USPS Office of Inspector General

If you want to expand your business by partnering with someone to sell your products or services in another location, you’d want that person to represent you appropriately and abide by your practices, right? In short, you’d want your partner to uphold your brand.

Meeting in Philadelphia in May of 1775 – more than a year before we declared our independence from Great Britain – the Second Continental Congress created the position of Postmaster General and conferred the title on Ben Franklin – and effectively established the U.S. Postal Service. The rest, as they say, is history. 

In the battleground that is last-mile delivery, groceries are the soup du jour. Major players and smaller upstarts are jumping in to test grocery delivery to the consumer’s doorstep. The competition should benefit consumers, if not their waistlines.

When it comes to postal products that don’t cover their costs, the U.S. Postal Service finds itself in a no-win situation. The law that governs the U.S. Postal Service, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA), requires the Postal Service to make sure all products cover their direct costs. But it also caps the price increase on market-dominant mail classes at the increase in inflation.

Cheaters never prosper, the old saying goes, but the growth in counterfeit goods might suggest otherwise. Trade in counterfeit and pirated goods has grown from $250 billion annually in 2008 to $461 billion in 2013, according to a new report from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), an international organization that promotes economic development. Fake goods make up more than 2.5 percent of all world trade.

Other findings: