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GOP Leader Emerges Real Player And Pain In Debt Talks

by AP on July 15, 2011

Huffington Post…

WASHINGTON — House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has become both a key player and big pain to more seasoned negotiators in the White House talks over how to keep the government paying its bills after next month. “Eric, don’t call my bluff,” President Barack Obama warned late Wednesday after a dramatic back-and-forth with the Virginia Republican that made some in Cantor’s party wince. “Enough is enough.” Not for Cantor, second-in-command to Speaker John Boehner who is widely assumed to aspire to the House’s top job. The testy exchange with Obama left Washington bubbling with speculation about whether the self-styled “young gun” had shot his own credibility in a roomful of political veterans. “I try to be as respectful as I can,” Cantor said in a telephone interview Thursday, explaining that he was only trying to understand a difference in spending cut proposals. In contrast to Wednesday’s tiff, the White House meeting Thursday was described as “composed and polite” by a Republican aide familiar with the session. Cantor did not speak during the day’s session, according to an official. The 48-year-old lawyer and father of three has made a career of confrontation with a brash Southern style that chafes opponents and to some extent has strained his relationship with Boehner. However unseasoned his style, Cantor is building support among the no-compromise faction of Republicans who want big spending cuts and an end to Obama’s health care law. Cantor grew up amid Republicans in Richmond, Va., where his father owned a real estate firm and served as the state treasurer for Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign. The future congressman entered politics his freshman year at George Washington University when he interned for former Rep. Thomas Bliley. After law school and nearly a decade in the Virginia House of Delegates, he was elected to Bliley’s House seat in 2000. His penchant for persuasion and fierce partisanship started early. Democrats are fond of touting his quote from a high school yearbook: “I want what I want when I want it.” During four terms in the statehouse, Cantor’s advocacy for business and corporate interests earned him the nickname “Overdog.” By all accounts, he has almost no hobbies and few interests outside elections, policy and his family: wife Diana, also a lawyer, two sons and a daughter. Cantor does like James Bond movies, and like Agent 007, clearly thrives on the rush of a good fight. There have been many. His tough partisanship in the 2004 campaign led the state Democratic party chairman to call Cantor an “attack dog” for President George W. Bush, who was running for re-election. In 2007, it was Cantor who offered an amendment to draw attention to then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s request for a “luxury jetliner,” an effort to brand the San Francisco congresswoman as extravagant. Pelosi’s staff staunchly denied that, saying the House sergeant-at-arms had requested that she fly in the same military aircraft as her predecessor, former Speaker Dennis Hastert. Still, the image was hard to shake. Cantor’s relationship with Boehner, too, has been delicate. The Virginia Republican won favor with senior members of his party as the House GOP’s vote-counting whip. In one cherished victory, Cantor headed the whip team that ensured no Republicans voted for the $800 billion-plus stimulus bill in 2009. But their styles are very different, and their staffs are not close. Boehner is a cigarette-smoking, golf-playing dealmaker from a blue-collar background who is regarded with deep affection by members on both sides of the aisle. He is well aware that Cantor, Republican Whip Kevin McCarthy and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan view themselves as a new generation of GOP leaders. That was the theme of a book they authored about how they would run the House in the future, titled “Young Guns.” At the book party last year, Boehner wove some trademark charm into a reality check. “The three of them know that my job is to make sure that they’re well-qualified and ready to take my place,” Boehner said with a semiserious grin, “at the appropriate moment.” That moment is not yet at hand. Pressed by Cantor this week for details, Obama said he had given them to Boehner. Boehner has sought to show he’s not threatened. Putting an arm around his protege Thursday, Boehner cast them as a team. “We have been in this fight together,” the Ohio Republican said at a news conference. “We’re in the foxhole.” But Cantor’s building up to it. He’s using the debt talks to raise his profile, holding briefings with reporters on the daily sessions and recounting the provocative comments he made during them. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, initially impressed with Cantor’s honesty but now “disappointed” by his behavior, said in a Senate speech Thursday that Cantor shouldn’t be at the bargaining table. In a statement later, Reid said through a spokesman that Cantor had been “nothing but a disruptive force over the course of these negotiations.” “Well I’m sorry he feels that way,” Cantor said Thursday a few hours before the group was to convene again at the White House. “I am trying to work with Speaker Boehner to get the best possible policy for this country.”

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GOP Leader Emerges Real Player And Pain In Debt Talks

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Vivian Diller, Ph.D.: Boomers Supporting Boomerang Children: A Positive Trend?

by on April 23, 2011

Huffington Post…

When your grown-up kids drop by to visit, do they still come with bags of laundry? How often do they leave with bags of leftovers — and maybe even a bit of cash — alongside their neatly folded, clean clothes? According to a recent Reuters report , there are many Baby Boomer parents in this country who are supporting their adult kids in lots of ways, with moms being the go-to person 60 percent of the time when offspring run into economic problems. The report was based on an online survey in Florida conducted by a research firm called Kitchen’s Group. They found that “of women with children over age 18, nine percent said they had adult children living back home for indefinite periods. Twelve percent were primarily responsible for their adult child or children’s financial well-being and 31 percent said they had children who returned home, relied on them but expected to become independent.” Although parents are not legally obliged to support children over the age of 18 (and in years past, few parents did), and although 86 percent of the Boomer moms in the survey were financially independent by the time they were 25 years old, it is clear that many parents today will do what they can to help their adult children. AARP confirms this new trend, saying the stats from the smaller Florida survey are in line with their own larger ones, which have shown that 69 percent of their members currently provide some level of financial support to their adult children. So what are the reasons behind this cultural shift? Is it a positive trend indicating that more young adults feel free to seek support from their parents as they struggle to establish themselves in their careers? Does it suggest greater closeness between moms and their kids, a kind of intimacy that was less common in previous generations? Or is it less positive, indicating an increasing over-dependence by children on their parents and vice versa? Perhaps, more worrisome, does it reflect a reluctance among 20-somethings to stand on their own two feet, resulting in a culturally induced laziness enabled by Boomer parents? High Unemployment The most apparent reason for young adults taking longer to become financially independent is clearly the current state of our economy. The Millennial generation reached their 20s just as the stock market crashed and a global economic downturn began. They entered the workforce as unemployment was rising, jobs were being eliminated and a college degree no longer ensured career opportunities. For many, moving back home or asking for financial help gave them the option to pursue unpaid internships, seek further schooling or simply wait out the recession. Although most of these young adults say that they would prefer to live on their own and be financially independent, when their parents offer help, most take it. Some have little choice. Others want to maintain the kind of lifestyle they were used to — or feel entitled to — and hope to avoid taking jobs they believe are beneath them. And parents go to great lengths to help meet their children’s wishes. One financial website writes that “mothers and fathers don’t always plan to be paying for their child’s expenses” after they reach the age of adulthood and find themselves filing for bankruptcy as they accumulate debt trying to help their kids become independent. Empty Nest vs. “Empty Next” Consider, too, that requests for financial help by adult children tap into the already existing ambivalence many Boomer mothers feel about this phase of their lives. Moms who have spent their 20s, 30s and 40s caring for their children feel pulled in opposing directions as their midlife approaches — to hold on or move on. While they may begin preparing for their years ahead without children and even look forward to spending more time on themselves, there continues to be a strong pull to hold on to what is familiar — the full house, even if messy bedrooms and empty fridges are left behind. Instinctively, many Boomer moms yearn for (or can easily be lulled back into) their role as caretaker — the go-to person. Being needed helps some women maintain their sense of purpose just as they face fears about becoming invisible, both physically and emotionally. (I like to call this phase the “empty next,” so that women focus less on losing their nest and more on what can come next; see chapter seven in my book, ” Face It; What Women Really Feel As Their Looks Change .”) Supporting children during this time can be viewed by some women as fulfilling, even if at the same time it financially drains them. New Family Structure Then there’s the fact that in the last 20 years, our family structure has become a great deal more child-centered, even as those children become full-fledged adults. No longer is Dad at the head of the table as Mom serves the meals and tells the children to go off to play quietly — think “Father Knows Best” being replaced by the kind of gatherings in “Brothers and Sisters.” Not only is the family dinner a thing of the past, but most mealtimes, weekends and vacations are now oriented around the kids’ activities: soccer practices, ballet classes, tutors, camps and other extra-curricular interests. Often both parents work, some even taking on extra jobs or second mortgages, just to finance their kids’ active and enriched lives. With children growing up assuming that parents will make these kinds of sacrifices, it isn’t surprising that they expect them to continue right through adulthood. Helicopter parenting can lead to overly dependent children who are loathe to give up their hovering but supportive families. We have to ask ourselves whether the wonder years have become the wander years, with too many young people ultimately lost because they were coddled too long. Generational Differences That Boomers remember their young adulthood differently isn’t difficult to understand. These women were raised by post-depression parents who emphasized the importance of financial self-reliance. Boomer women were also pioneers of the feminist movement. Economic success was not only about financial security, but served to ensure that they would avoid the dependency their mothers felt on men. These moms were among the first to break many of the glass ceilings that their Millennial children now take for granted. The result? Young adults today — especially 20-something women — view financial dependence neither as a failure nor as a betrayal of their political beliefs as many of their mothers might have. They are less embarrassed about what they see as a temporary and transitional stage. And since some of these moms wrestle with residual regret having pursued careers while leaving kids at home, indulging them now can meet needs all around — relieving moms of their guilt while helping out their grown children No doubt, the statistics indicating that more Boomer mothers support their adult kids reflect complicated psychological and cultural issues. And this recent Reuter’s report doesn’t even begin to explore the father’s role in this family dynamic. Is it possible that moms are the go-to person, viewed as having a softer touch, while dads are the go-away ones, more likely concerned about money matters? Are fathers hesitant to offer support because they worry that it will foster dysfunctional dependency? Do different attitudes about this issue contribute to marital problems in addition to financial stress at midlife? Maybe more importantly, given that many Baby Boomers have not planned for their own personal and economic futures, this trend raises questions about the long-term impact on how it will all work out in the end — for parents and children alike. We can all benefit from a better understanding of this cultural phenomenon. What do you think about adult children being financially supported by their moms or dads if they are in the position to help? * * * * * Vivian Diller, Ph.D. is a psychologist in private practice in New York City. She has written articles on beauty, aging, media, models and dancers. She serves as a consultant to companies promoting health, beauty and cosmetic products. ” Face It: What Women Really Feel As Their Looks Change ” (2010), written with Jill Muir-Sukenick, Ph.D. and edited by Michele Willens, is a psychological guide to help women deal with the emotions brought on by their changing appearances. For more information, please visit www.VivianDiller.com . Continue the conversation by following Dr. Diller on Facebook (at facebook.com/Readfaceit ) and on Twitter.

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Vivian Diller, Ph.D.: Boomers Supporting Boomerang Children: A Positive Trend?

