hpq

If you're hearing whispers that the dollar might be creeping up in value and that this might put downward pressure on commodities, then let me tell you: Don't you believe it. Although some upward adjustment might occur for the dollar, it's my opinion that this won't, by itself, reduce commodity prices. To think so is just too limited an economic scope.

First, we can believe that the platform of oil prices is going to hold solid. I do think that the price of oil will eventually recede, but it's not going to be soon and it's not going to be much. It'll be a couple years before we see any real decline, if we ever do. That reality gives us a good launching point for some speculation. Alternative fueling for motor vehicles will keep upward pressure on oils other than petroleum. Consider commodity soybeans, soybean oil, and palm oil as possible hedges. There's also potential in propane, and to me, natural gas is still artificially under valued. You might not think there's a relationship between these commodities and petroleum. Believe me though, there is. Also, like the high volume traded commodities, other vegetable oils, such as sunflower oil and cottonseed oil, are worth looking into.

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

Oshkosh B'Gosh, the well-known children's clothing manufacturer, was founded in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 1895. As are most of the cities in Wisconsin's Fox River Valley, Oshkosh was incubated first on the fur trade in the early 1800s, then was built upon the railroads and the lumber industry, and finally, it rests on light and medium manufacturing and the pursuit of higher education and culture. Currently, Oshkosh has a population in the neighborhood of 65,000, and it covers more than 24 square miles.

Oshkosh B'Gosh is probably the best-known namesake of its home city. Though the company's manufacturing operations have been moved away, it still maintains its corporate headquarters there. The company began as a manufacturer of sturdy clothes for working people, most especially its trademark overalls. It wasn't until the mail-order company Miles Kimball featured Oshkosh B'Gosh overalls in one of its catalogs that the company moved its products into retail stores. At that time, Oshkosh B'Gosh expanded its children's clothing line, which would eventually become the company's mainstay.

Two other companies have carried the name Oshkosh to great heights in the business world. One is Oshkosh Corporation (NYSE: OSK), formerly called Oshkosh Truck, and the other was Chief Oshkosh Beer. However, perhaps the most renowned feature of Oshkosh is the yearly Experimental Aircraft Association Airventure air show (EAA). During that annual event, Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, becomes the busiest airport in the world.

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

How long does it take to manufacture 100 billion crayons? Well, if you're the developer and foremost manufacturer of the colorful little cylindrical beauties, it takes exactly 93 years, as evidenced by the successful history of Crayola Crayons.

Easton Pennsylvania, sitting at the confluence of the Delaware and Lehigh rivers, has served as the backdrop for the entire glorious history of Crayola Crayons. A small town, covering just under five square miles, and home to fewer than 30,000 inhabitants, what Easton might lack in girth, it certainly makes up for with history. The partnership of cousins Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith, creators of the Crayola Crayon, probably were located in Easton to take advantage of the town's former status as a railroad hub, its access to raw materials, and its proximity to both Philadelphia and New York City.

While the partnership of Binney & Smith has grown and flourished, the city of Easton Pennsylvania has had its difficulties. While the Crayola empire has continually sought to enhance its offering and involvement in the creative arts by expanding, experimenting and inviting innovation, Easton has sought to remain true to, and thoughtful of its heritage. However, renewed stimulation of Easton's economy over the past decade has been focused on making the city an attractive getaway destination for visitors. This effort involves a deeply thoughtful utilization of the city's cultural, historical, and natural resources, which are being blended and deployed with strategic local focus.

Spurred by a near epidemic occurrence of brain-degenerating conditions as we age, people of all ages and backgrounds are stepping up their personal efforts to improve and maintain their brain health. According to a story in USA Today, sales of brain fitness software reached nearly $230 million in 2007. USA Today stated, "SharpBrains, (a market research firm) estimates the brain fitness software market will reach $2 billion in 2015 in the United States."

Prudent investment strategy might include a speculative foray into this popular and growing field. In light of this, you may wish to pay heed to blogger Steven Mallas, and read his take on Activision (NASDAQ: ATVI).

