When you’re drowning in debt and dodging creditors, a debt settlement plan with one low monthly payment to a single creditor sounds like a dream solution. But some debts won’t go into that settlement bucket.

Here are some of those debts and what you can do about them.

Utility bills: Are you behind on a utility bill? In many instances, a call to your electric, gas, phone or water company might help.

“Typically, utility companies and local taxing entities will work out a payment plan and will let you pay it off on a monthly basis,” says Gail Cunningham of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling in Silver Spring, Md.

• Quick quiz: Get a free credit score estimate

Student loans: If you’re trying to catch up on your college loans, the D-word is deferment, not debt settlement.

“Of all the different types of debt, (student loans) are fairly flexible to work with,” says Jessica Cecere, the president of the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast in Florida. “Payment plans on student loans can (be extended) for years — 30 years or more.”

But rarely are student loans forgiven, according to Bankrate’s Debt Adviser, Steve Bucci. So, Cecere says, eventually you’ll have to pay.

“At some point, you can’t defer anymore,” she says.

The Internal Revenue Service: Your tax debts can’t go into a settlement plan. If you owe taxes but can’t pay the full amount, there are other ways to fulfill your government obligation.

“You can apply to pay them over time,” Cecere says. “That’s something you have to be in contact with them about. You will pay interest. But if you don’t pay the IRS, they can garnish your wages.”

You also may be able to settle with the IRS. “It’s called an ‘offer in compromise,’” Cecere says. “You meet with an IRS representative and say, ‘There’s no way I can pay all this. What can we work out?’”

Even if the IRS makes the deal, you’ll have to pay taxes on the amount of debt that’s forgiven, Cunningham says.

Child support and alimony: Child support and alimony are legal, court-ordered obligations even if your checking account is empty. In some states, such as Florida, the court can take your driver’s license away for nonpayment, Cecere says. If you can’t pay, there is an answer. “Go to court. Document that you can’t pay,” she says.

Secured debt: You likely wouldn’t use debt settlement to make your car payment, mortgage or other secured debt, because those creditors don’t need a settlement plan. They can simply take your car or home, Cecere says.

“You need to take care of those things — your car, your house. Credit card bills are important, but if you have to choose between paying your Visa bill or making your house payment, you should make your house payment,” Cecere says.

For all debt, the key is communication. “It’s important to call and say, ‘I can’t make this payment. I’d like to work something out,’” Cecere says. “All they can say is no.”

This article was reported by Karen Haywood Queen for Bankrate.com.

Published May 3, 2010

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(Adds Obama comments in second paragraph. See {EXT4 <GO>} for more on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.)

By Jessica Resnick-Ault and Jim Polson

April 30 (Bloomberg) — U.S. Interior Department inspectors began boarding deep-water platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana mobilized the National Guard as an expanding oil slick that may rival the Exxon Valdez spill approached the coast.

Future drilling must safeguard against a recurrence, President Barack Obama said today in remarks at the White House, promising a “thorough review” of the BP Plc well leak the government estimates is spewing 5,000 barrels a day.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was ordered to report in 30 days the additional precautions needed, Obama said. The department’s Minerals Management Service, regulator of offshore drilling, is focusing on the blowout preventer, equipment used by all drillers that should have prevented the spill and an explosion that resulted in the death of 11 people, Mike Saucier, an agency spokesman, said yesterday at a press conference.

“I continue to believe that the domestic oil production is an important part” of U.S. energy policy, Obama said in remarks at the White House. “But I’ve always said it must be done responsibly, for the safety of our workers and our environment.”

No additional drilling will be authorized until its determined what happened aboard the rig, owned by Transocean Ltd., White House senior Advisor David Axelrod said today on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder dispatched a team of lawyers to New Orleans to meet the U.S. Attorney and spill responders.

Coastal Waters Closed

A sheen washed ashore on the Louisiana coastline last night, the Associated Press reported. Oil may hit Mississippi tomorrow, Alabama in two days and Florida in three, according to a government forecast.

Louisiana closed some coastal waters to shrimping and expects to close its entire eastern coastline to fishing to protect health and safety, said Randy Pausina, spokesman for the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

At the rate the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates oil is escaping from the well, the volume of the spill would exceed Alaska’s 1989 Exxon Valdez accident by the third week of June.

