Authenticating Of Jewelry

You see, to give money value to an item of jewelry is 90% or more of the work needed for an appraisal. The printed part is easy and often done with forms from a computer, with values from the previous inspection and evaluation typed in. If you want a value, this will mean appraisal. No store able to accurately valuate jewelry is going to guess and risk their reputation on a guess. A customer may leave the store with a "guess" and tell other that "the store" said the item was worth so much money. See what I am getting at?

This is a suggested approach which might help. Many jewelry stores will check the karat of metals for a reasonable fee. This is not an appraisal and no statement of value comes with it. I do not know of those who will grade diamonds and gemstones unless it is an appraisal since the grading is the largest part of appraisal work!

Still, it might be worth your time to call a few jewelers and simply ask if they will check the metal and how much is the fee. Ask if they will determine the weight, clarity and color of the stones, with no written appraisal. Tell them you do not want a dollar value, only the information mentioned. Some will be surprised to hear this question. Ask if they will do that and if the service will cost less than regular appraisal services. You might also explain the reasons, for the family essentially.

I suspect they will only provide appraisal services for the stones but should provide inexpensive service in telling the karats of metal items. The only way to know is to call and ask.

Have you examined the jewelry for stamps or marks showing karat? If the jewelry is from the Middle East then the marks will be unknown to most jewelers in the USA and the jewelry should be tested. If from European countries, most show karats by number marks. British jewelry uses symbols in many cases and numbers on more recent items with the added symbols from the regional assay offices.

10k gold is marked as shown or with the number 417. 14k is also shown as 585 18k is also shown as 700

Heavy electroplate, meaning the metal is not gold but has a heavy gold cladding contains the letters HGE.

Gold Filled, meaning there is a bonded layer of gold on a base (not precious) metal is marked in various numbers but always with a fraction and a GF. For instance, if the layer of gold is 12karat and is 1/12 by weight of the total piece, the mark is 1/12, 12k GF.

Sterling silver is marked "sterling" or 925, showing the silver content in the item.

Marks are often on clasps of bracelets and chains. On rings, the marks are on the inside. Sometimes magnification is needed to read the marks. If the jewelry has been worn a long, long time or a ring resized, the mark may be gone.

BUW, a greenish discoloration on a chain or on a ring generally means the ring is NOT gold. Copper and brass corrode with a green color. Gold will darken but does not show any green color. The metal testing should be inexpensive. Stone grading might require an appraisal charge; that is up to the jeweler.

About the Author
Victor Epand is the owner of http://www.JewerlyGift.biz, a huge online jewelry superstore featuring the greatest selection of jewelry including personalizable items. Clearance Sale items are here: http://www.jewelrygift.biz/collection/clearance-sales.html

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Are Your Employees Good Enough to Beat Your Competition?

An old saying goes 'that in good times anybody can make money; in bad times only the best can.' In down times, even more than boom times, employees become the critical edge.

And in good times or bad, employees determine profitability. The question is, are yours good enough? And if the numbers are not where they should be, what can you do?

The first step is a close examination of your business model and infrastructure. Is it viable and how does it look in the next one to five years? The next step is to look at your people. Can do they do the job? Can they provide customer value and specifically what value do they bring to your company?

Look at what form of company structure and organization will be necessary to meet your future needs. Specifically focus on what will your future customer want? What kinds of employees will be needed to service your future customer?

Make an employee list and rate each employee 's value to your company. Keep it simple. One method is to use the ABC rating: A for keepers, B for those with 'maybe' or 'twilight zone' and C for those that clearly need to be cycled out.

Failure to do this puts your company 's equity on a spinning roulette wheel, meaning your company must rely on outside miracles -- like a rapid turnaround in the national economy -- for your profit and loss statements to improve. Las Vegas, anyone?

Another key to determining an employee 's value is is to rate them on measurable productivity tasks, such as how many units they produce an hour or their monthly sales total.

It is important to remember you can measure almost anything such as customer satisfaction or number of hours of service billed. Make certain you measure what is important to driving customer value and your company 's profitability which should be the same thing.

Also think about employee intangibles: are they a team player, do they help company morale, do they get along with co-workers, and are they a fit with the company culture? If an employee is disruptive or not a team player how can they be a productive team member?

By looking at these 's oft' skills you will get a more complete picture of your employee 's true contribution.
You may be surprised at which employees may not have a spot in your future company. That 's because the employee of today may not be appropriate tomorrow.

Once you have determined you have inappropriate employees, you will have to recruit new ones. If you are not willing to recruit and replace, how can you improve?

This isn't rocket science. The corrective actions you take depend on your company 's specific circumstances. But from a strategic standpoint, you can either maintain the status quo including poor results, or change. The real problem is the amount of hard work required to make positive change happen.

The temptation to go back to the 'bad numbers' comfort zone is so strong, only the most driven owners will be willing to pay the price required to get the numbers to work. That is why most businesses aren't successful. It takes real effort to get out of the comfort zone and to get real improvement.

