(Akiit.com) Each of us should be striving to have money working for us instead of the other way around. Most of us know about getting a job and then getting up and working at that job Monday through Friday for as long as they let us work there. That is not the only way to provide for our families.

What is passive income?
Passive income is money that is earned from doing nothing, or almost nothing. Getting up and going to work is active income. You have to do something to get it. If you don’t do something then you don’t get the money. Passive income is the opposite. Investments are passive income. Books, songs, and films are passive income. Once you’ve created the thing, it can be sold in perpetuity with little to no more work from you. It’s a truly beautiful thing.

Why do we want it?
There is no greater satisfaction than knowing that you are earning money while you sleep. A key axiom of life is that we should work smarter, not harder. You may be thinking that you enjoy your job. You don’t have a problem with your income and you don’t have the will to create a passive stream of income for yourself, and all of that may be true, but if you could earn income from doing little more than you’re doing right this second and get more income, wouldn’t you do it?
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(Akiit.com) After listening to President Barack Obama’s remarks at the recent Congressional Black Caucus Dinner, I couldn’t help but compare some of the responses to what we’ve been hearing from the Tea Party and their master party – the Republicans in Congress – and a few disgruntled Democrats, who with few exceptions, were very latecomers to the team of supporters of the President.

When we were trudging through the ice, snow, cold and rain of Iowa, South Carolina, Pennsylvania and other states, they just weren’t with us. Even after candidate Obama won the primary, some reluctantly came on board – and some have been his worst critics since.

Obama can’t win

I tried to explain to myself how some members of my own party, despite the president’s best efforts, seem comfortable blasting him no matter what he says or does. Well, Frederick Douglass had already explained it on September 25, 1833 when he said, “Though the colored man is no longer subject to barter and sale, he is surrounded by an adverse settlement which fetters all his movements. In his downward course he meets with no resistance, but his course upward is resented and resisted at every step of his progress.

“If he comes in ignorance, rags and wretchedness he conforms to the popular belief of his character, and in that character he is welcome; but if he shall come as a gentleman, a scholar and a statesman, he is hailed as a contradiction to the national faith concerning his race, and his coming is resented as impudence. In one case he may provoke contempt and derision, but in the other he is an affront to pride and provokes malice.”

Did you ever see a person, against the greatest of odds, who worked as hard as President Barack Obama – even before he was sworn into office? Former President George W. Bush, in the closing days of his presidency, pretty much said, “Hey man, I’ve pretty much screwed up everything during my eight years, so I’m going to walk away and let you fix it.”
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(Akiit.com) (March 22, 2011) — In September 2010, President Obama approved the Small Business Jobs Act – a new law that has become a very significant piece of small business legislation. The law extends the successful SBA enhanced loan provisions while offering billions more in lending support, tax cuts, and other opportunities for entrepreneurs and small business owners.

Now in 2011, those provisions have become to manifest themselves. Just recently, the U.S. Treasury Department approved more than $50 million to support lending to small businesses in the states of Connecticut, Missouri and Vermont. This might sound small, but that translates into $534 million in loans.

In an earlier round of funding this year, California, Michigan and North Carolina were approved for a total of $293.8 million. And guess what? As time goes on, the law provides that even more states will receive funding.

Being that African American business owners are disadvantaged in many ways, they should especially pay attention to what’s happening and inquire locally at their banks and credit unions. A lot of this funding is being allocated to commercial loans, technology loans, and other loans for companies who have less than 500 employees.
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(Akiit.com) Some analysts are asking whether “fair inclusion” of minorities in the financial industry would have averted disaster or made it worse…

Last month Politico reported on a “little-noticed” section of the Wall Street reform bill. It gives the feds power to kill contracts with firms that fail to initiate workplace diversity. The law requires “fair inclusion” of women and minorities and “goes further than previous attempts by regulators to promote diversity in the financial sector.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a small black presence in a variety of financial occupations in 2009. Eighteen thousand, or 5.6 percent, of the nation’s securities, commodities and financial-services sales agents were black. About 5 percent of the country’s 94,000 financial analysts were black. That same year, women of all colors held 16 percent of executive and board positions in the financial sector.

The lack of diversity means that white men with similar opinions usually make decisions that affect the whole world — the majority of which doesn’t look, or think, like them. Forcing firms to diversify, some suggest, will provide substantial benefit. Imagine the disasters that might have been mitigated if black females instead of white males had managed the toxic mortgages that harmed so many.

But would a black manager’s decisions actually have been different? Some observers wonder about the value of greater diversity in finance. Santa Clara University professor Hersh Shefrin is an economist who has been a pioneer in behavioral finance, which looks at psychological factors that underpin financial decisions. Shefrin says that he gets the principle behind industry diversity: “There may be a benefit to having a loan officer who has personal experience with the people they’re lending to.”