“This has a danger of becoming an utter ecological disaster,” Ken Medlock, a fellow in energy and resource economics at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston, said yesterday. “This is going to result in remediation costs and is going to be burdensome, to say the least.”

BP Shares Fall

BP dropped for a second day in London trading after an analyst estimated that its cost for the spill may reach $8 billion before taxes. The shares dropped 8.7 pence, or 1.5 percent, to 575.5 pence. BP, the largest oil and gas producer in the Gulf of Mexico, has lost 10 percent of its value since the rig exploded April 20.

BP and partners Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Mitsui & Co. may have to pay as much as $12.5 billion before tax to control and clean up the oil spill, Sanford Bernstein & Co. analyst Neil McMahon said in a note to investors today.

“The cost for BP will be heavily influenced by how much oil reaches the Gulf coast and where this occurs,” McMahon wrote.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency and requested a federal disaster declaration to aid commercial fisherman, providing funds and potentially suspending loan repayments to the government.

National Guard

Jindal, a Republican, also requested federal funding for 90 days of military duty for as many as 6,000 National Guard troops and demanded extra oil barriers from BP and the U.S. Coast Guard to protect wildlife reserves that nurture a $1.8 billion seafood industry, the richest in the U.S. behind Alaska.

Shrimpers and fishermen filed suit in federal court on April 28 against BP and Transocean Ltd., owner of the sunken rig. The lawsuits say Louisiana supplies 25 percent of the seafood for the continental U.S.

Families of some of the 11 workers killed when the rig exploded and sank have also filed suit.

Louisiana is training crews to remove oil from marshes and plans to use prisoners, adding hands to the cleanup effort, Jindal said at a press conference.

BP, unable to staunch the leak that began when a drilling rig burned and sank a week ago, yesterday proposed injecting detergent 5,000 feet below the surface in an effort to disperse oil before it can form a slick. U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry said she was considering the “novel” request.

Permanent Solution

BP has a rig on site to drill to the base of the damaged well and plug the leak, the only permanent solution, according to the company and federal officials. Drilling may start within 48 hours, Doug Suttles, chief operating officer of exploration and production, said yesterday at a press conference in Robert, Louisiana. The work may take three months, he said.

“It’s the biggest U.S. offshore platform incident in 40 years,” Dagmar Schmidt Etkin, a Cortland, New York-based oil spill consultant who has worked for BP and the government, said yesterday. “Well blowouts are extremely rare events and usually when they occur it’s only a few barrels.”

Oil from the leaking well is lighter than the Alaskan crude spilled by the Exxon Valdez, Etkin said. “There are going to be more toxic impacts than the heavy black oil you saw with the Exxon Valdez.”

Sampling Water

Florida, Alabama and Mississippi dispatched all their marine research vessels to begin sampling water for oil and fish for taint, Robert L. Shipp, chairman of the department of marine sciences at the University of South Alabama in Mobile, said yesterday.

BP summoned offshore experts from Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc to devise other ways to halt the leak, Suttles said. BP also called in Anadarko, its partner in the Macondo field where the rig was drilling.

BP’s costs, now $6 million a day, will rise as it adds people and equipment, Neil Chapman, company spokesman, said in an interview in Robert. The company would welcome additional assistance, including from the U.S. Defense Department and from volunteers, he said.

The secretaries of the Interior and Homeland Security departments will join the head of the Environmental Protection Agency to visit the site today.

–With assistance from Kari Lundgren in London, Katarzyna Klimasinska in Louisiana, David Wethe in Houston, Kate Anderson Brower, Hans Nichols and Julianna Goldman in Washington, Moming Zhou in New York, and Laurel Brubaker Calkins. Editors: Charles Siler, Tina Davis

To contact the reporters on this story: Jessica Resnick-Ault in New York at jresnickault@bloomberg.net; Jim Polson in New York at jpolson@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Susan Warren at susanwarren@bloomberg.net.