If you are not up to the challenge then it 's time to look at your exit strategy and move on. Owners that neglect their businesses or see it as something they would rather not do simply end up paying themselves with their assets or what they have already earned.

From a cash flow stand point, mediocre employees and minimal performance is just not worth the effort. Better to get a job with someone else, no?

If your employees are not good enough the odds are your competition will find a way to beat you with better employees. With most businesses today, regardless of horizontal or vertical markets, employees are the competitive edge.

Stay consistent and always keep asking yourself "are our people good enough"?


About the Author
Jack Deal is the owner of Jack D. Deal Business Consulting. Related articles may be found at http://www.jddeal.com/blog/business and http://www.freeandinquiringmind.typepad.com

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10 Hot Areas for Employee Theft

Preemployment screening. Enough cannot be said about hiring quality employees. However, as you are reviewing their resume or application that studies show that nearly one third of all resumes and applications contain inaccurate information. This could be embellishing their experience, adjusting their dates of employment to appear to have been employed regularly, or leaving blank questions regarding criminal convictions.

Read the information and then go back through and pick through each line in detail. Ask yourself (and then the applicant)

Why there are gaps in employment? Were they unemployed or hospitalized or were they in jail during that time.

Why do they only list the year 's of employment and not, at least, the month?

Look at the SSN to determine if the issuing state is reasonable. These numbers can be checked to determine where they were issued. If the application says they are a life-long resident of California, why would they have a Florida issued Social Security number?

Does the education seem reasonable? Did they graduate around the age of 18? Did they go straight into college? If not, there should be employment history for that time.

Are the previous employers no longer in business? This is either a run of bad luck or an attempt to prevent reference checking.

Criminal Background checks are essential in today 's workplace. Access to convictions is available through so many public and private entities that to not conduct one may be considered negligent if this was not determined and that same employee committed a criminal act. Hiring someone with the full knowledge that they do have convictions is an extremely high risk. Many companies ask only for felony convictions to be disclosed on their applications. This too, is a risky practice. Misdemeanor crimes such as carrying a concealed weapon, assault, stalking and some narcotic offenses are pertinent to your company. A company is entitled to know of all convictions as an adult. Lastly, suspended sentences and deferred adjudication ARE convictions. They are a form of probation that required a guilty plea. To make this clear to applicants, a statement should be included on the application that these types of sentences must also be disclosed. Keep in mind it will be rare for someone to openly disclose a conviction therefore an outside verification is needed.

A final recommended method is "paper" honesty surveys. It 's actually done either on paper or via computer but the concept and results are the same. These are simply questionnaires that probe the applicants attitudes towards honesty and ethics. They ask questions such as "If you saw a co-worker steal something, you would..." and then there are multiple choice answers. They also ask drug and alcohol related questions such regarding having used drugs at work or coming to work under the influence. There is also usually a section where questions are asked if they have ever stolen from an employer and how much. Astounding as it may seem, many answer yes. In fact the results of the survey have a history of not recommending 30% of those taking them. While there is cost associated with this, the value is very high as the cost of training and turnover is greatly reduced.


Employee parking. Consider your employee parking area as a point of concern from both a security and safety perspective. We all like to get that parking space closest to the store at the mall but for most businesses, those parking spaces are reserved for clientele. There should be a designated parking area for all personnel and that area should be beyond the normal client/customer parking. The reason for this is easy: A thief has a reduced exposure if their car is parked closely.

Employee parking can be a thorny topic. Concerns for their vehicle seem to subside if they can at least occasionally, see their car. While there are no absolutes on this topic here are some suggestions:

Never allow employees to park close to the entrance/exit. Have a designated parking area for them (regardless of the weather).

Do not allow them to park next to loading docks or trash dumpsters.

Don't allow "I forgot my badge" to be a free pass to park anywhere. Have a procedure in place to get them where they need to be and back that up with a counseling program to ensure it won't happen in the future.

Encourage employees to leave the building together to reduce exposure to criminal acts while walking to their car.


Training and Awareness. The importance of training cannot be overstated but the variances of the methods and the materials makes it difficult to define the best practices here. When someone if first hired the amount of paperwork required is enormous. Sometimes mixed in with the employment papers are company policies that require signature. To ensure that the new hire understands the importance of these sign off acknowledgements, time should be set aside that is dedicated to only those documents. At the very least, a new hire should acknowledge through signature that they have read and understand policy. On the practical side, it would be best that specific policies that are pertinent to the employee be presented upon hiring. Those policies and procedures that, if violated, result in immediate termination are also good candidates for the new hire package.

"Training" to what ever extent it is (classroom, OJT, video, Computer Based) is not truly effective unless there is some means to verify the person 's level of understanding of the material. The argument cannot be made that because they were there and did not ask any questions that they comprehended the subject matter.

For many companies, initial training/orientation is the sum total of all personnel policies and procedures. Changes are distributed through company mail, email, or conference calls. It is important that all employees have some means of being informed of significant policy changes. When it comes to prevention of employee theft, awareness is the best on going tool.

