Recessions are especially hard on small businesses. Few small firms have the resources to stay the course and wait out the bad times. Credit is scarce, and budget cutting difficult. In a small operation, there are not that many places to cut.

Big picture, the Phoenix housing market showed gradual improvement overall through May, but zooming in on the various segments the picture changes, as some are still declining while others are improving — but only slowly.

The Phoenix resale market slowed a bit in May when compared to April, possibly because activity spiked last month as the federal first-time home buyer program came to a close, according to Jay Butler, associate professor of real estate and author of the monthly Realty Studies Report from the W.&n

For government and business, providers and patients, the U.S. health reform legislation promises a new world of costs and care. Most individuals without insurance will be able to get it. Those who have insurance already will probably have to pay more for it.

Last month the world was rocked by the news of a series of workplace suicides at Foxconn Technology in Shenzhen, China.

The Phoenix housing market appears to be stabilizing as preliminary data for April shows a 1 percent year-over-year price increase for the first time in almost three years, according to the ASU-RSI (Repeat Sales Index).

Recently a senior executive at a large financial services firm struggled to answer whether the client's interests come first, reported Dean Robert Mittelstaedt of the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University in his remarks at the convocation on May 13, 2010.

The median price for resale homes in the Phoenix area has been edging up for several months. Does this signal that the market is approaching normalcy?

There's little margin for error when you're in the business of selling electrons. After all, if an electron traveled around the world instead of bouncing around the nucleus of an atom, it would circle the earth some 8.3 times in one second.

A cynic might say that information systems consultants shortchange their clients. They can, for example, promise more than they deliver. Or they can tarry and delay. Or they might ask, on the back end, to bill for "unanticipated" work.