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Millennial Generation Has Its Own AARP To Lobby For Jobs And Deals

March 25, 2011

WASHINGTON — One in six are unemployed, more than any other adult age group. They carry an average of $24,000 in student debt . And one in 10 have been forced to move back in with their parents after school. No doubt about it, these are hard times for young adults. But it takes a leap of faith to start a membership and advocacy group called Our Time as the Millennial generation’s answer to AARP. Launched this week in a Pennsylvania Avenue office down the street from the White House, Our Time seeks to use online organizing to “change corporate practices, create exclusive deals and spark a national conversation.” It wants to “stand up for Americans under 30” while using its bargaining might to get discounts on health insurance and credit card programs. And with a homepage that Friday showed a scruffy dude screaming, “F#%K, I need a job! One in six of us is out of work,” and no annual dues for a generation used to getting everything free online, Our Time is unlikely to be mistaken for the group formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons. “Our generation has more of an economic reason to engage than anyone,” said il, the group’s 25-year-old president. “We can’t just complain about these things or sit on the sidelines. We need to use our generation’s unique strengths to fix them … This is the civil rights issue for our generation. If you can’t have economic freedom and mobility to become financially independent at an early age, than you are entering society on the wrong foot.” Our Time’s target audience can be summed up by the headline in a recent New York Times op-ed written by a 24-year-old: “Educated, Unemployed and Frustrated.” It is being formed at a time when a growing chorus of commentators — from David Brooks to Fareed Zakaria to Robert Samuelson — are connecting the yawning budget deficit to the nearly 40 percent of the federal budget that goes to Social Security and Medicare. Where, they ask, is the political will to take on those entitlements when, according to a 2009 Brookings Institution report , an elderly person receives $7 in federal aid for every $ 1 that goes to a child. “Everyone’s talking about ‘doing it for the children,’ yet the children are being neglected, or at the very least held hostage for political gain,” Segal said. “We have become cheap talking points for our budget, health care system, tax code and just about every other social quandary.” Segal said his peers worry their generation will be the first economically less well off than their parents’ and doubt the social safety net will be there when it’s their turn to retire. “We want to make sure every generation is willing to put some skin in the game, otherwise we’re just kicking the can down the road,” Segal said. “We’re not here to complain and ask for federal handouts.” Donna Butts of the advocacy group Generations United said Our Time sounds “wonderful,” especially at a time when young people in the Middle East are feeling so empowered. But she worries the group will wind up pitting one generation against another. Millennials aren’t the first to enter the workforce during recessionary times, she notes. “From our perspective,” she said, “it’s not a fight, it’s a family.” Dean Baker, a liberal economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said the group is “founded on a lie” if its creators believe older generations are getting a bigger share of the pie. “It’s obviously wrong-headed,” he said, to blame seniors instead of the rich for taking more than their fair share of the nation’s wealth. Segal said he isn’t interested in sparking a war with his grandparents’ generation or with Baby Boomers. If anything, the early-bird dinner crowd has been an inspiration to a generation that can barely afford anything more elaborate than Chipotle. “Young people don’t have a seat at the table now and that’s because we don’t vote in high enough numbers” like seniors do, Segal said. Indeed, the genesis of Our Time grew out of the 2004 election, when Segal and his friend, Jarrett Moreno, were students at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. They were among hundreds of students who made national headlines when they had to wait 10 hours or more to vote in the presidential election. Segal, who grew up in an affluent suburb on Chicago’s North Shore, went on to found SAVE, the Student Association for Voter Empowerment to help get out the youth vote in the 2008 election. The group eventually grew to more than 10,000 members on 40 college campuses. Young voters turning out in force helped elect Barack Obama president in 2008. Two years later, though, many may have been too busy looking for a job to vote in congressional elections. Segal and D.C. native Jarrett Moreno, a friend from Kenyon, decided there was a need to engage their peers year-round and not just at election time. And that’s where Our Time came in. Neil Howe, a generational expert whose books include “Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation,” says Our Time has the potential to be “the political and social movement equivalent of Groupon.” He compares today’s 20-somethings to the World War II G.I. generation that made AARP into the powerhouse membership and lobbying group it is today. While today’s seniors lacked Facebook or other social network sites, they were joiners who believed in what Howe calls “collective entitlement.” Just as the generation that came of age in the Great Depression energized the union movement, Howe said Millennials like those who recently marched in Madison, Wis., could lead a revival for organized labor. “They are a strong civic generation with a strong sense of peer cohesion,” Howe said. “They probably will reoccupy the civic void left behind by Generation Xers and Boomers and will create the same sense of solidarity that the G.I. generation, or greatest generation did.” And they will do it in a style very different than the Baby Boomers. Before they began qualifying for Social Security this year, many Boomers didn’t trust anyone over 30 — a credo taken to the extreme in the 1968 cult classic “Wild in the Streets .” The Millennials at Our Time prefer to use humor to dramatize their plight, as in a series of online videos entitled, “Living at Home Sucks.” And Segal said the emphasis is on entrepreneurship: “If you can’t find a job, create your own.” Baker said there is nothing wrong with being entrepreneurial “but they are deluded if think they can all get by running their own businesses,” noting the vast majority of start-ups fail. Whether Our Time will be among the failures remains to be seen. “The economic challenges they face are not overstated,” Howe said. “Their challenge is politically whether they can get other people to see them as having legitimate grievances, that the system owes them something.”

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Tony Schwartz: Take Back Control of Your Work (and Your Life)

March 22, 2011

I just got back from the SXSW interactive conference in Austin. I went there to give a talk about fueling sustainable productivity by balancing periods of fully absorbed attention with intermittent renewal. Peering out into that vast hall, I fear I saw the future: a sea of the digital elite hunched over blinking technologies, tweeting and texting as I talked. Here’s what I later learned some of them were saying, all in 140 characters or less: “I’m splitting my attention between @tonyschwartz & tweeting that 2 B gr8 U have to be willing to suffer/practice.” “Tony Schwartz tells SXSW attendees to go to bed earlier. Tough sell.” “How can Tony Schwartz stay sane giving a speech on focusing on task at a time while the audience is on their iPads/iPhones at same time?” I wasn’t so worried about my own sanity — I was only doing one thing at a time, after all — but I was a little concerned about theirs. We’ve truly entered a world of nonstop input and output. So what exactly would it take to seize back control of our lives? We need a series of deliberate practices to counter the powerful forces so accelerating our lives. 1. Just say no. Imagine for a moment that you’re downsizing from a house to an apartment one-third the size. Everything you have seems necessary until you realize it simply won’t fit in your new place. There’s always room for less. You likely already have too much to do, too much information to absorb, and too many choices to make. If so, your challenge is learning to say no far more often — “no” to more projects, more meetings, more emails, more tweets, more Facebook updates, more purchases, more friends, more “likes”, and more fans and followers. Prioritization isn’t just what you want to do, it’s increasingly what you ought not do. What can you delegate and eliminate, take off your plate or put on the back burner in each dimension of your life? If you’re going to take on something new, what are you going to stop doing? How are you going to be more ruthlessly selective? My colleague Scott Belsky refers to this as “curating” your life. Curate comes from the Latin curare, meaning “to care” — in this case for yourself. Think of this as a Not To Do list. 2. Create more space in your brain — and your life. Our working memory can’t hold much information. The first solution, as David Allen spells out in Getting Things Done, is to write down everything that’s on your mind — the more often, the better. The less you’re thinking about at any given moment, the calmer and more receptive you’ll be, and the better you’ll be able to manage whatever arises. We also need to create more space in our days. To make sense of our increasingly complex and demanding world, we need times during the day when we step back, reflect on and metabolize what we’ve just taken in. We need less data and more context, less volume and more depth. That can’t happen if we’re running from one meeting to the next, and emailing, texting and tweeting in every moment in between. Where can you insert purposeful pauses? 3. Do one thing at a time as much as possible. I appreciated having the SXSW audience tweet short bits about my talk to their followers, but while they were tweeting, they were likely missing whatever I said next. Human beings aren’t designed to do two cognitive tasks at the same time (much less three or four). The research is clear that we’re far more efficient when we do activities sequentially rather than simultaneously. We also do higher quality work when we’re singly focused, and remember more of anything we’re trying to learn. 4. Revisit and reevaluate. I’ve kept a journal most of my adult life. In my 20s and 30s, I filled it with anguished evaluation of my life’s ups and downs. Today, thankfully, I use my journal as a place in which to collect ideas when they occur to me. The real value of doing so, I’ve discovered, is periodically revisiting what I’ve written. I do that on plane trips, mostly, because that’s the least interrupted time left in my life. By revisiting ideas, and reevaluating them with a fresh eye, I find the best ones become richer and more layered, and the less good ones naturally fade away. It’s a practice that serves as an antidote to instant action, and allows ideas and projects to ripen so I don’t act on them before their time. 5. Take regular breaks from your technology. The digital devices we all now carry around are stunningly seductive and addictive, providing endless access to instant gratification: tweets and texts, stuff to buy, games to play, apps to add, and constant new information. Our devices are the means by which we get our work done, but they’re also a form of digital crack. If they’re turned on, you’ll almost surely use them and very likely abuse them. Here’s the threshold question: Are there websites you check 10 or 20 or even 30 times a day? Consider treating yourself like a parent does a child. Ruthlessly limit the time you expose yourself to irresistible temptation. While I’m writing this blog, for example, I have my cell phone and email turned off. At 90 minutes, I’ll check back in. The other move I’ve decided to make– and am committed to stick by — is to leave my laptop and phone in the kitchen when I head up to my bedroom at night. I’m convinced I’m better off reading books than I am Google Analytics, and truly relaxing with my wife rather than aimlessly surfing websites. Less is more. Reprinted from HBR.org .

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Tim Hanni: A Challenge to the Wine Industry

November 18, 2010

There are many positive factors that have parlayed wine into the adult beverage most associated with good taste, sophistication and style. Wine quality, at all price levels, has improved dramatically. The range of wine types and styles available today is complete enough to satisfy every possible consumer preference and pocketbook. Indeed one of the challenges consumers face is how to confidently drill into the overwhelming number of choices and find wines they will love. An equally dizzying number of choices exist with wine classes, educational initiatives and the availability of wine evaluations and information. The birth and expansion of social media, blogs and on line wine communities ranging from eRobert Parker, Jancis Robinson and Snooth have provided and explosion of connectivity and the ability to share points of view. To top it all off there are new generations of wine heroes and evangelists like Gary Vaynerchuk, Joe Roberts, Jeff Lefevere, Alder Yarrow and many, many others that millions of consumers and professionals alike tune into every day. Yep, there is plenty of wine information and interaction available. This being said I am struck by how often the same issues and obstacles to expanding wine consumption seem to arise over and over again. So let’s take a look at the progress that has been made over the past 10 years. The following quote appeared in Brand Week a decade ago and at the center of discussion in many wine industry circles as a call to action: “The fragmented, historically insular (wine) industry generally seems resigned to accepting the wine consumer pool as is rather than aggressively pursuing new markets… the next decade could easily be referred to by future wine historians as the “years of missed opportunity.” Brand Week, May 1, 2000 10 Years After So what does the wine landscape look like 10 years after Brand Week’s prediction that “the next decade could easily be referred to as the ‘years of missed 0pportunity’”? “The wine industry is guilty of going out of its way to confuse the consumer, and must urgently come up with ‘a new big idea’, according to a British advertising heavyweight…’The wine industry is the most fragmented market I’ve seen. Fragmented, confusing, impenetrable.’” Sir John Hegarty, June 28, 2010, Masters of Wine International Symposium, Bordeaux, France Hmmm. Sounds pretty familiar. What is it that keeps us stuck in this deeply etched rut carved into the path of wine enjoyment and appreciation? I am convinced that it is a combination of complacency, misinformation and stubbornness in the wine industry. It is an unwillingness to adapt and change that is preventing us from having a larger consumer base and compromising our long-term fiscal stability and health. Despite ample evidence that the wine industry would be well served by becoming more consumer-focused, simplifying our messages and improving OUR ability to communicate our mantra remains the same, “we must better educate consumers, move them up to better wine.” This is nothing new about the wine industry mission to educate consumers and there is also nothing wrong with the idea. Ditto for the idea of moving them up to better wine. Perhaps what we really need is another strategy to run concurrently. We seem to be keeping something in place that is not working for a really large portion of the market and then we wonder why we are not making more sustainable progress in removing the overwhelm and intimidation as evidenced in every wine consumer study ever conducted. This quote about the Project Genome consumer study taken from Wines & Vines in 2008, “With the highest percentage of consumers falling into the “Overwhelmed” category, Leslie Joseph, Constellation’s vice president of consumer research affairs, commented: ‘We need to do a better job as an industry of helping these people understand what a wine’s going to taste like.” And the following is from the UK site WINEOPTIONS.COM illustrating this phenomenon is present on a global scale. “WineOption.org feels the wine trade has traditionally placed its focus on connoisseurs and wine snobs rather than the much greater number of unpretentious people who enjoy wine. Many producers, retailers and wine writers have traditionally taken much of the potential enjoyment out of wine drinking by shrouding the subject with myth, snobbery, and arcane or pretentious language. This facade has been, and in some quarters remains, a convenient means of confusing or even intimidating wine shoppers into making purchase decisions much less helpfully informed than is the case with most other foods and beverages. In fact, it is perfectly possible to provide in relatively simple day to day language the basic information which most wine drinkers need and want to select any given wine.” I think that it is high time we look in the mirror and ask ourselves, “What are we missing that keeps a vast majority of consumers (and many of us professionals who are able to admit it) confused, mystified and intimidated?” The answer as I see it is to turn the tables and start newly educating ourselves and cleaning up a lot of the tired clichés and misinformation that is disseminated under the pretense of “wine education”. I am not implying that we stop wine education per se, just that we enforce a greater rigor in the information we dispense and come up with alternative solutions for the huge market segment that is further disenfranchised by our narrow, product-based and self-serving approach. The call to action is not to change anything about the many things we are doing right as an industry, it is a call to action so we can collectively discover what we may be missing that would add immeasurably to our continued growth and success. I love this quote: “To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.” Tony Robbins What would it look like if the wine industry and wine communities to on the mission to understand, embrace and cultivate ALL wine consumers, not just the over-saturated segment we narrowly define as ‘worthy’? What if our next educational initiative were internal and focused on learning more about consumers and discovering more about who likes what and why? I would love to hear your thoughts on the matter!