Awareness is simply reminding employees that the company monitors for this type of activity because it is a profit drain. There are many ways to approach awareness. The use of posters is probably most common and there are many companies that design generic versions. Meetings about inventory control, shrink, operating statements etc, are good platforms to openly discuss the results of internal theft. I saw a handwritten sign over a time clock in a grocery store that said "If you get caught stealing, you're going to jail." I do not recommend this approach and certainly think it sends the wrong message by saying "if you get caught". Now it almost seems like a challenge. The message should be about losses in general and some method of confidential communication should be in place so anyone can provide tips on suspicious behavior.


Access Control. This is a simple objective that increases in complexity the larger the company. This subject concerns two specific areas: access by employees and access by non employees that is facilitated by employees.

External Access Control

Employee Access. Start your review process from the outside in. In other words go to the furthest point that requires authorized access. Authorized access can be a key, a card, a pass code, or some other accept/deny point. The points could be gates, parking lots, exterior doors and alike. Everyone has some level of approved access. Access can be controlled by something as simple as a door lock or as complex as some type of biometrics. Regardless maintaining proper control is really a function of keeping things current. Vehicles and people can easily gain entry through unmanned gates/doors by simply "drafting" (going through after someone else before the door closes). These are weak areas of security.

Entering a building with a key is good security because only that person can/should enter. However, how current is your key control. What happens when a key carrier leaves the company? What happens to the alarm code when someone leaves the company? The security of the security is extremely.

TIP: If your building has a burglar alarm that is monitored by a central station (i.e. ADT) generally there are mailed or on line reports available to check open and close times. Someone should be reviewing these reports to determine if there are any odd-hour entries by authorized personnel. If someone enters the building at 2:00AM on a Saturday, what was their purpose. Alarm companies will generally notify someone if a door is opened at unauthorized time. Check with your alarm company.

Non employee Access. Employee theft does not necessarily need to be by the employee themselves. Collusion is a very high possibility. This is especially true with robberies in all business sectors. The "inside job" is more frequent than one might consider. CCTV as a second layer of security will, at least, provide possible identification of the parties involved. Collusion can be used for burglaries, corporate espionage, theft of trade secrets and vandalism (among others).

Internal Access Control.

Employee Access. Once inside a building the security should be more restrictive. The most sensitive areas can be anything from a vault to employee record storage to the IT Department. Value cannot be determined by simply assigning a cash value to it, there are costs associated with theft that extend far beyond the actual property. There are potential costs of liability, customer good will, interruption of the business operation, etc. If an employee steals a laptop computer containing business records that are not backed up, the cost of the loss can be devastating. In short, anywhere an employee has access, theft can and will occur.

Non employee Access. The person acting in collusion with an employee can only have access to areas that either have weak security measures (locked doors propped open) or are actively working with the employee. Getting into a business with the assistance of an employee is virtually risk free.

Tip: Even if you just use locks with keys, segregate the level of access everyone has to specific areas. Managers and supervisors with keys have to allow people to have occasional access somewhere. This is annoying to some. Their misguided remedy may be to disable the lock or give everyone a key by hanging it on a hook somewhere. This makes the security as rigid as tissue paper and defeats the purpose. If an area needs to be secure then limit access.

Postage and Shipping. Stamps! What is the harm of using one postage stamp to mail in my utility payment? The company has lots of stamps and certainly won't miss this one! And so goes the mentality. Do you know how much exposure you have when it comes to unauthorized use of postage and shipping?

Parcel theft, the unauthorized use (and certainly nonpayment) of some method of shipping for personal gain. The scale of a company 's mail function is certainly a factor but all companies face the same problem. Tight controls, frequent monitoring/auditing, and an absolutely defined company policy about misuse will help reduce theft. Keep in mind that this type of theft not only involves the mailing of Aunt Emma 's Christmas package at the last minute but the theft and diversion of company product and property using the company 's own mailing function.

Account numbers for common carriers, UPS, FedEx, DHL and others are pure gold. Little effort is required to ship a package if access to account numbers if uncontrolled. The security of these numbers is as important as safeguarding the combination to a safe. There are some areas where there is a great deal of vulnerability:

Mail rooms. We'll take the obvious first because the exposure comes from two sources: employees of the mail room and employees outside the mailroom. In both cases however, the final checkpoint is in the mailroom itself.

Tip: Ensure there are frequent spot audits (scheduled and irregular) of all documentation. Review for similarities of addresses that do not seem connected to the business. In large operations, only a database would enable complex queries. Investment is specialized software that can query disparate databases that contain data fields such as employee addresses, relative 's addresses, emergency contact information, names, etc (www.infoglide.com/index.htm ) would virtually be the only method to conduct audits of this type. Infoglide 's software can analyze relationships of information across multiple databases to determine how related all information is to the target.

Shipping Departments. This is the same as above but usually involves larger packages and carriers such as UPS and FedEx. This area has potential for theft of company product, especially in retail and catalog environments, by shipping to themselves or accomplices. Additionally the driver for the carrier can also be in collusion and simply accept packages and then drop them somewhere along their route.

