It’s tax time again. As freelancers, April 15th one of four big days we need to pay attention to from a business perspective. Why four? Because unlike our corporate counterparts, freelancers need to pay estimated taxes on a quarterly basis. If you’re only just now getting your freelance tax act together, this article will show you 5 last-minute freelance tax deductions you may not have considered yet.

Disclaimer: These are suggestions based on my three and a half years as a successful freelance writer and web consultant. Please consult a tax professional for your specific tax needs.

Tip #1: Books and Subscriptions

If you work as a writer, designer or other creative professional, all those books and subscriptions you bought to help keep your skills current are tax deductible. These should go on your Schedule C under Other Expenses and itemized in part V.

Tip #2 Mileage For Client Visits

If you work from home but occasionally need to visit clients at their place of business, you can deduct 55 cents per mile in 2009, plus any costs for parking and tolls. Make sure you keep a detailed journal of all business-related mileage plus a record of the overall annual mileage you put on your vehicle.

Tip #3 Shelter Your Profit With A SEP Retirement Plan

A SEP (Simplified Employee Pension) plan is very similar to a traditional IRA, and a great way for freelancers to shelter 20% of schedule C net income up to a maximum of $49,000 in 2009. If you haven’t opened an account yet, you have until April 15th to do so. Once in place, you or your representative will be responsible for directing investments and maximizing contributions.

Tip #4 Deductions For Internet Access and Other Communications

Many home-based workers use a dedicated cable or DSL internet connection for business purposes, while others use a household service that is bundled with household telephone and television services. Whichever you use, make sure to deduct the portion used for business. Don’t forget to include monthly data plans for smart phones or backup networks such as laptop network cards.

Tip #5 Home Office Deduction

If you work from home as a freelancer, you may be able to deduct expenses related to the business use of your home. These expenses can include mortgage interest, insurance, utilities, repairs and depreciation. The home office deduction isn’t just for homeowners – you can take advantage of it even if you rent.

To qualify, make sure you pass these two requirements: 1) You must regularly use part of your home exclusively for conducting business, and 2) you must be able to demonstrate that your home is used as your principal place of business. Most home office deductions are based on the percentage of your home used for business, so you’ll need to figure out the amount of space dedicated to your business. For example, if your home office takes up 250 square feet of a 2500 square foot home, you can deduct 10% of all qualified costs. But be careful with depreciation, as you’ll need to recapture it upon the sale of your home.

Pay Your Taxes, But Don’t Pay More Than You Have To

Deductions can mean the difference between profit or loss in your small business for a given tax year. The IRS knows you’re in business to make money, so if you show a loss over multiple years they will classify your business as a hobby rather than a going concern. Take your deductions honestly, but don’t pay more taxes than you have to.

“I didn’t get into engineering because I don’t like math!” OR “I dropped out of engineering because of math!”  We have heard these remarks hundreds of times.

While parents and mentors guide students to go with what they are passionate about, people who enjoy math are likely to come out winners, going by the current trend.  Math is at the crux of who gets paid.  Math skills earn highest salaries, according to a recent survey.  It was revealed that the top-15 high earning degrees require math skills.

Everyone seems to be running away from math taking the easy way out, but in the end the few that work through their algebra, geometry, trigonometry, complex arithmetic, and differential and integral calculus are those that land the crème de la crème of jobs.

Let’s take a look at a list of the highest paying college degrees, based on a recent survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.  This association tracks college graduates’ and jobs on offer.  This data is collected by surveying 200 college career centers.

The figures given below are starting salaries with a scope of going up far higher with a little experience.

1. Petroleum engineering       - $83,121
2. Chemical engineering        - $64,902
3. Mining engineering            - $64,404
4. Computer engineering        - $61,738
5. Computer science              - $61,407
6. Electrical engineering         - $60,125
7. Mechanical engineering      - $58,766
8. Industrial engineering        - $58,358
9. Systems engineering          - $57,438
10. Engineering technology      - $56,447
11. Actuarial science                – $56,320
12. Aeronautical engineering    – $56,311
13. Agricultural engineering     – $54,352
14. Biomedical engineering      – $54,158
15. Construction management – $53,199

According to this list, engineering majors snag 12 of the 15 top spots.  While in college, math majors may not be considered special in any way, their true value surfaces when out of college and looking for jobs.  They can land themselves top jobs with fat post-grad wallets.

Petroleum engineering is the highest-paying degree with the average starting pay being $83,121.  This is a great time to have a newly mined degree in petroleum engineering.  The reason for this is the growing scarcity of petroleum77.  Graduates with these degrees can get to work finding oil and gas reservoirs, or come up with ways to bring these resources to the surface of the Earth.  The industry needs brightest young minds to reach the deepest places for energy resources.

