New Yorkers will get a sneak peek at Target’s latest collaboration Wednesday.

And considering Liberty of London has crossed the pond to be here, it should be quite an event.

Target will launch a pop-up store of flowery goods, and this one has everyone covered: Men, women, children and even home goods go on sale starting at 11 a.m. Wednesday at 1095 Sixth Ave., next to Bryant Park.

The pop-up preview store will house the collection, which includes piggy banks, lamps, ties, bathing suits and even a bike ($199.99) decked out in the British brand’s signature prints.

Liberty, which started in 1875, collaborates with an international array of upscale brands that are carried in its stately London flagship store. But what they’re best known for are the prints - their archive holds over 43,000 designs.

Check out the pop-up Wednesday (11 a.m.-8 p.m.),  Thursday through Saturday (9 a.m.-8 p.m.), or in Target Stores this Sunday.

This could be a nice long term collaboration with a couple of heavy hitters in the retail world and could offer employment opportunities due to this expansion.

This move is sure to go over big with franchise owners as they were less than thrilled when corporate decided that the price for the burger should be only 1 dollar. The price has since increased to 1.19 making it more palatable to the owners of this well know fast food restaurant uses the dollar menu to drive in traffic even though it hurts their profits.

Although the concept of the loss leader to generate activity is not new, in this economy the profits are even tighter because the dollar menu items are all the rage with those affected by job losses and job cuts. With an increase in the percentage of dollar menu items sold, Burger King had to look at ways to to keep the franchises profitable and the slice of cheese being removed was one of them.

Burger King is also promising to add more items to the dollar menu which could include new items altogether and perhaps some items that would actually be profitable. Expect to see the change in the cheese volume April 26th of this year.

There are talks that BK will also remove the Whopper Jr from the dollar menu as well as that is also an under performing item in terms of profit margin.

Toyota stock is surely going to feel a hit due to the Prius recall but based upon the quality of their entire line, they should recover over time. Toyota officials went to Japan’s Transport Ministry earlier Tuesday to formally notify officials the company is recalling the 2010 Prius gas-electric hybrid — the world’s top-selling hybrid car. The automaker is also recalling two other hybrid models in Japan, the Lexus HS250h sedan, sold in the U.S. and Japan, and the Sai, which is sold only in Japan.

The 223,000 cars being recalled in Japan include nearly 200,000 Priuses sold from April last year through Monday, according to papers the automaker filed with the ministry. The Prius is Japan’s top-selling car.

In the U.S., Toyota will recall 133,000 Prius cars and 14,500 Lexus HS250h vehicles. Nearly 53,000 Priuses are also being recalled in Europe.

To look at this on a positive side, there will be a bunch of work for the mechanics that work at Toyota dealerships and should bump up their hours for some overtime. This will be temporary so no new jobs will be created due to this huge debacle.

These design problems are part of a series of problems that Toyota has been having lately and the actions taken by Toyota are not swift. Unless Toyota gets their act together, they very well may lose some of the precious market share that they have acquired over the years.

A recall is not yet in the works but the transport minister of Japan is requesting it and may very well order an investigation as the problems continue to mount.

The actual problem with the Prius is when the car moves on a bumpy or slippery surface, a driver can feel a pause in the braking when the vehicle switches between the traditional hydraulic brakes and the electronically operated braking system, he said.

The brakes start to work if the driver keeps pushing the pedal, but the driver may momentarily feel they aren’t working, he said. Fixing that included a software programming change.

Prius owners are sure to be concerned over this latest development with the car maker but Toyota is still a profitable entity as Toyota reported Thursday a $1.7 billion profit for the October-December quarter, citing healthy sales of its green models including the Prius, and predicted it would return to profit for the fiscal year through March.

Hopefully this is just another blip on the radar screen and Toyota can handle this issue quickly and cleanly

He stated that he the car manufacturer was sorry that they made customers “uneasy” as he was attending the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

He indicated that they plan to establish the facts and give an explanation that will “remove customers’ concerns as soon as possible”.

