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By Knight Kiplinger

The Kiplinger Washington Editors

May 16, 2008

Overall prices will rise 4% this year -- on a par with last year -- but inflation clearly feels much worse for businesses and households struggling to pay bills. This week's Kiplinger Letter analyzes the various pressures impacting prices and forecasts when inflation will ease.

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I am a strong believer border security, keeping track of work and student visas, etc but do you think that deportation of illegal immigrants is a waste of money?

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Green Building: Virtue and Business Sense Converge

Green building is no longer a cause, but a profitable and vital part of the commercial real estate and construction industries.

Worth Reading: The Quick Take from Kiplinger

March 2007

Building Design+Construction

Building Design+Construction is one of the leading trade magazines in the country for architects, contractors, engineers, and owners/developers. It reports on trends, new technology and products in the building trade.

Green building is no longer a cause, but a profitable and vital part of the commercial real estate and construction industries. Anyone in the building trades, anyone who uses, invests in or leases real estate as part of their business needs to understand green building trends, opportunities and pitfalls—and factor them into their thinking. Building codes, insurance rates, employee health and even customer satisfaction can all be affected by green building concepts.

In a white paper titled Green Buildings and the Bottom Line, the magazine Building Design+Construction takes a clear-eyed look at when and how green construction, design and energy features will pay off for those investing in a project and those who will work, shop, sleep or play in it. While the report explains why the industry is so robust, its focus is on a sector-by-sector breakdown of green building trends—from the hotel and restaurant industry to heavy industrial uses, from retail operations to schools and medical facilities.

The report warns against the increasing popularity of codifying green principles into state and municipal laws. Rather than rely on strict rules and the threat of fines, "Forward-looking governments have created incentives to encourage green building, through fast-track permitting, density bonuses, and other mechanisms that provide measurable value to developers, property owners, and building teams," the paper argues.

And how does a savvy business weigh whether a green office building is worth constructing, investing in or moving into? Those questions and more are answered in the following excerpts of Chapter 3: "Financing Green Office Buildings".

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