Other engineering majors that pay high include chemical engineers, mining engineering and computer engineers.  Such graduates are considered valuable assets, because there are so few of them, compared to students from other fields, for example, the liberal-arts.  Employers are willing to pay a premium for candidates with math skills as the demand and supply ratio does not match and everyone wants to hire the best from the few there are.

The survey also revealed that the engineering field makes up about 4% of all college graduates; similarly, it is 4% for computer science and 16% each for history and social science.

However, in the United States, the unfortunate scenario is that a large percentage of high school students continue to drop out of colleges or switch to non-engineering majors – because of math.

In comparison, there are so many social work, English, communications majors around, that they command much smaller paychecks, around $29000 to $35,000. This could be the reason students are getting smarter and choosing fields that pay well.  They are picking majors based on the earning power of a particular field.

This is not to say that each and every student with a technology degree may land a plum job but they certainly do have an advantage over students from other fields.  It is a tech driven world and the demand for engineers is growing, which is not so with other fields, especially so in the current economy where finding jobs is not easy.

Out of the 15 top earning degrees, only three are from the non-engineering fields. Even these fields have had good pays all through the past few years, but these fields need math skills too.

The job market pays based on supply and demand.  The less number of graduates there are, the higher the pay.  In the current day, just choosing a major to graduate in is proving to be a challenge in itself. While smartness lies in choosing a field that has high demand and less supply, you, as a student will certainly have to look into where your interest lies.  All the money in the world cannot compensate for the satisfaction and enjoyment you derive from doing what you love. But, don’t give up on math without trying.

The term “white collar crime,” is not just some crime conducted by people in white-collar jobs; it is a crime of artful lying. White collar criminals use persuasion and deceit to achieve their end.  Not all crime is illegal, a person can be deceitful and unethical while not committing any illegal acts, according to law.

Spinning is the favorite tool of these criminals. Since humans live on hope, they are sold hopes and dreams through lies. It is a common thing for accountants of companies to employ several tricks to dupe auditors, but one trick that was much talked about involves using women.

Sam Antar

As a former CPA and former Chief Financial Officer for Crazy Eddie, Inc.; Sam Antar had become (in)famous in the 1980s for masterminding one of the largest securities frauds of its time, which shaved investors off by hundreds of millions of dollars.  Many lost their life savings, some lost their careers, cost creditors lost hundreds of millions of dollars and overall was responsible for immeasurable suffering of thousands of people, including shareholders, creditors, financial analysts, employees, public accounting firms, Wall Street firms etc.  The fraud hit so many people that Antar was called, “the Darth Vader of Capitalism,” by US Attorney Michael Chertoff.

Compared to today’s frauds which go into billions of dollars, the fraud at Crazy Eddie may seem small; however, it was much more outrageous than most frauds committed during those years because it went on for 18 long years (1969-1987), and it used multiple methods.

Antar used several complicated accounting tricks, but one of the simple methods used by him was to pair hot female employees with young male auditors who were in their 20s. He later said, “These auditors from the Big Four accounting firms are usually single kids just a few years out of school. What do kids in their 20s think about all the time? Sex. In effect, I was a fraudster, matchmaker and pimp.”

In Sam Antar’s words, “We committed crime simply because we could. Criminologists like to analyze white collar crime in terms of the ‘fraud triangle’ — incentive, opportunity, and rationalization. We had no rationalization. Simply put the incentive and opportunity was there, but the morality and excuses were lacking. We never had one conversation about morality during the 18 years that the fraud was going on.”

Eventually Antar took full responsibility for his actions and to avoid jail time, worked with the U.S. government, and now has taken up a position as advisor to the government agencies and other businesses on avoiding accounting fraud.

Accounting Scams of Today

The current financial crisis has seen several such accounting scams, including the Bernard Madoff scheme, which is a multi-billion dollar fraud.  But Bernie Madoff may just be the tip of the iceberg with the unraveling of several such frauds.

Accounting firm, KPMG, another of the Big Four accounting firms (with Ernst, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu being the other three), had its Executive siphon as much as $900,000 of the company funds for personal use.  Ernst & Young had one of its Hong Kong executives detained by police because of evidence of false audit documents came to fore in a court case.

According to a former FBI accounting fraud investigator, “There’s always an uptick in fraud activity when the economy goes down.  It’s like the ocean going out and you can see everything that was hidden under water.”

The Need for Accounting Education

Antar feels that reform has to start with accounting education. He says, “The kids who are out on the front lines of auditing, they know nothing about people like me.  It is easy to fool them.” He wrote in one of his posts, “Accounting students must take separate in-depth courses in criminology, securities laws, internal controls, insurance/risk management, and other ‘real experience’ areas they require for the fieldwork they will encounter on audits.”

