicago Fed President Charles Evans has proposed something very similar, a policy that would keep the Fed funds rate near zero and supplemented with other quantitative measures as long as unemployment remained above 7 percent or inflation stayed below 3 percent. Making the unemployment target explicit would also serve to constrain inflationary expectations: As the unemployment rate fell, the inflation target would fall with it.
Today our highest priority should be to stimulate investment, growth, and employment.
Surety Bonds for California Contractors
Surety bonds are required for virtually all high profile construction projects to begin, yet they remain a mystery to many. Some have never heard of “surety bonds” or “contractors bonds” as they are commonly referred to in the construction industry, so acquiring one can be unclear all in itself. Bonding requirements vary from one area to another; for those looking to start a construction project in California, the following areas can help define local surety bonding principles:
Surety bond definition
A question often asked regarding construction bonds is, “What is a surety bond?” In simplest terms, surety bonds are legally binding contracts. For contrac
Independent trustee: Profession or role?
Independent trustees are being increasingly recruited to trustee boards within pension schemes. The reasons for this are complex, but are largely related to the increasing amount of legislation that trustees are expected to absorb, and the changing nature of the role. Voluntary or member-nominated trustees are thus diminishing in the face of an increased workload and broadening range of expectations. Becoming a trustee has traditionally been considered a role, not a profession or vocation. This is due to the fact that lay-trustees do not get paid for their services and are usually acting outside of an existing profession. The increasing amount of independent trustees who are paid for their services and earn a living from acting as a trustee, however, is changing this. Read more…
Tags: Independent trusteesThe First Online Mashup Music Festival
I love emergent behavior inside web services. When the users take over and start doing stuff you never imagined, you know youve got something.
Next week, on Dec 7th, the core users of Turntables three mashup rooms are hosting an online event with some of the top mashup DJs in the world. Here are the details:
Dec 7th 3-8 PM EST All Mashup rooms – Mashupfm1, Mashupfm2, and the Mashupfm VIP room – are hosting what could be Turntables, and possibly the internets, first online Music “festival”20+ DJs including:3LAU, Yoni, Basic Physics, DJ Trademark, Kap Slap, DJ DiBella, Wick-It, Desler, Bruneaux, DJ abSRD, Dotcom, DJ Graycat, DJ Strongarm, DJ Rudy, The Airport District, DJ Bahler, Nammo, Mitch-Mash and More
These mashup rooms are some of the most fun rooms in the turntable service.
The Economy Slows Here and Abroad
And what we can do about it
From Macroeconomic Advisers and e-forecasting, some recent reads on the macroeconomy: 
Macroeconomic Advisers monthly release for September has GDP flat, while e-forecasting (as of a week ago) has GDP essentially flat for October. As of this morning, MA’s tracking forecast has Q4 growth at 3.2%. Short term, it may be growth will continue. But see also Berge, Elias, and Jordà (2011).
Given my bias as an open economy macroeconomist, I look to the rest of the world to think about what is going to happen, given the trajectory of external sources of demand.
Nevada Mortgage Broker Bond Update
Nevada mortgage broker surety requirements have been changed due to a new bill. The bill is labeled AB 77 and alters the bond amount required of mortgage brokers. The previous law stated that the bond amount was calculated by the number of branches that the broker had or its yearly loan volume. The set bond amount was $50,000 plus $25,000 for each branch, but was capped at $75,000; or the bond had to be $50,000 if the broker had less than $20 million in loan volume and $75,000 if the broker’s loan volume was over $20 million. AB 77 does away with the bond amount calculation using the number of branches. It’s now calculated by loan volume only. The