NFL's Troubles Aren't Expected To Affect Super Bowl Advertising, Pricing -Forbes.com

The Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson domestic abuse scandals had major advertisers like Budweiser concerned but three months later as NBC tries to sell its remaining ad slots for the Feb. 1 edition, ratings and interest in the brand are as strong as ever. Even brands such as Cover Girl or McDonald’s which rely on the support of women or having a family experience may not want to cut ties with the NFL now.

Superbowl ads bring in huge amounts of money for the companies that do them. Just because the NFL had a rough year from a behavioral stand point, that doesn't mean less people are going to not watch the Superbowl. Companies would be stupid to lose out on all of the viewers just because the NFL has a bad reputation. In the end it is all about money. Companies are profit maximizing.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidlariviere/2014/12/18/nfls-troubles-arent-expected-to-affect-super-bowl-advertising-pricing/

Rondo-to-Mavs deal nearly finished- ESPN.com

The Boston Celtics have finalized a deal that is sending Rajon Rondo to the Dallas Mavericks. Brandan Wright, Jae Crowder, Jameer Nelson and two draft picks will all be heading to the Dallas Mavericks. Rondo would join Dirk Nowitzki, Monta Ellis, Tyson Chandler and Chandler Parsons in a starting five that is looking to compete for the NBA championship. The Celtics were at the roster maximum of 15 before the trade and will need to part with additional players to absorb three from Dallas.

From a basketball standpoint this is a great move from both teams. The Mavericks improve their team this current year. They got an all-star point guard without having to give a huge player up. Many experts give them a shot to win the Western Conference, including myself. This was also a good move from Bostons position. The Celtics were not going to win with Rondo there. He is a great asset to have but they were still losing. The Celtics good three half decent players and two draft picks that will help them rebuild. This is a good long run move from the Celtics position. 

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/12048931/rajon-rondo-trade-boston-celtics-dallas-mavericks-course-happen 

Adrian Peterson May Be Suspended, But He's Unlikely To Lose Any Pay - Forbes.com

http://www.forbes.com/sites/darrenheitner/2014/11/18/adrian-peterson-suspension-is-all-about-perception-of-nfl/


The NFL has recently announced that Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson will be suspended for the remainder of the 2014 season, without pay. Peterson will likely earn his full pay for the entire 2014 NFL. The NFL Players Association (NFLPA) published a statement immediately after the NFL’s announcement of a stern punishment against Peterson. The NFLPA will appeal Peterson's suspension. This is important because Peterson will continue to be paid during the pendency of his appeal.

The NFL will look like they did the right thing by suspending him without pay, but in reality he is still getting paid. Peterson will continue to get paid. Meanwhile, the NFL will look like it took strong action against the running back.

From an economic stand point it was very smart of the NFL to suspend Peterson and "appear" to suspend him without pay. If the NFL appeared to be soft with the punishment there would be a massive response from NFL fans and non NFL fans, and it would not be a good one. Less people would watch the NFL games, attend games, and buy NFL apparel.

Stanton wanted flexibility for Marlins - ESPN.com

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/11897600/giancarlo-stanton-325m-miami-marlins-heavily-backloaded

Giancarlo Stanton has agreed to a 13 year 325 million dollar contract with the Miami Marlins. He has the option to opt out of his contract after 6 years. If he were to do this he would be walking away from 218 million dollars. Stanton still wants to give his team financial flexibility. He would be getting paid 25 million dollars a year every year. Instead Stanton is going to back load is contract. That means he will be getting paid around 9 million dollars his first three years. His last couple of years he will be getting paid more than 25 million dollars a year.

Stanton is getting a guaranteed 107 million dollars his first six seasons. Then he has the option to leave the team. If Stanton feels like the Marlins didn't bring in enough people to build a championship contending team, he will leave. He would be walking away from the majority of his guaranteed money by doing so. 

This was a really smart decision by Stanton. Stanton left himself with a lot of options. Stanton obviously wants to stay with the Marlins after agreeing to back load his contract. Giving the Marlins financial flexibly gives the team a better chance to improve. There is now a good chance of that happening with the money freed up by the back loading.

   

Latest Giants World Series Is Mercifully Nearing An End - Forbes.com

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomvanriper/2014/10/28/latest-giants-world-series-is-mercifully-nearing-an-end/


Through five games, the 2014 world series have some of the lowest ratings is the history of baseball. This world series is down 5% down from the Giants World Series in 2012. For some reason people do not tune into watch the Giants in the World Series. 2010, 2012, and 2014 all had the Giants playing in the World Series. Those three World Series were the three lowest World Series ratings of all time.

Seven-game World Series’ have been rare in recent years. The most recent one came in 2011 when the Cardinals defeated the Rangers. Before that, the last Series to go the distance was the 2002 match up between the Giants and Anaheim Angles, which did an 11.9 TV ratings. There is no denying that World Series that go to seven games get better TV ratings,

Statistics have shown that baseball has become one of the less popular sports.For one thing the NBA and NFL are becoming more and more popular. The same can not be said about baseball. Don't get wrong, baseball is still a very popular sport, just not as much as it once was. One thing that keeps fans coming to the games is the price of tickets. Because MLB tickets are much cheaper than NBA and NFL tickets (we're talking averages) people are still willing to go. 

NFL London franchise could be 'worth more than £100m' to UK - BBC.com

Sources say that the two NFL games at Wembley in 2013 brought in 32 million pounds for London. In 2016 the NFL is expected to play four games in London. Those four games are expected to bring in an estimated 58 million pounds for London. The main goal for London is to have a NFL franchise by 2022. A franchise in London would bring in an estimated 102 million pounds for the city. With rates of income tax lower in the US than in the UK, a London team would cause problems for the league and its relationship with the NFL Players' Association.The NFL operates under a collective bargaining agreement between the team owners and the players which limits the total amount each team is able to spend, but also sets minimum salaries based on each player's time in the league. 