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Manisha Thakor : 4 Ways Healthcare Reform Will Affect Your FSA

November 18, 2010

These days it feels like change is the only constant. As working Americans prepare for open enrollment – the annual window where you can make key elections to your employee benefits – it’s very important to be aware of a number of recent changes that have occurred as a result of health care reform, including those changes that impact flexible spending accounts (FSAs). For those not already in the know, FSAs are a great way to plump up YOUR bottom line by enabling you to pay for necessary out-of-pocket medical expenses with pre-tax dollars. As a result, when you sign up for an FSA, you can save up to 40 percent on expenditures that you are going to make anyway. To help current and prospective FSA users prepare for open enrollment, I’ve teamed up with Wage Works on a ” Save Smart, Spend Healthy Campaign ” to spread the word on how you can make the most of this critical period. Here are four key differences from last year that you should know about when planning how much to contribute to your FSA account: 1. OTC Medicines Are Still Covered… But You Will Need A Prescription . When there is change, there is often confusion. A number of news stories have inaccurately reported that the IRS is no longer allowing over-the-counter (OTC) medications to be paid for with FSA funds. Thankfully, this is incorrect. The truth is that starting January 1, 2011 OTC medications (excluding insulin) will require a doctor’s prescription in order to be paid for with FSA funds. Note: the key word here is “medicines.” Other non-medicinal OTC items such as band-aids, crutches and diagnostic kits can still be paid for with FSA dollars prescription-free. The easiest way to prepare for the new rule around OTC medications is simply to have a frank dialogue with your doctor at your next annual exam and get the necessary paperwork (specifically, a prescription) in advance for things like allergy medicine or pain relief capsules. 2. Contribution Caps Are Coming… So Plan Today For Elective Procedures . Starting in 2013, annual contributions to FSA accounts will be capped at $2,500. (Right now contribution caps are set by individual employers, and tend to average around $5,000). If you’ve been contemplating an elective procedure for you or a qualified family member – such as LASIK or braces – 2011 and 2012 are the last two years in which to set aside and use extra funds in your FSA. Remember, a payment made with FSA dollars is akin to getting a discount of up to 40 percent off since you are paying with pre-tax dollars. So it’s really worth it to make an estimate of your FSA eligible expenses for the coming year and sign up to contribute that amount into your account. 3. Adult Children Get A Helping Hand… Under Certain Circumstances . Thanks to healthcare reform your adult children can stay on your healthcare policy up to age 26 – as long as they are not offered coverage by their employer. Now is a great time to check in with your entire family and see who might need coverage and/or whether any of your adult children qualify as dependents. Note: some firms will allow mid-year FSA contributions to reflect the addition of adult children so check with your HR department about their policies on qualifying events. 4. “Free” Preventative Care… Means Some Costs Will Go Away . Last but not least, routine screening for blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol may no longer require a co-pay. Other cancer screenings like mammograms and colonoscopies as well a pre-natal care visits, vaccinations, and routine infant and childcare checkups may also be provided as part of your baseline insurance – thus requiring no additional out-of-pocket cost. If you had previously used your FSA to pay for these expenses, you can pare back here. Ultimately, spending a little bit of time understanding how healthcare reform may change the amount you choose to contribute to your FSA for 2011 is an investment that you won’t regret.

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Don McNay: Eat, Pray, Love and the Economic Crisis

October 3, 2010

When the moon hits you eye like a big pizza pie that’s amore -Dean Martin I could be the last person in America to read Eat, Pray, Love but the movie got me interested in the book. There is a segment in the book that keep running through my mind. The author, Elizabeth Gilbert, references Luigi Barzini’s book The Italians when explaining why a country that has “produced the greatest artistic, political and scientific minds of the ages” has not become a world power. Barzini’s conclusion is that after hundreds of years of corruption and exploitation by foreign domination, Italians don’t trust political leaders or big institutions. Gilbert said the prevailing thought is that “because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should only trust what one can experience with one’s own senses.” She added, “In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down.” I have pondered Gilbert’s insight for weeks. I keep asking myself the essential question. Is the United States headed the way of Italy? Survey after survey shows that Americans do not trust their elected officials and don’t trust the people on Wall Street. My parents grew up in a society where people trusted big companies to provide secure, long term jobs, excellent benefits and solid retirement plans. They trusted Wall Street to invest in those big companies and fuel America’s economy growth. They trusted political leaders to pass legislation that made the nation better, like the Civil Rights Act, even when the vote wasn’t politically expedient. We trusted our leaders to do the right thing. My children are growing up in a society where none of that is happening. Corporations dump loyal employees, cut benefits and wiggle out of paying for pensions. Wall Street rewards them for it. Wall Street has been based on a system of paying employees huge bonuses for gambling in silly trading games, rather than helping the economy produce growth. Washington seems more focused on the latest opinion poll or their lobbyist buddies than what is good for the average citizen. Long term thinking seems to occur around the “24 hour news cycle.” If the American people are following the path of the Italians, you can’t really blame them. On the other hand, I don’t want to see the United States become the next Italy. Three recently released books, Arianna Huffington’s Third World Nation, Charlie Gasperino’s Bought and Paid For , and Zac Bissonnette’s Debt Free U are different in philosophy but trace back to a central theme. You can’t trust what the powerful are telling us. Arianna writes that politicians have sold out the middle class. Zac punctures the myth that people have to rack up big student debt and Charlie makes the case that President Obama is in the pocket of Wall Street. I’ve been developing my own set of ideas on creating Wealth Without Wall Street and most of them stem from self preservation. Turning money and my life over to Washington and Wall Street seems to be a road to the poor house. Arianna has been pushing the concept of Move Your Money , where you stop doing business with Wall Street banks and start doing business with community banks and credit unions. Zac pushes the principals of no debt, just as I have been doing for a long time. Younger Americans are coping with an insane amount of debt in student loans that will be the flash point for our next economic crisis. I want to trust big institutions but that trust has to be earned. I trust many life insurance companies because they are heavily regulated and oriented towards safety. I’ve been in an associated industry for all my adult life, know the people who run the companies and believe in the concepts they sell. The culture is very different from Goldman Sachs. I want to trust government. I voted for President Obama in 2008 because I thought he would bring change to the economic system. Instead he gave us Geithner, Bernanke, Dr. Lawrence Summers and all the people who got us in this mess to begin with. Gasperino makes a well documented claim that there was never a plan to bring change and that Obama was in Wall Street’s pocket before he took office. I pray that Charlie is wrong but suspect he is not. There is a way to turn things around but the window is short. Arianna promotes public financing for elections. I’d like to see economic incentives for people who save and invest as opposed to bailouts for those who lack self control. America could completely become the Italian model, where we retreat to our own worlds and focus on immediate pleasure. Although there are a lot of downfalls, as Gilbert notes, the Italians can make one heck of a pizza. In the big scheme of life, that’s amore . Don McNay, CLU, ChFC, MSFS, CSSC of Richmond Kentucky is an award-winning financial columnist and Huffington Post Contributor.

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Fathers Suffer From Postpartum Depression Just Like Mothers, Study Finds

May 18, 2010

By Nicole Ostrow May 18 (Bloomberg) — Move over, mothers: about 10 percent of dads experience depression before or after their child is born, an analysis of previous research found. A higher rate of depression symptoms, almost 26 percent, was reported for fathers three to six months after their baby’s birth, according to research published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association . That’s greater than the roughly 5 percent of the adult U.S. male population that suffers from depression, according to previous research cited by the study. Much attention has gone to mothers’ postpartum depression that shows overall rates of 10 percent to 30 percent, while less notice has gone to fathers, the study authors said. Today’s report on dads, the first to pull together research from 43 previous studies in 16 countries, shows overall depression symptoms in new and expecting fathers doubles from baseline rates, said lead author James Paulson. “This isn’t something that’s a widely recognized phenomenon,” said Paulson, an associate professor of pediatrics at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, in a May 14 telephone interview. “It highlights that as a problem, and a problem that seems to occur before and after birth and across all nations.” Symptoms of depression, including feelings of profound sadness, fatigue and worthlessness, loss of interest and thoughts of death or suicide can occur in mothers and fathers, he said. Postpartum Depression In women, postpartum depression can begin anytime within the first year after childbirth, and the onset is linked to a variety of factors. After childbirth, hormone levels plummet, and changes in blood volume and metabolism can lead to fatigue and mood swings, according to the Mayo Clinic . Emotional triggers caused by lack of sleep and feelings of being overwhelmed may contribute as well as difficulty with breast feeding and a lack of social support. In men, Paulson said, it’s difficult to know what causes the condition during a partner’ s pregnancy and after the baby arrives. The depression may be tied to whether their partner suffers from depression. It may also occur because of changes in perceived role in life, financial stress, isolation from friends and social activities and sleep deprivation, he said. 28,004 People Paulson and co-author Sharnail Bazemore, a research associate at Eastern Virginia, looked at previous studies to determine how often fathers become depressed during their partners’ pregnancies and after the babies arrive. They also reviewed how depression in the men related to depression in mothers. Today’s findings came from an analysis of studies involving 28,004 people from the countries including the U.S., the Netherlands, Spain, Australia and the U.K. The researchers found about 2,900, or 10.4 percent, of the men in the studies suffered from depression either before the baby was born or after. The depression was highest in the three to six months following the baby’s arrival. Paulson said that may be because family leave ends about that time, particularly in the U.S. “Fathers do experience postpartum depression and prenatal depression,” he said. “If they are aware of that, they may be able to catch it early.” The depression rate for pregnant and new moms in the study was about 24 percent, with about 42 percent experiencing postpartum depression from three to six months after the baby’s birth, according to the analysis. Paulson is working on a study looking at depression in moms and dads starting in the third trimester of pregnancy through six months after a baby’s birth to see who develops the illness and what’s going on in the family that may cause depression. To contact the reporter on this story: Nicole Ostrow in New York at nostrow1@bloomberg.net .

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Stocks Gain as Europe Financial Crisis Eases; Treasuries Fall, Gold Rises

