Oh dear

THE world's richest man has spoken, and it's not good news.

When Warren Buffet, left, opens his mouth, people generally listen. It's not just because of his wealth ($62 billion, according to Forbes). He dismissed the dot.com boom as unsustainable, and remains a byword for financial prudence and value investment.

He has repeated earlier fears about a recession, adding, "My feeling from what I see in the economy is this, it will not be short and shallow."

Don't put away those stat-up plans just yet?

NOW would not seem the right time to start a business - or is it?

The one lesson RR believes that anyone who starts up and survives in a recession would take with them is that if you can survive then, you can survive any time (providing you exercise the due care). Do you believe in yourself enough?

Hope for us yet?

JAPAN may be about to break a 30-year-old cycle and not follow the US into recession, it has been claimed.

It appears that the country's economy may be buffered from slowdown by China's increasingly voracious demand for consumer goods. This goes back to an earlier RR argument - the emerging economies (with average growth of between 6% and 9%) will require trading partners.

Only time will tell what that means for the economic balance of power across the globe, and how bad we get it this time round. Tidal waves are moving.

Recession? Yes - no - err, good

ADVERTISING and marketing are often used as key indicators of how the economy is doing. Both make for Marmite topics of debate for business people - you either think they are an essential part of business, or a luxury that detracts from the real job of making and selling.

Regardless of what side of the fence they sit on, most companies will rein in the marketing in times of economic uncertainty. So when Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, the world's largest advertising group, reports a slowdown in revenue and says recession will bite proper in 2009, people are going to listen.

But there are still plenty of observers out there, like this columnist on The Scotsman, says we still only have the housing market as proof that there are difficulties, and only the drop-off in mortgage approvals as evidence there.

Meanwhile, The Times has decided to have a bit of fun with one of those 'you know when...' columns, pointing out that there are good times to be had in a recession, too. Judge for yourself.

Archbishop attacks debt culture

THE Archbishop of Canterbury has attacked unsecured lending and punitive interest rates, claiming that they have caused Britain's huge debt levels.

Dr Rowan Williams, left, aimed his remarks at what he called "doorstep lenders" during a debate he tabled in the house of Lords last Friday, April 25.

Tips for businesses

SOME of these may seem a bit obvious, but tips for businesses like this are worth a quick read to make sure your business has them all covered.

More tips

GOD bless America, as they say, for its online thrift promotion community. This feature covers family finances, while this one looks at saving when you're young.

And now the good news

SOME 100 American economists that were questioned in a recent survey have said that this recession is likely to be far less savage than the last US downturn in the late 1990s.

However, near all of those who answered said they believed the world's foremost economy is now in recession.

Any tips?

HERE at RR, we're all about refusing to believe there aren't ways to make money, even in a (whisper it) recession.

So when it's claimed that some banks are going to profit from the credit crunch, we have to ask: are there any lessons we can learn from them?

Rather than just shake our heads and enviously wonder how the suits always do it, RR suggests we all pick apart their processes and work it out for ourselves. You never know...

Give yourself a spending check

THERE'S lots of advice on how you can give yourself a health check. But now is the time to be doing the same with your finances.

This feature runs over a variety of ways you can squeeze more from your salary, make savings even when things are tight, along with a variety of other helpful tips.

Pensions - can you afford not to?

YOUGOV'S latest poll makes depressing reading. If you think things are bad now, imagine what they could be like in 40 years' time, when people are forced to work into their old age.

Another view on falling house prices

THIS piece reflects the RR view that far too much emphasis is placed on house prices as an indicator of the general state of the UK economy.

Why are all the best ideas coming out of the US?

CAN'T somebody this side of the pond convert all this good advice into pounds and shillings?

Stop tomorrow's downturn

LOOKING ahead to the future, this website believes you should get your children involved in the recession. Again, seems like sound advice ... and might get you out of paying the next time you get ambushed for sweets.

It might seem obvious

YOU can never have too much financial advice. Well, we suppose you can, but these tips seem sensible.

Cheers, Happy Go Kate, whoever you are...

No longer accepting

NOW Visa believes the cheque is dead.

Do we believe this bloke?

ONLY in America ... millionaire Alan Corey, left, claims he made his fortune by going on what amounts to the ultimate blagger's trip.

In between using popcorn bags for months on end to get refills and claiming mobile phone calls were cut off, in a bid to get free time, he says he really got rich by investing in clever property purchases while still in his twenties.

Believe him? Trust him? Find out for yourself and learn how to do it his way by reading his book, A million Bucks by 30: How to Overcome a Crap Job, Stingy Parents, and a Useless Degree to Become a Millionaire. If nothing else, it should win awards for the title.

The future's bright, the future's Mint

A NEW upstart threatens the status quo with a free personal finance and budgeting website, aimed specifically at a younger generation.

See if it's something you can use here.

Double dip - it gets worse

A SENIOR US leader has warned that the world's biggest economy could be heading for a 'double dip' recession.

Harold McGraw, chairman of Business Roundtable, a group of chief executives of top US companies, warned: "If, after the economic stimulus package takes effect and we get into 2009, and the ... lower interest rates do not kick in, there is a probability of a double-dip recession."

He said that there is growing nervousness that the US economy might slip back again after a brief recovery in a W-shaped "double dip recession", before predicting that the credit crunch would continue until the end of this year.

Throwing convention to the wind

RR likes to make up its own mind when it comes to ... well, everything. So it's nice to see that others are happy to hear a contrary view every now and again.