On March 23, the Associated Press published a story dealing with sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church to little fanfare. It noted that allegations of sexual abuse involving the Catholic Church in the United States dropped in 2009, and that most of the alleged offenders “are dead, no longer in the priesthood, removed from ministry, or missing.” The article also noted that “Of the allegations reported in 2009, six involved children under the age of 18 in 2009.” It is easy to see why this story was not front page news in the New York Times: it is hard to use such numbers to convince the public to demand the resignation of Benedict XVI.

That, of course, is the object of the recent media campaign against the Pope, one that has seen everyone with an axe to grind against the Catholic Church clamber on board. Richard Dawkins, writing on the Washington Post website, described Benedict as “A leering old villain in a frock,” the leader of a “profiteering, woman-fearing, guilt-gorging, truth-hating, child-raping institution,” one that is destined to tumble about Benedict’s ears, “amid a stench of incense and a rain of tourist-kitsch sacred hearts and preposterously crowned virgins.” One wonders if the Post or the Times ever published similar condemnations of the Soviet Union, let alone such a description of any non-Christian religion. Dawkins declined to tell those lapping up his purple prose that, in 2006, he had written that “we live in a time of hysteria about pedophilia” and that “All three of the boarding schools I attended employed teachers whose affection for small boys overstepped the bounds of propriety. That was indeed reprehensible. Nevertheless, if fifty years on, they had been hounded by vigilantes or lawyers as no better than child murderers, I should have felt obliged to come to their defense, even as the victim of one of them (an embarrassing but otherwise harmless experience).” Dawkins even wrote that “I can’t help wondering if [the Catholic Church] has been unfairly demonized over this issue.”

Dawkins’ fellow atheist and close ideological ally Christopher Hitchens has never expressed any such doubts about the perfidy of the Catholic Church. Hitchens, after all, opposed John Roberts’ nomination to the Supreme Court, in essence, because Roberts is Catholic, has said of Mother Teresa that “I wish there was a hell for the bitch to go to,” and recently described Thomas More as “one of history’s wickedest men.” It should come as no surprise, then, that Hitchens devoted three successive columns to attacking the Pope. To Hitchens, Benedict is cut from the same cloth as Mother Teresa and Thomas More. He is a “grisly little man,” whose “whole career has the stench of evil.” But Hitchens’ case against the Pope, relying on the reporting of the Times and Hitchens’ own flights of fancy, falls short.

In his first column, Hitchens charges that while Joseph Ratzinger was Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, he was involved in “obstructing justice on a global scale,” and quotes from a document issued by that Congregation. However, as Sean Murphy points out at the Catholic Education Resource Center, the document Hitchens quotes was issued in 1962, when Ratzinger was still a priest in Bavaria: traveling through time to commit evil is quite a trick, even for a villain of Ratzinger’s magnitude. Moreover, canon lawyer Tom Doyle, quoted as an expert by Hitchens in the column, had this to say about the documents issued by that Congregation governing sexual abuse by priests: “It is not correct to state that the popes under whose authority any of these were published were either creating a blue-print for a cover-up or mandating a church-wide cover up of clergy sexual abuse.” Doyle also noted that “It is also incorrect to use these documents to accuse any of the personnel charged with administering the Church court, such as the Prefects of the Vatican Congregations, with a cover-up in a conventional sense.” Indeed, as John Allen noted in the generally liberal National Catholic Reporter, once Ratzinger reviewed all the files on priestly sexual abuse that made their way to the Congregation after his office was given oversight of such cases in 2001, he “seems to have undergone something of a ‘conversion experience,’” and “the substantial majority” of those cases “were returned to the local bishop authorizing immediate action against the accused priest—no canonical trial, no lengthy process, just swift removal from the ministry and, often, expulsion from the priesthood.” Hitchens also charges that a document Ratzinger issued in 2001 “wrote its own private statute of limitations” for canonical claims against abusive priests, running for ten years from a victim’s 18th birthday, and cites an attorney suing the Church in Texas characterizing this as an obstruction of justice. Hitchens neglects to mention that the State of Texas is apparently an accomplice to this obstruction, since the statute of limitations for rape in Texas is—you guessed it—ten years.

