Earlier this month, a group of 28 big names from the business, legal, academic, and nonprofit world put out a paper called “Overcoming Short-Termism: A Call for a More Responsible Approach to Investment and Business Management.” Among the signatories, all of whom are members of The Aspen Institute’s Business & Society Program, are heavyweights like John Bogle of Vanguard; Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway; Louis Gerstner Jr., formerly of IBM; and James Wolfensohn of the World Bank Group.

Short-termism “refers to the excessive focus of some corporate leaders, investors, and analysts on short-term earnings guidance, coupled with a lack of attention to the strategy, fundamentals, and conventional approaches to long-term value creation,” according to the CFA Institute. more

Nearly two-thirds of the 250 economists surveyed in March by the National Association for Business Economics predict that the consumer price index (CPI) will rise to more than 2.5 percent within the next two to five years. That compares with the current CPI, which fell 2.1 percent over the 12 months ending in July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports.

The concern that prices may start rising isn’t limited to economists. “A significant number of people are concerned about it,” says Arun Bansal, managing consultant in the corporate enterprise risk management group of Towers Perrin. That includes many corporate financial executives, who point to the liquidity in the market created by the Federal Reserve through its purchases of mortgages and cuts in the interbank lending rate, which now stands at about .25 percent. more

As any company that sells in the business-to-business market knows, at least a few big-time buyers like to throw their weight around and take some time before paying their suppliers. According to this recent article in the Wall Street Journal, the practice has grown even more pronounced over the past year or so, as credit has tightened and companies have tried to boost internal cash flow.

Ariba, a provider of spend management solutions, has several solutions geared to financial executives whose firms are getting squeezed. These systems take advantage of Ariba’s network of suppliers, which now numbers more than 200,000, says Drew Hofler, senior manager of financial solutions with Ariba. The company started by providing procurement and sourcing software and connecting buyers and sellers. As the business grew, the electronic network connecting the two parties did as well. In fact, about $120 billion worth of purchase orders flows through the network annually. more

Ever since Uncle Sam pumped billions into Citigroup, Bank of America, and other banking behemoths in order to keep them alive, the question has come up: Just how big is too big, when it comes to banks?

The answer isn’t as straightforward as it might seem. Intuitively, it would seem that if a bank is too big to fail, and thus warrants the use of taxpayer money to keep it from death’s door – then, it’s simply too big. And, highly concentrated banking systems would seem more volatile than banking markets that boast more disbursed competition. more

Clearly, funding has been hard to come by as of late. And, time always is in short supply. Even so, lots of cash and unlimited amounts of time aren’t always needed to make money, as this project assigned to students at Stanford University demonstrates.

Several years ago, Tina Seelig, executive director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program and author of What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World (HarperCollins 2009), was trying to figure out how she could best convey the concept of entrepreneurship to her students. So, she divided students into about a dozen teams of four or five each, handed each team $5 — that’s not a typo — in seed money and gave them two hours to come up with a plan for making money. They then had several days to execute their idea. more