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by on June 4, 2011

Scott Bittle: Fiscal Follies: No New Taxes? So Now What?

May 8, 2011

As of this weekend, it looks like Congress will hammer out some sort of deal to extend the federal debt ceiling and avoid pushing the country to the brink of default. The response from the Washington Post ‘s Ezra Klein is the best we’ve read so far. “Whew,” Klein wrote last week. As Klein tells it, both sides are softening their hard line positions out of a “healthy aversion to unimaginable consequences.” Whew indeed. But regardless of what kind of package Congress agrees on, this is just the beginning. We need to cut spending and raise revenue for years to get the country out of its fiscal mess. Unfortunately, a sizable contingent of Americans still believes we can solve our problems without tax increases — or at least not any that would affect “me.” More than half of Americans (53 percent) reject the idea of small tax increases and small cuts in Social Security and Medicare to “significantly” reduce the federal debt. Majorities oppose eliminating deductions for home mortgages, state and local taxes, and contributions to charities as “part of a plan to reduce the federal budget deficit.” By a margin of two-to-one, the public wants to balance the federal budget by cutting spending rather than raising taxes. And why wouldn’t they? Politicians have been telling the public for years that all we need to do is cut — even if they stop short of describing the details. So let’s take a look at what “no new taxes” really means if that’s the way we decide to go. Our trillion-dollar budget problems will be $3 trillion dollars worse. Since the Bush taxes cuts are set to expire in 2014, “no new taxes” means that Congress will need to extend them. According to the Congressional Budget Office, extending all of the existing cuts (both the Bush cuts and the expanded tax credits put in under President Obama) means government will have about $3.2 trillion dollars less to spend over the next decade . If we were at even-steven now, or even close, that would be one thing, but the United States is some $14 trillion in debt , and on track to have our national debt exceed the size of our entire economy in only 10 years or so. Plus, just about every budget out there, from the left, right, and the center (and including the Ryan plan ) has us adding to the red ink for decades. The cuts would have to be savage. Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s see what it would take to eliminate 2011′s $1.4 trillion deficit just by cutting spending. The total budget is about $3.8 trillion, so you have to cut about a third of what government now spends . That might not sound impossible, but once you take a look at the numbers, the task is daunting. To cut the deficit by one-third, you would need to eliminate everything government does except for defense, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and paying interest on the debt. Losing that “non-security discretionary spending” would save $533 billion , but of course, you’ve also just wiped out the entire departments of agriculture, commerce, education, energy, and labor. We no longer have federal meat inspectors, the Centers of Disease Control, FEMA or Pell grants. Want to sink your teeth into defense spending? That’s fine, but to eliminate that $1.4 trillion deficit, entirely, you’d need to cut the entire national security budget: all $900 billion of it in 2011. People may end up paying more one way or the other, even if it’s not called a “tax.” The Republicans seem to be backing away from Rep. Paul Ryan’s controversial budget plan, which included turning Medicare into a voucher plan. It’s a “no new tax” plan, and whatever you think about it overall, it makes one tradeoff perfectly clear: the price for no new taxes is higher medical premiums for seniors . Under his plan, the CBO reported, by 2030 seniors would be paying double what they’re currently projected to pay for Medicare . In a philosophical sense, you may have strong feelings about paying higher premiums versus more taxes — but the cost to your bank account is the same either way. Taxing fat cats doesn’t help as much as you think. It is true that most Americans (although certainly not the purists) do back the idea of raising taxes on people who earn more than $250,000 a year . Unhappily, it doesn’t raise that much money. The CBO calculated that raising taxes by 1 percent on the top two income brackets (individuals earning about $175,000 and couples earning about $212,000) would only bring in about $84 billion dollars over the next decade. Unfortunately, our projected deficit for next year is about 10 times that. There certainly are other options — larger tax increases for wealthier Americans, higher corporate taxes, higher payroll taxes, modest tax increases on all of us, taxing fossil fuels, and so on. But the “no new taxes” mantra shuts down any reasonable conversation on how to cut spending and increase revenues in the fairest, least destructive way. The fact is that most government spending is on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, programs the vast majority of Americans value, and there’s no way to protect them (even with tweaking) without raising taxes to cover what they cost. Perhaps the worst result for the country is when an immovable fixation against higher taxes on one side hits up against an immovable fixation on the other side that Social Security and Medicare are untouchable. At that point, the math is simply impossible. In the near-term, Congress may agree on some immediate spending cuts and make some promises about what they’ll do in the future. We’ll all feel better temporarily. But unless more Americans begin to grasp the facts of the budget, we’ll never get out of this. It’s easy to say “no new taxes,” but in real life, the results are almost unimaginable.