As Scott Richert ably explained at his blog at About.com, the horrific case of Fr. Murphy, trumpeted by the New York Times and seized upon by Hitchens, is a red herring, twisted to blame then Cardinal Ratzinger for Murphy’s monstrous abuse, which had stopped 22 years before Murphy’s case was referred to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith by the Archbishop of Milwaukee. There is no evidence in the Times story that Joseph Ratzinger had any personal involvement in that case, and in any event the Congregation waived the statute of limitations for the crime of solicitation in the confessional so that a canonical trial against Murphy could proceed. (There could have been no criminal trial of Murphy at that point, since the Wisconsin statute of limitations had long since run and, indeed, police and prosecutors in Wisconsin had failed to take action against Murphy in the 1970’s, when Murphy’s crimes were reported to them.) The Archbishop of Milwaukee abated the canonical trial against Murphy two days before he died, but also began the process of removing Murphy from ministry, a quicker process than a canonical trial. In Hitchens’ retelling, Ratzinger, described as “a cardinal in Rome, supervising the global Catholic cover-up of rape and torture,” made “no response” to Milwaukee’s request for a canonical trial, “until Father Murphy himself appealed to Ratzinger for mercy and was granted it.” Even putting aside Hitchens’ description of Ratzinger as “supervising the global Catholic cover-up of rape and torture,” Hitchens tells three distinct lies in his brief summary of the Times story: Ratzinger’s Congregation did not have jurisdiction over cases of clergy sexual abuse until 2001, and was only involved in the Murphy case because it involved a separate canonical crime, solicitation in the confessional; the Congregation did respond to Milwaukee, by waiving the statute of limitations and allowing a canonical trial to proceed; and Murphy was not granted “mercy,” much less by Ratzinger, unless beginning the process to remove a priest from ministry constitutes “mercy.” (In Hitchens’ defense, it should be noted that his retelling of the Murphy case is less lurid than that of the Times own Maureen Dowd, who, as Pat Buchanan notes, wrote that Ratzinger “ignored repeated warnings and looked away in the case of the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy,” implying that Ratzinger failed to take action when Murphy was actively engaged in abuse.)

The Times and Hitchens also make much of the transfer of an abusive priest from Essen, Father Hullermann, to Munich for psychiatric therapy in January 1980, when Ratzinger was Archbishop there. Hullermann later abused other teenage boys while working in the Archdiocese of Munich, at a parish assignment he received seven months after Joseph Ratzinger left Munich for Rome. There is no dispute that Ratzinger approved letting Hullermann reside at a rectory in Munich while undergoing therapy; the dispute concerns what role Ratzinger played in his vicar general’s decision to allow the priest to resume his duties while undergoing therapy. The vicar general has assumed full responsibility for that decision, while the Times notes that “Cardinal Ratzinger’s office” was copied on a memo from the vicar general returning Hullermann to full duties. But from the Times own report it appears that what chancery officials in Munich were told by the official dealing with Essen was that Hullermann needed “medical-psychotherapeutic treatment in Munich” and was “a very talented man, who could be used in a variety of ways.” The fact that this description of Hullermann turned out to be spectacularly wrong does not inculpate those who acted on such advice. And a subsequent Times story showed that even those unconnected to the Church in Germany doubted that Ratzinger knew much about Hullermann, quoting Hannes Burger, who covered the Church for Suddeutsche Zeitung, as saying that Ratzinger “certainly would not have realized anything; he was in a different sphere. He held beautiful sermons and wrote beautifully, but the details he left to his staff” and quoting Andreas Englisch, a German Vaticanist, as saying, “I don’t think he really knew the details; I don’t think he was really interested in the details.” Even the Times reporter noted that “How closely he would have watched personnel decisions, especially with an administrative chief, Vicar General Gerhard Gruber, who had been in his post since 1968, is an open question.” To be sure, Ratzinger bears ultimate responsibility for what happened in Munich during his episcopacy. But there is a difference between Ratzinger’s possibly making a poorly informed or negligent decision on Hullermann and Ratzinger’s “finding another parish with fresh children for the priest to assault” and of making pederast priests his “pets,” as Hitchens charges. Indeed, when Hullermann was convicted by the German courts of sexually abusing minors in 1986, he received a suspended sentence, a fine, and probation conditioned on continued psychiatric treatment, but the probation imposed on Hullermann does not appear to have restricted Hullermann from working as a priest. Hullermann’s sentence shows that Catholic bishops were far from the only ones in the 1980’s who regarded psychiatric treatment as an effective response to pederasty, though international media outrage over the result of such an attitude is in fact limited to Catholic bishops.