May 12, 2010

By Rita Nazareth and David Merritt May 12 (Bloomberg) — Stocks rallied, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index recovering losses from its May 6 plunge, as a successful Portuguese bond sale and planned budget cuts in Spain and the U.K. bolstered optimism the European debt crisis is subsiding. Treasuries fell and gold rose to a record. The S&P 500 surged 1.4 percent to 1,171.67 at 4 p.m. in New York, above its highest close since May 4. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index climbed 1.5 percent as all 19 of its industry groups gained. The 10-year Treasury yield increased six basis points to 3.58 percent after a $24 billion auction of the notes, while gold futures surged to a record $1,249.20 an ounce on speculation international financial support for indebted European nations will depress currencies. Portugal’s bond sale, Spain’s reduction in public wages and new U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron ’s plans to cut the deficit added to optimism that Europe’s debt crisis will ease after leaders pledged almost $1 trillion in emergency loans over the weekend. Better-than-estimated earnings at companies from A.P. Moeller-Maersk A/S to ING Groep NV and faster-than-forecast growth in the euro region’s economy also lifted sentiment, as did a potential $15 billion leveraged buyout in the U.S. “It’s not another Lewis Carroll ’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ tale,” said Michael Holland , who oversees more than $4 billion as chairman of Holland & Co. in New York. “David Cameron’s budget-deficit plan reminds people that you have some adults in the world when it comes to addressing the problems. The European package was another adult response. The global economic recovery is continuing and will likely not be derailed by the European crisis.” U.S. Rally Gauges of technology and industrial companies rose at least 2 percent to lead gains among all 10 groups in the S&P 500, with International Business Machines Corp., Intel Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and Caterpillar Inc. rising at least 3 percent to help lead the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 148.65 points, or 1.4 percent, to 10,896.91, also the highest since May 4. Cisco reported better-than-estimated results after the close of trading, while IBM forecast earnings-per-share may double by 2015. Morgan Stanley fell 2 percent after the Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. prosecutors are investigating some of the bank’s transactions in collateralized debt obligations, citing people familiar with the matter. Chief Executive Officer James Gorman , speaking at a press conference in Tokyo today, said there is “no substance” to any allegations. M&A Watch Blackstone Group LP slipped 0.2 percent as the world’s biggest private equity company, Thomas H. Lee Partners LP and TPG Capital are in talks to pay more than $15 billion including debt for Fidelity National Information Services Inc., according to a person with knowledge of the deal. Fidelity National rallied 2.9 percent. Sybase Inc. jumped 35 percent after Bloomberg News reported SAP AG is close to buying the company for $6 billion, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The MSCI World Index of stocks in 23 developed nations advanced 1.1 percent, recouping yesterday’s drop. Maersk , the owner of the world’s largest container-shipping line, rallied 9 percent after saying it returned to profit as freight rates jumped and global trade picked up. ING , the largest Dutch financial services company, jumped 4.2 percent in Amsterdam after reporting a better-than-estimated profit as bad loans fell. European Austerity The U.K.’s FTSE 100 Index rose 0.9 percent as Conservative leader Cameron took over as prime minister. Cameron’s chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne , will prepare an emergency budget within 50 days containing 6 billion pounds ($9 billion) of spending cuts to narrow the deficit. The measure is part of the Conservative Party’s deal with its coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats, announced yesterday. Spain’s IBEX 35 Index, which jumped a record 14 percent two days ago after the European loan package was announced, climbed 0.8 percent today and the cost of insuring against default on Spain’s largest banks fell to the lowest in three weeks after Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero announced measures to cut the country’s deficit. Credit-default swaps on Banco Santander SA, Spain’s biggest lender, declined 35 basis points to 130, the lowest since April 20, according to CMA DataVision prices. Contracts on Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA fell 31.5 basis points to 148, indicating an improvement in the perception of credit quality. Spain, France Spain will reduce public-sector wages 5 percent this year and freeze them in 2011 in response to calls from European finance ministers for deeper budget cuts as part of the aid package for the region’s most indebted nations. Zapatero’s deficit reduction plan triggered a 22 basis-point decline in the country’s sovereign default swaps to 139. The CAC-40 Index of French equities rallied 1.1 percent today, trimming its 2010 decline to 5.1 percent. Nicolas Lenoir , chief market strategist at ICAP Futures LLC in Jersey City, New Jersey, advised shorting the French equity market on speculation that any potential austerity measures will not be well-received in that nation. “Being French I can promise you first hand that if there is any form of austerity required as part of the $1 trillion package it will not fly one bit,” Lenoir said in a note to clients. “We had riots with a daily car-burn rate above 1,200 for over a week because a teenager electrocuted himself trying to escape from the cops, so just try and imagine if railway workers can no longer retire at 50 or 55 after being driven to exhaustion watching a computer do their job 35 hours a week.” Portugal Bond Sale In Portugal, Finance Minister Fernando Teixeira dos Santos said the nation’s sovereign debt is enjoying better market conditions as borrowing costs eased. Portugal sold 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion) of 10-year bonds today, getting more demand than at previous auctions. The country’s debt agency priced the 4.8 percent bonds due 2020 to yield 4.52 percent, 181 basis points below last week’s high, which was a record since the euro’s introduction. Gross domestic product in the 16 euro nations rose 0.2 percent from the fourth quarter, when it remained unchanged, the EU’s statistics office in Luxembourg said today. Germany’s economy unexpectedly grew in the first three months of the year as rising exports and company investment outweighed the effects of the cold winter. Gains for the Greek two-year note drove the yield down 4 basis points to 6.98 percent. The nation’s 10-year bond yield lost 20 basis points to 7.24 percent, with the yield premium demanded to own the debt instead of benchmark German bunds narrowing for a third day to 430 basis points from a record 965 basis points on May 7. Asset-Backed Downgrade Moody’s Investors Service lowered 22 billion euros ($28 billion) of Greek bonds backed by loans to consumers and companies as the country adopts austerity measures to qualify for European aid, leaving the notes under review for further downgrades. Spain’s 10-year bond yield slipped one basis point to 3.91 percent, the lowest since April 21, and Italy’s decreased two basis points to 3.92 percent. The MSCI Asia Pacific fell 0.1 percent. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc., which holds about 20 percent of Morgan Stanley, sank 2.4 percent in Tokyo. China Resources Land Ltd., a property developer, lost 3.1 percent in Hong Kong. Posco, South Korea’s largest steelmaker, declined 2.5 percent. The yen weakened against 14 of its 16 most-traded counterparts, dropping more than 1 percent against the Brazilian real, Mexican peso, South African rand and Swedish krona and at least 0.2 percent against the dollar and euro amid demand for high-yielding currencies. The Dollar Index, a gauge of the currency against six major trading partners, rose 0.5 percent to 84.889. Emerging Markets The MSCI Emerging Markets Index of equities rallied 1 percent, with the Micex Index in Russia, the world’s largest energy exporter, jumping 4.3 percent for the biggest gain among global equity gauges. Brazil’s Bovespa increased 1.2 percent after retail sales rose at the fastest pace on record and BM&FBovespa SA, Latin America’s biggest securities exchange, reported better-than- estimated earnings. . Argentina gave institutional investors more time to turn over defaulted bonds in a $20 billion restructuring offer and said it may shelve plans to sell new debt as its borrowing costs surge. Argentina Restructuring Argentina extended the deadline for swapping securities to May 14 from today and said further extensions are possible, according to a government statement distributed by Barclays Capital, which is managing the offer. Economy Minister Amado Boudou said yesterday the country may scrap a $1 billion bond sale that formed part of the restructuring after yields rose to a two-month high on concern the Greek crisis was spreading. Gold futures for June delivery rose $22.80, or 1.9 percent, to $1,243.10 an ounce. In electronic trading after settlement, the price reached $1,249.20, the highest ever. Crude oil declined, losing 0.9 percent to $75.65 a barrel in New York, after a U.S. government report showed that inventories climbed for the 14th time in 15 weeks. To contact the reporters on this story: Rita Nazareth in New York at rnazareth@bloomberg.net ; David Merritt in London on dmerritt1@bloomberg.net .

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Brown Taps Thatcher’s Legacy of `Poll Tax,’ Asset Sales to Counter Cameron

May 4, 2010

By Robert Hutton May 4 (Bloomberg) — British Prime Minister Gordon Brown wants voters to think about one politician in the election in two days, and it’s not him. Twenty years after she left office, it’s Margaret Thatcher who features more than anyone else in Labour advertising. In swing districts, Brown invokes her spending cuts to remind voters why they turned against the Conservatives in the 1990s. Labour’s effort to tie Conservative leader David Cameron to Thatcher’s legacy may help explain why he has been unable to widen his lead over Brown, who polls show may win Labour’s smallest share of the vote since 1983 in the May 6 election. The result may be a hung Parliament, where no party wins a majority, unsettling investors concerned that such a government may be too weak to cut a record budget deficit . “Labour is banging the drum that the Conservatives haven’t changed,” said Philip Norton , author of “The Conservative Party” and professor of politics at Hull University. “Thatcher was a divisive figure.” A ComRes Ltd. poll for ITV News and the Independent newspaper last night showed Conservative support at 37 percent, Labour at 29 percent, and the Liberal Democrats at 26 percent. That would give the Conservatives 294 seats, 32 short of a majority in the House of Commons , Labour 251 seats and the Liberal Democrats 74, ComRes said. The polling company telephoned 1,024 voters on May 1 and 2. Seven-Point Lead A YouGov Plc poll for The Sun newspaper gave the Conservatives 35 percent support, with Labour and the Liberal Democrats both at 28 percent. That gives the Conservatives 277 seats, 15 more than Labour, according to the BBC’s seat calculator . YouGov questioned 1,455 people May 2 and yesterday. No margins of error were given for the polls. A Crosby/Textor poll of swing districts for the Daily Telegraph suggested that the Conservatives might win 103 seats from Labour, though none from the Liberal Democrats. That’s short of the 117 districts they need to gain from other parties to ensure a majority. Cameron’s challenge is greatest in the north of England and Scotland where Thatcher’s policies of public-sector privatizations and reducing the power of unions hit hardest. In Scotland, the Conservatives, also known as the Tories, won only one out of 59 Parliamentary seats in 2005. Labour took 40, and the Liberal Democrats 11. “For me as a business owner, the Tories’ policies look slightly better, but I just have a mental hang-up about voting for them,” said Nik Wilson, 36, who runs a florist store in Edinburgh with his wife and voted Scottish National Party in the last election. “People just forget how things were.” ‘Remember the Tories’ Labour’s first television ad in Scotland was titled “Remember the Tories” and featured Thatcher’s image three times. In another Labour spot, starring the comedian Eddie Izzard , she’s the only politician mentioned. It is not just in the north of the country where Labour, which has been in power for 13 years, sees Thatcher as a handicap for the opposition. Leaflets sent out by the party in London attack Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg for having made positive comments about Thatcher, 84, now known as Baroness Thatcher , who lives in the capital. “The Tories haven’t changed,” says a Labour television ad that aired in Scotland. “They closed our mines, closed our steelworks and closed our factories.” ‘Big Society’ Cameron has spent the past 4 1/2 years since he became leader of his party trying to counter that, pledging to protect spending on the National Health Service, promote female, gay and ethnic-minority candidates, and repudiating Thatcher’s claim that “there is no such thing as society.” The central plank of his campaign is something he calls “The Big Society.” “To have spent any part of your adult life under Thatcher, you’d have to be 40 years old,” said David McLetchie , business manager for the Conservatives in the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. “But she’s still conjured up as a demon figure. She ended up as a victim of her own rhetoric.” Independent until it joined England to form the United Kingdom in 1707, Scotland still has its own legal system and prints its own version of the national currency, the pound. Like parts of northern England where the Conservatives also struggle, Scotland’s mining and industrial areas were devastated by Thatcher’s policies of selling state-run companies and breaking the grip of unions. Poll Tax Scotland is also where the program that brought her down, called by its critics the “poll tax,” was tested in 1989. The policy of replacing property taxes with a per-person charge hurt the poorest and caused riots when it was brought to England a year later, leading the Conservatives to oust Thatcher and repeal the levy. Scotland, Brown’s home, has voted Labour since 1945. Still, the Conservative vote fell to 16 percent in 2005 from 31 percent in 1979, when Thatcher was first elected. A Progressive Scottish Opinion survey last week put Labour at 41 percent, the Scottish National Party at 22 percent, the Liberal Democrats at 21 percent and the Conservatives at 12 percent. The company surveyed 1,024 Scottish adults between April 20 and 26. Cameron is campaigning in 11 Scottish districts this year, including Edinburgh South and the seat of Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling , Edinburgh South West. “There’s no sign of a Cameron bounce,” Labour’s Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy told reporters travelling with Brown to the central Scottish city of Stirling on April 27. “It’s in the bloodstream after what happened here last time. Most people here don’t think the Tory party’s changed.” While Cameron has made some progress in changing this view, the Conservatives still have an uphill climb in Scotland, said Nicola McEwen , co-director of the Institute of Governance at Edinburgh University. “Cameron’s no Thatcher, and they’re not hated up here in the way they used to be,” said McEwen. “In Scotland, a lot of people who by any objective measure are middle class will continue to identify themselves as working class. Those things run deep. The Conservatives don’t pick up those votes.” To contact the reporters on this story: Robert Hutton in Edinburgh, Scotland at rhutton1@bloomberg.net .

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Boomer Parents Optimistic About Kids’ Prospects, Despite Continued Financial Dependence

April 22, 2010

Baby Boomer parents may have succumbed to a bout of cognitive dissonance. According to a new Charles Schwab survey , they overwhelmingly expect their young adult children to be at least as financially successful as they are, but don’t see them becoming financially independent in the near future. About 85 percent of all Boomer parents, with at least one child between the ages of 23 and 28, expect their kids to be at least as financially successful as they are. Yet, 41 percent of all Boomer parents subsidize their adult children in some fashion, and 35 percent don’t expect their children to achieve financial autonomy before the age of 30. “There’s a disconnect between reality and parents’ perceptions,” Carrie Schwab-Pomerantz, Senior VP of Schwab Community Services, told HuffPost. “Kids are kids longer these days.” Unlike today’s Millennials, 86 percent of all Boomer parents said they were entirely independent by the age of 25. And nearly 4 of every 10 Boomer parents admit their adult children are more dependent on them than they were on their own parents. College debt (32 percent) and unemployment (31 percent) were the most widely cited factors underlying the trend. This prolonged period of financial gestation may take its toll on Boomer parents, 85 percent of whom are concerned about their financial security. 29 percent say they may never be able to retire and 22 percent fear they may outlive their retirement money. Fortunately, only 6 percent of all Boomer parents support both an ageing parent and a young adult child, mitigating what’s often called the “sandwich” phenomenon. The Charles Schwab “2010 Families and Money Survey”, released Wednesday, was conducted with 1,000 adults with at least one child between the ages of 23 and 28 and at least one living parent.