Tip: While cumbersome and time consuming, occasional audits should be conducted after the carrier has been loaded. All packages should be checked for proper labeling and screened for suspicious names and addresses.



6. Expense Monitoring. Expense accounts are often termed as "abused" when in reality it is theft. Expense accounts can be used in a number of ways for personal gain, most of which can be caught early on with proper oversight. A supervisor should always review submitted expenses or monthly credit card statements to ensure the propriety of money spent. A paper trail needs to exist for all expenditures and companies should refrain from adopting policies that do not require receipts for small dollar amounts.

To combat possible fraud companies should do as much direct billing as possible and set strict limits with those vendors as to what will be paid for. A strict policy should be maintained regarding improper use of company funds and regular audits should be conducted for all employees. A distinction should also be made within the policy that the supervisor 's approval signature is meant that all items have been properly reviewed and that they are legitimate. When there is accountability, there is less likelihood that a supervisor is passing down receipts to a lower level so that questions won't be raised on their own reports.

Abuse and fraud through the use of personal credit cards is also possible. One of the most frequent abuses I have seen is the use of a personal credit card that awards airline mileage to book travel reservations. The owner of the card will almost always be management and the reimbursement process will need to be prompt in order to pay the bill. Hundreds of thousands of miles can be amassed in a fairly short period of time.

7. Payroll. Using the company payroll to commit fraud is perhaps one of the oldest ploys around. "Ghosting" payroll means creating fictitious employees or continuing to submit payroll requests despite the employee no longer working. This also requires forgery of the endorsement of the check so the funds can be cashed or deposited in the forger 's account. This type of fraud is usually committed by managers and can go undetected for long periods of time.

Even a small company can fall victim to this type of theft without occasional audits to reconcile the existence of employees. In high turn over industries a manager could simply postpone submitting termination paperwork to a payroll department for until the next person quit. This could be considered a form of identity theft but it is more a means to steal cash.

Tip: Field managers should be conducting these audits on a very regular basis.

8. . The Bookkeeper. The bookkeeper plays a critical role in a business because of their skills, their knowledge base, and their total familiarity with the company and their practices. These same areas can be used with a devastating effect if theft is involved. Even when a company becomes large enough to move into the stage that requires an Accounting Department, fraud can occur.

Consider the following areas:

Banking. What process is in place to ensure that revenue and deposits are the same? What process is in place to ensure that the number and amount of checks and the amount of cash equal the receipts for the day? To steal cash, one would simply have to delay depositing funds. The subsequent days the cash that was taken would have to be replaced by checks from previous day 's business.

Vendor accounts. What prevents the bookkeeper from creating fictitious vendors and then creating payments they receive themselves? What prevents intentional overpayment of a vendor to receive a portion of the stolen funds. What monitoring is available to ensure that vendors do not develop personal relationships with critical employees. (Note: a review of policy regarding the receiving of gifts, trips, ball game tickets, rounds of golf, etc from vendors should be conducted).

Horror Stories. A vendor for a very large company set out to woo the affection of the accounts payable clerk that who handled their account. Eventually becoming successful the AP clerk began charging various locations through journal entries for fictitious product. By sheer coincidence one of the locations' managers saw an unusual charge which eventually unraveled the case. Time to detect: 8 months. Loss: $1.2 million. Both were prosecuted

A busy realtor had an excellent bookkeeper. The bookkeeper was young, energetic and very territorial about her work. Even the realtor could not get into the password protected files. The realtor thought she was a gem of an employee because she even came in on her vacation to take the daily deposit to the bank. She was also efficient and had the realtor pre sign company checks to pay bills. The bank manager was alerted to some odd looking checks made out to the bookkeeper. Since the realtor had been a long time customer, the realtor was notified. The bookkeeper was creating checks to herself and depositing at the same bank. Time to detect: 12 months. Loss: $267,000. Side note: Realtor failed to conduct criminal background check which would have shown the bookkeeper 's prior convictions for credit card fraud.

9. Petty Cash. Sometimes called a coffee fund or office supply money, petty cash is simply an amount of money that is used for various small purchases. There is no "Best Practice" as to how much the fund should be but regardless, it must be tightly controlled and must be used only for the intended purpose. Petty cash funds tend to become the "small loan department" for lunch or other needs when someone is short on cash. The money goes out and an IOU is substituted. This is not a recommended practice as company funds are being used for personal use.

Petty cash should be counted daily and documented somewhere for reference. This documentation should be audited and the cash personally counted (with a witness) by the person who is in charge of this fund. The cash plus any receipts for disbursed money should equal the total that should be present. Variances, over or short, should not be tolerated.

10. Lockers and searches. Lockers are considered by many employees to be "theirs" meaning there is an expectation of privacy of their contents and that searching a locker is an intrusion of their personal rights. This should not be the perception or the rule and is simple enough to remedy.

