José García is a senior research and policy associate at Demos, a non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization. He is co-author of Up to Our Eyeballs: How Shady Lenders and Failed Economic Policies are Drowning Americans in Debt (2008). Prior to working at Demos, Garcia was the vice president for policy at the National Institute for Latino Policy. He sat down to talk about indebtedness -- and his opinions may surprise you.

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has come close to calling for an end to race-based affirmative action, political observers say. Politico reported Sunday that since 2004, the Illinois senator has suggested that economic status should match or trump race and gender as criteria for who should benefit from programs.

The dollar's sharp rally last week has prompted some investors to say its seven-year slide may be over, as the focus shifts from U.S. economic woes to the spread elsewhere of the slowdown inspired by the credit crunch.

The number of Hispanic-owned businesses in the United States is expected to grow 41.8 percent in the next six years to 4.3 million, with total revenues surging 39 percent to more than $539 billion, according to new estimates by HispanTelligence. Spurred by growing entrepreneurial trends and affluence among the nation's largest minority population, the increase is expected to come at a robust rate of 8.5 and 8.7 percent, respectfully, over the next couple years.

For more than two decades, the annual Hispanic Business 500 directory has served as a barometer of the U.S. Hispanic economy. A purchase of the 2007 directory provides the top 500 Hispanic-owned companies list in Excel format including: CEO names; company addresses and telephone numbers; e-mail addresses for 375 companies and Web addresses for 430 companies; and company revenue and employees numbers for 2005 and 2006.

If your business is looking for an injection of capital, you may know exactly what you want when you approach an investment bank or private equity firm. But what about the lender across the table? What does he or she want and expect from you? Knowing that can make the difference between walking out with a signed deal in your pocket and leaving disappointed and empty-handed. Hispanic Business magazine spoke with several investment firms across the country, all of them familiar with funding for today's fast-growing Hispanic market.

The full list of top exporters, recently revealed in our July/August issue, follows.

After our research department delivered the list of the fastest-growing Hispanic-owned companies in America, we wondered what all these success stories have in common. Is there a single, universal element of success they share? In search of an answer, we talked to six CEOs from some of the hottest companies, all in the top 20 of our list. The sectors vary, as do their locales, but they all have this in common: they are defying an unstable economy to produce skyrocketing profits. Here are the insights they shared with us. You may find some of them surprising.