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Nine-Year-Old Fossil Hunter Finds New Species of Human Ancestor

April 12, 2010

By Meg Tirrell April 8 (Bloomberg) — A 9-year-old boy who wandered from his father’s side may have opened a new chapter in the evolutionary story of mankind when he found the fossilized collarbone of a child who lived almost 2 million years ago. Matthew Berger was about 15 meters (49 feet) from his dad, Lee, a paleontologist working at the archeological dig in South Africa known as the Cradle of Humankind , when he called out, his father said during a briefing yesterday with reporters. “Dad, I found a fossil,” the youngster said. The bone was just “sticking out of the rock,” the elder Berger said. Scientists now suspect Matthew discovered a new species of hominid, the name for humans and their extinct ancestors, that lived just prior to the historical development of modern man. Researchers reported finding partial skeletons of the male child and an adult female who lived 1.78 million to 1.95 million years ago in two papers published today in the journal Science . The new species “might be a Rosetta Stone to defining just what the genus Homo is,” Berger, a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand , in Johannesburg, said in the call with reporters. “This is a good candidate for being the transitional species between the southern African ape-man” and later groups more closely related to modern humans. The male child and the adult female would have been alive about 1 million years after “Lucy,” one of the best-known primitive human ancestors. The scientists said the species, named Australopithecus sediba, include a mix of characteristics belonging to more primitive and more advanced humans and may represent one of the most recent ancestors leading to those in the Homo genus, the group to which modern humans belong. ‘Natural Spring’ Australopithecus means “southern ape” and refers to an early human species that includes Lucy, who is 3.2 million years old and was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974. Sediba means “natural spring” or “fountain” in the South African language Sotho, an “appropriate name for a species that might be the point from which the genus Homo arises,” Berger said. The female adult and male child are estimated to have been about 1.27 meters (4.17 feet) tall, and to have weighed 33 kilograms (73 pounds) and 27 kilograms, respectively. The female was likely in her late 20s or early 30s, while the child was probably 8 years old to 13 years old, the scientists said. While the species has long arms, similar to apes, it has short, powerful hands, unlike the longer fingers of chimpanzees. Its long legs and more developed pelvis indicate it was able to walk upright, yet still likely spent some of its life in trees, according to the researchers. ‘Pinheads’ One of the most surprising aspects of the discovery helped convince the researchers that the two skeletons weren’t in the Homo genus: the small skull, Berger said. “It would look almost like a pinhead,” Berger said. The size of the cranium indicated this species had brains as small as some of the oldest “ape-men,” yet their faces more closely resembled something similar to Homo erectus , a more direct human ancestor, he said. The findings are significant because they come from a point in time that’s not well-documented, said Ian Tattersall , a curator in the division of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, in an April 6 telephone interview. That’s the time “just after 2 million years ago when we think that the earliest members of the genus Homo, to which we belong, were evolving,” he said. More Skeletons Tattersall said he doesn’t think the newly discovered species represents the “actual precursor” to more recent human ancestors. “What these features do is show you can have features of this kind in an archaic kind of hominid that is not a member of the genus Homo,” he said. Since the first discoveries of the sediba specimens, made in 2008, Berger and his colleagues have found at least two more hominid skeletons at the site, he said yesterday. The bones were discovered along with skeletons of saber-toothed cats, a wild dog, a horse and antelopes among about two dozen species of animals, the scientists reported. The Cradle of Humankind, located 40 kilometers (25 miles) outside of Johannesburg, is also the place where the more than 2 million-year-old fossil of Australopithecus africanus known as “ Mrs. Ples ” was found in 1947. Discoveries at the site have yielded insight into human evolution dating back 3.3 million years, according to the Web site of World Heritage , a cultural institution connected to the United Nations. Underground Lake The latest finding occurred in what was once a deep cave or underground lake, and sediba and animals may have entered in search of water, said Paul Dirks , a structural geologist and professor at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, and a lead author of one of the papers. The fossils were probably well-preserved because it’s likely they ended up in a place inaccessible to scavengers, Dirks said. “Perhaps at the time of their death, the area in which sediba lived experienced a severe drought,” he said. “Animals may have smelled the water, ventured in too deep, fallen down hidden shafts in the pitch dark, or got lost and died.” Sediba’s overlap of primitive characteristics with more developed features is indicative of the way humans evolved, with a period of possibly 600,000 years in which Australopithecus and Homo co-existed, Tattersall said. “We’re all brought up to think of our history as a slow, single-minded slog from primitiveness to perfection in some way, and clearly that was not the case,” he said. “We’re one of nature’s many experiments that seems to have succeeded.” To contact the reporter on this story: Meg Tirrell in New York at mtirrell@bloomberg.net .

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Breast Cancer Risk Rises, Lifespan Shortens After Childhood Cancer Therapy

April 5, 2010

By Nicole Ostrow April 5 (Bloomberg) — Women’s risk of developing breast cancer may increase as much as 20-fold if they were treated with chest radiation for malignancies as children or young adults, according to an analysis of studies. By the time they are in their 40s, the women’s incidence of breast malignancy may be 13 to 20 percent compared with about 1 percent for females generally, researchers said today in the Annals of Internal Medicine . A second study in the journal said both male and female survivors of childhood cancers die about a decade sooner. The findings add to research showing the effects of childhood cancer and its treatment, said Kevin Oeffinger , one of the authors of the breast cancer study. As adults, these survivors should be aware of their health risks and work with doctors to prevent premature death, the researchers said. “We still need radiation for treatment of many of the cancers,” said Oeffinger, director of the Adult Long-Term Follow-Up Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, in a telephone interview on April 2. “If a woman were treated with radiation to the chest area for a pediatric or young-adult cancer, they should talk to their doctor” about when to begin screenings for breast cancer, he said. 300,000 Survivors There are more than 300,000 childhood-cancer survivors in the U.S., Oeffinger said. Treatments such as radiation can damage healthy cells while destroying malignant cells, according to the National Cancer Institute, based in Bethesda, Maryland. In children, this can prevent bones, tissues and organs from developing properly, leading to damage seen years later. People who beat cancer as children face a risk of worse health over their lifetime from heart disease, infertility and psychological ailments, according to the National Cancer Institute. As many as 55,000 women in the U.S. today were treated as children with moderate to high doses of radiation to their chest to fight lymphoma and other cancers, according to the breast- cancer study. Oeffinger and colleagues at the University of Chicago, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis and other institutions wanted to determine the breast cancer risk for such survivors. The researchers analyzed 11 studies that had data on 7,000 women who received chest radiation as children or young adults from 1960 to 2000. Radiation Dose Women who received chest radiation had a chance of developing breast cancer by the age of 40 to 45 that ranged from 13 percent to 20 percent, depending on the dose of radiation therapy they received as children, according to the analysis. Women in the general population have a 1 percent likelihood of getting breast cancer by age 45, the study said. The increased risk for breast cancer was seen as soon as eight years after the chest radiation was given and didn’t level off as the women grew older, the researchers said. The researchers also wanted to assess the benefits and risks for screening the women from age 25 throughout their lifetime for breast cancer, Oeffinger said. Results suggested the advantage of early cancer detection outweighed the risk of more radiation from screening X-rays. He said the best results came from combining mammograms with magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI . Life Expectancy In the second study on lifespan, Jennifer Yeh , a research fellow at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, developed a mathematical model to predict the longevity of survivors of childhood cancers, including leukemia, brain and bone tumors and lymphoma. The estimates covered both men and women and varied by diagnosis, ranging from kidney-tumor survivors’ dying four years sooner than the general population to brain and bone tumor survivors’ dying almost 18 years earlier. That means as much as a 28 percent reduction in their life expectancy, said Yeh, who worked with colleagues from Harvard and Emory University in Atlanta. “Survivors of childhood cancer continue to face excess mortality risks in their adult years,” said Yeh in an e-mail on April 2. “Monitoring the health of the growing population of childhood cancer survivors and evaluating newer therapies for patients newly diagnosed with cancer can help to minimize the impact of these late effects on survivors’ life expectancy.” A childhood-cancer survivor who reaches the age of 40 has a 3.3-fold higher risk of dying before the age of 50 than those in the general population, according to the research. A person who reaches the age of 60 has a 1.4-fold higher risk of dying before the age of 70, Yeh said. “This suggests that as survivors age, the elevated risk of dying declines and approximates general population levels,’’ Yeh said. “Our estimates are based on data for survivors treated 20 to 40 years ago. Patients who received treatment more recently may have more favorable outcomes.’’ For Related News and Information: To contact the reporter on this story: Nicole Ostrow in New York at nostrow1@bloomberg.net .

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Hefner’s Harem, Love Nest Earn Him a Lawsuit: Ann Woolner

February 12, 2010

Commentary by Ann Woolner Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) — No one could blame David Brown for being piqued at Hugh Hefner . Brown bought a chunk of Playboy Enterprises Inc., believing in the way the company made money, which is mostly by feeding male sexual fantasies. That formula hasn’t worked so well for shareholders since the birth of X-rated Web sites. The shares , higher than $30 in 1999, dropped below $10 two years ago and have gone nowhere since. Nonetheless, Hefner continues to live out the Playboy dream. He does so at the expense of minority shareholders , claims Brown, who owns 47,000 shares of Class A stock and 130,000 of Class B. If he’s right, then there is such a thing as wretched excess even for a playboy-in-chief. Brown filed suit this week in state court in Los Angeles complaining that the 83-year-old Hefner shooed off prospective buyers for the company rather than give up his indulgences. He wants to represent all minority shareholders and seek unspecified damages, plus a court order directing Hefner to carry out his fiduciary responsibilities. Instead, Hefner continues squiring about busty 20-something blondes in multiples, only now he’s 60 years older than they are. His current trio of favorite babes star in the TV show and online video, “The Girls Next Door.” Why would he want to move out of the 30-room Playboy mansion in Los Angeles, that Wonderland of male adolescent desires and grotto parties bursting with near-naked female bodies? ‘The Good Life’ “Hefner has continued to live the good life and make sure everyone knows it,” Brown says in the suit. Whether you find Hefner’s conduct disgusting or cartoonish or admirable, it wouldn’t matter unless his pursuit of pleasure cost shareholders the chance to get a solid return on their investment. Brown says it did. He claims Hefner chased off would-be buyers, who were contemplating purchasing Playboy for about $300 million. That’s roughly three times the company’s market capitalization , which now stands at $116.5 million. One suitor, Iconix Brand Group, walked away in large part because of disagreement over what would happen to old Hef, some news accounts reported, saying he’d never leave the mansion alive. Hefner, who owns 70 percent of the company’s Class A stock, could have smoothed out that sticking point if he had wanted. His company owns the mansion, which he leases. It would have been simple enough to pack up his smoking jackets, slippers and Viagra. It’s not as if he lacks the wherewithal to stave off homelessness. And surely he will have fun-loving female friends wherever he goes. Hefner’s duty to minority shareholders requires him to put their pecuniary interests above his prurient ones, Brown says. If he’s right and Hefner spiked deals to avoid eviction from his pleasure palace, then it’s just another page from Playboy’s playbook. The Playboy Philosophy Isn’t the essence of the Playboy philosophy to seize the day, day after day, year after year, decade after decade? And yet the lawsuit feels flimsy. It ignores other reasons the would-be deals might have fallen apart. Iconix , which licenses and manages brand names like London Fog and Candies, had a complicated plan for unraveling Playboy’s various businesses so that it could keep the brand and logo and unload the soft-core porn. To get out of the adult-entertainment video business, it would have had to dump TV and online operations. It couldn’t be done. Besides, what meaning and value would the Playboy bunny logo have without its link to plentiful, sexy women? And think about it: If Hefner did sabotage deals, was it really because he wanted to breathe his last gasp in the Playboy mansion? He has no daily duties to perform for the company, though he retains the title of chief creative officer. Boys Not Babes My guess is that Hefner’s hold on the business stems from something more than the joy of hanging out with bosomy babes. His daughter, Christie Hefner , 57, resigned as chief executive officer effective last month. The elder Hefner has said he wants to pass his chunk of the company to his two teenage sons. It’s not as sexy as the notion that Brown lays out, and it would mean the man has an inch of depth, despite his image. If Hefner does want to hand over the business to his sons, he should be asking whether the company will last that long. ( Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.) Click on “Send Comment” in sidebar display to send a letter to the editor. To contact the writer of this column: Ann Woolner in Atlanta at awoolner@bloomberg.net .

