US Foreclosures problem isn't ending

The US economy remains very fragile, even after trillion of dollars spent by government to save it. It seems now clear that tax payers money wouldn't be enough to stop the economic crisis partially at least routed in the sub prime system. Delinquent mortgages are often the first step of foreclosure. If in parallel the employment rate and the economy was doing good, this indicator wouldn't be as scarring as it is. Things are going together, and they aren't going in the right direction. I personally think that America isn't finding the short term solution to get back on track, which gives people the impression that tomorrow is probably not better than yesterday, so they spend less until they see the light...that they don't see yet! However,there are some positive aspects, that are mainly outside of the US, the good trends in Asia and some South American countries are raising the life level, which means more attraction for US type of products and services.

After manufacturing, America risks to loose services leadership too!

Considering that America has transited from being a manufacturing country after WWII to a service oriented economy, you can imagine how impacting it could be to see America losing its leadership in this segment. Even if it remains a traditional locomotive, this sector has also suffered in the last two years.

Repartition of US GDP: agriculture: 1.2%, industry: 21.9%, services: 76.9% (2009 est.), source: CIA

Raul Pupo, IT serial-entrepreneur and author of the book "America's Service Meltdown: Restoring Service Excellence in the Age of the Customer", gives US entrepreneurs the keys to remain top world contributors of services. This can be achieved by refocusing on the promise of a customer service  excellence, and privileging an ethical long term vision, rather than the current quarterly profit addiction.

You can also see his interview at Money News : Raul Pupo talking about his book

Electronic components demand is soaring

The electronic components' market is the perfect indicator of the High Tech industry trends. After a year of great uncertainty, again new products and gadgets are selling. Thanks for some best sellers as the Apple Ipad that has always a very positive impact on the consumer market and is giving some appetite to other vendors to try to catch a portion of the market. In fact, as the Electronic Components Association is mentioning it, there is also a fear for a shortage in the market. With the emerging countries continuously driving the demand for new cars, new phones and other electronic products, the risk is to see the demand higher than the offer, for a certain time in the next months. At least on that side, the recession seems to be behind us.

Venture capital is slightly back in High Tech sector in the US

Dow Jones just released a report on investments in what we can summarise as the Internet World. After a continuous drop in investments in the Web industry in 2009, 2010 has been a time of recovery. The bottom was reached in Q1 2009 with only about 50 deals concluded. In fact, Q1 2010 was even worse if we take in consideration the value of the money invested with just over $200M. Fortunately enough, Q2 2010 shows an increase in both volume and value. If the number of deal is more important to online communities, the money spent on entertainment is roughly equivalentto the first one. For the last 2 years, online communities have continuously trusted the first place in investments. Everyone is searching for the next Facebook or Twitter. Companies as Foursquare or Gowalla are clearly seen as potential future  with an interesting mix between social and mobile capabilities. Do these startups will bring the ROI expected, it's always hard to say the potential, and we have seen in the past hundreds of promising concepts going nowhere. Today investors are looking very cautiously where they put their money, but we will always see beautiful pitches and plans not giving the expected results. The investors are more than never before asking to theentrepreneurs to have a business model where advertising isn't anymore the only way to create revenue, as they saw too many times the difficulty to attract advertising money in a so crowdy internet world.