Key Elements In Fraud Cases

In spite of there being millions of ways to commit fraud, the key elements in most employee fraud cases are found to be incentive, opportunity and rationalization.

Incentive – A deeper look into the whole thing reveals that while greed is the main incentive, there are other strong incentives, such as gambling debts, drug usage, infidelity or just ego. There have been cases where fraud was conducted just to satisfy the psyche, and not for monetary reasons.

Opportunity – This is when an employee feels that there is a lesser chance of being caught and this happens in private companies where there are less internal checks and controls rather than in public limited companies.

Rationalization – The white-collar criminal consoles their conscience and rationalizes his or her behavior, usually when there exist internal problems such as downsizing or overworking.

Antar says accounting fraud is all about “distraction,” like diverting the auditors’ attention with attractive young females.  He says, “It’s like David Copperfield, it’s an illusion … I want you to look over here so you don’t see what I’m doing over there.”

Another tactic is “delay.” If the auditors have five weeks to do the audit, the fraudster’s goal would be to leave 80% of the work till the last minute, so that the auditors feel rushed.

According to another white-collar fraudster, accounting fraud means understanding the difference between truth and accuracy.  He said that every financial statement he has ever created was completely accurate – but not truthful.

One of the best ways of detecting fraud is said to be by asking questions and if someone gets offended in the process when asked a question about verification, then something is wrong there. Honest people do not get offended when asked to verify something official.The one good thing that came out of the financial crisis was that several people were being trained to detect this fraud. Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, a US based company, trains accountants in fraud investigation, and 10,000 of its 47.000 members joined last year alone. Could this be the beginning to the end of white-collar fraud?

It’s no secret that the U.S. economy is in bad shape. The housing bubble burst. The stock market crashed. People lost a lot of their retirement savings. The federal government has been bailing out big industries like banks and auto makers. State governments are feuding over state budgets. People are losing their jobs with some of the highest unemployment rates young professionals have seen in their lifetime.

Who’s to blame for the recession we’re in? It’s a hotly debated topic, and there really is no single right answer. The economic recession didn’t stem from a single group or a lone action. But to help you understand how the current economic situation came about, let’s look at three groups that had a hand in it:

The Federal Reserve – For years, the Fed kept interest rates low. Low interest rates help to grow the economy–they make borrowing (and therefore spending based on that borrowing) more attractive to consumers. Low interest rates also benefit banks making loans, because it’s easier for them to attract new customers as they advertise that low interest. The problem is that low interest leading to growth is good when the economy needs a boost; not so much when it’s already booming. That can lead to rapid inflation like we saw for years with the skyrocketing housing prices around the country.

Banks - You would probably be hard-pressed to find any American who didn’t hold banks at least partly to blame for the credit crunch-turned-recession. The fact that their tax dollars then went to bail out the banks with little oversight certainly didn’t help matters. And they would be right. Banks played a major role in the current crisis–a role stemming from greed.

To explain it as simply as possible, banks knowingly loaned money (through mortgages for over-inflated housing prices) to people who couldn’t afford it. They did it for the sole purpose of earning more money–they can charge much higher interest on sub-prime loans to people at the most risk of not paying them back.

Why did banks take that risk? Well frankly, they didn’t consider it to be that much of a risk at the time. They had at least two back-up plans:

1. They had insurance (through companies like AIG) to help cover their potential losses.
2. The housing market at the time showed no signs of slowing down. Therefore, if they foreclosed on a home, they had a good chance of selling it back on the market for an even higher price.

Everyone knows that markets fluctuate through inflation and recession, and that every bubble will eventually burst. The problem with banks is that they just didn’t care. They wanted to make as much money as possible in the short-term with little regard for the long-term.

Credit: Steve Woods

Consumers – Yes, even consumers just like you played a role in the current economic recession. Let’s be honest about it. If people lived within their means without a sense of entitlement to more, they wouldn’t have racked up debt they couldn’t afford.

In their defense, the average consumer is somewhat easily sucked in by promises of low interest and great deals (if the marketing messages and sales pitches didn’t work on many, people wouldn’t use them across most sales-oriented industries). Banks basically promised high-risk consumers something they never thought they’d have–a house of their own. People who otherwise would have stayed in their smaller homes or continued to rent strove for something better, but something they ultimately knew they couldn’t afford.

No single person, or even a single industry, led to the collapse of the housing market or our overall economic recession. While it may be easy to place blame on whoever the media or government is targeting on any given day, when you really think about the situation critically you see that there’s plenty of blame to go around. While you can’t say any one person caused the recession, you can be sure of one thing–the economy will rebound. It may not happen as quickly as we’d like, but it always does. Following every boom there comes a bust. And after every bust we rebuild.