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Don McNay: Tearing Up the Lotto Ticket

February 8, 2010

I’ve got two tickets to Paradise. -Eddie Money When the body of murdered Florida Lotto winner Abraham Shakespeare was found, his mother said that on many occasions Shakespeare had said he wished he had torn up the winning ticket. After lottery winner Jack Whitaker, of Hurricane, West Virginia, went through a litany of problems, including the drug overdose death of his granddaughter, his wife said she wished he had torn up his record-breaking Powerball ticket. Seems like a lot of lottery winners want to tear up the ticket. Some don’t verbalize the thought. They just run through the money as fast as they can. Having unlimited wealth is a dream for many people. However, I keep running into others, like 9/11 widow Kathy Trant, who consciously or subconsciously hated the idea of being rich. What is going on? A lot of “Big Money” misery comes from not having the necessary systems in place. The winners weren’t ready for their fifteen minutes of fame and the hangers-on who would want a piece of them. I’ve been following the Shakespeare story closely. He clearly did not have the education, temperament or background to handle his fortune. Being an easy mark was how he ended up dead. People don’t really know what to do with wealth. Some dream of showing off or sticking it to people they don’t like. While “take this job and shove it” probably feels good for a day, revenge won’t keep you happy over the long run. Money equals security for most people. Or, at least, it should. One of the primary reasons that people become entrepreneurs is to keep big corporations from running their lives. They want to be responsible for their own financial destiny. Since money is the ultimate security blanket, it seems senseless that people fritter it away. Yet, it has been said that 90% of people who get a lump sum do exactly that. Some people get tired of pursuing money for money’s sake. I’ve long been fascinated by the story of Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity. Fuller was a millionaire at a very young age. His primary focus was getting rich. His wife was at the point of leaving him. He stepped back and took a look at himself and didn’t like what he saw. He and his wife sold everything and moved to a commune-like farm. From there, he redirected his passion and business skills and built an organization that made a profound and lasting impact on society. I’ve studied “Big Money” for all of my adult life, and most of the problems come down to a few areas. First is a person, like Abraham Shakespeare, who just couldn’t say no. He was the perfect mark for every con artist with a story. Usually the person with a story isn’t a stranger. It’s family, longtime friends and newly found “romantic interests.” A lot of emotions get brought into play. And money seems to flow out the door. The second is having too much money all at once. Most of the lotto winners who get in trouble are the people who took all the cash up front. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t let lottery winners take a “cash option.” If they took the annual payments, they would learn from the mistakes with their first installment or two, and would still have 18 or 19 more chances to get it right. Most lottery winners eventually figure things out, once the money is gone. Or when they are at the point where they wish they had “torn up the ticket.” The government figured it out a long time ago. We don’t give people a lump sum social security check at retirement. We don’t want them to run out of the money. The same used to hold true with pension plans. People received an annuity that lasted the rest of their lives. Today, most pensions are 401(k) plans. Just like the lotto winners, people are running out of retirement money while they are still alive. When you think about it, almost all of us have our own “lotto moment.” We make decisions about money that will either give us long term security and happiness or bring on pain and regret. Handling a lump sum wisely can be a “ticket to paradise.” Or, like Abraham Shakespeare and Powerball Jack, it can be a ticket to misery that they wish they would have torn up. D on McNay, CLU, ChFC, MSFS, CSSC is one of the world’s leading authorities in helping people deal with “Big Money” issues. McNay is an award winning, syndicated financial columnist and Huffington Post Contributor. You can read more about Don at www.donmcnay.com McNay founded McNay Settlement Group, a structured settlement and financial consulting firm, in 1983 and Kentucky Guardianship Administrators LLC in 2000. You can read more about both at www.mcnay.com McNay has Master’s Degrees from Vanderbilt and the American College and is in the Eastern Kentucky University Hall of Distinguished Alumni. McNay has written two books. Most recent is Son of a Son of a Gambler: Winners, Losers and What to Do When You Win The Lottery McNay is a lifetime member of the Million Dollar Round Table and has four professional designations in the financial services field.

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Imperial Capital Shelves IPO, Patriot Risk Delays Offer as Slump Deepens

February 4, 2010

By Michael Tsang, Nikolaj Gammeltoft and Craig Trudell Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) — Imperial Capital Group Inc. postponed the first initial public offering by a U.S. investment bank in two years, while Patriot Risk Management Inc. delayed its share sale as the IPO market’s 2010 slump deepened. Imperial Capital, the Los Angeles-based firm that specializes in high-yield and distressed debt, shelved its $113 million sale yesterday. Patriot Risk , which underwrites workers’ compensation insurance plans, pushed back a $204 million IPO, according to Bloomberg data. A day earlier, Ironwood Pharmaceuticals Inc. cut the size of its deal by 30 percent in the biggest price reduction for a U.S. offering this year. Buyers are extracting concessions on IPOs after two of the first three deals of 2010 fell more than the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, which slid by the most in a year in January. Imperial Capital was asking investors to pay three times the median so- called tangible book value for investment banks, while Ironwood took a 30 percent discount after trying to sell its shares at 31 percent more than what the company said was its “fair value.” “It is hard for IPOs to carve out a lot of interest in a market that’s been generally frustrating,” said Brian Barish , president of Denver-based Cambiar Investors, which oversees $5.5 billion. “As a portfolio manager, why compound your frustration with these unseasoned offerings? We’ve looked at a couple of IPOs, but we haven’t participated in any meaningful way.” Barish’s $1.07 billion Cambiar Opportunity Fund has beaten 92 percent of rival funds over the past year. 2010 Forecast While Barclays Plc of London estimates that U.S. IPOs will triple this year to $50 billion, Alpharetta, Georgia-based Cellu Tissue Holdings Inc. has lost 13 percent since selling shares at 24 percent less than the price it sought. Chesapeake Lodging Trust in Fairfield, New Jersey, has retreated 5.5 percent since its offering, and Bellevue, Washington-based Symetra Financial Corp.’s deal priced 14 percent below the highest level sought. Terreno Realty Corp. of San Francisco became the first U.S. company to shelve its IPO in 2010 last week as the S&P 500 extended its January slump to 3.7 percent, the biggest monthly drop since the gauge’s 62 percent surge began in March 2009. The biggest U.S. stock-market rally since the 1930s revived deals in the last four months of 2009, with IPOs increasing from the slowest pace on record after the failure of New York-based Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. froze credit markets. China to Belgium Chinese companies, which accounted for six of the world’s 10 largest IPOs last year, are also accepting lower prices in 2010. China First Heavy Industries Co., a maker of equipment used in the mining and energy industries, yesterday became the first mainland company in at least a year to sell a domestic IPO at less than the highest level sought from investors. Taminco Group NV of Ghent, Belgium, the world’s largest producer of alkylamines, canceled its initial share sale yesterday because of “unfavorable” market conditions. “On the surface, it would appear the market should be working” for IPOs, said Jack Ablin , Chicago-based chief investment officer of Harris Private Bank, which oversees about $55 billion. “Looking under the hood suggests there may be more problems than people realize.” Imperial Capital had estimated in a Feb. 1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it has a net tangible book value, a measure of shareholder equity that excludes assets that can’t be sold in liquidation, of $3.41 a share. The bank would have been valued at 4.69 times its net tangible assets per share after the offering, assuming an IPO price at $16, the midpoint of the forecast range. That’s more than the median 1.52 times tangible book value of 48 investment banks and brokerages in the U.S., data compiled by Bloomberg show. Patriot Risk, Ironwood Patriot Risk had planned to sell 17 million shares at $10 to $12 each. Net premium revenue at the Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based company fell 12 percent to $28.4 million in the nine months ended Sept. 30, according to its SEC filing. At the midpoint IPO price of $11 a share, Patriot Risk’s existing shareholders stood to make an eightfold profit from the offering, based on the per-share average of $1.31 paid. Ironwood’s common stock had a “fair value” of $12.18 a share, according to models used by the Cambridge, Massachusetts- based drugmaker, its Jan. 20 SEC filing showed. That meant buyers were asked to purchase shares at a premium of 15 percent to 31 percent, Bloomberg data show. The company’s shares gained 3.6 percent to $11.65 yesterday in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. FriendFinder Networks Inc. , the publisher of Penthouse magazine, didn’t announce the pricing of its scheduled $240 million IPO yesterday. The Boca Raton, Florida-based company had planned to sell 20 million shares at $10 to $12 each after delaying its offering last week. The operator of AdultFriendFinder.com has lost money for five straight years. Marc Bell , FriendFinder’s chief executive officer, didn’t respond to e-mail and telephone messages. To contact the reporters on this story: Michael Tsang in New York at mtsang1@bloomberg.net ; Nikolaj Gammeltoft in New York at ngammeltoft@bloomberg.net ; Craig Trudell in New York at ctrudell1@bloomberg.net .

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Penthouse Publisher FriendFinder Said to Delay Initial Offer to Next Week

January 27, 2010

By Michael Tsang and Nikolaj Gammeltoft Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) — FriendFinder Networks Inc., the publisher of Penthouse magazine, has pushed back its initial public offering scheduled for today until next week, according to a person familiar with the situation. FriendFinder, the Boca Raton, Florida-based operator of Web sites from AdultFriendFinder.com to Cams.com, had planned to raise as much as $240 million selling 20 million shares at $10 to $12 each today, according to a Jan. 8 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission and Bloomberg data. Calls and e-mails to FriendFinder’s office were not immediately returned. The delay comes after Terreno Realty Corp. became the first U.S. company to postpone a 2010 IPO this week, Cellu Tissue Holdings Inc. cut its price by 24 percent and Chesapeake Lodging Trust raised 40 percent less than originally sought, Bloomberg data show. FriendFinder has lost money for five straight years and was in default on its debt covenants until October. “FriendFinder looks like an IPO out of necessity rather than opportunity,” Steven M. Rogé , manager at R.W. Rogé & Co. in Bohemia, New York, which has $200 million in assets, said before the delay. “A lot of companies have an IPO to get cash to grow. Whatever cash FriendFinder can raise is going straight to their creditors.” While U.S. IPOs are forecast to triple according to London based Barclays Plc, 2010’s first offers show buyers are wary of new deals after almost 40 percent of deals in the second half of 2009 left investors with losses. S&P 500 FriendFinder was offering shares after the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell the most since October last week. The publisher, which also runs so-called general audience social networking venues from SeniorFriendFinder.com to BigChurch.com, got about 70 percent of its revenue from its adult-themed Web sites in the first nine months of 2009, according to the SEC regulatory filing. The company was selling a 49 percent stake and planned to use the proceeds to pay down debt. After the offering, it would have $5.24 million in cash compared with $286 million in debt. FriendFinder’s sales would have declined 1.5 percent in 2009 from a year ago, based on $244 million in revenue generated in the first nine months of the year. Sales from both its adult- themed and general audience sites fell during the nine-month period from a year ago, while interest expenses exceeded operating profit by 66 percent. ‘Biggest Concern’ “The biggest concern is just the fact that it’s got a lot of debt and really hasn’t grown,” said Nick Einhorn , an analyst at Greenwich, Connecticut-based Renaissance Capital LLC, which has followed IPOs since 1991. The firm isn’t affiliated with FriendFinder’s lead underwriter of the same name. “Companies that have lots of debt and slowed growth have really not been attractive for investors,” he said before the delay. Playboy Enterprises Inc. , the owner of the namesake men’s magazine, had operating income equal to 1.02 times interest expenses of $4.46 million in 2008 as the Chicago-based company posted its biggest annual loss since at least 1987. FriendFinder has also lost about as many fee-paying subscribers from its adult-themed Web sites as it has gained in each of the past four years. It had breached loan agreements in such areas as failing to deliver certified annual financial statements, missing certain sales targets for the films that it produced and distributed and not keeping senior debt below certain levels. Renaissance Capital of Moscow and Ledgemont Capital Group LLC in New York are the lead underwriters for FriendFinder. Neither firm was credited with arranging any U.S. company IPOs last year, according to Bloomberg league tables. To contact the reporters on this story: Michael Tsang in New York at mtsang1@bloomberg.net ; Nikolaj Gammeltoft in New York at ngammeltoft@bloomberg.net .