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Richard (RJ) Eskow: Bachmann/Ryan Overdrive: A High-Speed Escape From Economic Reality

April 14, 2011

Remember all those mini-movies that summarized a broad topic in two minutes? Whether the subject was the Civil War, the magical things that happen when you multiply by ten, or the complete history of Western Civilization, these little films covered it all in one rapid-fire shot after another, giving you a whole lot of information — and a splitting headache — in a very short period of time. The first couple minutes of this Michelle Bachmann Today show interview are like that. She runs through the entire litany of conservatism’s disproven economic cliches in 100 seconds or less. without even getting short of breath. If someone ever wants to make one of those two-minute movies and call it The Ideas That Crushed the American Dream , Rep. Bachmann’s already written the script. Fire it up and watch her go! We’ll sound the bell every time she floats a discredited idea. Ready? Raising taxes for the wealthy shouldn’t be “on the table,” says Bachmann, because “tax rates are high enough (ding!), and history shows (ding!) that when we raise taxes, particularly on job creators (ding!) we actually bring in less revenue (ding! ding! ding!) rather than more.” Forget what I said about two-minute movies. Michelle Bachmann could cover Western Civilization in ten seconds . I was on a talk radio show from St. Louis yesterday with a guy from the Heritage Foundation who used the same “history shows us” line. What history actually shows us is that we lost jobs after the Bush tax cuts, even before deregulation brought down the economy. History also shows us that our periods of greatest economic prosperity occurred when taxes were higher than they are now. The history of the Great Depression shows that it took a lot of government investment to get people working and the economy growing — and that this investment paid off handsomely. FDR listened to the Bachmannites of his time in the late 1930′s, and that’s when everything started falling apart again. So history shows us that we need government investment to reduce persistent unemployment. And “job creators”? Oh, please. Wall Street financiers have regained their pre-crash parasitical economic stranglehold, seizing nearly 40% of corporate profits. They’re getting rich by not creating jobs, and sometimes by destroying them through destructive hedging. Corporate profits are at historic highs and taxes for the wealthy are at historic lows, yet people in the real world are still taking the world’s longest unemployment gut-punch. Which raises the question: If these guys are “job creators,” where are the jobs ? “Do we want more revenue or more taxes?” Bachmann asks rhetorically. Because the two don’t go together.” As the young people say (picture a finger snap here): Oh no she didn’t! Did she cite the Laffer Curve ? Yes, she did. Michelle Bachmann just brought out the most discredited theory in modern economic history: the notion that people will stop making money if taxes are too high, so overall government income will fall and not rise. There’s only one thing that contradicts that theory: The economic history of every single nation on the planet. The Laffer curve argument goes like this: if you taxed everybody 100% of everything they earned, nobody would ever bother to make money. So it must be bad to increase taxes. That sort of reasoning cuts both ways: If you paid everybody zero for their work, nobody would bother working. But they never use that logic to fight for a higher minimum wage. Economists like the name “Laffer curve” because this theory is always good for a laugh. “You could actually confiscate (ding!) all the wealth that people make at $200,000 or more,” says Bachmann, “and that would only yield about six or seven months of revenue to run the government.” Hey, that’s half the whole cost of government! She’s selling the idea pretty well! Conservatives love that word “confiscate.” They’re the same ones who say they’d lay down their lives for their country. But pay four pennies on the dollar on six-figure income? Forget it. That’s dictatorship! Think of it: Our highest tax bracket under Dwight D. Eisenhower was 91% percent. He must be the greatest dictator of all time! This is the type of person who loves to sing along when they play that song about sacrificing everything for this country — you know the one . All the Democrats are proposing is a four-and-a-half percent increase on income over $250,000. “There ain’t no doubt I love this land” — but