But he adds, “Having said that … I can’t see [the diversity provision] making much of a dent in improving the sorts of problems that led to the global financial crisis. We have to remember that the culture of banking has more to do with the structure of firms than with the personal tendencies of employees.”

Work for Someone Else’s Company, and Priorities Shift

Shefrin thinks that the financial sector’s corporate culture prevents a diversity of opinion, even if it exists. He cites specific instances, prior to the mortgage crisis, in which female underwriters warned their supervisors about giving loans to underqualified applicants. “Do you know what they were told by their superiors?” he asks. “They were told, ‘You approve the loan — and if you don’t, I will.’ Then they were told that they’d been put under review for firing. There is great pressure applied to these people.”

African Americans are used to Wall Street pressure, and there have been several generations of black Streeters since they arrived in the industry more than 50 years ago.
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(Akiit.com) Job losses. Game-changing technology. Belt tightening. Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of black media in 2010…

When it comes to black-oriented news media, we have a mixed bag: There is the kind of buzz that was created in 2007 by college-student blogs, e-mails and text messages alerting the nation to a major injustice in Jena, La., where six black youths faced felony assault charges stemming from a fight with a white student in the midst of escalating racial tension at the local high school. White kids were not similarly charged for their roles in the tit-for-tat confrontations. The Jena Six story grew as syndicated radio hosts like Tom Joyner, National Public Radio and, eventually, national civil rights leaders and the mainstream press picked it up. Some 20,000 protesters from across the nation marched in Jena in September 2007, heeding the media’s call.

The work of students from Florida A&M University (FAMU) who participated in coverage of this year’s World Cup soccer competition with university students from China, bringing South African and soccer news to audiences in a refreshing way through their blogs, was the kind of real-time energetic reporting not readily seen in the traditional black press or even BET and TV One.

But the black press was not much of a presence in any form on the story that left the Obama administration and media with egg on their faces: the firing of federal agricultural employee Sheryl Sherrod based on misinformation. According to Richard Prince, who produces the column Journal-isms: “Black media have been parties to the Sherrod discussion, but they have not led it.” The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) did give Sherrod a forum at its recent convention, and what she said — including her plans to sue the blogger who started the false story about her — made national and international headlines.

On another front, the Time Inc.-owned Essence magazine, a must-read for many black women for 40 years, made its biggest news splash in years with the controversial hiring of a white woman to be its fashion director.

That is a thumbnail sketch of what is happening in the topsy-turvy world of the black press — or, more broadly, black-oriented media. There have indeed been innovations, but technological advances, as well as belt-tightening and desperation, have also led to the loss of many jobs. While the entire news-gathering industry has been hard hit, it seems that journalists of color are being particularly affected. And NABJ is struggling with deficits and declining membership, as its convention publication, The Monitor, has reported.

Add to this air of anxiety the continued speculation that Essence, Ebony and Jet are on their last legs. Journal-isms posted this from a June 17 Folio article: “Ad pages slipped 8.2 percent at Black Enterprise while Johnson Publishing’s Ebony and Jet saw dramatic declines of 30.6 percent and 33.1 percent respectively.”

Linda Johnson Rice, the chairman of Johnson Publishing Co., countered in an e-mail statement to me: “Both Ebony and JET remain the No. 1 African-American magazines in the marketplace. Yes, times have been challenging as [they have] been for most media companies but keep in mind that we are not alone. If you look in the news lately, many magazines have shut down, but we’re still here.”

True, but traditional modes of disseminating news to black folks — including the 200 or so newspapers in the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) and the 258 radio and television stations in the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB) — seem almost as precarious now as when Samuel Cornish and John B. Russwurm declared in 1827 in the first edition of the first black newspaper in the United States, Freedom’s Journal: “We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us.” They were out of business by 1829, although, to this day, many others continue to try picking up their baton.

In his 1944 study, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, Gunnar Myrdal described the black press as “the greatest single force in the Negro race.” For much of his own historical research, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., co-founder of The Root and champion of newspapers, has studied the content of black newspapers — everything from professional advancement to society news to advertisements to obituaries — and concluded: “It’s like the mind of the race is buried in those newspapers.”

Paul Delaney, who worked as a reporter and editor at The New York Times for 23 years and received NABJ’s 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award, recalls getting his start in black newspapers in the 1950s: “The main source of black-press strength then was availability of black journalists, who were not hired by white media during Jim Crow. The [civil rights] movement changed that abruptly, significantly and permanently. Most talented black journalists were hired by white media, leaving the black press in worse shape than ever.” Many of those best and brightest were also left champing at the bit when they were denied choice assignments in the mainstream media.
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