And that outrage is most intense when it involves a certain type of Catholic bishop, of whom Pope Benedict is seen an example. In Hitchens’ final salvo at the Pope, the outspoken atheist spends nearly as much time on Benedict’s transgressions against leftist theology as he does on his supposed failings in dealing with clerical pederasty. (Hitchens also keeps lying in this column, and further reveals his anti-Catholic animus, by claiming that “Almost every episode in this horror show has involved small children being seduced and molested in the confessional itself,” even though there is no evidence that such abuse has occurred primarily in the confessional.) We are told that as Archbishop of Munich Ratzinger reversed the “liberalism” of allowing children to make their First Confession one year after “subject[ing] small children to their first communion at a tender age,” that as Cardinal he defended the Legionaries of Christ, whom Hitchens had earlier described as “ultra-reactionary,” and that as Pope he lifted the excommunications of the four bishops of the Society of St. Pius X, “that group of extreme right-wing schismatics.” (Hitchens never mentions that as Pope Benedict barred the founder of the Legionaries of Christ from public ministry, instructing him to live a life of prayer and penance until his death, following a complaint for sexual abuse filed by former Legionaries in Rome, the truth of which the Legion has now acknowledged.) Indeed, we are told that for Pope Benedict, “the sole test of a good priest is this: Is he obedient to the traditionalist wing of the church?” Concerns over whether children receive their First Communion before or after their First Confession, over whether the SSPX is “schismatic,” over whether the Legionaries of Christ are “ultra-reactionary,” and over whether Benedict favors those in the Church’s “traditionalist wing” are very odd concerns for an atheist to have, unless they show his motivation in blasting Benedict as “a completely undistinguished human being” at the beginning of his papacy and in labeling him as “evil” today. The non-religious editors and writers of the New York Times have long expressed similar concerns over the contours of Benedict’s theology. Hitchens and his allies in the media fear a revival of traditional Christianity, and hate Benedict because they believe that is what he is trying to accomplish within Catholicism.

Of course, there have been many horrific cases of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, and many bishops who, at the very least, failed in their duty to protect those under their care. But sexual abuse within the Church was at its worst in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and John Allen’s case that Pope Benedict has been a force for good on this issue is substantial. Unfortunately, many media reports on this issue reflect, and are calculated to produce, an unreasoning frenzy, reminiscent of the 1960’s, when radicals demanded immediate, wholesale change and expressed contempt for any who dared question their demands. The ranting of Hitchens, Dawkins, and Dowd differs more in degree than in kind from much of what is being presented in mainstream media outlets, and comment boxes throughout the internet are filling up with hatred and vitriol. Iconoclastic British atheist Brendan O’Neill, writing at the online journal Spiked, has noticed the same thing: “The discussion of a relatively rare phenomenon as a ‘great evil’ of our age shows that child abuse in Catholic churches has been turned into a morality tale—about the dangers of belief and of hierarchical institutions and the need for more state and other forms of intervention into religious institutions and even religious families.” O’Neill also noted that “it might be unfashionable to say the following but it is true nonetheless: very, very small numbers of children in the care or teaching of the Catholic Church in Europe in recent decades were sexually abused, but very, very many of them actually received a decent standard of education.”

Indeed. I have nothing but fond memories of my Jesuit high school, and the Catholic Church has been a great force for good within my family. I know my experience is far from unique, even though I am both saddened and angry that some priests and some bishops have caused other Catholics to have a far different experience of the Church. But I cannot ignore those who have long hated the Church and who are using legitimate concerns over clerical sexual abuse to further a campaign designed to topple the Pope and, they hope, the Church as well, a campaign that, if even moderately successful, will cause incalculable damage.

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In 1994, “Forrest Gump” was the movie of the year, health care stocks were as cheap and unloved as they are today, and the reason was exactly the same: Washington was considering health care reform.