not enough to chip in for it. Here’s the song they should really be singing. Know what’s funny? Bachmann and her colleagues are the same people people who think we can’t afford to pay thirty million dollars per year to predict coastal storms and floods and plan for disasters. These floods create an average of $11 billion in damage every year , along with loss of life — and they think we can’t spare a few million to lower that cost and save some lives. Yet they’ll give away hundreds of billions in tax expenditures like it was peanut butter in a smoke-filled college dorm. For the Representative from Minnesota it’s “confiscate” this and “take 100 percent” of that… on and on and on… until all of the ridiculous rhetorical tricks that got us into this mess begin to flicker stroboscopically and the rational listener is in danger of having a seizure, like those cartoon-watching kids from a few years back. Bachmann goes on in this vein for what seems like forever, but which in reality is only four minutes or so. This alteration in subjective temporal experience is produced by something physicists call the “Mind Dilation Effect,” in which time appears to be moving more slowly as the flow of bullsh*t approaches the speed of light. We see every single conservative cliche simultaneously, as if … Well, almost all. She left out one of their favorites, the one that says “If you could go back in time one day for every dollar the government spends, you’d be face to face with Jesus.” Just as well. With all their cuts to life-saving health care and law enforcement programs, it looks like a lot of other people are gonna wind up face-to-face with Jesus too. “Already again,” she says later, “the top 1% of income earners pay about 40% of all taxes.” (That’s not the right number, because it leaves out other forms of taxes, but whatever.) Why do the top 1% pay a large share of taxes? Because the top 400 families in America are richer than the bottom fifty percent of the entire country! So of course they pay a big chunk of income tax, even after they’re coddled with tax breaks galore. Rep. Bachmann sure has a lot of talking points, but here’s an odd thing: When Matt Lauer asked about the CBO’s report on, which documents the devastating financial impact their Medicare cuts would have on seniors, suddenly she tells us she “hasn’t had a chance to look at the study.” “But it’s important for us to understand,” Bachmann continues, “that individualism (ding!) and personal responsibility (ding!) have always been a bedrock of this country.” When it comes to the whole “devastating financial impact” question, I’ll take that as a “yes.” There’s more, but you get the gist. Some people think she’s a little nuts, and they’ll even get a little personal by mentioning that Children of the Damned-ish glint in her eyes. Actually she’s very polished and effective here. Somebody’s been coaching her, both on presentation and on talking points. Still, her ideas are as radical and as detached from reality as ever. But as Dave Johnson points out, Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed budget is too extreme even for her. And that’s how it is on the Right these days. You can always tell that a movement’s degenerating into extremism when the radicals start attacking each other. Think Stalin vs. Trotsky, or that big squabble among birthers a couple of years back. And don’t forget the Judean People’s Front vs. the People’s Front of Judaea. (“Splitters!”) Now we’re in Bachmann/Ryan Overdrive time. These Representatives and other members of the Right are in a high-speed race to see who can outbid the other to win the extreme vote. I’m not against radicalism — it’s can be a laboratory for new ideas — but they’ve seen that responsible members of the far Right like Ron Paul are suddenly at risk of being thrown over by the Tea Party. That means that the Ryans and Bachmanns are going to keep upping the ante as long as they can. It’s like the game of chicken in Rebel Without a Cause where neither driver will take his foot off the accelerator until somebody goes over the cliff. Hope it’s not us. Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars . __________________________________________ Richard (RJ) Eskow, a consultant and writer (and former insurance/finance executive), is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America’s Future. This post was produced as part of the Curbing Wall Street project and the Strengthen Social Security campaign. Richard also blogs at A Night Light . He can be reached at “rjeskow@ourfuture.org.” Website: Eskow and Associates

