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Commentary: Energy woes need quick, lasting fix

Last month, the front page of The Wall Street Journal featured 25-yearold Saeed Khouri, who paid at auction the equivalent of $14 million of our increasingly worthless American dollars for a license plate bearing “1.” His cousin, Talal Khouri, threw in $9 million in pocket change for tag “5” to tool around Abu Dhabi in his Rolls Royce. Get this, the Khouris declined to be interviewed because they didn’t want to be the center of attention. I am not particularly…

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Indiana’s entrepreneurial hotspots

If youâ??re an entrepreneur, or dream of one day becoming one, which place in the state offers the best
opportunity?

Are you a fan of fast-growing exurbs like Fishers? If youâ??re into medical startups, is the best spot on
the downtown…

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BEHIND THE NEWS: News from the front lines: More tough times ahead

The past 12 months have been hard to take, with all the gloom-anddoom headlines about the weak housing market, subprime credit crisis and softening economy. We’re all ready for some good news. Unfortunately, I can’t provide it here. That’s because executives on the front lines of Indiana business-those most tuned in to the twists and turns of the state’s economy-aren’t ready to call a turnaround yet. In second-quarter conference calls with analysts, the executives are trumpeting their firms’ ability to…

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Racquet Club Pro Shop continues record growth: Team sales pushing specialty retailer’s expansion

In the midst of a down economy and tepid interest in tennis, the only problem the Indianapolis Racquet Club Pro Shop has is where to expand next. Pushed by double-digit-percentage sales growth in nine of the last 12 years, the IRC Pro Shop has expanded from a 750-square-foot shoebox to become an industry giant in the specialty tennis category. Most tennis club pro shops are breakeven operations, but IRC officials said they have seen profit grow each of the last…

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Commentary: Please copy this column

(In deference to ’60s radical Abbie Hoffman and his 1971 cult paperback “Steal This Book,” I hereby relinquish our copyright to this column and give you permission to copy it. I’ll tell you what to do with it later.) Silly me, I thought Mitch Daniels had really shaken things up and done a great job in his first four years as governor. To hear his Democratic opponents in the upcoming election tell it, you’d think he had provided uninspired leadership…

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Hotels feeling travel slump: City occupany rates fall, but downtown operators performing well this year thanks to convention biz

Staggeringly high gasoline prices and a sputtering economy are preventing scores of would-be travelers from packing up their thirsty sport-utility vehicles and heading to their favorite vacation destinations. Nationwide, hotel occupancy rates slipped to 68 percent through June of this year, down from 71 percent the same time last year, according to the most recent data from Tennessee-based Smith Travel Research. For the most part, local hotel operators are feeling the same pain. Through the first six months of the…

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Hummer buyers are back

Gas prices have been up for quite a while now, so are buyers of the H2 Hummer, the king of sport-utility
vehicles, pulling back?

Not as much as one might think, says Corey Lockhart, Hummer general manager at Lockhart Hummer in…

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Pearson Partners recovers from HHGregg loss: Agency gains new clients, projects 20-percent growth

Ron Pearson said business at his Indianapolis-based advertising agency over the last year has been “stellar.” Exaggeration or not, any growth at Pearson Partners is a 180-degree reversal from the dire situation the firm faced just a year ago. In April 2007, Pearson’s firm-then called Pearson McMahon Fletcher England-lost its biggest client, HHGregg. Last summer, Pearson cut nearly half its work force, paring the agency down to about 20 employees in the wake of losing the $20-million-plus account. Pearson’s capitalized…

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Bank-run scenes create concerns: IndyMac situation unlikely in Indiana, but customers should check out stability of their banks, experts warn

It was a scary scene, reminiscent of the Great Depression: Customers lined up outside California’s IndyMac Bank branches to withdraw deposits after a bank run led to the bank’s failure. The images have driven some central Indiana customers-businesses and individuals-to take a more critical look at the strength of their banks and the safety of their deposits. Even as financial stocks rallied in mid-July, the risk remains for more bank failures. Dismal earnings reports and massive write-downs continued in recent…

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VIEWPOINT: Let’s bring government into this century

In the early 1970s, employees at Xerox Corp. developed a breakthrough version of the desktop personal computer called the Xerox Alto. The innovation was quickly shelved by the company-everyone knew there was no market for a personal computer! It was later licensed to Steve Jobs along with a few other “orphan technologies” for $1 million in stock in his young company, Apple. The rest, as they say, is history. Xerox is still a solid company, valued at $17 billion. Of…

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Independent coffee shops feeling perkier than Starbucks

At a time when Starbucks is closing hundreds of stores nationwide, he and other local independent coffeehouse owners say they’re doing just fine, largely because they’re infusing their stores with personality and offering consumers an experience chain stores can’t replicate.

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The ‘vicious cycle’ at newspapers

A new study shows newspapers continue to lose advertising dollars and circulation to the Internet, and theyâ??re
slicing ever deeper into newsroom budgets to try to stay in the black.

Stories are shorter and devote less attention to international…

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EYE ON THE PIE: Taking the con out of economics

A marketing professor at the Kelley School of Business used to proclaim he could teach all one needed to know about economics in a week. That was back in the days when faculty would spend a few minutes of the morning hours in the coffee room engaged in friendly banter as well as serious discussion. The coffee room and my friend are both gone, but to me, a teacher of economics, the insult remains. Imagine-denigrating my calling, my faith, with…

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10 local Starbucks will be among 600 nationwide closings

At least 10 local Starbucks stores are slated to close by early next year as part of a 600-store nationwide purge. The chain
has named only 50 of the stores it plans to close, including two in Indiana, but it has notified the others. Those include
at least six in Indianapolis and stores in Carmel, Greenwood and Beech Grove.

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Carmel’s play for the arts: Some fear it will come at Indianapolis’ expense

The $80 million-plus Carmel Performing Arts Center, a neo-classical-styled concert hall designed to be an acoustical masterpiece, is still two years from opening. But it’s already the source of some dissonance in the Indianapolis arts community to the tune of Mozart’s String Quartet No. 19, in C major. On one hand, Indianapolis-area performing arts groups would sacrifice to theater god Dionysus for a chance to perform at the 1,600-seat music hall or at its adjacent 500-seat theater. But others fret…

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Living with feisty inflation

You might have seen the startling news this morning about inflation. The cost of living exploded by 1.1
percent in June, which is a sobering annual rate above 13 percent.

One of the Indianapolis areaâ??s leading financial planners says…

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Events facing higher costs at Lucas Oil Stadium: Venue managers also bracing for additional expenses

Local big-draw events are itchy to make their first-ever runs in the $675 million Lucas Oil Stadium, in hopes the roomier venue will let them draw more attendees who want to kick the tires and enjoy the new stadium smell. But there’s a trade-off-a bigger price tag to cover security guards, ushers and cleanup. And at least one event is weighing higher ticket prices as a result. “I don’t think there’s any doubt [Lucas Oil Stadium] will cost more based…

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ECONOMIC ANALYSIS: What we can learn from our kids’ summer activities

Summer is at its midpoint, and with it comes the end of youth baseball, scout camp and a seemingly endless string of swim meets for the Hicks household. Like many of you out there, I welcome a few more quiet evenings at home. But during those long third-inning stretches and sleepless evenings in a tent, I spent some time calculating how much we value these youth sports and activities. You might be surprised what this math tells us about ourselves….

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Kempton is red-hot

Ever heard of Kempton? Itâ??s a burg between Indianapolis and Kokomo that just happens to be the second-fastest
growing town in the state.

Kemptonâ??s population last year was 716, an increase of 27 percent in just one year, according to an…

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