But then the Clinton administration’s proposals died, and stocks in the sector roared upward, enriching investors who’d been brave enough to make a contrarian bet on those stocks during the debate.

This time around, it looks like President Barack Obama’s health care reform ideas might actually become law, perhaps in the next few days. So betting on health care stocks now would be dumb, right?

Wrong.

Pass or fail?

To understand this picture, start with a little Forrest Gump logic. Because the details of health care reform remain unclear, the sector’s future is like a box of chocolates: Investors don’t know what they’re going to get, so they are steering clear.

But there’s limited risk that health stocks will fall when a bill passes because top money managers have already assumed legislation will be approved, according to a survey released last week by Deutsche Bank. This suggests passage is priced in — already accounted for in stock prices.

Instead, simply clearing away the uncertainty could get them moving up. And if the reform push falters, well, the rally is on.

“The market hates uncertainty,” says Robert Hodgson, the portfolio manager at BlackRock Healthcare Fund (MDHCX), which has beaten the market and its benchmarks by a healthy margin over the past five years.

If reform passes, Hodgson says, investors can begin “putting numbers on what is nebulous right now.” They’ll like what they see, he believes, particularly because many of the changes won’t go into effect until 2014.

Meanwhile, company “fundamentals are still robust, and valuations are cheap. For at least several years in the future, fundamentals aren’t going to change a whole lot,” Hodgson says.

Simply settling the issue will draw investors to health care stocks, says Derek Taner, the manager of AIM Global Health Care Fund A (GGHCX), another outstanding fund in the sector based on five-year returns.

“A lot of investors are thinking, ‘It is too hard to figure out, so why don’t I own Apple (AAPL, news, msgs) and Caterpillar (CAT, news, msgs), because they are blasting the numbers.’ Once you get resolution, the sector is going to be much better off.”

If reform fails, on the other hand, the gains could be really big as the stocks catch up to the rest of the market.

Sector is 20% behind

“Since the March low of last year, health care has severely lagged the broad market by 20%,” says Scott Callahan, the portfolio manager at IconHealthcare Fund (ICHCX), making it the cheapest sector in the market. “We see tremendous value in a lot of these stocks.”

He calculates that you get $1.18 in value for every $1 you put into health care stocks right now, compared with just $1.04 for every dollar that goes into the S&P 500 Index ($INX).

Here’s another way to look at the potential. Before the Clinton health care reforms surfaced, stocks in the group typically traded for 1.2 to 1.4 times the price-earnings ratio of the S&P 500, says Ed Yardeni of Yardeni Research. That’s a common comparison used to decide whether stocks are cheap compared with the market.

By the time the Clinton reforms were introduced in April 1993, the relative P/E had fallen to a record low of 0.84. But look what happened next:

• By August 1994, with the plan losing support, the relative P/E for the group had recovered to 1.08.

• By the spring 1995, the sector was back in the 1.2-to-1.4 range.

• From the lows in 1993 through the next 10 years, health care stocks outperformed the S&P 500 by more than two times, Yardeni says.

Recently, the sector traded at a P/E that’s 0.86 times the S&P 500’s — very similar to the low point of the Clinton years. This isn’t to say history will repeat itself, but that’s a sizable potential for gains compared with a very limited downside.

So how do you play this opportunity if you agree?

Continued: The sector bets

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The strategy: Buy from a respected maker, such as Rolex or Longines, and you’ll probably be able to sell it for as much as or more than you paid for it, says John DiDonato, owner of Farfo.com, a vintage-watch retailer. To ensure that it holds its value, get it cleaned and oiled every three to five years.

Protect yourself: To avoid getting stuck with a fake, buy only from authorized dealers listed on the brands’ Web sites or secondhand shops that offer warranties and returns (see nawcc.org).

Infographic by Ronald Plyman

By

Spencer E. Ante and

Kimberly Weisul

in the course of the holidays last year, Aydin Senkut and Elad Gil gathered 50 of their pals=> associates=> buddies=> mates at a health-food restaurant in Palo Alto. Over turkey burgers and tofu wraps, they talked about tech development=> patterns and the way to=>tips on how to=>methods to=>ways to=>easy methods to=>the right way to=>how you can get wealthy. Or, more precisely, the way to=>tips on how to=>methods to=>ways to=>easy methods to=>the right way to=>how you can get wealthyer.

