Written by Bob Meyer, Editor of BarterNews

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BBX Investors Into Real Estate

An article in the Sydney Morning Herald (March 22) reported that members/property investors within Business Barter Exchange (BBX) hold $80 million worth of real estate. BBX is now into its 13th year of business.

Michael Touma, BBX’s managing director, says there is an increased interest in real estate in the barter market because one can use trade dollars on the downpayment (20% to 30%).

Touma says BBX can offer, depending upon the situation and buyer, interest free trade loans of up to $80,000 repayable over 18 to 36 months.

In Australia, home builders (vendors) see the trade exchanges as an alternative market for sales. It provides a new clientele for their properties and reduces reliance on cash funding, as they use the services of other members to reduce construction outlays on either the current building project or their next development.

Running a trade exchange is a 24/7 effort. At every national convention trade exchange owners always talk and nod in agreement about the importance of educating their clients—making them aware of the many benefits of barter so they will be better traders.

Then they return home, and once again are inundated with simply not enough time in the day to get everything done...let along time to research and then write and layout an eye-appealing, interesting, educational and powerful marketing newsletter. One which points out and reinforces the benefits of your valuable services—each and every month...on a consistent and on-going basis.

As a trade exchange owner, you realize that having such a unique marketing tool to use for your existing members—as well as the hundreds of prospects in your marketplace—is really necessary in these competitive times. Yet who has the available time and ability to generate such a newsletter?

What’s the answer...? The highly effective Competitive Edge newsletter. For almost two decades now, unfailingly, each and every month CE has been published for your use only. It’s the professionally written and designed, yet inexpensive answer for a busy, growing exchange like yours.

Check it out...click here to see a sample copy

Bartercard International Launches Portal For 16 Countries

With a worldwide, organization Bartercard International faces the challenge of providing regional culturization and language needs for 16 distinct and unique countries.

The company undertook to create a singular web site platform that addressed the consumer needs for each of its countries’ markets, with regional content management all under a unified global brand.

The results can be viewed at www.bartercard.com which offers 16 unique web sites. All are culturally and content relevant for the local domain, yet displayed in a similar manner and exhibiting consistent navigational norms.

Get New Money-Making Ideas And Valuable Contacts!

You can obtain useful, informative ideas and contacts in every available back-issue of BarterNews.

Television’s First Responsible Business & Investing Show Debuts Nationally On PBS

Ethical Marketplace LLC, a media company that reports on the growth of responsible business in the global marketplace, announced the national premiere of Ethical Marketplace, a new half-hour weekly television show reporting on the multi-trillion dollar growth of socially and environmentally responsible investing.

It is the first national TV show dedicated to reporting the news, trends, and stories of the companies, governments, and people worldwide who are redefining success with socially and environmentally responsible practices, investments, and lifestyles.

A “financial lifestyle” show, Ethical Marketplace takes viewers beyond the balance sheet with engaging, real-life stories of businesses, executives, investors, and consumers that demonstrate an increasingly popular standard of corporate citizenship measured by the integrated “triple bottom line,” often referred to as People, Profit and Planet.

Hosted by Simran Sethi, award winning producer and reporter, it is the only program to report on these unaccounted for assets through topics such as fair trade, renewable energy, and socially responsible investing (SRI)—a market that has grown to represent 11% of all U.S. investments under professional management, roughly $2.2 trillion.

The show explores the business assumptions that affect every investor from fund managers, corporate executives, board members, small business owners and employees, to consumers, students, and the millions of involuntary investors with pensions, 401K plans, or other forms of indirect investments. Viewers can use this information to improve their quality of life in ways that reflect their personal interests, ethics, values, and goals for success.

“Business leaders are increasingly realizing the value of an economic model that measures business success by focusing on the greater community and environment, as well as profit,” says internationally recognized author, futurist and sustainable business economics expert Dr. Hazel Henderson, creator and co-executive producer of Ethical Marketplace.