Company policy should clearly state that all employees and their vehicles are subject to search. Lockers present a challenge if employees are allowed to use their own locks. Check with your legal counsel as the "ownership" issue may change if the lock itself belongs to the occupant.

Searching lockers either randomly or for cause can be a human resource disaster if not handled with care, tact, and diplomacy. Ensure your method of search is approved by legal counsel. Is a "search" confined only to what is visible in the locker or does the search allow opening of backpacks, purses, and briefcases? Does the employee need to be present during any search? There is a reasonableness factor in this element. Check with your attorney to determine if a supervisor can be there instead. What is the action taken if someone refuses to allow the search of the locker? If your policy is clearly written, the resolution of that confrontation is spelled out.

Consider this question: what expectation of privacy should an employee have while on company property? There are many arguments to this and policy should be chosen and written carefully.

Throughout this paper the overriding theme is audit. Policy and procedure without compliance review have little or no impact on a business. Policy and procedure without consistent application is an open invitation to liability.

About the Author
Pat Murphy is the President of LPT Security Consulting. He provides security consulting and expert witness testimony on a number of topics. He has over 30 years experience in the industry.

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The 3 Types Of Fast Personal Secured Loans

Crap happens. Sometimes things just happen in our lives that we have no control over. Sometimes these events are positive and sometimes these events are negative. Regardless, these events will have an impact on our lives no matter how we look at it. Sometimes and negative event will include a medical emergency, unexpected bills, unexpected property expenses or dental emergencies, etc. Unfortunately, these types of emergencies often require spending money that we don't have for whatever reason.

In times of emergencies like this, there are financing options available were a person can go and get a fast personal secured loan. There are three lending institutions that will allow you to access cash through a fast personal secured loan. Title companies, pawnshops and cash advance businesses.

Title Loan Companies

Title loan companies will usually provide you with a fast personal secured loan, provided you are an owner of a vehicle. They like the security of putting a lien on your car. What this basically means is that they will hold the title to your car. You will be still allowed to drive your vehicle for your own personal use. However, if you should miss a few payments, at their discretion, they can now repo your car.

The amount of the loan will be based on the value of your vehicle. Often times, the amount of the fast personal secured loan will range of to a few thousand dollars. The maximum amount of this type of loan it is usually one half of the approximate value of the vehicle.

The terms of this type of loan will vary. Those terms can include the length of the loan which can range anywhere from thirty days to several years. With the loan such as this, the interest rates will tend to be much higher than a regular loan. Failure to meet the terms of the loan will mean that the loan company can now take possession of your vehicle.

Pawn Shops

Another option where a fast personal secured loan can be obtained it is through a pawnshop. A pawnshop can sell items that have not to been reclaimed. A pawnshop operates to provide small loans to its customer base.

How this normally works is an individual who is in need of fast money will enter the pawnshop with an asset that they own. The owner of the pawnshop will then have a look at the asset and then put a value on it. Whatever the appraised value is will be the amount of the loan made available. This is a secured loan because the pawnshop owner for an average of 30 days retains the asset. If the loan and interest is not repaid within those 30 days, the pawnshop owner is now free to sell that personal asset.

Cash Advance Businesses

The third option of where you can obtain a fast personal secured loan is through a cash advance business. The process of obtaining a loan is accomplished by writing a personal check to this cash advance business. The check will be made in the amount of the loan plus associated fees. The writing of a check to the cash advance business qualifies this loan as a secured loan.

The typical term for this type loan is generally two weeks. If after the two weeks the loan has not been repaid, the check will be cashed. If there are insufficient funds in the bank, the borrower will incur additional fees from the cash advance business as well as the fees of the bank too. The interest rates for this type loan are generally very high because of the risk involved.


About the Author

Kerry Ng is a successful Webmaster and publisher of The Secured Loan Tips Blog. For more great helpful information about secured loans visit The Secured Loan Tips Blog

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What is 14k Gold & Why Is It Valued ?

The measure of karats, abbreviated as "k," expresses the level of purity in a piece of gold. The purest gold is 24k, but to understand the true meaning of karats, it 's best not to be mislead by the connotations of "purity." In other words, although the raw, pure gold is more valuable on the open market than less pure gold, it is extremely soft and malleable, making it essentially useless for jewelry and other applications. Because of this, in order to create the jewelry items that we love and give as gifts, pure gold must be mixed with harder materials, such as copper and silver, and brought to a state of balance.

This is why 14k gold has long been the most widely used gold for American jewelry; it strikes the perfect balance between versatility and purity. To create the perfect balance, pure gold is first melted, and then the melted gold is alloyed with smaller percentages of other precious metals, which take away neither from the gold 's shine, nor from its weight. Once the alloy has reached the perfect balance, the 14k gold is then ready to be shaped into jewelry and set with diamonds and gemstones. From beginning to end, the entire process requires great expertise and skill on the part of jewelry artisans, which is part of the reason why jewelry can be costly.


Historically, gold has always been valued, but jewelry technology hasn't always been able to produce the perfect, 14k purity we enjoy today. The metal, which is found throughout the world in river beds, alluvial deposits, and in underground concentrations, was first recognized for its unique qualities by the earliest human civilizations.