With all due respect, Mr. Toyoda, this is not about concerns but rather lives.  Your sticky accelerator problem can, if it has not already, kill people and you should have been working on this months ago when it was initially discovered.  Your quality control people, your engineers and your buyers all blew it when it came to purchasing the faulty parts that are causing this problem and because of that you have a lot of people that are currently not working.

As to you cruising the highways and byways of Switzerland while this extreme safety issue is floating around the world… well that in itself speaks as to what you are all about and it has nothing to do with the safety of your customers.

As a shareholder, I’m not a little annoyed… I’m totally ticked off!

In consideration of the global economy people are reconsidering their investments into stocks, bonds, 401Ks, savings accounts and especially real estate. There was a time when no one would ask “Is real estate a risky investment?” because it real estate has historically been a sound investment.

Now, however buying real estate is considered risky business and has implications beyond your individual risk. In particular, Americans buying real estate outside of the United States are branded as disloyal and opportunistic.

State of Affairs

Because home prices have increased significantly, economists are not only assessing if real estate is a risky investment, they worry that the real estate market will stay flat for many years to come in markets where real estate was previously a booming business.

Appraisals on mortgage re-finance loans were over inflated causing what some would call a national bubble. In 2005, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation claimed home prices had grown nearly 19% faster than people’s income in Hawaii, nearly 20% percent faster in California and 25% faster in Nevada. Beyond those states, in 38 states, home prices increased by at least 6.7% than people’s wages over a one year period.

Another report released by the PMI Mortgage Insurance Company proved to be prophetic in 2005 when it determined home values would severely decline over the following two years and that is exactly what happened.

What has compounded this harmful reality is that some of the most overvalued markets were also some of the biggest and included most of California, New York City, Los Angeles, southern Florida and Boston.

So the answer to “Is Real Estate a Risky Investment?” is yes, yes, yes! This is in part to rapidly increasing property tax and insurance rates. Even for homeowners not holding a mortgage, these two expenses on the rise are jeopardizing people’s quality of life especially those on a fixed income.

In large part, increasing commodity prices are contributing significantly to the increase in insurance as the costs of insulation and lumber, for example are more expensive than a few years ago. As a result the “replacement value” of property are calculated on those commodity prices thereby driving up the cost of insurance.

More Bad News

Also contributing to the increase in insurance premiums are the various hurricanes that have hit the United States making real estate a risky investment from that perspective. Additionally, people living in Western Europe and Australia are aware that the real estate problems are not isolated to the United States and are struggling with many of the same problems.

Even though the real estate collapse in New York City and Boston back in the late 1980’s may have been a distant memory, it has begun to come closer to the surface recently. And because so many made their investment into real estate long before the current crisis they will unfortunately be trapped in their homes because of severe negative equity.

Therefore, without question, at this point and time, given the domestic and global economy, real estate is a risky investment.

Building a business from the ground up takes time and patience. Remember Rome wasn’t built in one day and neither will your new profitable online business. 90% of people who fail at an on line business fail because they didn’t follow a proven process or they never knew what the process was.

One of the biggest fears is how to write for the Internet. No one wants to pay webmasters the fees that they charge particularly when the process is a simple as C-T-P-M.

Content-Traffic-Presell-Monetize

The key to success on line is to build a site that is niche-focused . The reason for this is that you will have less competition and it will be easier for targeted traffic to find you. Afterall your targeted traffic is the ” heart and soul” of your business.

In the online world people use the net to get information and find solutions. It makes the yellow pages look like tiny post it notes in comparison.

Your first order of business is to write high value content rich pages that the search engines like. In doing this you get ranked higher on Google, Yahoo, etc. which makes it easier for your site to be found. Your quality pages written by you builds traffic to your site.

You now will have built credibility in your visitors minds because of your high ranking and converted your visitors into presold customers. Your presold customers are now in a ready to buy mind set which makes it easier for them to click through to your monetization model.

Your monetization could be anything from an order page to affiliate merchant to referral program the possibilities are endless.

This is how to build a Niche- Focused- Theme- Based- Content Website for long term profits. A site that sells.

If this sounds all too easy it is not . It does require motivation and focus. Keep reminding yourself of your ultimate goal which is a higher standard of living for yourself  and  your loved ones.