I think a NFL franchise in the NFL is a bad idea for a number of reasons. Teams located in America are not going to enjoy flying over seas to play an NFL game. The London franchise will be completely isolated from all other teams in the NFL. Most NFL players are from America, whose families live in America. Being away from their families might give the better players in the NFL an incentive not to play for the London franchise. With income tax rates higher in the UK, I would expect that the franchise in London would have to pay their players more. I do not see an NFL team doing that.

http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/american-football/29813017 

The U.S. Debt: Why It Will Continue To Rise - Forbes.com

America has the largest debt burden in the world. Japan is the world’s fourth largest economy (measured by GDP), has a debt-to-GDP ratio of 227%. This is the highest ratio in the world. The U.S. has a debt-to-GDP ratio of 101% which is not bad in comparison to Japan. 

Japan’s debt is approximately $13.4 trillion; however, its economy is only one-fourth the size of America’s.Japan’s debt-to-GDP ratio is more than two times greater than America’s, this indicates that we are far from the total amount of debt we can handle.

Japan is able to handle their huge deficit compared to the size of their economy, this gives me hope that America can handle debt upwards to 30 trillion dollars. Debt in this country seems like it will never stop growing. In this next couple of years it definitely will not. I think the government and people should really start worrying when the debt reaches 25 trillion dollars. However, action needs to be taken now in order to reduce the deficit. If the deficit does happen to reach 30 trillion dollars we will still be okay, but it will be almost impossible to get back to even.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2014/09/18/the-u-s-debt-why-it-will-continue-to-rise/

UK debt and deficit: All you need to know - BBC.com

In January, British Chancellor George Osborne claimed the national debt has fallen 1/3 since 2010.  Recent studies have shown that this is false. UK's debt has been doubled to one trillion pounds in the last five years.The Office for Budget Responsibility says the deficit will keep rising. 

The Government's tax revenues are not enough to fulfill the counties large spending habits, so every year Britain runs a large budget deficit. The money the UK can't raise from taxation needs to be borrowed. Every year, this budget deficit is added to the national debt. The UK is dealing with the same problem America is. Although many citizens strongly dislike being taxed it is essential to get out of the massive amounts of debt. 

In 2009-10 the Government spent £671.4 billion of tax payers money, despite tax revenues of only £496.1 billion. Defense is fifth the most expensive area of spending. They only spend 36 billion pounds on defense. With the defense budget this low I'm surprised to how much debt they are in. In America we put aside most of our budget for defense.

 www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25944653 

Uncle Sam runs $114 billion surplus in April- CNN.com

In April a $114 increase was booked by the U.S Treasury Department, this is the biggest increase in money this month has seen since 2008, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Overall spending has decreased 2%. The drop is due to lower than expected interest payments and other spending, including defense.

Unemployment benefits went down 31%. Federal spending on unemployment insurance: Annual outlays increased from an average of $33 billion from 2004 through 2007 to $119 billion in 2009 and $155 billion in 2010; they dropped to $93 billion in 2012 and are expected to decline further over the next few years. Out of all the areas to reduce spending this is a great one to do so. Unemployment effects a small amount of people compared to the other areas of spending.

The trend in higher tax receipts and lower overall spending has been in effect for awhile. Although people might not like higher taxes I definitely think it is for the better of the country. In order to decrease the debt deficit it is essential to decrease spending and increase taxes, reasonably. 

What surprised me was the decrease in spending by 5%. Military spending is greater than Medicare ($529 billion), Medicaid ($331 billion), or the interest payment on the debt ($251). It's also more than the three next largest departments combined: Health and Human Services ($73.1 billion), Education ($68.6 billion) and Housing and Urban Development ($32.6 billion). With defense being the main concern in this country I did not expect for spending to decrease that much. I thought it would stay relatively steady. But because military spending is so expensive a 5% decrease is a lot of money. I do think it was a good decision to decrease spending on military.  

http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/07/news/economy/april-budget-surplus-cbo/index.html?iid=SF_BN_Lead

Budget Office Raises Deficit Estimate for Fiscal Year to $506 Billion - New York Times

The federal deficit is expected to reach 506 billion dollars this current fiscal year. In April the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the deficit would only reach 492 billion dollars.The Congressional Budget Office projected Monday that the 2014 shortfall will decline to 2.8% of GDP  or $492 billion. That's about $23 billion below what the CBO forecast just a few months ago. And it's well below the 4.1% or $680 billion recorded last year.

The Congressional Budget Office was completely off with their estimation of being only 492 billion dollars in debt. One of the reasons why they were so incorrect was because of the lower than expected corporate income tax. With the corporate tax rate up to 35% you would think America's corporate income tax would be high, but that is not the case.

Many large American corporations like Pfizer, a pharmaceutical corporation headquartered in New York City, are considering moving their headquarters elsewhere to avoid the country's large corporate income tax. Pfizer will likely move they're headquarters to England where the corporate income tax is as low as 20%. I think America needs to do something about these large corporations that generate huge amounts of income for this country. I don't think lowering the tax on these corporations is the answer. There needs to be an initiative for the corporations to stay put.

Up until recently companies that moved out of the country were kicked out of American stock's index. Because of this companies were forced to move to smaller firms which lowered the share price hurting the company. In order to gain revenue for this country I think its important for the big corporations to stay. So going back to the way things were would be a great idea in my opinion.


 http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/us/politics/budget-office-raises-deficit-estimate-for-fiscal-year-to-506-billion.html?ref=business&_r=0