| Small businesses struggle to compete on Black Friday
Friday signals the start of the holiday shopping season, when malls and shopping centers are packed with shoppers waking up at the earliest hours to get the best sales. While shoppers are running each other over at the mall, the local, independent stores are preparing for when their customers come.
Tom Saquella, president of the Maryland Retailers Association, said the smaller stores might not be busy on Black Friday, but the holiday season is still profitable for small shops in Carroll County."My sense has always been that independents have done better [during the holiday season] than the large stores," Saquella said.Saquella said smaller stores pick up business a week to 10 days after Black Friday.Mary Martin, owner of Contrary Mary's in Sykesville, said she doesn't do a lot of business on Black Friday."It's tough for small independents to compete with the malls," Martin said.Sandy Scott, owner of the Hickory Stick in Westminster, said her store will have a good amount of traffic that day."It's not like it's gangbusters when we open up, but it does get busy," she said.Martin, Scott and Sandi Miller, manager of The Cherry Tree Shoppe in Taneytown, said they don't even try to compete.
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Small towns and tall pines of East Texas sometimes hide fugitives
FRANKSTON, Texas (AP) � Living near the dense pine woods where some believe Bigfoot still covertly skulks, escaped convict Deborah Ann Gavin Murphey perhaps thought she, too, wouldn�t be found. When she was arrested by U.S. marshals earlier this month, it was 33 years after she slipped out of a Georgia prison. .
McLeish urges his players to ditch inferiority complex and beat Italy
IF SCOTLAND are to defeat Italy tomorrow, they must first ensure they do not defeat themselves, according to Alex McLeish. The national manager has seen the confidence of his squad increase as this Euro 2008 qualifying campaign has gone on, but thinks an inferiority complex may still be inhibiting the players from realising their potential. McLeish's team will qualify for the finals if they take all three points at Hampden, and he is determined to ensure they do not underestimate themselves against the world champions. Although accepting that both the Italians and group leaders France are blessed with more finesse than his own players, he is convinced his team's two victories over the French show they can also upset the odds against the Italians. .
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Council to retread revisions to contract preference program
Beaufort County Council members hope that requiring better documentation of county-hired contractors' subcontracting practices will help more taxpayer dollars find their way to small and minority-owned businesses. The proposed changes come in response to claims that some prime contractors doing business with the county often exclude small and minority-owned businesses from their subcontracts. County-hired contractors already are required to solicit and document subcontract bids from small and minority businesses, though there's no system to track changes made after a contract is signed. If the County Council approves the changes to its small and minority-owned business program, prime contractors would have to send monthly reports to the county documenting their spending with all subcontractors during the life of the contract.
Mortgage bankers go back to basics
Mortgage bankers are eagerly going back to basics before Congress makes them. At the annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association, or MBA, the most oft-spoken phrase was “back to basics." No matter what you were doing — walking past a shoeshine stand, staring mutely at your shoes in an elevator or waiting in line for lunch — you heard someone uttering “back to basics." That means the home loan du jour conforms to standards set by mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: It isn't a jumbo (a mortgage for more than $417,000), isn't subprime (for a borrower with iffy credit), and it has a fixed rate. Preferably, the borrower totes a good-size down payment (if buying) or sports serious equity (if refinancing). If the mortgage business is going back to basics, then, by definition, it wandered away from the basics.
Big banks made the same mistakes small investors often do
Big-name investment banks are taking a financial beating this year, leaving many Americans to ask: Just how did all these Wall Street bankers in their $4,500 John Lobb shoes manage to step in you-know-what? The answer is simple. They made the same mistakes as the rest of us, just with more zeros attached to them and bigger consequences for the U.S. economy, if not for their own $625 John Lobb wallets. Those mistakes are why the heads of Merrill Lynch and Citigroup have been ousted in recent weeks, why household names such as Bank of America and Wachovia are announcing billion-dollar losses, and why more trouble is brewing. Individual investors frequently lose money by chasing past returns, deciding on future investments by looking at past performance instead of future market conditions.
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