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Americans More Pessimistic on Economy Amid Concerns for Nation’s Direction

December 8, 2009

By Mike Dorning and Rebecca Christie Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) — Americans have grown gloomier about both the economy and the nation’s direction over the past three months even as the U.S. shows signs of moving from recession to recovery. Almost half the people now feel less financially secure than when President Barack Obama took office in January, a Bloomberg National Poll shows. Those concerns have put consumers in a miserly mood as they head to the mall for holiday shopping, with half the country planning to spend less on gifts than last year and few buyers willing to run up credit-card debt for Christmas. “The recession may be over, but the administration seems to be losing the battle when it comes to winning the hearts and minds of Americans,” says Chris Rupkey , chief financial economist for Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd. in New York. “This is important because the spending of consumers is the main factor that will turn the economic recovery into a self- sustaining one.” Obama yesterday addressed anxiety over the economy with a speech proposing new spending on the nation’s transportation system, tax credits to spur hiring by small businesses and incentives to make homes more energy efficient. Unemployment in November stood at 10 percent, a drop from 10.2 percent in October yet still the second month in a row the figure stood in double digits. No. 1 Concern The economy is the country’s top concern, with persistently high unemployment the greatest threat the public sees. Eight of 10 Americans rate joblessness a high risk to the economy in the next two years, outranking the federal budget deficit , which is cited by 7 of 10. An increase in taxes is named as a high risk by almost 6 of 10. Fewer than 1 in 3 Americans think the economy will improve in the next six months. They are pessimistic that the government will succeed in reducing unemployment or lowering the budget deficit. A year into Obama’s presidency, only 32 percent of poll respondents believe the country is headed in the right direction , down from 40 percent who said so in September. The mood among members of Obama’s own Democratic Party has shifted most dramatically: While Democrats remain the most positive, the proportion saying the country is on the right track dropped to 58 percent from 71 percent in September. Among independents, 26 percent say the country is on the right track, down from 29 percent in September. The poll of 1,000 U.S. adults was conducted Dec. 3-7 by Selzer & Co. , a Des Moines, Iowa-based firm. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. The poll includes 714 likely voters in the 2010 general election, the margin of error for questions based on likely voters is plus or minus 3.7 percentage points. Skeptical Over Stimulus The country has grown increasingly skeptical of the centerpiece of Obama’s economic agenda, the $787 billion economic-stimulus package, with 60 percent of Americans saying it hasn’t helped the economy, up from 49 percent who said that three months ago. Michele Crawford, 37, a Las Vegas health-care worker who identified herself as a Democrat, says the stimulus plan put too much money in the hands of corporations rather than sending it directly to families through tax cuts. “I think that was the wrong approach,” Crawford says. For now, former President George W. Bush continues to get most of the blame for the hard economic times. Six of 10 poll respondents say the economic difficulties Obama confronts were mostly inherited. Blaming Bernanke, Geithner Still, there are signs the economic doldrums are tarnishing current officeholders. Americans have turned against the administration’s leading economic spokesman, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner , with 33 percent viewing him unfavorably against 26 percent with a favorable view. As recently as September, a slim plurality viewed Geithner favorably. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke , another public face of economic policy though he is independent of the White House, also declined in popularity. A third of the country views Bernanke favorably, down from 41 percent in September. Bernanke’s standing fell even though the Fed as an institution improved, with 50 percent holding a favorable opinion versus 44 percent three months ago. Four out of 10 respondents have no opinion on either Geithner or Bernanke. Some of the malaise may stem from middle-class households bracing for the expectation of greater burdens ahead, says J. Ann Selzer , president of Selzer & Co. Almost 9 in 10 poll respondents say they believe middle-class Americans will have to make sacrifices to decrease the deficit. ‘We’re Under Water’ When asked about changes in measures of personal economic well-being — household income, job security, quality of health care, retirement savings and home equity — the responses changed little from September. Only 1 in 3 Americans indicated an improvement in any category. For many consumers, that uneasiness means a shorter Christmas shopping list. Cindy Gamet, 54, an environmental project manager who lives in Greeley, Colorado, says her family’s prolonged encounter with financial insecurity is leading her to cut back further this holiday season. “The economy has been on the decline for some time,” Gamet says. “Our major investment, which was our home, it went south. So now we’re under water.” ‘We’re Spenders’ Though it goes against her inclination — “we’re spenders,” Gamet says — she and her husband plan to limit gifts for their grandchildren and forgo presents to their adult children. “We’re going to do what we can for the kids, but the adults are just going to have to understand,” Gamet says. Just 8 percent of people plan to spend more on gifts this year than they did last year, while 47 percent say they will spend less. The country is especially leery of taking on new debt for the holidays, with 82 percent of respondents saying they plan to pay for Christmas gifts solely from cash on hand or savings. The Grinch may even have come to the Internet, where commerce has been shifting in recent years. Only a quarter of respondents — 27 percent — say they will buy more gifts over the Web this year, while 42 percent say they will buy fewer and 22 percent say they will buy nothing at all. To see the methodology and exact wording of the poll questions, click on the attachment tab at the top of the story. To contact the reporters on this story: Mike Dorning in Washington at mdorning@bloomberg.net ; To contact the reporter on this story: Rebecca Christie in Washington at rchristie4@bloomberg.net .

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Mesoblast Limited (ASX:MSB) Sustained Six-Month Improvement In Heart Muscle Function With Revascor, "Off-The-Shelf" Adult Stem Cells

November 18, 2009

Mesoblast Limited (ASX:MSB) Sustained Six-Month Improvement In Heart Muscle Function With Revascor, “Off-The-Shelf” Adult Stem Cells

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William Drayton: Want to Fight Climate Change? Hire Somebody

November 17, 2009

With official U. S. unemployment at 10.2% and with Congressional debate on a climate bill sputtering, last week the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on how climate legislation might help fix the economy and create jobs. At the same time, President Obama announced he would hold a White House forum next month to gather new ideas for achieving the robust job creation that has so far eluded stimulus efforts, and opponents and supporters of cap-and-trade legislation both echoed the jobs theme, saying that in the end, any US climate bill must be a jobs bill. These are promising developments that may point the way to an effective climate policy. Because with them, the crucial enabling connection between creating jobs and fighting climate change has finally entered explicitly into our politics. I say “finally” because throughout most of 2009, even as the economy hemorrhaged some 3.8 million jobs, while they were framing proposals for climate change legislation, most members of Congress and their staffs were curiously reluctant to broach the obvious jobs connection. They expressed lots of concern over the impact of regulating carbon on energy producers, coal states and carbon emitters, but very little about its impact on jobs and workers in general. (President Obama’s 2010 budget proposal was a notable exception; it plowed carbon permit revenues back into a payroll tax credit to help working families, but unfortunately that provision didn’t pass Congress) . But it’s not that surprising the jobs dimension of the climate debate has been relatively muted until recently, considering the federal government doesn’t like to be explicit about the true extent of unemployment, either. Unemployment is much worse than official statistics suggest. That official 10.2% rate represents only a fraction of the adult population that is not working; the total figure is closer to 40%. BLS statistics show that of the total non-institutionalized adult population of 235 million, only about 140 million, or about 60%, are working. Officially, there are 15 million unemployed; unofficially, the true number of unemployed is roughly five times higher. But double-digit unemployment crosses an undeniable perceptual threshold in the public’s mind. When we hit it, the political rhetoric around the climate bill shifted, and the jobs connection was finally made explicit. Acknowledged or not, it’s been clear for a long time that in order for climate legislation to pass, it must not exacerbate job loss, and that for it to make sense, it should take advantage of this once-a-century opportunity for retooling the economy to optimize job gain. In October the CBO released a study projecting a net job loss from the climate legislation bill that passed the House. It contradicted the findings of a report released by the Center for American Progress which projected a net job gain. The projections are contentious politically, hence the Senate Finance Committee hearing last week. Part of the debate is about whether a US cap and trade system could in effect create more “green” jobs than “non-green” it destroys, whether it will ultimately grow the economy or shrink it. But there is a more fundamental principle involved than whether the particular cap-and-trade mechanism in the House bill or in Senate proposals can create a certain number of jobs. At the heart of the matter is one of the most basic decisions societies make: how to manage the fundamental tradeoff between the two primary factors of production — labor utilization vs. resource consumption. The two aren’t quite a zero sum, but in general, they are substitutes for one another. The more natural resources such as energy and materials a business uses, the more labor it “saves,” and vice versa. Ideally, in a market economy the two should find an optimal balance. But for decades, through taxation and other interventions, we have pushed our thumb down hard on the scale, and tilted it steeply in favor of employing things over people. Even when U. S. joblessness is obviously deeply damaging our economy, not to mention our communities and families, we continue to define “productivity” in terms of how little labor we can use, and Wall Street can still rally on bad jobs reports. As a result our economy consumes natural resources very aggressively. At the same time, US policy actively discourages labor demand. More or less by accident, we have sent a giant “use things, not people” price signal as payroll taxes have increased from 1% to almost 40% of federal revenues over the last several generations. This raises hiring costs, lowers employment, and hands an effective subsidy to resource consumption, skewing the relative prices of labor vs. resources over 30%. The human impact of this is enormous. The potential contributions of tens of millions of people are wasted (hundreds of millions worldwide), studies show the health of sidelined workers and unemployed retirees suffers, and a whole host of social ills arises, from crime to students who see no future, with debilitating costs to individuals, business, and government. The climate impact is equally enormous. The effective subsidies favoring resource consumption and discouraging hiring mean we are burning a lot more fuel, tearing up more land and emitting a lot more carbon, than if the relative prices of labor and resources were corrected, and we produced utilizing far more people and far fewer natural resources. That’s the bad news, and it’s also the good news. It suggests that if we reverse the current price signals, we can also reverse the perverse incentives that drive joblessness and over consumption of energy and resources. We can do this by taking the tax burden off payrolls and therefore employment, and putting it instead on energy waste and resource consumption. OECD countries that have cut their payroll taxes substantially boosted employment and lost fewer jobs in the downturn than countries which didn’t, like ours. This week The Economist magazine recommended the U.S. adopt a similar policy. If we cut payroll taxes and replaced the lost revenue with levies on non-labor inputs to business, such as a non-labor Value Added Tax (VAT), carbon permit fees and/or energy taxes, we could create tens of millions of jobs and stimulate economic growth while deeply cutting natural resource use and emissions. Such tax switching is a revenue-neutral approach that involves no net increase in taxes. It also creates no bureaucracies, choosing of winners or losers, implementation delays, or risk of corruption. It is, not surprisingly, attractive to smart conservatives and liberals alike. Recent advocates range from Charles Krauthammer to Thomas Friedman, Al Gore to Richard Lugar and T. Boone Pickens. This year Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) and Rep. John Larson (D-CT) both introduced climate change bills that recycle over 90% of carbon pricing revenues into payroll tax cuts. That’s a hint of this approach’s broad appeal. It would align the relatively small contingent of committed environmentalists who want strong action on climate with the huge constituency of the tens of millions of Americans of all backgrounds who need a job and the hundreds of millions who want a stronger economy. Whereas now, climate negotiations are fractious and expectations from Copenhagen and Washington are depressingly low, such a coalition for real economic and environmental change would be unstoppable and allow us to aim higher. To fight climate change, we need concrete goals — return to 350 ppm atmospheric carbon, achieve 80% GHG reduction by 2050, hold global warming to an average of 2 degrees Celsius, etc. If we are serious about reaching them, we must add another fundamental one — create tens of millions of jobs by reorienting our economy and our tax structure towards engaging more people and using fewer things.

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Patricia Handschiegel: The New Power Girls: Women Entrepreneurs And Gender In Business

November 7, 2009

As I take a seat at the small table facing a packed room at L.A.’s Writer’s Guild for a panel on new media, I’m aware of three things. First, that there are two seasoned entertainment business executives seated who feel strongly about their views on the Internet. Second, that we’re probably more than likely going to disagree on a lot of things because I’m from the Internet side and see things from a different perspective. Third, that I’m the only woman on the panel with exception to the moderator. As someone who has spent most of her adult working life in Internet telecom and platform business, I’ve been the only woman in the room more often or not. It’s not an issue of gender for me but one of confidence. Will I be able to stand up in this conversation? If so, how? It’s a question that I ask myself countless times in business regardless of who or what gender is around me. Power Girls are women in a man – and women’s – world. Whether its speaking at an event, negotiating a deal, signing a partnership, selling a startup, taking a media interview, or any other element of owning and running a company, gender does not define who we are, what we need to do, and most of all, what we want to accomplish. It never has. “Women CEOs and founders are still pretty darn rare,” said Sarah Fell, CEO of Flexjobs.com . It doesn’t stop Fell from attending events and conferences, often where she’s one of few women. The trio behind Blogher has played the Silicon Valley funding game, notoriously said to be predominantly male. Pure Entertainment’s Deborah Krause is blazing the trails in the hospitality industry. Though there are still plenty of places where women in America face limitations and obstacles solely due to their gender, there are more women than ever working to change it. How do women entrepreneurs blaze the trail when in predominantly male industries and markets? “I don’t think about it, to be honest,” said Sortingwithstyle.com founder and CEO Sayeh Pezeshki who also pens the very popular Office Stylist blog. “I don’t think I’m in a man’s world or a women’s world. I work just as hard in any world.” Spoken like a true Power Girl! To hear what Meghan and I have to say about this week’s topic, visit NPGDaily.com here.