The rising unemployment woes are giving way to some cheer, thanks to the retail giant, considered to be an unscathed entity in the current financial turmoil – Wal-Mart Stores.

At a time when the major retailers, including Costco, Target and Best Buy are struggling to beat the recession and the retail industry seeing extensive layoffs, Wal-Mart is at the other end of the spectrum, all by itself.

The news that Wal-Mart has decided to recruit people for about 150 new or expanded stores’ in the United States comes as a pleasant surprise. The company will be creating more than 22,000 jobs for Americans during this period of economic hardship. Although, this figure is less than that of 2008, it is extremely impressive in the current scenario that leaves thousands of people jobless each month.

The economic crisis in the US has seen thousands of people lose their jobs, as employers started trimming their workforce in the past year, as a way of cutting costs. The official unemployment rate is said to be above 9 percent.

According to Eduardo Castro-Wright, vice chairman of Wal-Mart, “Job creation is just one way in which we’re working hard every day to help people across this country live better.”

Wal-Mart would be taking employees for different positions; including store management, human resource managers, pharmacists, customer service associates, sales associates and cashiers. The company is planning on generating jobs in various states; 1,300 jobs in Arizona, 1,300 in Florida, 1,200 in New Jersey, 1,000 in California, 1,500 in Michigan, 1,200 in Utah, 1,000 in South Carolina, 1,100 in Virginia and others.

In spite of being considered as one of the best employers, Wal-Mart has been facing its share of criticism, mainly for the low pay and benefits as well as for preventing its employees from forming unions. This may be true to some extent, but the fact also remains that Wal-Mart is one of the very few large companies in the U.S. that contributes to improving national employment.

Now, with the announcement made to provide thousands of jobs, Wal-Mart has also improved its employee benefits, in the form of health insurance coverage, which is available at cheap rates for both full-time as well as part-time employees; a 401(k) plan, profit sharing bonuses annually, stock purchases and discounts for its workers making in-store purchases. It was only recently that this employer has given out more than $2 billion in bonuses, payments into the 401(k) plan and profit sharing. There are few other companies that put money in to the 401(k) plan without the employee also putting in money.

Satisfied employees who work at Wal-Mart talk about several other benefits they enjoy, such as getting cancer, dental, short and long-term disability and others. They also say they are guaranteed a 40 cent an hour raise every year just for coming to work and doing their job perfectly. They get discounts on child care, gyms, car purchases, cell phones, travel etc.

Yes, there is a section of society who is unhappy with the way Wal-Mart looks after its employees. There are several people who love to hate Wal-Mart. But the fact remains that a job is better than no job. Some pay is certainly far better than stretching hands in front of the government. A hiring employer is better than one laying off. There will always be detractors but as long as the basic essentials are provided at affordable rates for families who cannot afford to spend much in the current situation and thousands of unemployed are being given jobs, then there can be nothing to complain about.

Regardless of everything else, a majority of Americans agree that Wal-Mart is a trendsetter and this is good news for the American economy. This retailer will provide thousands of Americans a career again and help them get back on their feet. These positions could be filled by housewives looking to earn extra income for the family or they can even be taken up by students looking for help to make their way through college.

Here are the ten most powerful brands in the world brought out by Millward Brown research company, which takes into account the measure of brand equity combined with the performance of the company. According to the report, the top five remained the same, with all the five companies showing an increase in brand valuation between 15% and 30% when compared to 2007, but there are several changes with the rest of the list.

Google

As expected, Google tops the list. Google is the most powerful brand in the world with a current brand value estimated at $86 billion, and it has achieved all this in just ten short years. This global search engine giant had its beginnings in 1996 and was just a research project started by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two Stanford University Ph.D. students. The incorporation of Google Inc. took place on September 7, 1998 at their friend’s garage in California. The company experienced stupendous growth in a short time and went public on Aug 19, 2004. Google’s rank is based on the equity value and the fantastic financial performance.

General Electronics (GE)

GE is a giant US multinational engaged in technology and services industries. It has its headquarters in Fairfield, Connecticut. It is now the second largest company in the world, in terms of market capitalization. The brand value of this company is estimated at $71.4 billion.

Microsoft Corporation

Microsoft is the world’s largest software company and the third most powerful brand on the globe, with annual revenue of $44.28 billion and a brand value of $70.89 billion. This veteran software company was started by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in 1975 and has its headquarters in Washington. The company went public in 1986. It manufactures computer technology for business and personal computing, offering a wide range of software products.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola makes carbonated soft drinks and has a brand value of $58.2 billion. It was started in 1885 as a patent medicine by Dr. John Stith Pemberton in Covington, Georgia. It was named Pemberton’s French Wine Coca back then.