That's why Mazuma's very own Lucy Cohen, left, has been wending her way around blogs, with her firm and forthright views about going to university, and the benefits of foregoing further education in favour of vocational training.

Find out what she had to say here.

It's all about the customer

THEY say that a downturn is the time to up your marketing spend, and generally do the opposite of what everyone else does.

Motley Fool suggests trying it with customer service, along with tips on how to improve your public-facing functions.

Someone always does well in a downturn

IMAGINE being in the kind of business where you hope not for boom times but for a recession.

That's exactly what Las Vagas recovery agent Hank Lelau yearns for, and he's seen quite a few in his long career. For a fresh view on the current economic crisis, and how it differs from others, have a look at what he has to say.

Facing East

A frank and thoughtful assessment of what the US slowdown means or Asian markets has been posted on the Singapore Property Frontiers website.

In all the fuss about house prices, most media spectators seem to have forgotten that Asian growth is thundering ahead. Regardless of how things get here, they will still need trading partners, and it may be their strong economic arms that grab us as we fall into the pit, because recession here will not help them.

How the other half lives

EVER wondered just how rich hedge fund managers are?

A new list of the top UK earners has been released, and it appears that the eye-watering figures are beyond even what most of us could have imagined.

Of course, hedge fund managers are the new bogeymen of the financial world, supposedly profiting from the financial misfortunes that the rest of us are enduring, employing their sharp practices to ensure that the markets bend to their will.

By their very nature, hedge funds profit from volatilty, but that volatilty would be there, regardless of whether or not they were trading - notwithstanding the still-unexplained mischief surrounding one or two of the big clearing houses a fortnight ago. The credit crunch happened because the big financial institutions failed to securitise the risk on their books, pure and simple.

Instead of berating hedge fund managers for making a buck (or several hundred million) in a downturn, we should examine more closely how they do it, and if there's anything the rest of us can learn from them.

Keep your staff learning

RR is keen to include good management practice into its blog, and where finer a place to start than Havard Business School, which has just released a white paper on how to teach information provision to existing managers?

If you think it will be helpful, you can download here.

Household debts are climbing

Almost three in four people in the UK say the financial state of their households has got worse in the last year-and-a-half.

According to a poll conducted for ITV News by YouGov, 71% with arrears said they are now worse off than at the start of 2008, while 58% were struggling or falling behind with bills and credit commitments.

Around one in six people in arrears have applied for a new loan in the last three months, but just three in 10 received the money they wanted, while nearly half (46%) were turned down, or could not afford the repayments (10%)

Discounting mortgage payments, nearly a half (45%) in arrears owed more than £10,000.

And debt is impacting on lifestyles, the survey discovered, with almost one in five saying they are drinking more than usual, almost half are having relationship difficulties, and nearly four fifths are experiencing difficulty in sleeping.

Deal or no deal

JUST like Noel Edmonds, more and more of us now have a direct line to the banker, according to global study by analysts Juniper Research.

However, it won't be him calling us. Rather, some 800 million people around the world will be accessing our accounts via our mobiles by 2011, with the number of transactions climbing from 2.7 billion in 2007 to 37 billion in three years' time. Despite fears over how secure this method will be, the average value of payments made in this way is expected to double over that period, and quadruple in emerging markets.

Juniper Research reports that the greatest number of mobile banking users will be found in China and the Far East, following by Western Europe and the Indian sub-continent.

Will this uptake encourage us to behave with more restraint when we're out shopping, pricked into logging on while in the mall? RR certainly hopes so, but won't hold its breath.

Cut out the estate agent

PITY the poor estate agent, that most despised of professionals. Now, it seems, we are being encouraged to cut him (or her) out of the selling process.

And why not? If you're unlucky enough to have experienced a slide in the value of your home, or if you want to gain a bit of a competitive (and attractive) edge over any neighbours that have their property on the market by knocking a couple of grand off, why not follow this easy-to-use guide?

Caught stoozing on the job?

EVER heard of stoozing? Despite a modicum of publicity in recent months, and the backing of high profile characters like Martin Lewis, from moneysavingexpert.com, the Refuseniks have yet to come across anyone keenly evangelising the practice.

Here's how it works: the consumer takes advantage of the ultra-competitive world of introductory offers on credit cards by tarting every three to 18 months (according to the lifetime of the offer) in order to get 0%, or very low, interest rates.

Then you take the card and pile everything you spend on to it, while putting your salary straight into an easy access, high interest account. At the end of every month, you pay off the balance and pocket the difference.

Those that espouse it are keen to point out that you need to start with no balance on the credit card, and your bank account needs to be in the black. Of course, with credit harder to come by (so they say, although those enticing letters from the likes of Barclaycard keep popping through the letterbox), it may well be that this isn't a good time to stooze.

A more detailed explanation on how to carry this out, with advice on the best cards and other related subjects, can be found here.

Business as usual, pretty much

A surefire way of seeing how the City is really an be achieved by taking a look at the state of its suppliers.

Major trader technology supplier Patsystems has issued a trading update today, ahead of its AGM, and what was its verdict? Yes, it's slowed, but expectations are being met.

Non-executive chairman Stewart Millman said: "Although major purchasing decisions are concluding more slowly than usual, we remain comfortable with current market expectations for the year."

That's the great thing about publicly-listed businesses - there's very little to hide behind. All the figures will be laid bare tomorrow before shareholders, and there will be questions if the sums don't match Mr Millman's words. And slowed than hoped is a long way from slower than expected.