Indeed, throughout history, there has been almost no group of people that didn't appreciate gold and use it in some way. The Ancient Egyptians employed it for a variety of decorated uses, while the ancient Turkish kingdom of Lydia is said to be the source of the first gold coins, during the 7th century B.C. Later, gold provided the impetus for much colonialism and European expansion throughout the world, including the expeditions to America that lead to the formation of the United States.

It 's difficult to pin down the historical reasons for gold being favored over other precious metals, but undoubtedly its unique color and heavy weight spoke to early peoples as symbols of unique spiritual qualities. Few naturally occurring stones have such a distinctive and alluring color, which must have delighted early peoples, who had none of the understanding of chemistry and geology that we have today.

Since then, gold has taken on a variety of meanings, and to this day, its meanings continue to change. Most commonly, because of its value and preciousness, gold has been associated with royalty, wealth, luxury, and affluence -- for better or worse. Plus, because gold objects have always made great gifts and rewards, today gold awards are given to the top athletes at the Olympics, as well as to winners in a variety of other competitions, sporting and otherwise

Also, in the modern world, the durability and easy recognition of gold have given rise to the "gold standard," a fixed weight of gold that defines monetary values throughout the world, contributing to our ability to trade and have commerce with foreign countries. The gold standard not only relies upon gold for its measurement, but it also assures that gold will be the most important and sought-after precious metal for centuries to come.

As for the prominence and value of 14k gold in American jewelry -- the reasons are simple. No other precious metal is as versatile and beautiful as 14k gold. We don't even have to consider the history or the science of gold; 14k gold is simply a wonderful, lasting, and symbolic material, always perfect for gifts, and always pleasant to the eye and to the touch.

About the Author

Lulu Bells Treasures has been offering high quality 14k gold, sterling silver, diamond and gemstone jewelry online since 2003. Visit them today at http://www.lulubells.com to view their large selection of 14k gold jewelry and gifts. Use coupon code AM0807 for $10 off orders over $150.

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The Economist Focus Articles on Microfinance

Financial services are at last spreading from the rich to the developing world and even making money, writes Tom Easton
IN RICH countries, financial services on the whole work remarkably well, despite the exotic salaries, the crackpot deals and the occasional bust. The vast majority of people have access to interest-bearing savings accounts, mortgages at reasonable rates, abundant consumer credit, insurance at premiums that reflect the risk of losses, cheap ways of transferring money, and innumerable sources of capital for funding a business.

