It’s the stereotypical image. A hotshot MBA from a B-School joins a prestigious multinational company. Old timers quake in fear, as she walks by spouting jargon, and analysis. In fact, all are worried that she’s going to show exactly how inefficient they are with her energy, and ‘go get it’ attitude.

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In fact, this might not be the truth at all. Nadira Hira from the Fortune Magazine, feels that along with all her peers, ‘Generation Y’ may have really low self esteem, and constantly need feedback, encouragement, and Motivation.

The reason? Most young people who have just entered a corporate environment, have been coached, and given all the support they need, even well into college, find the transition into corporate life, as a bit of a shock. Since most join in entry level positions, their managers aren’t necessarily giving them the feedback that they need to ascertain, whether or not they are doing their job well. As a result, they suffer from a lack of esteem, and constantly need validation.

So what can be done? Hira feels that youngsters need to get all the information that they can at the beginning of the project, and if they’re not clear about something, they need to make sure that they ask. Also, when they’ve learnt the ropes, they must have someone to whome they can ask questions.

Also, every couple of months, they need to get feedback from their managers about their professional performance. These simple measures will greatly help the newbies into gaining confidence, and ultimately, perform their job well.

If you’ve often thought that you would like someone to set up your appointment, remind you of them, handle your correspondence, write your letters, or even find out where the closest restaurant is, you’ve wanted a personal assistant. Chances are however, that you can’t even begin to afford one.

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However, in the latest outsourcing trend, you can get a personal assistant for as little as $30 month. At this ridiculously cheap price, you have someone who is constantly on the Internet, and is available for any services that you care to give them!

Christopher Carfi, who runs his own software firm, finds that he has too much on his hands to handle by himself. He went in search of a personal assistant, and found Girish. Girish works in Mumbai, and is able to help his employer whenever the need arises. For example, Carfi’s headlight blew, and Girish was able to find him a place to get it repaired, within a 5 mile radius!

Companies in India like Get Friday, supply personal assistants. Most of the clients (over 95%) are in the US. The help that is rendered can be for serious business, or just for pleasure. Venkatesh Thattia, a Virtual Assistant manager says that his firm has organized birthday parties for two year olds, organized windows to be fixed, and arranged for dinner to be catered at home.

With the new idea of online assistants, it’s a trend that more and more Americans are going to be taking advantage of.

It’s good to keep a diversified portfolio while investing. The idea is to spread your risk so that when environmental conditions make one underlying asset perform poorly, that same condition causes the other sort of underlying asset to become more valuable.

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This is usually born out in the debt versus shares situation. It is well known that the prices of these two instruments move in opposite directions, and the reasons are the ones stated above, namely that they perform well in different environments. While stocks are good for you when the market is bullish, the debt funds are good for you when the economy is down, providing you with steady income that you can rely upon.

But the same principle holds for within shares as well. Shares are subject to different price fluctuations based on the industry in which they work. In concordance with this logic, each share has a beta value, which is a measure of the risk of the share. The risk is a measure of how wildly the share price fluctuates. But when the risk is high, the returns are high as well. Low risk shares, hardly fluctuate at all, but their yield is low. They are the dependable shares. Based on your investment horizon, you will want to decide what percentage of your stock portfolio you want to allot to each of these different types.

It is best to have a healthy mix of both so that you can hedge your bets in difficult times like these.

Verizon’s sales in the fiber-optic services, and wireless communciations, seem to have allowed it to weather the economic situation that has affected almost everyone else. It’s shares rose 1.4% to $37.55 on Monday.

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With a 13% increase in earnings this year, Verizon met the expectations of Thomson Financial analysts. This didn’t even take into account 4 cents per share for special items, since analysts usually discount one time increases. Also in line with expectations, were it’s revenue, which rose 5.5% to $23.8 billion.

Verizon showed a 1.5 million increase in it’s wireless customer base. The company has been developing it’s wireless services very energetically, as it cannot continue to rely on it’s phone wire base, which has been declining. In fact, it is declining much faster than analysts had expected.

Craig Moffett, senior telecom analyst for Sanford C. Bernstein, is worried, that soon, the wired service will no longer be sustainable. On the other hand, the wireless business seems to have weathered the storm, as Verizon’s competitor AT&T showed improvements in it’s wireless growth as well.

Now that Verizon has added the FIOS TV fiber-optic service, with 263,000 new customers, it is in competition with Comcase, and Time Warner.

In all the talk of the American Recession, here is a startling figure. According to a new study by the Harrison Group, the wealthiest Americans, accounting for 10% of the population, are also responsible for over 50% of the overall purchases!

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And it seems, that they never had it so good. Paul Palmer, an Entrepreneur who owns five homes in three countries, a dozen cars, and three jets, says that he doesn’t care about the recession, and will certainly not stop spending oodles of cash.

In fact, the wealthiest Americans are actually purchasing more than they ever were. The sales of luxury items like cars, homes, and jewelery continue unabated, and are very much on the increase. In some cases, it is even setting unprecedented records.