Each episode includes in-studio and field-based segments such as “Walking The Talk,” and examines the overall topic from multiple viewpoints such as appreciating assets, and earth ethics. They provide engaging discussions with executives from Fortune 500 companies to small start-ups, personal stories of people seeking value and success, and supply historical perspective, indicators of success and quality of life, new technologies, as well as realistic projections for the future.

Every company featured is vetted by a screening process, to ensure they support a socially and environmentally responsible business model. The Ethical Marketplace series is being made possible by underwriting from the Media Venture Collective.

For more information contact CEO Gary Tomchukat (215) 844-2292.

Now available ...BarterNews issue #64, get your copy now! Orders will be shipped within two business days of publication. Click on Order Form.

(If you are not sure if your subscription has lapsed, e-mail your name, address, and zip code to bmeyer@barternews.com.)

Siegel Envisions Next Growth Wave

Jeremy Siegel, professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Future for Investors, says today’s nay-sayers are taking a far too narrow view of the world. And, he contends, the next great wave of growth will be in the developing world.

According to Siegel, the expansion of China, India and other developing countries will have a huge impact on world capital markets. Why? Because today’s capital markets are global, and capital flows to the countries offering the best returns (and away from countries where returns are low).

In the future we can expect to see the fast-growing firms in India and China increasingly tapping the U.S. capital markets...upping the demand for our funds and driving interest rates higher.

The best-selling author says raising rates demonstrates a realistic and upbeat assessment of growth prospects not only in the U.S., but around the world. “Our economy no longer needs artificially low interest rates that have caused bubbles in both commodity markets and housing prices.”

Siegel says the future looks bright because the developing countries, despite comprising 87% of the world’s population, produce less than one-quarter of the world’s output measured in dollars. It’s likely that they will produce over half the world’s GDP by the middle of this century...becoming the dominating factor in the world’s capital markets.

So investors should not succumb to the pessimistic forecast of government agencies and others who bemoan the aging of the U.S. population. Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan is finally showing the markets that our historically low interest rates are unjustified.

Siegel says those pessimists currently buying bonds to protect themselves against the widely predicted economic downturn will soon be sorry that they bet against growth.

Every barter company in the world is listed on our web site, click through to our Global List of Barter Companies.

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Here & There...

• John Strabley, Sr. VP at Continental Trade Exchange, headquartered in Milwaukee, has congratulated his fishing buddy, Ken Meharg, founder of New England Trade of Boston, for his huge catch. Meharg recently defended his fishing title for the second year in a row at the Lac La Marte Lodge in Wisconsin— Lac La Marte is North America’s fishing capital. Meharg proudly caught a whopping 29.5 pound trout!

• Clear Channel is bartering with various concert performers (Rob Thomas, John Legend, Gavin DeGraw and Jesse McCartney) in a preparation for launching an ambitious program of concerts. The shows will be recorded live and offered free on Clear Channel’s 1,000 station web sites beginning in May. The performers traded their talents (for vast exposure) because the shows will provide promotional value for the artists’ CD sales.

• Have you signed up to receive a summary via e-mail of the Tuesday Report every week? If not, go to the top of this issue (right hand corner) and sign up!

• Extreme commuters—people traveling a minimum of an hour-and-a-half to work and back—is seeing incredible growth. Since 1990 the numbers have jumped an astounding 95%, according to the Census Bureau, accounting for 3.4 million workers.

• In 1999, 37% of serving CEOs had held their positions for five or more years. By 2001, that figure had dropped to 28%. It’s a continuation of a trend towards shorter CEO tenure that has been occurring over the past two decades.

• You’re happy when you make more money, aren’t you? So consider that average incomes in the West have doubled in the past 50 years. Are people twice as happy today as people were 50 years ago? Studies show that people are precisely as happy (or as unhappy) now as they were then. This is the “paradox at the heart of our lives,” writes noted British economist Sir Richard Layard.