After a year of both positive and negative month-to-month changes, the Credit Managers Index (CMI) inched up to 54.4 in December, its highest level since May. (Numbers higher than 50 indicate expansion; numbers below 50 indicate contraction.)

However, the Index remains below the level of a year ago, when it was at 55.8. The Index incorporates ten factors, including sales, new credit applications, bankruptcy filings and accounts placed for collection, and covers both manufacturing and service industries. The CMI is calculated by the National Association of Credit Management (NACM) in Columbia, Md. The index is based on responses from about 900 trade credit managers, about evenly divided between manufacturing and service organizations. more

Throughout 2011, I’m pretty sure I heard every possible Dodd-Frank implementation forecast possible. Here are just a few: the new law will require 10 times as much compliance work as Sarbanes-Oxley while squashing U.S. competitiveness and innovation; the new law will become so watered-down that it will stand no chance of preventing a second “Too Big to Fail” global financial meltdown; the new law will be overturned and zapped from existence.

These theories sound grand, or scary, depending on your perspective (and politics, I suppose), but they are not much help from a practical perspective. For example, as previously noted, the SEC has extended the comment period on a key proposal within Dodd-Frank.

To get a better feel for the new law and its ongoing implementation, I contacted John Wilson, a partner in law firm Foley & Lardner LLP’s transactional and securities practice, and got his input into what it all will mean for finance managers. more

If you’re in a reflective move while considering New Year’s resolutions, you may want to dash off a comment to the SEC regarding the Dodd-Frank’s so-called Volcker Rule. Late last month, the SEC extended the comment period regarding the proposal to Feb. 13. more

The allure of some sort of tax holiday on repatriated earnings, which I covered in this blog back in June 2011, remains strong. In October, members of the House of Representatives’ Democratic Blue Dog Coalition, a group of fiscal conservatives, added their support behind H.R. 1834, or the “Freedom to Invest Act of 2011,” as this article from the Win America Campaign describes. The legislation would, among other things, extend the election allowed to a U.S. corporation to deduct dividends received from a controlled foreign corporation.

In a letter to the members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction – the now defunct “Super Committee” – the Blue Dogs also stated, “As you consider tax reform, we urge you to include a temporary change to the tax code that allows businesses to repatriate money trapped overseas as part of reform or as a bridge to comprehensive reform.” The letter went on to say that “experts agree that temporarily lowering tax barriers will bring earnings back home, and therefore strengthen our economy.” more

The big technology trends in 2012 will be extensions of trends that began in 2011 or earlier. For example, wiredFINANCE noted the Consumerization of IT back in September. Expect it to pick up speed in 2012. Similarly, back in January you read about The Internet of Things here. That too will drive technology trends in 2012.

The top IT research firms publish their trends projections for 2012. You can find Gartner’s here. Maybe more interesting to a CFO will be IDC’s security trends for 2012 here. IDC also breaks out IT trends by market segment, such as retail here and manufacturing here.

The tech trends below are based on the numerous vendor briefings and conferences wiredFINANCE attends as well as talking with dozens of IT and finance managers. Most shouldn’t surprise you if you have been reading wiredFINANCE, but a few might. more