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ProMutual Group Appoints Donna Miele-Cesario to Chief Information Officer

April 6, 2011

BOSTON, MA–(Marketwire – April 6, 2011) – ProMutual Group, a leading provider of medical professional liability insurance, announces the appointment of Donna Miele-Cesario to Chief Information Officer. Promoted from within the company’s ranks, Miele-Cesario was previously the company’s vice president of Information Technology (IT). In her new capacity, Miele-Cesario will lead the development, acquisition and implementation of advanced technologies and systems for the entire ProMutual Group enterprise.

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Fossil Inks 535,000-SF Office Deal in Dallas Suburb

April 6, 2011

Fossil Inc. signed an agreement with owner The Swig Co. to lease the entire 535,000-square-foot office building at 901 S. Central Expressway in Richardson, TX. The accessories and clothing maker will consolidate three local branches into the building. Fossil expects to occupy the space in the fourth quarter. Former known as the Blue Cross Blue Shield Campus, the five-story, Class B office property at 901 S. Central was constructed in 1980 and…

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Peggy McColl: Success or Failure: Which Fear Is Really Holding You Back?

March 29, 2011

You are months, or even weeks away from launching your product or services online and you are ready to abolish the entire idea. Yikes! You might be surprised at how many other internet marketers, authors and solo-preneurs share your same doubts and fears. Many of my clients and I have experienced these negative issues associated with putting ourselves out there in the marketplace and wondering what will happen if…. if we fail, and if we succeed. Do these thoughts sound familiar? It’s not going to work I’ve spent all of this time and money building it and what if no one wants it? Why would anyone want to buy anything from me? My content is on X and I am not a perfect example of X Once I launch and it’s successful, the microscope will be on me to walk the talk and I may not be able to keep up with demand. One of my clients candidly confessed, “I don’t know if I am afraid of failure or afraid of success.” This is natural. There is a fear to fail because you’ve put so much into it, including your name, your brand and your reputation. The other side of the coin is what if it is a big success? Is it going to take her away from her family more than she’d like? If she’s feeling overwhelmed now, even before it launches, what will her life look like if it does take off? This coaching call reminded me of similar experiences I’ve had with feeling overwhelmed. In my earlier days of releasing some of my first books I felt like pulling the plug on the entire concept because I questioned who cares what I have to say. It brought back memories of my own fears. I wasn’t as concerned about failing as I was about succeeding and what that meant because then I’d have to step up, follow through and consistently deliver. That was a lot of pressure and I didn’t know if I wanted to set myself up for it. Is the fear of success better or easier to overcome than the fear of failure? Not really. Fear of any kind can be an immobilizer and you have to be able to stare it in the face and go for it anywhere. Here are the recommendations I made to my client and the strategy that can work for you: Understand your fears are natural so don’t be upset with yourself because these thoughts come up – it’s okay to feel it. Some of the most successful people in the world had that experience. Come from your heart, remember why you are doing it and reconnect to the passion that started the whole process in the first place. Continue to give the best of who you are Don’t worry that you are not perfect at what you are teaching others -you are human and that will resonate with your customers. Think about when a high-profile golfer has a tough match and when he is interviewed, he admits to not playing his best. We don’t fault him for that, we know how difficult it is to be on top of your game at all times. Don’t be afraid of sharing your own challenges – people will connect and respect your vulnerability. Let them see the real you. Make a conscious choice to put the fun back in to the process. There is tremendous value in asking yourself great questions such as: What do I like or enjoy about this? How will I make this more enjoyable? What am I grateful for in this experience? What am I most grateful for in my life right now? (This is a Biggie!) Put a reminder in front of you to stay connected to what you are enjoying most about this experience What am I learning? How am I growing? There will always be the one moment in time when you want to throw up your hands and give up. Remember it is just a moment, a day or a week and it is a temporary feeling. Take a break and do something else for a while until the feeling passes. I remember when I sent my first manuscript to my editor and when she said it was a great book my response was, “Really???” She laughed and said, “Oh you authors are so insecure.” We are all very similar when it comes to taking a risk and putting ourselves out there. Two decades ago Susan Jeffers published her book, Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway . It is still true to this day!

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Gretchen Morgenson: Attorneys General May Be Rushing Proposal for Loan Servicers

March 13, 2011

ONE crucial reason the nation’s mortgage industry ran itself — and the entire nation — off the rails was its obsession with speed. Mortgages had to be approved chop-chop, loans pooled instantly. When it came to foreclosure, well, the quicker the better. So it is disturbing that the same need for speed is at work in the bank settlement being devised by state attorneys general relating to improper loan-servicing and foreclosure practices.

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The Economist: ‘Deficit Hawkery As Farce’

February 2, 2011

I’M HAVING trouble writing about the GOP effort to reach a compromise over whether to cut $100 billion out of the 2011 budget, or just $50-60 billion. My problem is that I can’t really write about the advantages or disadvantages of one or another version of the cuts when the entire enterprise appears completely senseless to me.

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Colliers Recruits Hotchkiss to Grow National Service Lines

January 21, 2011

Colliers International has brought aboard Cushman & Wakefield veteran A. Dwight Hotchkiss as executive managing director of client services, reporting directly to Colliers US CEO Dylan Taylor. Hotchkiss, a Los Angeles-based industrial specialist who has spent his entire 20-year career at Cushman, will be tasked with expanding existing service areas and practices as well as working to launch new business lines. His core responsibility will be…

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Megabank’s 43-Page Dress Code Warns Employees Not To Show Underwear

December 15, 2010

It took no fewer than 43 pages for the human resources department at the Swiss bank UBS AG to establish what bank personnel should consider acceptable corporate attire. The Wall Street Journal has the goods on the clothing guidelines for the bank that was embroiled in a nasty tax evasion scandal that lead to UBS paying the U.S. government $780 million in fines. The UBS look book commands that employees wear suits of dark grey, black or navy blue, since these colors “symbolize competence, formalism and sobriety.” Among the “dos” and “don’ts” for women: “Make sure to touch up hair regrowth regularly if you color your hair.” Men are commanded to, “Schedule barber appointments every four weeks to maintain your haircut shape.” Neither sex is allowed to “allow their underwear to appear,” wear short-sleeved shirts or, strangely, cuff links. You can see the entire brochure here (courtesy of John Carney at CNBC’s NetNet , who’s pulled a French-language page that walks you through how to properly tie a proper tie.) Read the entire WSJ piece here .

