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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's government acknowledged for the first time on Monday that the economy was in crisis, undermining earlier attempts by officials to suggest albeit weakening growth it could weather sanctions over Ukraine. Moscow markets wait to see the full scale of western measures over the seizure of Ukraine's Crimea and support of its referendum to join Russia, after losing billions of dollars in recent weeks in state and corporate money. More from Corliss: http://corlissonlinegroup.com/ http://corlissonlinegroup.com/blog/ https://www.facebook.com/corlissonlinefinancialmag https://twitter.com/CorlissGroupMag

WASHINGTON (AP) - October 1, 2013 (WPVI) -- Campers in national parks are to pull up stakes and leave, some veterans waiting to have disability benefits approved will have to cool their heels even longer, many routine food inspections will be suspended and panda-cams will go dark at the shuttered National Zoo. Those are among the immediate effects when parts of the government shut down Tuesday because of the budget impasse in Congress. A look at what is bound to happen, and what probably won't: ___ THIS: Possible delays in processing new disability applications. BUT NOT THIS: Social Security and Medicare benefits still keep coming. ___ THIS: Washington's paralysis will be felt early on in distant lands as well as in the capital - namely, at national parks. All park services will close. Campers have 48 hours to leave their sites. Many parks, such as Yellowstone, will close to traffic, and some will become completely inaccessible. Smithsonian museums in Washington will close and so will the zoo, where panda cams record every twitch and cuddle of the panda cub born Aug. 23 but are to be turned off in the first day of a shutdown. The Statue of Liberty in New York, the loop road at Acadia National Park in Maine, Skyline Drive in Virginia, and Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Park, home of Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, will be off limits. At Grand Canyon National Park, people will be turned back from entrance gates and overlooks will be cordoned off along a state road inside the park that will remain open. "People who waited a year to get a reservation to go to the bottom of the Grand Canyon all of a sudden will find themselves without an opportunity to take that trip," said Mike Litterst, a spokesman for the National Park Service. More Financial News: http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1037871 http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1036282

A serial entrepreneur Aaron Sylvan who lives in New York, contrasts the circumstances to requiring to hire both a carpenter and an architect when building a house. An accountant can analyze the big picture of your financial situation and offer strategic advice as he/she produces key financial documents, like profit-and-loss statement, if needed, and files a company's taxes. An accountant can also act as an outsourced chief financial officer, advising an entrepreneur on financial strategies, like whether to secure a line of credit against receivables when introducing new products after tax season is over On the contrary, a bookkeeper's jobs are the day-to-day hands-on tasks: making sure new employees file all the right paperwork for the company's payroll, submitting invoices (promptly) and following up on them, and paying the bills. The bookkeeper also tracks company expenses or company financial statements and can assure that every cost has been entered - and recorded correctly - into software like QuickBooks so that the business is ready for tax time along with filing any other reporting to, say, creditors or investors. "I don't keep receipts; they're a pain," says Sylvan, who runs Sylvan Social Technology, an ecommerce-services company. "Every month I get a bank statement with a gazillion transactions," such as taxi rides, meals, conferences and other expenses he has placed on his company's debit card. He said his bookkeeper spends a few hours a week sorting it all out. Consequently, Sylvan has a better idea about how his expenditures stack up in opposition to his budget. He is certain he won't bill clients wrongly or miss important payments. "Knowledge is power," even when it comes to the small details, Sylvan says. "If you don't have a bookkeeper, you're probably not being as strategic as you could be in how you spend your money." When to Bring in a Bookkeeper Sylvan has typically hired a bookkeeper for a few hour

The slowdown in the economy after 2010-11 has had a ripple impact on the fortunes of India Inc. and lenders alike. With gross domestic product (GDP) growth decelerating from 8.4 per cent in 2010-11 to the sub-five per cent level in the first three quarters of the current financial year, the number of companies seeking succour from lenders under the aegis of the corporate debt restructuring (CDR) cell had almost doubled to 605 as of December 2013 against 305 as of March 2011. Further, there has been a 194 per cent jump, from []1,38,604 crore at the end of March 2011 to []4,07,656 crore as of December 2013, in the amount of loans that came up for recast. Therefore, it is not surprising that bank managements, in their internal meetings and conferences with the media and analysts, are devoting as much time fielding questions on the loans that had to be restructured in a quarter vis-à-vis loans that have gone sour. More related issue from Corliss: http://corlissonlinegroup.com/ http://corlissonlinegroup.com/blog/ http://corlissmag.livejournal.com/

Democratic presidents tend to preside over better economies than Republican ones, but that may be down to pure luck, according to a recent paper from Alan Blinder and Mark Watson at Princeton. Since the end of World War II, the U.S. economy has grown at an average real rate of 4.35% under Democratic presidents and only 2.54% under Republicans. So what gives? "Democrats would no doubt like to attribute the large D-R growth gap to better macroeconomic policies, but the data do not support such a claim," they write. "It seems we must look instead to several variables that are mostly 'good luck.'" Three factors can explain 46-62% of the growth gap, according to the paper. Here are the reasons (via James Hamilton): Oil shocks. With the exception of Jimmy Carter, oil price shocks tend to dog Republican administrations more. The 1956-57 Suez Crisis, early-70s OPEC embargo, 1980 Iran-Iraq War, and the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 all happened during Republican administrations. Productivity. It's hard to say that a U.S. president is responsible here, but Democrats tend to see bigger gains in productivity. Bill Clinton, for example, enjoyed a big boost in U.S. productivity during the 1990s. Consumer confidence. Consumers tend to have a rosier outlook on the U.S. economy in the first year a Democrat is in the White House. "Yet the superior growth record under Democrats is not forecastable by standard techniques, which means it cannot be attributed to superior initial conditions," they write. Chalk this one up to luck again, but it does come "tantalizingly close to a self-fulfilling prophecy in which consumers correctly expect the economy to do better under Democrats, then make that happen by purchasing more consumer durables."

Financial advisers stress that there are several money lessons everyone in their 20s should know. For example, start saving at least 10 percent of your monthly income. Changing your financial state requires a kind of time travel to commune with your future self. Where do you want to be in 10, 20 years? Are you on the right path, or heading in the wrong direction? The time value of money-that is, how savings, investments and debt levels compound with the passing of years-means that money habits, good or bad, created when we start to earn cash echo into the decades that follow. And a whispered bit of wisdom up front can keep you from howling over your mistakes later in life. We polled our NerdWallet network of Ask an Advisor certified financial planners about the greatest regrets and lessons you should learn in your 20s, 30s and 40s. Taken together, these could be considered 12 steps toward securing your financial future. And they all hinge on two keys skills we must learn-and often relearn-in our money lives: prepare and stick to a budget, and establish good savings habits. We'll address the 30s and 40s later this week, but first: your 20s. "Understand that the world has changed. You will be more responsible for your financial future in regard to earning a living, retirement planning, funding and investing, health insurance coverage and costs and less coverage through government programs," says Jerome Deutsch, managing director of U.S. Institutional Markets for Index Strategy Advisors in Decatur, Georgia. "Learn, plan and live mindfully and with a long-term perspective. It may not sound like fun, but you have a long life ahead of you."