On Feb. 19, the Federal Reserve Board raised the discount rate from one-half to three-quarters of 1 percent. This change of one-quarter of a percentage point in the little-used primary credit window resulted in an immediate leap of the U.S. dollar to nine-month highs. Overnight, the value of the dollar rose 0.82 percent and 0.31 percent against the Euro and the Yen, respectively.

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson


Mom and Dad are both gone now. Moved on to what we all hope is eternal life and happiness. Even though they have left this earth, I still think about them every day.

Several years ago, a company advertised its hearing-amplification device on TV by dramatizing how it could let you hear what friends and neighbors were saying about you behind your back.

The landscape for financing early-stage companies continues to evolve, as does the rest of our economic system. As venture-capital (VC) funds have grown in size over the past decade from the significant influx of money from institutional investors, so has their appetite and need to deploy greater amounts of capital. This sounds like a good thing at first for those of us wanting to raise money for startups.

It costs honest New Yorkers millions

Insurance fraud is an enticing enterprise for criminals throughout New York State, but you have to wonder just what some of the state’s fraudsters were thinking when they cooked up the scams that led to their eventual arrests.