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Nelson Davis: Blah, Blah, Blah, It’s A Business

August 28, 2009

The passing of 60-Minutes creator, Don Hewitt, reminded me of the very useful role that broadcast media has played, and should play, in our lives. Mr. Hewitt’s creation helped shape how Americans received accurate information about important issues and stories. Monday morning office debates around the country were often fueled by what appeared on 60-Minutes the night before. Though I never met Don Hewitt, I imagine that he must have often cringed at what became the sloppily broad definition of broadcast news. Every TV and radio broadcaster who presents something labeled news would benefit from learning what he had to teach about storytelling, fact checking, and fairness. There has been a lot of talk in Washington in the past year about reviving the Fairness Doctrine, which would radically affect today’s world of talk radio. That Federal Communications Commission guideline for broadcasters was struck down in 1987 and had required that stations provide free air time for responses to any controversial opinions that were broadcast. Its loss helped create a whole new category of business by providing an opportunity for a kind of flatly partisan talk radio programming that had not previously existed. Talk personalities, such as Rush Limbaugh, gained traction on America’s airwaves because they could rant about people in the public eye without regard to too many underlying facts or a sense of fairness in public discourse. This new business created a raft of so called right-wing talk personalities and probably became a lifeline for scores of failing am radio stations. The business of radio talk shows is, of course, based on attracting a crowd large enough to result in a substantial audience rating. Owing more to P.T. Barnum-style hucksterism than a deep exploration of ideas, the programs operate on the principle that the best way to draw a crowd is to create an emotionally stirring, conflict fueled spectacle. Think of the World Wrestling Federation or Ringling Brothers Circus as the business model. If it was just about truth, accuracy, and useful discussion, most talk radio shows would be unsuccessfully brief! Current talk radio does seem to provide immediacy and a high degree of emotionalism that is rare on television or in magazines. Pew researchers found in 2004 that 17% of the public regularly listens to talk radio. This audience is mostly male, middle-aged and conservative. Among those who regularly listen to talk radio, 41% are Republican and 28% are Democrats. Furthermore, 45% describe themselves as conservatives, compared with 18% who say they are liberal. In the United States, talk radio is dominated by right-leaning political commentators: according to Talkstreamlive.com, the top five programs are those of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and George Noory. Others include Neal Boortz, , Jim Quinn, Bill Cunningham, Mark Levin, Dennis Miller and Melanie Morgan. Noory has developed what I think is the most interesting niche; his late night program exploring paranormal phenomena. Many of the most popular talkers label themselves as conservatives without fully defining what that really means. Let me say that I’ve worked in broadcasting (both radio and TV) all of my adult life, and I must confess that outside of religion, size of government issues, and banging the gong about deficit spending, the real difference between conservatives and liberals still eludes me. On talk radio there are lots of references to one group or the other not caring deeply enough about our country or being always on the wrong side of the important issues. Rule number one for current talk radio success seems to be to demonize a person, his or her belief system, or an entire political party. If you want to create a heated spectacle, have someone passionately articulate a position opposite to the feelings of most of the people in the room, then pass the microphone around. Just look at video from the current round of Town Hall meetings on health care in America. When I first heard Limbaugh in the days when his ratings were at their peak, Bill Clinton was president, and it was easy to see that he supplied wonderful grist for the Limbaugh talk radio mill. My innate sense of Libra fairness was offended, and I’d usually punch another radio button after a few minutes of the bombast. Even with daily eruptions over health care reform today, references to Bill Clinton are still frequent. There must be some unanimous feelings of “who was that strange man” about George W. Bush because Hannity, Limbaugh, and Levin hardly ever mention him. Remember, it is a business built on entertainment and showmanship where you must have a good and colorful foil as the object of your wit and partisanship. When we elected a Republican president and congress some years ago, I wondered who would become the “Whipping Boy” or girl for the conservative talk hosts. Most of us would now agree that the George W. Bush administration was generally judged to be a failure, and that presented a strange new challenge to people who ruled the talk show roost. They had to spin things a bit differently because it wasn’t clear who was wearing the white hats and who had donned the black fedoras. My theories about recent ratings declines for many politically charged talk shows are simple. Americans are passionate about many things, but most people have some sense of fairness and eventually distance themselves from anyone who indulges in what seems to be an unfair fight every day on public airwaves. Another thought is that the rise of Internet Radio has siphoned off some listeners who didn’t have that option five years ago. Also, there are now some stations that carry programming that is categorized with the liberal label from Air America. That network hasn’t achieved anywhere near the success of the top conservative hosts. I think it’s because when you are talking to people who agree with you, there are no fireworks in the town square to draw a crowd. We are facing some monumental issues as a country, and people are beginning to recognize that real solutions lie beyond traditional right-left politics and have to be seen in the realm of right and wrong, good and bad. The eventual fate of the unwieldy health care legislation is an example. It is neither liberals nor conservatives that carry the only key to our salvation. The Fairness Doctrine is probably not destined to return anytime soon, and the talkers will continue to bluster on behalf of one camp or the other. The hosts, their syndicators and, the station owners are after all in “the business of show,” not the business of finding the best practices for useful public discourse in America or developing an action plan that will save the country from those awful predictions and schisms they’ve built their businesses on.

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Madoff Lover Stuck With Him Because of His Tenderness and Wealth, Her Lust

August 19, 2009

By David Voreacos and Linda Sandler Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) — Sheryl Weinstein and Bernard Madoff nurtured a tender relationship that turned sexual five years after Hadassah, the Zionist women’s organization where she was chief financial officer, invested millions of dollars with him. They kissed and caressed in hotel rooms and restaurants in New York for months until their extramarital affair blossomed one evening in 1993 at the Willard InterContinental Hotel in Washington, Weinstein writes in her new tell-all book, “Madoff’s Other Secret: Love, Money, Bernie, and Me.” “There was a gentle shyness about Bernie that I found endearing,” Weinstein writes. “And probably most enchanting was the way he made me feel. With Bernie I always felt wanted, desired, and that was an empowering sensation. During the past few months, the thrill — the buzz — of sexual tension had only gotten stronger.” Weinstein and Madoff had sex in hotels for months before the affair cooled and a warm friendship followed, she says. She trusted him with her family’s savings until Dec. 11, 2008, when he was arrested for running a Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of investors of billions of dollars. Rage followed. “He is a beast that has stolen for his own needs the livelihoods, savings, lives, hopes and dreams and futures of others,” Weinstein said June 29 to a federal judge in New York who sentenced Madoff to 150 years in prison. “He has fed upon us to satisfy his own needs. No matter how much he takes and from whom he takes, he is never satisfied. He is an equal opportunity destroyer.” Emotional Arc Such is Weinstein’s emotional arc in recounting her troubled marriage before the affair, Madoff’s courtship of her, her sexual awakening, and her intimate revelations of his shortcomings, both physical and emotional. She and her husband, Ronald, are struggling to recover from the shock of Madoff’s betrayal. She makes clear that she can lay Madoff, 71, bare unlike no one else, including his wife, Ruth. Weinstein, 60, begins her story with a February 1988 meeting at Madoff’s midtown Manhattan office with two colleagues from Hadassah, where she worked from 1984 to 1997 after serving as controller of New York’s Lincoln Center. A mysterious donor known as “Albert I.,” who lived in Paris, gave Hadassah $7 million on the grounds that Madoff manage the money. Weinstein had never heard of Madoff or his firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities. After the meeting, he began wooing her in flirtatious ways, and she “felt heat prickle my face.” Where Weinstein’s husband was bullying and emotionally abusive, Madoff was kind, charming and exciting, she writes. A series of lunches led to one at the Four Seasons, where he professed his desire for an affair. She balked, saying “Adultery is not my thing.” He said “that takes the pressure off,” she writes in a book St. Martin’s Press releases Aug. 25. Deep Friendship Their friendship deepened as her career, and Hadassah’s investments with Madoff, advanced. Hadassah said it invested a total of $40 million with Madoff and withdrew $130 million. Weinstein says Madoff long balked at meeting Hadassah’s financial advisory board, whose members she doesn’t identify. Around 1992, she writes, Madoff said “we’re doing a trade with treasuries” and asked Hadassah to invest. Hadassah agreed. At that time, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued a Florida investment firm, Avellino & Bienes, that invested $441 million with Madoff. The firm closed the business and refunded investors. After reading in the Wall Street Journal that Madoff was cleared of wrongdoing, she became convinced it was safe to invest her life savings with his firm, she said. Madoff’s secretary, she says, set up hotel meetings before the Willard encounter and made reservations in person “to ensure that the room would not turn up on his credit card.” Weinstein describes herself as smoking marijuana to relax. Madoff said his wife did too. Weinstein says she didn’t know if that was true. Great Kisser By the time they reached the Willard, Weinstein writes, she had learned that Madoff was a great kisser, a bad tipper, a name dropper, and a narcissist who may have obsessive-compulsive disorder or Tourette’s syndrome. At the Willard, Weinstein writes, she learned one of his many secrets that they discussed by telephone a few days later. “Bernie had a very small penis,” she writes. “Not only was it on the short side, it was small in circumference. That he was now pointing it out to me was telling. It clearly caused him great angst. I wanted to be careful how I responded. Men and their penises have a strange and unique relationship.” Still, she said: “I liked this man and didn’t want to emasculate him. His tiny penis hadn’t prevented me from climaxing.” Their encounters were “surprisingly exciting,” she says. ‘On Fire’ “When we made love, I was on fire. Bernie was a release valve, someone I could disappear with for a few hours. Somebody who would say nice things to me and treat me like a lady. He was an older man, and he was chivalrous. He opened doors for me, stood when I entered restaurants and was never short on compliments.” In the middle of the affair, Weinstein writes, Bernie professed his love for her at the Hilton Hotel. “Usually, we’d spend three or four hours talking, eating, and making love,” she writes. “I was getting myself together and Bernie was already dressed and pulling his coat from the closet. He was about to walk out the door when suddenly he turned back to look at me. ‘Sheryl, you know I love you.’” Her fantasies of a whirlwind romance in Europe and staying in five-star hotels began to end. The realities of an affair between two married people took root. “I knew in my heart of hearts that this was never going to be anything more than it was, simply an affair,” she writes. “But there was a part of me that wanted Bernie for myself. I wanted to be number one.” After the Affair After the affair ended, Weinstein rebuilt her emotional life with her husband. He took medication for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and his mood improved, she writes. She took antidepressants. They began to run a commercial laundry trade publication. They refinanced their Manhattan apartment and invested the cash with Madoff. Weinstein told her husband and their adult son about the affair a month after Madoff’s arrest. Weinstein doesn’t detail how much money she lost to Madoff. She does say she started with $70,000 and added an unspecified sum from her Hadassah compensation in addition to the unspecified mortgage money. “In order to move forward, I decided to tell my story,” she writes. “I truly hope Ronnie will be able to forgive me for sharing these private moments in our lives.” Peter Chavkin , a lawyer for Ruth Madoff , said she knew nothing about the “alleged affair.” That should remind people who say Ruth Madoff must have known of her husband’s fraud that “there are some things that some spouses, however close they are, do not share with each other,” Chavkin said. Madoff’s lawyer Ira Sorkin didn’t immediately respond to a call and e-mail seeking comment. Last week, he said Weinstein was “entitled to her free speech. Why one would go public with something like that, I don’t know. She’s entitled to say anything that might be deemed derogatory about herself.” To contact the reporters on this story: David Voreacos in Newark, New Jersey, at dvoreacos@bloomberg.net ; Linda Sandler in New York at lsandler@bloomberg.net .

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