If you're a small-business owner, you're by definition a risk-taker. The danger, however, of being comfortable with taking leaps of faith is that you can sometimes overlook smart and simple ways to minimize the damage if your leap ends in a fall.

Here are seven ways to do just that.

1. Be cash-conscious

"The number-one risk for most small businesses is improper cash-flow management," says Scott Lovingood, CEO of The Wealth Squad Inc., a small-business consultancy in Riceville, Tenn. "Calculate every month how much money you have on hand and how long it will last if your income dries up. Also evaluate monthly your total accounts payable and the number of days accounts are outstanding because a slowdown in accounts payable will lead to cash-flow crunches."

Avoid those crunches by creating a contingency plan and setting aside three to six months of operating costs in reserves. "In the contingency plan, ask where your business would be three to six months from now if you lost your biggest client," explains Lovingood. "Which expenses could you cut? Which would you have to keep paying? That number of three to six months is variable because you could have cash-flow problems for various reasons. Losing a key customer could take away 50 percent of your revenue, but it might also take away 50 percent of your expenses."

CHICAGO (AP) — Media conglomerate Tribune Co.. announced a definitive agreement Friday to sell all but a 5% stake in the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field to the billionaire Ricketts family, capping a tortuous process that began nearly 2,5 years ago.

Tribune valued the transaction at about $845 million.

"Our family is thrilled to have reached an agreement to acquire a controlling interest in the Chicago Cubs, one of the most storied franchises in sports," said Joe Ricketts, who founded the Omaha, Neb.-based online brokerage TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. "The Cubs have the greatest fans in the world, and we count our family among them."

Tribune had announced on Opening Day in 2007 that the marquee baseball franchise and historic ballpark would be sold at the end of that season. But the process was slowed by CEO Sam Zell's efforts to maximize sale profits, the collapse of the credit markets and Tribune's 2008 bankruptcy filing.

The Ricketts family, tentatively selected as the winning bidder last January, had agreed to pay about $900 million for the team, Wrigley and a 25% stake in Comcast SportsNet Chicago, which broadcasts many Cubs games.

But that total was renegotiated, with Tribune retaining a small stake for legal reasons.

The sale figure exceeds the record $660 million paid for the Boston Red Sox in 2002, although that deal did not include a ballpark.

The successful bid was led by Tom Ricketts, 43, a Chicago investment banker and Joe Ricketts' son. He is

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Last year, as the gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression shook the banking system, Ben Bernanke seemed nearly as beleaguered as the institutions themselves.

The Federal Reserve chief had initially underestimated the crisis -- and then seemed to inject new risk by unleashing breathtaking sums of money to fight it. Now, a strengthening economy is raising Bernanke's standing just as President Barack Obama must decide whether to reappoint him.

His supporters say Bernanke, 55, a scholar of the Great Depression, has the knowledge and ability to guide a sustainable recovery without igniting inflation. And they argue that without his bold interventions, the global financial crisis could have been much worse.

"He has risen to the occasion admirably after what you might argue was a slow start," says Alan Blinder, a Princeton professor who was Fed vice chairman in the mid-1990s. "His performance merits reappointment."

Bernanke, having just wrapped up the Fed's annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., remains under pressure to help speed a recovery. Joblessness, now at 9.4 percent, is expected to hit double digits this year. Yet his riskiest task is to decide when and how to unwind the Fed's emergency rescue programs without endangering the economy.

His critics see failures in Bernanke's performance. They say he overplayed his hand by swelling the Fed's