For example, so far, 71 Manhattan apartments costing $10 Million have been sold so fart this year compared to only 17 sold last year! Pam Liebman of the Corcoran Group says that this part of the market is recession proof, and she wishes that there were more houses to sell.

Andy Serwer says that these people aren’t hurt at all and “To the extent that they are, they’re probably down to their last 50 Million” he says.

The move by the Government to Distribute the Tax rebates two weeks earlier than usual, is an attempt to get the economy back on track. The question is, how much is it going to help.

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Economists are of the opinion, that the damage just might have been done already, and that the rebates are just a quick fix, that will not achieve any lasting purpose. They point to figures which indicat that 232,000 jobs have already been lost, causing the unemployment figure to reach 5.1%. The economic reports that are due in April, are expected to show that another 80,000 jobs will be lost this month.

In addition, they speak of retailers reporting low sales, and Automobile sales, which of course were the first to be hit by the recession, going down by 8%. The last measure, is the rising price of basic commodities, and fuel. They feel that the extra money will only help Americans to purchase what they have already been purchasing at higher prices. In other words, it won’t give the boost to spending that the government was hoping.

Nonetheless, Rich Yamarone, director of economic research at Argus Research feels that officially, the US will avoid a recession. The National Bureau of Economic Research doesn’t recognize a recession until six months have passed since it began.

The layoffs continue to affect the people, as GM was the next in line to cut down it’s staff due to drops in it’s sales caused by the prices of Fuel, and American’s lower spending power.

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Four factories in North America were subject to the cut, as GM removed one shift from each, bringing the total number of laid off workers to 3,500. The vehicles that are slated to have reduced production are the SUV’s, and pickup trucks, with the planned reduction in capacity being 50,000, and 88,000 respectively.

The cuts will affect factories in Pontiac and Flint, Mich., and Oshawa, Ontario, as well as the full-size SUV plant in Janesville, Wis.

GM said however, that workers will get unemployment benefits, and that added to their supplemental pay, will make up a huge amount of their regular income.

It’s not surprising that GM is cutting back on SUV production. Evers since the fuel hike, Americans have ben wary of vehicles that guzzle fuel. Indeed, Troy Clarke, GM North America President admitted as much.

This trend of fewer SUV’s and pickup trucks has been developing over three year now. The focus is now on normal cars. However, in recent months, the trend has become more drastic. Gas prices have now reached $3.60 per gallon.

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Visa is a recent entry in the stock market. It joined only on the 19th of January, and since then, it’s shares have risen by over 70%, with it’s initial share value being $44, rising to close at $75.63 on Monday.

The IPO of Visa raised $18 Billion. It was the largest IPO in the history of the US. Visa however, needed every cent of that money. It set aside $12 billion to buy back it’s shares from banks who, consequently had a huge vested interest in the company. These banks like JP Morgan, and BoA, earned huge profits from the IPO. And the cash must have been welcome, as the financial sector has sustained immense losses on the loan repayment, and the mortage market front.

Another $3 Billion was set aside for lawsuits.

The company’s books showed a jump in Profits of 28% due to the increased use of Credit Cards by it’s customers. However, it seems that investors are expecting even more. They were disappointed by Visas’s earnings which they felt should have been even higher. Even so, Visa’s earnings were pretty much what analysts expected, at $1.45 billion ending the 31st of March.

On Monday, the stocks had done well, with the market reacting well to the News that Wrigley was being acquired by Mars for $23 Billion. However, investors might do well to wait a little longer for the hoped for market recovery.

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The Dow Jones, as well as the Standard & Poor’s 500 lost a little bit and the end of Monday. The Nasdaq on the other hand, was more or less the same.

After stocks had reached their peak after January, analysts and investors took hope that the recession was over, and were encouraged from the not wholly disappointing quarterly results. Rumors, and news about mergers were enough to make the market happy.

However, since the Fed Policy meet might give unexpected results, investors held back waiting for more information about the decisions of the meeting.

The Federal Reserve meeting that is to be held over two days on Tuesday and Wednesday, will determine whether or not interest rates are to be cut yet again. The market is hoping that the rates will not be cut again. Other factors that led investors to hold back, is the April Jobs report, and the first-quarter GDP growth. Both of these factors could give official information as to whether or not the economy is indeed in a recession.

It’s not enough to have a great Idea. It’s not even enought to make the idea feasible. These days, everything lies in the marketing. You can have a great product flop, or a lousy product make it to the top simply on the strength of the marketing campaigns that were devised.

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But marketing requires a lot of money, expertise and patience. Something that very few, if any, inventors have. That is why the makers of so many great ideas, when they have been proved, are willing to go to a large corporation that will look at the technology, and get into a partnership with the inventor, in return for a share of the profits.

But many people are suspicious of large companies, and non are more so than the inventors themselves, who may have put in years of work in getting the invention just right. They are afraid that if they show their technology to a large firm, they might just take it away from them, and market it on their own.

In cases like this, the standard procedure is to use a Non Disclosure Agreement or NDA. It essentially says that neither party will be able to use any information that is revealed during discussion for any commercial purpose unless the two are doing business together.

The best way to set up an NDA, is to hire a lawyer who has experience in such matters.