By contrast, financial services for poor people in developing countries a business known as a microfinance have mostly been awful or absent. With no safe place to store whatever money they have, the poor bury it, or buy livestock that may die, or invest in jewellery that may be stolen and can be hard to sell. Basic life and property insurance is rarely available. Home loans are costly, if indeed they can be found at all. For many people, the only source of credit is a pawnshop or a moneylender who may charge staggeringly high interest and beat up clients who fail to pay on time. In the Philippines, lenders who zip from town to town on motorcycles expect six pesos back for every five they lend. That translates into an annual interest rate of over 1,000% on a loan for a month.
For workers from poor countries who venture abroad to earn a better living, sending money home to relatives can be hugely expensive. Such remittances have become an important source of income in many developing countries, dwarfing other inflows of capital from overseas such as foreign direct investment and multilateral aid. But if the money is being sent, say, from America to Venezuela, charges can amount to as much as 34% of the sum involved, according to Dilip Ratha of the World Bank.
Why are the poor so badly served? The easy answer, that people who have little money do not make suitable clients for sophisticated financial services, is at most a half-truth. A better explanation, this survey will argue, is that the poor have been hurt by massive market and regulatory failure. Fortunately that failure can be, and increasingly is being, remedied.
In most developing countries, the barriers to providing financial services for the masses are all too clear. Inflation tends to be high and volatile; government is often incompetent; and the necessary legal framework for financial services is often missing. Property laws can make it impossible for poor borrowers to use assets such as their home as collateral for loans.
In the past, many countries have outlawed usury, and today many Islamic countries prohibit the charging of interest. Governments in developing countries often impose caps on the interest rates charged on loans for the poor. Despite their popular appeal, such caps undermine the profitability of lending and thus reduce the supply of loans.
Incomplete and erratic regulation of financial institutions has also undermined the confidence of the poor in the financial services that are available. When they can find an institution that will accept their tiny deposits, it often lacks the sort of government deposit insurance that is routine in rich countries, so when a bank goes under, savers suffer. For example, Indonesia’s PT Bank Dagang Bali, once known for its work with poor clients, was closed by regulators last year after it was discovered to be insolvent and riddled with fraud. Many savers did not get their money back.
Corruption is also commonplace in many developing countries. A recent study by the World Bank found that in two poor states in India where the financial system is largely controlled by the government, borrowers paid bribes to officials amounting to between 8% and 42% of the value of their loans. Corruption raises the cost of every financial transaction, allows undesirable transactions to take place and undermines consumer confidence in the financial system. This, and the related curse of cronyism, explains why access to financial services in countries where the state has control over the financial sector is poorer than where it does not.
Inadequate basic public services add to the burden on financial firms. SKS, a fast-growing microfinance institution in India, has had to build back-office systems that can work on two hours of power a day; it closely monitors voltage when its computers are running and keeps a diesel generator on hand. Many others simply give up on the idea of modern technology and continue to use paper instead. This makes them vulnerable. The tsunami in December 2004 wiped out financial records at many small Indonesian banks.
But not all the blame goes to poor-country governments. Financial-services firms too have failed to do enough to deal with the lack of the sort of data (for example, about a client’s financial history) that are taken for granted in rich-country financial systems, and to find ways of reaping economies of scale. Many have simply dismissed the possibility that serving the poor might be a viable business.
The start of something big
In recent years, at least in some parts of the world, this bleak picture has begun to change, first in credit, then in savings and more recently in remittances. Even insurance not only the basic life sort but also more sophisticated forms for things like cattle and weather risk is gradually being introduced.
These changes have recently received a lot of attention in policymaking circles. Grand claims have been made that credit can end poverty. A World Bank report by Thorsten Beck, Asli Demirguc-Kunt and Soledad Martinez published last month shows a strong correlation between lack of financial access and low incomes (see chart 1). Earlier research by the first two authors and Ross Levine concluded that a sound financial system boosts economic growth and particularly benefits people at the bottom end of the income league. A long-term study in Thailand by Robert Townsend of the University of Chicago and Joe Kaboski of Ohio State University showed that families with access to credit invested more, consumed more and saved less than those without such access.
What makes microfinance such an appealing idea is that it offers “hope to many poor people of improving their own situations through their own efforts, says Stanley Fischer, former chief economist of the World Bank and now governor of the Bank of Israel. That marks it out from other anti-poverty policies, such as international aid and debt forgiveness, which are essentially top-down rather than bottom-up and have a decidedly mixed record.
Studies by Stuart Rutherford, who runs an experimental bank that provides loans and takes deposits in the slums of Bangladesh, show that the poor attach great value to having a safe place to keep money and some means of providing for life’s risks, either through savings or, better still, through insurance. When financial services are available to them, the poor, just like the rich, snap them up.
In one sense, microfinance has been around for a long time. What is now generating so much hope and excitement is less the discovery of some entirely new way to deliver financial services to the poor than the effect of the rapid innovation that has taken place in the past three decades.
From pawnshop to Citigroup
The oldest financial institution in the Americas is a pawnshop on Mexico City central square. Set up in 1775 under an edict by the Spanish crown to assist people in financial trouble, it is called Monte de Piedad, variously translated as the mountain of mercy or the mountain of pity. Pity or mercy come in the form of cash in return for valuables. Unclaimed items end up for sale in a series of glittering rooms near the main banking hall.
By transforming trinkets into capital, pawnshops perform an important (if under-appreciated) service, but they have three limitations. They advance cash only to people with assets. Their loans are based on the value of collateral, not of a business venture. And the valuables held as collateral cannot be used to fund businesses, as banks’ cash deposits can.
There have been two notable attempts to find alternatives. One has been the creation by developing-country governments of state banks, particularly to finance the rural poor. These have mostly been a disaster. The other, much more successful one involved a number of organisations extending uncollateralised loans to very poor borrowers. In 1971, Opportunity International, a not-for-profit organisation with Christian roots, began lending in Colombia. ACCION International, also not-for-profit, made the first of what it called micro loans in 1973. Grameen Bank started in 1976 and soon became extraordinarily famous for offering microcredit to women in small groups.
To qualify, Grameen customers had to be extremely poor, probably earning less than a dollar a day. To overcome the lack of collateral or data about creditworthiness, group members were required to monitor each other at weekly meetings, applying varying degrees of pressure to ensure repayment. As loans were repaid, people were allowed to borrow more. The group replaced the security that pawnshops gained from collateral. The model is not perfect, but it does have real virtues and has since spread around the world.
Why did these organisations start with providing credit? They assumed that poor people were unable to save, and that their sole need was for capital. But that was not the whole story. When BRI, a failing state-controlled rural lender in Indonesia, was transformed into a bank for the poor in 1984, it offered not only the usual loan products but also a government-guaranteed savings account with no minimum deposit. This has been an extraordinary success: BRI now has 30m savings accounts.
Nobody knows how many institutions are providing microfinance in some form, but the number is certainly huge (see article). They are growing fast and serving a vast number of people in absolute terms, although still only a small proportion of the billions who earn only a few cents a day. Local banking giants that used to ignore the poor, such as Ecuador Bank Pichincha and India ICICI, are now entering the market. Even more strikingly, some of the world biggest and wealthiest banks, including Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, HSBC, ING and ABN Amro, are dipping their toes into the water.
The downsides
Not everyone has been pleased with the prospect of better financial services for the poor. Islamic fundamentalists have bombed branches of Grameen in Bangladesh and attacked loan officers of other institutions in India. Maoists have looted microfinance offices in Nepal. The head of a microfinance effort in Afghanistan was murdered, possibly by drug traders.
To drug lords in Afghanistan, the availability of credit is unwelcome because it gives a choice to farmers who were previously forced to grow poppies for want of other ways to finance their crops. For the elites in closed markets running inefficient monopolies, credit raises the prospect of future challenges from entrepreneurs. For radical Muslims, it means that women (who in many countries make up the bulk of microfinance borrowers) are able to run viable businesses and become independent. And for everyone in poor countries, credit can mean social upheaval as merit and enterprise replace inheritance, family ties and position.
Nor does microlending always have a happy outcome. The clients of K-Rep, an excellent Kenyan microfinance bank in a small town on the fringes of Nairobi, are a pretty resourceful lot, but when the government stopped repairing roads, picking up rubbish and spraying for malaria, some were at their wits end. Drainage in the marketplace was plugged by uncollected garbage and customers stopped coming. Maria Njambi, a single mother with a ten-year-old child, used to have a viable business selling fruit and vegetables she bought with credit from K-Rep, but she had to watch her inventory rot and has stopped repaying her loan. She is not alone in her misfortune. A report in 2002 by CARD, a microfinance organisation in the Philippines, offers the following explanation for borrower attrition: It is a tragic fact that over time, husbands will fall sick, sari-sari [variety] stores will be robbed, harvests will be poor and children will die.
Yet microfinance institutions typically claim extraordinarily low loan losses of 1-3%, a bit better than the rate for big banks in rich countries and much better than for the big credit-card companies. Given the difficulties facing businesses in poor areas, some critics question the accuracy of these figures. Many of the banks lending to the poor are not-for-profit organisations whose accounts are rarely scrutinised by outsiders. Much of their capital has been provided by governments or philanthropists, and often does not have to be repaid, so perhaps microfinance institutions are being quietly lenient with their customers. Indeed, large-scale defaults in microfinance may go unreported. The Townsend-Kaboski research project in Thailand informally tracked hundreds of microfinance institutions and found that in the five years before the Asian financial crises, 10% failed and a quarter stopped lending.
So there is room for scepticism, but also plenty of reason for hope. The biggest of these is just how much progress the industry has made in the past 30 years.