China Mobile

This is the world’s largest mobile phone operator with the maximum number of subscribers (about 296 million). Vodafone owns 3.3 percent of the China Mobile. This company has a 65% share of the most competitive Chinese mobile market and commands a brand value of $57.2 billion.

IBM

IBM once had the distinction of being the largest computer company in the world but Hewlett-Packard took that spot in 2006. However, IBM is currently the largest information technology employer in the entire world. Its brand value is reported to have shown a 65% increase to $55.3 billion and this moved the company up to sixth place.

Apple

Apple Computer Company was formed in the year 1977 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniac and Ronald Wayne. It was initially called Apple Computer Inc. but then the world “computer” was dropped from its name in keeping with the expansion from a computer maker to consumer electronics and software. The well-known Apple creations and designs are Mac laptop and desktop computers, iPod and iTunes, the OS X operating system and the very popular iPhone. The company has seen a 123% rise in its brand value because of these innovative products. Fortune magazine called Apple the most admired company in the United States and it has a brand value of $55 billion.

McDonalds

The fast food giant McDonald’s brand value grew more than 49% and is currently estimated to be at $49.49 billion. This restaurant chain is one of the most recognizable on earth being the most popular food outlet in the world. It had the most basic beginnings when Dick and Mac McDonald created the brand. But the story goes that much of the success is owed to a salesman of a milk-shake maker, Ray Croc, who made a trip to California to check out McDonald’s hamburger stand, only to enter into a well-known business relationship with the McDonald brothers.

Nokia

Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational company with its headquarters in Keilaniemi, Espoo. This communications company is focused on wired and wireless telecommunications. It is the world’s largest manufacturer of mobile telephones and employs thousands of people worldwide. It has achieved its goal of connecting the world and has a brand value of $43.9 billion.

Marlboro

Marlboro had its share of problems initially and reaped rewards after the introduction of a new cowboy image for the brand. With this change, sales shot up by 5000 percent with an estimated brand value of $39.2 billion, which is an increase in value by 2 percent from last year.

It is interesting to note that all these powerful brands had humble beginnings but soon reached the top with their imaginative and innovative approaches to business, customer satisfaction and to achieving their goals.

The US government, as part of its stimulus plan to revive the depression in the US economy, recently decided on including an amendment that imposes a ban on firms receiving government bailouts, from hiring workers from other countries. Microsoft has recently been asked to remove foreign workers that are employed under the H-1B Visa program, resulting in the software giant announcing that 5,000 jobs will be cut in the next six months; including 1,400 immediately.

H-1B visas are offered by the US government to enable international students and highly skilled international workers, from all over the world, or who are already living in the USA, the opportunity to live and work in America legally.

From the beginning, there has been criticism from various quarters, over the role of the H-1B program in replacing US workers. There were several instances of US staff being replaced with H-1B workers. The ploy employers used is to hire these H-1B replacements from contract job shops. This way the companies could claim that they had not applied for H-1B visas, making it possible for them to legally replace their US staff.

Another complaint was that US Employers hired H-1B workers because they pay significantly less than they would have to for US workers. This cheap labor causes depression in the overall wage structure.

Currently, 65,000 H-1B visas are granted by the US annually to Hi-technology workers from countries like China, India and Philippines.

The US government states that they are not against the H-1B program, but it has to be used in the actual spirit of why it was started in the first place – to have alternatives for specialized workers when there is no availability in the US. It was also clarified that since the 900 billion dollars for the stimulus plan is being paid by the American taxpayer, it is only fair that American workers are hired.

This decision for foreign countries could mean hundreds of thousands of foreign students studying in the US universities will not get employment and millions will be made jobless.

The US government is also planning on controlling outsourcing. American firms that move their jobs to other countries will not be eligible for any tax breaks. Obama, in his address said, “We will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas.”

This will affect more than 1,000 American firms that have over the years moved their jobs outside the country. The government is doing away with a particular provision of the tax code where US companies pay lower taxes for profits earned from foreign countries. There has been opposition for this tax code for a long time, as it was seen as an encouragement for companies to send their jobs abroad, when they rightfully belong to the American workers. The government’s aim through this move is to make outsourcing unattractive to companies in the US.

However, many believe that tax breaks when compared to savings through outsourcing do not stand a chance. While the idea of tax breaks would certainly appeal to the US businesses, it would require a huge tax break to change the established trend of global outsourcing. It would be highly unlikely for companies involved in significant outsourcing to take their businesses, and the related infrastructure and human-resource costs back onshore. So, the impact of this move may be very little.

People who oppose this move say that this move will only hurt the US as outsourcing makes a lot of sense; both economic and logical. It is left to be seen what actually happens. However, with Obama focusing on the revival of the US economy, this is the kind of positive reaction that Americans expect from their new President.

Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

Even in the business world, what goes up sometimes comes down, and if the company is big, the sound of the fall is louder and clearer. Chapter 11 bankruptcies in the United States have been many. Chapter 11 allows a company to reorganize by allowing the debtor to keep a part or all of their property, as well as allows the company to pay off creditors with future earnings.

Washington Mutual – September 26, 2008

The present financial crisis has hit the US harder than Hurricane Katrina, and WaMu bankruptcy only reiterates this. US reeled under the news of the biggest bank failure in its history, as federal regulators seized the largest American savings and loan institution, Washington Mutual (WaMu), which came to symbolize the excesses of the mortgage boom. Regulators brokered an emergency sale of the assets to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 bn. As expected, global markets plunged. WaMu’s assets were $307 bn and it was also the sixth largest US bank, behind Bank of America. With this acquisition, JPMorgan will now have about $900 bn in deposits.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. – September 15, 2008

A press release on September 15, 2008 by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LBHI), the 158-year-old U.S. investment bank, altered the American financial landscape. The company announced its intent to file for bankruptcy. This is the largest bankruptcy in the history of the United States with $638 billion in assets listed and the largest failure of an investment bank. The bank has been undermined by bad debts and shares tumbled 94% this year, before it was delisted on September 17, 2008. The deal for Barclays Plc to acquire the main business of Lehman has been approved. Barclays would also absorb $47.4 billion in securities and $45.5 billion in trading liabilities.

Refco Inc. – October 17, 2005

Refco Inc. filing was then one of the major bankruptcies in the United States. New York-based Refco was a diversified financial services organization that was primarily a commodities and futures broker, with operations in 14 countries. Founded in 1969, this firm was the largest broker on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, with more than $4 billion in customer accounts. The firm’s collapse came about ten weeks after it sold shares for the first time to the public. The company was under investigation for hiding a $430 million debt and the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman; Phillip Bennett pleaded guilty of fraud and sentenced to 16 years.

Delta Airlines Inc. – September 14, 2005

This United States airline is based in Atlanta, Georgia and operates extensive international and domestic flights. The company has been facing financial difficulties for a long time and ever since 2004, tried to stave off bankruptcy by restructuring the company with job cuts and expansion plans. However, in September 2005, it filed for bankruptcy for the first time in its 76-year history. The company cited high jet fuel prices and high labor costs as the two main factors. Delta was in $20.5 billion debt at the time of filing. On April 30, 2007, the airlines emerged from bankruptcy protection as an independent carrier.

Conseco Inc. – December 18, 2002

This is an epic case of a stock-slide leading to bankruptcy and then an amazing recovery. Conseco Inc., an insurance, investment and lending company in Carmel, files for bankruptcy. But it did so after reaching a pact with major creditors to restructure its debt. With the bankruptcy Judge approving a plan cutting the company’s debt from $7 billion to $1.4 billion, the company emerged from being the third-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history and paved the path to financial recovery. Conseco Inc. was once a high-flying company that rose to Fortune 500 status through several insurance acquisitions. Too many buyouts sent the company into a severe tailspin.

UAL Corp. – December 9, 2002

UAL Corporation is an airline holding company based in Illinois. It was incorporated as a Delaware corporation. To keep up with the deregulated airline market place, the company tried diversifying its businesses in 1982, in order to improve its financial situation. In spite of its efforts, like other airlines, it struggled with rising fuel prices and shaky finance, and filed for bankruptcy. However, it emerged from bankruptcy in 2006.

WorldCom Inc. – July 21, 2002

WorldCom bankruptcy came about a month after the company revealed that it had wrongly accounted almost $4 billion in expenses. It was the largest US-based telecommunications company with more than 20 million customers and 80,000 employees. At that time, WorldCom was one of the world’s most valuable companies, valued over $100 billion, and the bankruptcy was considered the largest in United States history. WorldCom also came to be famous as one of the biggest instances of a corporate feeding its greed through accounting and financial manipulations.

Global Crossing Ltd. – January 28, 2002

The result of this bankruptcy was said to be the loss of 9000 jobs. Global Crossing is an American telecommunications company based in Bermuda, providing computer networking services throughout the world. In its filing, the company listed its total assets of $22.4 billion and debts amounting to $12.4 billion. It has since recovered from bankruptcy and succeeded in turning around its performance.