First on the list for brain maintenance is physical activity, which probably accounts for the outstanding sales of Nintendo's Wii Fit. from Nintendo Ltd. (OTC: NTDOY). Active lives promote healthy blood circulation, which helps to feed steady amounts of oxygen to the hungry brain. Good hard work, cardiovascular exercise and even regular sexual activity can all help to keep your heart pumping adequate levels of oxygen into your brain.

This post is part of our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered.

"It is a place where simple things, done well, will never be out of style." Those are the words of Walter Kohler, Sr., as he envisioned the creation of one of the first planned communities to be built in this country. In 1913, Kohler Company initiated its plan to move its manufacturing operations from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, onto a tract of countryside farmland it purchased for its new industrial complex.

The village of Kohler slowly took shape around the company's industrial complex. It featured all the necessities for fulfilling community life. Single and two family homes were constructed, utilizing lumber from the Paine Lumber Company in Oshkosh. The village included a proper school, a village hall and dormitory housing for unmarried workers. During this time, Kohler Company established itself as a world leading supplier of plumbing products.

When Walter Kohler, Sr., was shaping the vision for his company town, he visited garden cities across the globe and incorporated the desire for natural beauty into his plans. Working with the Olmsted Brothers, designers of New York's Central Park, Kohler made a 50-year plan to provide gardens and green spaces within the new company village. Kohler's second 50-year plan for green space was then established under the guidance of The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. The result of this careful oversight has been the creation of a village with deep respect for its natural surroundings and which is laced with gardens of beauty.

This post opens our Big Company, Small Town series, featuring large companies and the small towns in which they are headquartered. Watch for more Big Company, Small Town posts coming soon.

All across this great country of ours, small cities, towns, and villages have been built in the shadows of major companies that supply work for their local populations. It can be a wonderful situation that cultivates a special kind of community and a deep-seated local pride. However, it can also be a recipe for civic disaster, if the major supplier of a wage base in a locality goes out of business or leaves town. Such was the near disastrous fate of Park Falls, Wisconsin, not so long ago.

The city of Park Falls, which is Wisconsin's most geographically isolated city, was built around its paper mill. At its height, the mill helped to bring the population of the city to nearly 4,000 inhabitants. However, in 2006 the paper mill, which was operating at reduced capacity under ownership from out of state, was shut down almost without any prior notice. The result was immediate and deeply wrenching turmoil. Not only had the paper mill workers lost an excellent source of income, but the collateral damage was jarringly significant also. Loggers had no local market for their pulp wood. Dozens of family-feeding log trucks were idled. Private contractors who did various types of work for the mill were left with thousands of dollars worth of unpaid invoices. Local vendors, retailers, and support businesses almost immediately went slack.

The Internal Revenue Service is reporting that it still has about 5.2 million tax rebate checks which it cannot send out because the people who should get them have not filed a 2007 tax return. According to a report in USA Today, these citizens only need to fill in a few lines on IRS form 1040A, in order to get their money. The IRS says that veterans and retirees, those who could use the money the most, make up the major portion of the population that has not yet received it's rebates. The IRS expects to issue 124 million rebate payments by year's end. So far, about 76.5 million of those payments have gone out.

An interesting post written by Joseph Lazzaro on Tuesday indicated that many economists think that the economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, known as the BRIC economies, will supplant the United States and European nations in terms of world power and economic strength. While this may be true to a degree, I have a message for those emerging economic powerhouses: they had better be careful.

Dear Brazil, you have resources you can't yet even contemplate. However, you have been whacking through your opportunities at a very rapid pace. You have no idea about what political powers you should align yourself with. Can you reign in your pirates, your poachers, your drug lords? Can you effectively protect even just one of your trees?

Dear Russia, you scare me. The world knows more of your organized crime than it knows of your present government. You move more capital through your black markets than through your own ports. You turn your backs on true enterprise in exchange for quick profit.

As if this country doesn't have enough to worry about, now Donald Trump says that oil companies such as BP (NYSE: BP), Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX), and Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE: XOM) are ripping us off. According to a story from CNBC, Trump is calling for punitive sanctions against oil companies, citing their historic profit levels.

