Business

Although we are in the midst of the "holiday cookie season," another cookie season will soon be under way - Girl Scout Cookie Season!  Did you know that this annual event is considered to be the largest "girl run" business in the world?  This week, we learn more about this 81-year tradition and the impact that it has made on past, current, and future women leaders.

Discover Lehigh Valley is celebrating it's 30th anniversary "building the Lehigh Valley into a bustling leisure and business travel destination while boosting the local economy as the official destination marketing organization for Lehigh and Northampton counties." Michael Stershic, President of Discover Lehigh Valley,  discusses accomplishments and future challenges in the leisure and business travel industry.

(Original air-date 10/16/2014)

Host John Pearce welcomes authors Roberta Newman, professor at NYU, and Dr. Joel Nathan Rosen, professor at Moravian College, to discuss their award-winning book Black Baseball, Black Business: Race Enterprise and the Fate of the Segregated Dollar, exploring how the relationship between the segregated Negro League and black businesses functioned, particularly in urban areas with significant African American populations--Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Newark, New York, Philadelphia, and more.

(Original air-date 9/29/2014)

Whether intentional or not, all businesses today have international exposure through the internet. Businesses that are seeking to expand their markets beyond the Lehigh Valley or US, need to understand the different "rules of the game." 

What happened to manufacturing? Are we producing anything anymore?

Employment in manufacturing has dropped from 18 million in 1972 to 12 million in 2010, however, the fewer manufacturing employees are producing a lot more products than their significantly larger manufacturing employees did in 1970s.

(Original air-date 7/11/2014)

June consumer sentiment index recorded a slight increase over its May’s level. The index has been relatively unchanged in the last 6 months, this is remarkable considering the size of the GDP drop in the 1st quarter. Consumers clearly considered this a one time events.

(Original air-date 7/4/2014)

The nation’s real Gross Domestic Product or GDP dropped  by a surprisingly large 2.9% during the 1st quarter of 2014, last winter was a lot worse than we thought.

(Original air-date 6/27/2014)

Host Eleanor Bobrow discusses getting your business idea off the ground with Carlton Raines, Chairman of Lehigh Valley Chapter 74 of SCORE, an organization dedicated to growing successful small businesses across America, one business at a time. (Original air-date 6-2-2014)

What exactly is a financial advisor? What does the designation mean? Host Laurie A. Siebert, CPA, CFP®,  AEP®, explains and takes listener finance questions live on the air. (Original air-date 5/28/2014)

While inflation over the last 12 months still registers only at a low 2.0%, if we look at the first 4 months of this year the picture changes significantly. The consumer price index, the instrument we use for measuring inflation rose by 1.3% over the last 4 months. This translates into a 5.2% inflation at annual rates. That is if this trend continues for the rest of the year we are going to re-visit inflation for the first time since 2007! (Original air-date 5/16/2014)