Enron Corp. – February 12, 2001

Enron Corp. bankruptcy was the biggest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history, and left investors burned and employees with lost retirement savings. It was an energy company in the United States, formed in 1985, in Houston, Texas. It grew to be the nation’s seventh-largest company in terms of revenue by buying electricity from generators and selling it to customers. Wall Street also called it the technological innovator. The reason for its downfall is said to be the complex partnerships to keep about $500 million in debt off of the books in order to mask its financial problems, to continue to get credit and cash for running its trading business. Once the loss of $638 million was disclosed, the Securities and Exchange Commission opened an investigation. Enron then filed for protection from creditors.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. – April 6, 2001

This company, with its headquarters in San Francisco, was founded in 1905 and supplies natural gas and electricity to most areas of Northern California. This company did well initially and had gas power, several hydroelectric and steam plants. Under the electricity market deregulation, the company sold off its natural gas power plants and retained the hydroelectric plants. But with the selling of the gas power plants, the generating capacity went down and it had to buy power from other energy generators. The company had to buy at fluctuating prices and sell at fixed prices, which led to losses and eventually bankruptcy. In 2004, the company emerged from bankruptcy and established itself extremely well and was named one of the most profitable companies for 2005 on the Fortune 500 list.

Bankruptcy cases are always filed in the United States Bankruptcy Court and are governed by federal law. State laws are also applied when it comes to property rights. There have been several other notable bankruptcies in American history, such as Texaco, Inc. and Financial Corp. of America. While some companies survived a bankruptcy and came out strong, others faded into oblivion.

The faltering economy and tight credit have forced many U.S. companies to lay off staff. Families furiously job hunt and it does not take long to see consequences pile up, leading to a situation where any extra money is more than welcome.

Cornered without a job and young kids to look after, many women are turning to unorthodox means of overcoming their economic problems. Donating their eggs to fertility clinics!

An egg (ova) is the beginning of life and women donate these eggs to fertility clinics where they are used for purposes of assisted reproduction, which involves in vitro fertilization.

Says 29-year-old Susan, “I have no other go right now, with one small kid, rent to pay and rising gas prices, what I’m earning is not enough. I need more money just to survive.”

This survival instinct makes women look for alternative income streams, even extreme ones such as egg donation.

Susan is just one among thousands of women earning money this way. Fertility clinics report an enormous increase in egg donations. They are receiving an increased number of calls inquiring about egg donation when compared to last year.

According to a doctor at a fertility clinic, “I know why they call us, for that financial remuneration. They don’t like to openly admit that, but some people are saying that.”

The monetary compensation for an egg donor is good; although, not every fertility clinic pays well. A donor can earn anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 and in rare cases, a few donors even reported to have earned up to $20,000.

Yes, there are women who donate to help other women but the financial lure is getting more obvious with the slump in the US economy.

Screening tests will be done including a basic physical exam. Most fertility clinics also require a visit with a counselor, because donating the eggs can also prove to be traumatic and needs counseling. A genetic questionnaire will have to be filled up and if everything is found to be okay, the next step is to produce fertile and healthy eggs for donation. The donor will have to undergo a powerful hormonal therapy to stimulate the ovaries and produce multiple eggs. Over a period of a few weeks, the doctor will continue to monitor the ovaries with vaginal ultrasounds and blood tests. Finally, the eggs will be removed through a non-surgical procedure.

Experts say that women who donate eggs for monetary gains are sacrificing a whole lot more than just their eggs. Egg donation carries a great deal of risk, in the form of bleeding from the egg or ova recovery procedure, bloating, abdominal pain, weight gain, and reaction to the hormones. The most dangerous problems are liver failure and ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, where ovaries become enlarged and this is a life-threatening condition.

Although, the long-term effects of egg donation are not very clear to doctors, they say there is some evidence of early menopause and increased risk of ovarian cancer.

If you think it is only the fertility clinics who buy eggs, there is the controversial plan of buying eggs for research. These eggs are used to bolster the limited supplies by fertility clinics to scientists who use these eggs to create cloned embryos for stem cells harvesting.

This proposal has outraged many groups of people who say that these hormonal treatments are very risky for women. They believe that medical ethics are being questioned and that the risks involved in egg donation are too many to be allowed for the sake of research.

Research also shows that many women, when asked the reasons for selling their eggs, have reported of doing so to pay off credit card bills.

It is pitiable that women have to subject themselves to such risks for some extra income. It shows the burden they are faced with, bringing up their children and supporting their families. Their safety takes a back seat.

With U.S. economy getting tight, it pushes these women to put themselves last. But can any amount of monetary compensation justify the risk and probability of life-long suffering? There are several debates on payments for such donations, with some states considering non-payment as a way of restricting women from taking these risks for monetary compensation.

There has been and continues to be a lot of debate over outsourcing and while supporters say that it is good for the US economy, detractors argue otherwise.

Proponents insist that outsourcing will save money for companies, will open up opportunities and will lead to more Americans holding jobs at a higher level. They feel this practice offers substantial gains to the US economy with cheaper imports and stronger exports.

Opponents who are against outsourcing argue that hiring people from foreign countries effects the US economy in a negative way and strips hundreds to thousands of Americans of jobs, especially the skilled and semi-skilled workers. They argue that the loss of competitive advantage to other countries is permanent and the American worker and economy lose forever.