While calling himself a "great capitalist" and stating that it is against his nature to seek punitive sanctions against companies that are reaping big profits, Donald Trump indicated that it is his opinion that oil companies have been ripping off the world for quite some time. In a statement aired by CNBC, Trump said, "I can see doing something against the oil companies."

Associated Press has made it quite clear that the organization intends to put the hammer down on bloggers who quote that news service. As one who routinely quotes and links to Associated Press content, all I can say is, "Yeah, good luck with that."

At first, AP took a hard-line stance, demanding that one particular blog should remove seven pieces of content which featured quotes from AP articles and stating that bloggers across the internet should curtail the use of AP content. However, when faced with a swift backlash from a cross section of well-known and heavily-read bloggers, the news service took a big step back. The New York Times reported that Jim Kennedy, vice president and strategy director of The A.P., stated in an interview that the agency was "heavy-handed" and that A.P. would "rethink its policies toward bloggers."

This post is part of a series on some of the most memorable companies that have disappeared.

The original Montgomery Ward retail strategy focused on selling quality merchandise over long distances. Aaron Montgomery Ward had a vision of providing first-quality goods, at reasonable prices, to rural customers who might otherwise not have had such merchandise available to them. The first Montgomery Ward catalog appeared in 1872 as a single sheet of paper, listing 163 items for sale, with ordering instructions.

By 1883, the Montgomery Ward catalog, dubbed the "Wish Book," had grown to 240 pages and 10,000 items. It wasn't until 1896 that Montgomery Ward faced any serious competition in the mail order field. That was the year Richard W. Sears fielded his first catalog and the fierce competition between the two companies began. By 1904, Montgomery Ward was mailing as many as three million, four-pound catalogs to its loyal customers across the country. In 1908, the company opened a 1.25 million square foot distribution center and headquarters north of downtown Chicago.

In 1926, Montgomery Ward opened its first retail store in Plymouth, Indiana, while continuing to operate its catalog business. The company rebuffed a merger offer from Sears in 1930. All was well until the early 1950s when the automobile gave birth to suburbia, and Montgomery Ward held the city ground while its competitors moved out to the strip malls. By the mid 1960s, the company's catalog sales began to weaken and the company struggled into the 1970s after a merger with Container Corporation of America. In 1976, the company was acquired by Mobil Oil, and an aggressive restructuring buoyed the company. However, its catalog operations ceased in 1985, as its retail outlets underwent transformation from department stores to specialty stores. A leveraged buyout then took the company private in 1988.

This post is part of a series on some of the most memorable companies that have disappeared.

Although the name Lionel, synonymous with electric model trains, is still the hallmark of that toy genre, the current Lionel LLC, is in no way directly connected to the original Lionel Corporation.

The root stock of Lionel trains, Lionel Corp., was founded in 1900 by Joshua Lionel Cowen and Harry C. Grant in New York City. However, that company did not originally set out to manufacture toy trains. At the outset, Lionel was in the business of manufacturing small electrical devices, including fans and light fixtures. Lionel's first model train was in fact a window display designed to attract customers to other Lionel products. The train display was an immediate hit with customers, who then wanted similar sets for themselves, and thus the toy train business was set in motion.

Lionel had a bumpy yet upward ride from the time of its incorporation until 1957. In that year, a convergence of factors quickly brought trouble upon the company. A shift in consumer preference from Lionel's classic "O" gauge trains to the smaller "HO" scale cut deep into Lionel's sales. Toy buyers also began taking greater interest in the automobile, which compounded the company's troublesome decline. Then began a series of critical yet unsuccessful business moves that finally drove the company to bankruptcy in 1967. In 1969, Lionel acquiesced to the reality of its financial troubles and its toy train legacy was sold in its entirety to General Mills (NYSE: GIS).

In tough financial times, certain food products and food preparation ideas seem to gain increasing favor with consumers. People try to find ways to prepare nutritious and interesting meals while gaining greater purchasing power from their hard-earned dollars.