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Art Of Jewelry Making

There are some jewelry hobbyists that exhibit their creative edge and brilliant talent when making their own jewelry designs. It is a very rewarding experience that is made quite simple through Internet jewelry websites. These fine jewelry retailers maintain an inventory of jeweler tools, castings and ring mounting devices to let a jewelry making enthusiast explore all possibilities at a reasonable price.

With so many gem choices to pick from, creative jewelry craftsman have the opportunity to cut, polish and enjoy brilliant works of art in jewelry form that they can give as gifts to special people in their life. These jewelers are very knowledgeable of what it takes to create a diamond, and are skilled craftsman when it comes to cutting multi-faceted gemstones with exquisite precision.

It's hard to believe that an unattractive chunk of carbon could be crafted into something so beautiful. People love to wear these chunks of coal around their necks as pendants, and around their fingers as engagement rings to show the world they are truly loved.

Some jewelers like to explore all of the possibilities and keep an abundant amount of amethyst, citrine, aquamarine and garnets and other semi-precious gems on hand to fulfill custom orders that will add wonder and magic to someone's day.

Some people have a particular stone in mind when they come in to place their custom jewelry order. They get captured by the beauty of loose gemstones that they see in a highly lit display case and hand select several gemstones to be added to their order. These extra touches of color will make a truly special wearable jewelry item that is custom ordered in their favorite setting.

The shaping of gemstones is offered in at least 15 varieties and each will prominently display the refined tastes of the particular jewelry fancier. There are heart shapes that are typically ordered by star crossed lovers who enjoy a continual reminder of how they feel for each other. The marquise, rectangle, square and round shapes fill a more traditional shape that is found in most jewelry fashions on the market today.

For creating unusual and unique shaped jewelry pieces, jewelry enthusiasts might choose a trillion cut or perhaps a triangle cut that will turn a unadorned ring band with few possibilities into a work of art in very little time at all. The rectangular Octagonal and Cushion shapes make dramatic shaped gemstones gifts for the most astute jewelry wearer in your life.

Whether you prefer a ring setting that is basket shaped, or prefer bezels with baguettes running vertical and horizontal in a swirled and very ornate jewelry creation, there are certainly many opportunities to display your favorite gemstones in exquisite styles that fit your personality.

Many people bring in their older jewelry pieces to have them remounted into exquisite settings that give new life and satisfaction to an old ring arrangement that they are no longer comfortable with. Gems such as diamonds and rubies are collectible items that families pass down as heirloom items that the entire family can enjoy with a little work by a skilled jewelry craftsman.


About the Author
Mary Lorainne writes about AdjustableRing Online Proposal and CabochonParcel Coupon

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