Senkut, Gil, and their dining circle are alumni of Google (GOOG), one of the greatest engines of wealth creation the united states=>the us has ever known. Since going public six years ago, Google has generated more than $170 billion for its employees and investors. lots of the=>a lot of the=>lots of=> a lot of the millionaires the company has produced are young, wired into the latest developments in tech, and at ease with risk. Which explains why so many Google alums‟our;including lots of=> a lot of those at Senkut and Gil’s gatherings‟our;are active angel investors, attempting to add yet another zero to their bank acremember=> rely=> matter=> be counted=> count number=> depends and yet another innovative company to their list of accomplishments. “I really feel like we have such a energy=> strength=> potentialful network, it is nearly=> practically like we have recreated Google outfacet=> aspect=> part=> edge=> area of the Google walls,” says Andrea Zurek, a 39-year-old backer of 26 startups.

excellenter than forty ex-Googlers have make investmentsed in about 200 fledgling companies since 2005, in accordance to the lookup firm YouNoodle and reporting by Bloomberg BusinessWeek. At least a half dozen current Google executives, including CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, are also financing young companies. quite a few angel-watchers say the Google group has more in common than just pedigree. Unlike many venture capitalists, the Googlers want to swap investment ideas and back beginups together. They’re also willing to take big opportunity=> possibility=> probabilitys. “[They're getting into] very danger=> threaty deals that’s excessively rewarding,” says Jeff Clavier, a veteran venture capitalisting=> record=> checklist who based Palo Alto-dependent SoftTech VC in 200four. “they’ve been very active as a group over the past two to three years.”

excellenter than MONEY

The results have been impressive. Companies backed by Googlers include Twitter, Tesla Motors, and gamemaker Tapulous. “As Google matures, its alums are continuing to have a huge effect=>a huge impact=>a big effect on Silicon Valley and the tech industry,” says Ron Conway, among the many Valley’s most active angel investors, who has backed one hundred ninety=> a hundpurple=> pink=> crimson ninety companies, including Google, Facee-book=> guide=> ebook=> e book, and Twitter.

One reason for their success is that Google’s angels have more to offer struggling entrepreneurs than just money. Bart Decrem, a Stanford University law grad, turned to the Google network when he was starting Tapulous in 2008. The company’s Tap Tap Revenge game requires players to tap on-screen balls to the beat of a song—not exactly a sure thing of an idea. But Decrem thought the game might turn into=>develop right into a substantial business by selling it on Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone. He raised $500,000 from a dozen angels, including Senkut and Zurek, who advised on strategy, connected the company with new partners in Asia, and helped it explore platforms for cell phones=> cellphones that use Google’s Android software. Today, Tap Tap games have been downloaded excellenter than 25 million times and Tapulous is solidly seasoned=> professionalfitable, with $1 munwell=>sick=>ailing=>in poor healthion in revenues a month.

Google’s Angels dabble in a wide selection=>a wide selection=>a wide selection=>a wide variety of businesses. Zurek has money in a premium vodka maker and a South Korean frozen yogurt emporium. Yet the angels tend to concentrate their cash in what they know‟our;search technology, mobile computing, and the consumer Internet. Already, Twitter, backed by former Google executive Chris Sacca, is the hottest startup in Silicon Valley, pioneering a new field of real-time communications. The online personal finance service Mint.com, with money from Senkut, proved so popular that market leader Intuit (INTU) bought it for $one hundred seventy=> a hundred and seventy million last year and made founder Aaron Patzer one of its best=> prime=> leading=> major execs. Search supplyr Powerset, backed by Senkut, was acquipurple=> pink=> crimson by Microsoft (MSFT) in 2008, and its technology turned=> grew to become a key a part of the Bing search engine.

But another key component is multimedia.  Compelling product demonstrations, captivating commercials, videos that go viral . . . any of these might make or break a campaign.  We at Business Wire have long been a proponent of including multimedia with a press release.  We launched the Smart News Release, the first such product in the industry, in 1997.  Over the past few years, we’ve uploaded more than 1,300 videos by our users onto our YouTube channel, among other popular video outlets.