Just the other day, some of us bloggers were engaged in a lively email chat regarding some of our tried-and-true strategies for stretching our grocery dollars. As you can guess, ramen noodles almost immediately took center stage. I was entertained with stories of the many ways that the slender pasta can be made quite appealing. For instance, if you take any brand of chunky salsa, cut it 50% with water, add a sliced hot dog and pour the heated mixture over the noodles, it's really a very delicious and satisfying meal.

As the discussion ebbed, I couldn't help but be amazed that no one had mentioned SPAM, by Hormel Foods Corp. (NYSE: HRL). Surely, I thought, these people must know about the illustrious history of SPAM! Could they ignore the fact that SPAM has carried literally millions of people though hard times since prior to World War II? Though there is probably a ratio of three SPAM jokes to every one SPAM recipe, the fact remains that Hormel's SPAM, in all its variations, still sells exceptionally well. It sells even better as times get tough, as indicated by a recent Associated Press overview.

This post is part of a series on some of the most memorable companies that have disappeared.

Inspired by what must have been a less than luxurious train ride from Buffalo to New York in the early 1860s, George Pullman founded the Pullman Palace Car Company in Illinois in 1867. The company had a long and illustrious business cycle that spanned more than a century. Starting from humble beginnings based solely upon the vision of one man , the company rose to grandeur via the railroad boom of the early 1900s. At one point, Pullman even owned it's own "company town." The town, called Pullman, was located 14 miles south of downtown Chicago and was home to nearly 9,000 men, women, and children at its peak under the control of Pullman.

As one would expect, just when things were in high gear for Pullman, the government intervened. In the interest of antitrust laws, Pullman Inc. was ordered by the Justice Department to divest itself of either the Pullman Company (operating) or the Pullman-Standard Car Manufacturing Company (manufacturing). After three years of negotiation, the Pullman Company was sold to a railroad consortium for approximately $40 million. In much the same way, the Justice Department is making trouble on the rails again today.

The Pullman Co. didn't vanish as much as it was fractured and absorbed. It began with the 1944 sell off of passenger car operating rights and continuing through until 1987 when subway car manufacturing, performed under the name Pullman Technology, was sold to Candian conglomerate, Bombardier. The merger and acquisition history of Pullman from 1981 through today reads like a who's who of transportation, oil, engineering, and associated technologies. In fact, I believe that George Pullman would be amazed to discover that the original thread of the Pullman name was still active in manufacturing as late as 2004, when Pullman is reported to have been manufacturing "rubberized" automotive parts under the control of Tenneco Automotive.

Let us know in the comments what you miss about Pullman. And be sure to check out other Companies That Have Vanished.

I've been very wary of market conditions over the last six months. I've taken the bear position for better than a year now. Today however, I am seeing a convergence of conditions and circumstances that lead me to question whether the gates have again been thrown open for the bulls. Make no mistake about my position on the economy from a consumer standpoint. It's real ugly out there and I'm not too happy about that. However, I've seen it worse in my time and for now, we still live in a world where good hard work and some personal responsibility can accomplish a lot for a person.

There are several things that I now find promising for the investment world. First, the answer to the question of the Democratic presidential nominee is all but cemented. That's one big monkey off the nation's back. Second, the Federal Reserve has subtly come out in favor of protecting the dollar. I do understand more now about why the Reserve Board took the path that it did, but I still think that interest rates need to come back up a little. Third, our nation has shown that it can indeed reduce it's driving habit in short order. Fourth, manufacturing numbers have not declined as quickly or as deeply as I expected. Finally, I think the downward slide of real estate values is slowing and shall soon stabilize, but there are still a lot of mortgage notes yet to crumble.

I know that the stock markets and the overall economy are inextricably connected, I also know that they are two very distinct worlds. That is why I feel that the markets could surge while things at the consumer level still look very grim.

If the price of crude oil can be reduced and stabilized, if we can reverse the downward trend in employment, and if this country's citizens can repay their debts rather than defaulting on them, I see a bull market on the horizon. What do you think? Should we aim the DJIA upward again?

Gary Sattler is a freelance blogger. He spent most of his economic stimulus check on a much needed new refrigerator.