All the points seem valid in their place. It has to be agreed that outsourcing does lead to loss of jobs in the US, especially those that have minimal qualifications. On the other hand, the loss of jobs is not only limited to people with minimal skills, but also jobs of skilled labor that are being outsourced to other countries.

Americans who are in poverty and willing to do minimally skilled jobs find it harder to find jobs, and poverty does nothing for the US economy, other than reduce consumer spending and tax revenues.

There is also data that provides evidence that jobs are lost and lost forever, especially for those who belong to the low end of the food chain. A suitable example would be the manufacturing job losses examined by the University of California-Santa Cruz. In their study, they found that in a period of 20 years, in the labor intensive industries such as leather, textiles, footwear and clothing, about one-third displaced workers could not find reemployment within a three-year period, and even those people who did, about half of them experienced a substantial cutting in their wages by at least 15 percent.

The middle class American is not far behind as even his job is being outsourced. This level of outsourcing involves the computer and technology industry.

How does this affect the economy?

Outsourcing in these areas does not leave enough jobs for the Americans. A jobless person cannot purchase homes and cannot spend money. When people do not buy, people that produce things do not make money too.

Another harmful effect of outsourcing is loss of income by local, state and federal governments. There are lesser payroll tax receipts and lesser contributions to Social Security and Medicare. Then there are the outgoing payments for unemployment benefits. Sales and other tax revenue suffers too.

Outsourcing is nothing new. In the early 19th century, Britain imported cotton from the United States, then spun the cotton and weaved the fabric in England and then exported the finished textiles abroad, mostly to India, then its colony. UK kept about 80 percent of the monetary gains from these exports, adding to its national wealth. After some time, the mill owners came up with what a “so-called” smart idea – that they could grow the cotton in India and shift the textile machines there too, which will enable them to save money on wages and shipping expenses. This felt like a great idea, but then the monetary gains being repatriated to England was only 15 to 20 percent of the total value of the textiles in the form of profit.

Now 80 percent of the created monetary gains remained in India, which was a great loss to the British economy that resulted in unemployment as well as social unrest.

United States also faces similar problems. By outsourcing, not only skilled labor is lost but monetary gains too. What must be understood is that service jobs do not pay as much as manufacturing jobs do nor do they create national wealth. On the other hand, they absorb wealth. Manufacturing jobs have by far the greatest impact on national economy, in terms of losing skills and the time taken to retrain such a force. Another thing is the loss of industrial infrastructure with the closing down of U.S. factories and then exporting of capital abroad. This money is then not available for U.S. economic expansion.

Service jobs on the other hand do not need so much training and very little capital investment. U.S. companies derive savings in wages and more importantly in health benefit payments by outsourcing these jobs. Of course there is no doubt there is loss of national wealth by sending money abroad to pay their wages and salaries.

An argument pro outsourcing can say that short-term job losses brought on by outsourcing are mitigated in the long run by gains to American workers from consumption growth and free trade in low-wage countries.

Certain professional roles like retail, personal care, catering cannot be outsourced because of inherent personal interactions between the consumer and the deliverer. Because the service sector encompasses about 70 to 80 percent of the U.S. economy, outsourcing can impact only a sliver of U.S. employment.

According to research data, more than 400,000 U.S. jobs had moved abroad and the total is estimated to hit 3.3 million by 2015. That’s just above 200,000 jobs lost every year to global outsourcing, a trivial problem in the context of the normal churn of the U.S. economy, where about 7 million jobs were gained and lost in each of the previous four quarters.

Many government agencies outsource a part of their work in order to save millions of dollars, which helps US economy and helps federal spending. The theory here is that paying people less for work means that these companies have the ability to produce things cheaper and will be able to transfer these savings to their consumers back in the U.S. Cheaper rates means more consumers buying the products. One example is that of the early 90s, when the price of personal computers dipped because the U.S. chip manufacturers outsourced this offshore and thus reduced chip prices anywhere between 10 to 30 percent.

So who actually benefits from outsourcing?

U.S. investors, shareholders and American consumers derive the benefits of outsourcing, although sometimes at the expense of American wage earners.

Another supportive argument is that outsourcing jobs to other less developed countries helps those countries economically and helps increase trade for US products. It also gives those countries the ability to pay back their debts to the U.S.

Experts believe that the greatest saving potential comes from outsourcing simple assembly work or services. Since there is not much capital involved, except for training people in other countries and payments for displaced U.S. workers, there is no other major investment.

Outsourcing is a difficult issue to tackle and everyone, the supporters and detractors agree on one thing – that outsourcing cannot be eliminated completely. Some people feel companies that outsource should be taxed for outsourcing and those that do not should be rewarded.