Today we’ve taken yet another step, teaming with leading sales and marketing video producer MEDIAmobz to give our users access to the best in video communications for their news.  Read all about the Business Wire/MEDIAmobz team-up, or check out the video below for more information.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 10:37 am and is filed under Business Wire, Press Release Tips, Smart News Release, new media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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By

Diane Brady and

Adriana Brasileiro

David Neeleman is in a good mood. Fresh off a flight from São Paulo and gearing up for a round of TV interviews, Neeleman, 50, agrees to meet over lunch at a Così sandwich outlet in Greenwich, Conn., near his home in New Canaan. The lunch tab for two: $26—fitting for a man building his fourth discount airline and his first in an emerging market. Neeleman has a happy story to tell: Investment firm TPG has just bought a $30 million stake in his Brazilian airline Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras, and Azul has set an industry record, carrying 2.2 million customers in its first year.

Azul’s early success is all the more sweet for Neeleman given the bitterness he felt after his ouster from JetBlue Airways (JBLU). The company had captured consumers’ imaginations, and Neeleman, hailed as the model of a passionate leader, could often be spotted passing out snacks on planes or helping passengers check in bags. JetBlue became such a phenomenon that its stock jumped 67%, to 45, on its first day of trading in April 2002. Then a Valentine’s Day 2007 ice storm left thousands of passengers stranded and led to Neeleman’s ouster by the board. “My reaction was shock and disbelief,” says Neeleman. “I got sucker-punched.” JetBlue, which declined to comment on the firing, hasn’t enjoyed much of a rebound; its stock has since fallen by more than half, to about 5.

After dabbling with the idea of starting an ethanol company in California, Neeleman went to check out a Brazilian airline called BRA Transportes Aéreos as a favor to some investor friends. “It was the furthest thing from an airline I’ve ever seen,” says Neeleman. “I thought, ‘If these guys will invest $150 million in this, it must be worth looking around.’ ” (BRA suspended operations in late 2007.) Neeleman quickly raised $150 million to launch his own startup airline. Then, just as he was finalizing route plans and securing government clearance to fly, the global economy crashed. With his financing and plane orders locked in, he pushed ahead with his launch in December 2008. Remarkably, Azul—”blue” in Portuguese—is on track to make a profit in 2010. Neeleman, the chairman, owns about 15% and controls the voting shares.

Azul’s long-term success will depend in part on how well Neeleman has learned from his mistakes. One challenge, says Vaughn Cordle, managing partner of Washington-based research firm AirlineForecasts, will be curbing his ambition. “The greatest threat is if they let Azul grow above a sustainable rate,” says Cordle. “That’s what happened at JetBlue.” Neeleman acknowledges the Brazilian market’s many challenges, from taxes to infrastructure, and insists he’s keeping his expectations in check. But in the same breath he talks about the opportunity. He wants to revolutionize the Brazilian market by bringing air travel to the masses. And he wants redemption.

LOCAL ROOTS

Brazil was a logical place for Neeleman to go. He spent his first five years there, the son of a reporter for United Press International who had first visited the country as a Mormon missionary. At 19, Neeleman returned to the country of his birth to do his own two-year missionary stint. In 1984 the college dropout helped create Morris Air, a Salt Lake City airline modeled on Southwest Airlines (LUV), which purchased Morris Air a decade later. Neeleman then helped launch Canada’s WestJet and developed an airline reservation system called OpenSkies, now used by Ryanair (RYAAY) and a dozen other carriers, before starting JetBlue in 2000. He wasn’t just the CEO of JetBlue—he was the creative force, an energetic father of nine children (now aged 10 to 28), proudly characterizing his attention deficit disorder as an asset he wouldn’t trade for the world.

All Things Press Release launches a “Going Global with Your Press Release” podcast series today with an episode on timing. Marianne shares tips on what to consider when sending press releases across time zones around the world.

Simultaneous?  Play to the local market’s time zone and work day?  What about local holidays and celebrations?   Take a listen and learn–and let us know what you think.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 3:34 pm and is filed under All Things Press Release, Business Wire, Podcast, Public Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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