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The time required to start a business is the number of calendar days needed to complete the procedures to legally operate a business. This chart is from 2017 statistics.

Business is the practice of making one's living or making money by producing or buying and selling products (such as goods and services). It is also "any activity or enterprise entered into for profit."

A business entity is not necessarily separate from the owner and the creditors can hold the owner liable for debts the business has acquired. The taxation system for businesses is different from that of the corporates. A business structure does not allow for corporate tax rates. The proprietor is personally taxed on all income from the business.

A distinction is made in law and public offices between the term business and a company such as a corporation or cooperative. Colloquially, the terms are used interchangeably. ( Full article...)

Economics ( /ˌɛkəˈnɒmɪks, ˌkə-/) is a social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.

Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes what's viewed as basic elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyzes the economy as a system where production, consumption, saving, and investment interact, and factors affecting it: employment of the resources of labour, capital, and land, currency inflation, economic growth, and public policies that have impact on these elements. ( Full article...)

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Finn Michael Westby Caspersen, Sr. (October 27, 1941 – September 7, 2009) was an American financier and philanthropist. A graduate of Brown University and Harvard Law School, he followed his father, Olaus Caspersen, a Norwegian immigrant to the United States, as chairman and chief executive of Beneficial Corporation, one of the largest consumer finance companies in the United States. After an $8.6 billion acquisition of Beneficial by Household International in 1998, Caspersen ran Knickerbocker Management, a private financial firm overseeing the assets of trusts and foundations.

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"The New Fred Meyer on Interstate on Lombard" (7404 N Interstate Ave, Portland, OR 97217).
Photo credit: Genghiskhanviet

In commerce, a hypermarket is a superstore combining a supermarket and a department store. The result is an expansive retail facility carrying a wide range of products under one roof, including full groceries lines and general merchandise. In theory, hypermarkets allow customers to satisfy all their routine shopping needs in one trip.

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Johannesburg, the financial capital of South Africa

The economy of South Africa is a mixed economy, emerging market, and upper-middle-income economy, one of only eight such countries in Africa. The economy is the most industrialized, technologically advanced, and diversified economy in Africa. Following 1996, at the end of over twelve years of international sanctions, South Africa's nominal gross domestic product (GDP) almost tripled to a peak of US$416 billion in 2011. In the same period, foreign exchange reserves increased from US$3 billion to nearly US$50 billion, creating a diversified economy with a growing and sizable middle class, within two decades of ending apartheid.

Although the natural resource extraction industry remains one of the largest in the country with an annual contribution to the GDP of US $13.5 billion, the economy of South Africa has diversified since the end of apartheid, particularly towards services. In 2019, the financial industry contributed US$41.4 billion to South Africa's GDP. In 2021, South Africa-based financial institutions managed more than US$1.41 trillion in assets. The total market capitalization of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange is US$1.28 trillion as of October 2021. ( Full article...)

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"I have not set forth any bills in drafted form ready for enaction, because that is a mere detail which should come at a time when things have shaped themselves so as to make that step necessary. The ground must be plowed before the seeding is done. The people themselves must do the plowing. After that they must seed the land and keep possession of the field if they wish to harvest and reap the fruits of their labor. They have always done the plowing, the seeding, the cultivating, and practically all of the work in the field of industrial enterprise, but they have never reaped the results of their labor. There has always been a Rothschild, a Gould, a Rockefeller, a Carnegie, a Morgan and men of their kind, and a few thousand lesser harvesters who have gathered in the best fruits out of the fields of industry. They are on hand and active at every point of vantage; they understand human selfishness, and know how to deal with the individuals whom the people have selected to represent them. They know that the individual citizen whose interest is the same as that of the citizens in general, will not find it practicable to spend the time in the legislative halls or in Congress, to exert a direct influence over his official representative. But the other parties to whom I have alluded send their representatives to influence the people’s representatives, and the manner of their influence is so varied in its application that no description of its application in one case would serve as an index to another. I shall deal with that particular phase of the subject on another occasion but before dropping it at this point, let me call the attention of the citizen to the fact that he must be on guard that the new progressive spirit and movement is kept alive, and that special interests are made to understand that it is alive. The special interests are more alert individually than the people themselves are individually, for the reason that the interests get the bulk of the wealth that grows out of the work of the people, and, therefore, the special interests are seeking to convert the progressive movement into another victory for themselves. I started as an original progressive when there were but a few on the battle line of progressiveness, and I had known the wily moves employed by the interests in their efforts to divert this progressive movement to their own advantage, not only in dividing the progressives into factions and parties, which means one and the same thing in its effect upon the people, but in what is worse than that, the attempt on their part to fill the ranks of the progressives, with spies and traitors and then presume through selfish influence to convert many of those who honestly started the movement. “Temptation thou art a mighty power in the hands of those who hold the seductive bait.” The interests base their hope of victory upon the temptation furnished, by that "bait" Their first hope was to win by ridiculing the progressives and taking patronage from those whom the people had elected, but this proved a failure."

Charles August Lindbergh, Banking and Currency and the Money Trust, 1913

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March 18:

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  • ... that Italy is the third largest producer of wine in the world?
  • ...that Calouste Gulbenkian was known as Mr. Five Percent because he retained 5% of the shares of Royal Dutch/Shell, the second-largest corporation in the world by revenue, which he participated in the formation of in 1907?

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