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Meredith Bagby: Harvard Political Review Publishes Annual Report on America

October 22, 2010

Amidst the witches and the former madams, the too-damn high guy and the Nazi reenactor, the demon sheep and the Aqua creep, there is finally some rational conversation this election season about the issues that really matter. But this illuminating analysis is not coming from the politicians running for office. No, it’s from a group of college undergraduates. The Harvard Political Review , a nonpartisan undergraduate magazine at Harvard College, has just published The Annual Report of the USA (“ARUSA”). Yes, you heard it right. Just as a corporation reports to its shareholders, ARUSA informs citizens how our country stacks up financially. The students break down how our tax dollars are being spent — how much money comes in, and how very much goes out. They write about complex issues such as the national debt, the new health care legislation, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — and much more — all in a way that is engaging and understandable to everyone. So how does America fare in 2010? You can probably guess, but here are just some of their findings: In 2010 the U.S. government will spend $1.6 trillion more than it receives in tax revenue . That’s more than a 40% shortfall and the largest nominal deficit in history. Total federal debt stands at more than $13 trillion or 84% of GDP (everything we make, sell, or do all year). Forty-eight percent of that is owned by foreign investors, a number more than double what it was 10 years ago. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other post-9/11 operations have cost roughly $1.15 trillion over the past decade . That’s more than twice what we spend on the entire public education system in a year. Thirty-one percent of the federal budget is spent on just two programs — Social Security and Medicare . These “mandatory spending” programs can be changed only legislatively and are not part of the budget process. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that in 10 years entitlement spending will cost as much as we spend on the entire budget today. The $787-billion-dollar American Reinvestment Act represents the single largest counter-recessionary effort in American history. The biggest chunks are $288 billion in tax relief and $144 billion to state and local governments . These monies have helped shore up public sector jobs, but there is mixed evidence on the impact to the private sector: the unemployment rate hovers at 9%. As an alum of the HPR and creator of ARUSA in 1995, I may be a little biased. But what I find most impressive about this report is that it comes from a group of students that spans the political spectrum. Joint editors, Peyton Miller, the editor of The Salient , the conservative rag on campus, and Eva Lam, president of the College Dems, may disagree on some policy issues, but they do agree on the numbers and the implications of what’s coming: “Strained by static revenue and exploding costs across the board, ballooning deficits risk dangerous consequences. Excessive borrowing raises interest rates, reduces private investment, gives foreign lenders diplomatic leverage, and places a huge burden on future generations. Overcoming these problems will require decisive and painful political choices. Providing a clear view of how and why our government spends our tax dollars is the first step to shaping the debate.” For two years now, we’ve watched our economy flail and thrash in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression — because of private market largess, yes, but also because of deep and persistent government mismanagement. Quite frankly, some days, it seems we may be looking over the precipice with no idea of how far we may fall. Perhaps, the pale light in these times of darkness is that we have a younger generation that seems to care. If these students can work together to pinpoint and discuss our problems in a respectful and thoughtful way, why can’t our politicians and leaders? Join the discussion: www.annualreportusa.org

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State Of Oregon Joins Class-Action Suit Against Apollo Group

October 19, 2010

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–The state of Oregon has joined a securities fraud class-action lawsuit against Apollo Group Inc. (APOL) and several of its executives, alleging the for-profit college operator misled investors about its revenue between 2007 and 2010. The Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund lost $10 million as Apollo’s stock price dropped in the wake of the company’s disclosure of a Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry and heightened scrutiny of the entire for-profit college sector, according to a statement released by Oregon Attorney General John Kroger and Treasurer Ted Wheeler.

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Bernanke, Regulators Testify On Financial Reform Implementation

September 30, 2010

WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and other top regulators said Thursday their agencies are working vigorously to put into effect the sweeping overhaul of U.S. financial rules and are closely coordinating with each other. Bernanke said the Federal Reserve is working with the Treasury Department to develop ways for regulators to best detect financial dangers that could damage the economy. “It is essential that the (overhaul law) be carried out expeditiously and effectively,” Bernanke testified at a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee. Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin said, “We are moving as quickly and as carefully as we can.” The regulators said they will collaborate in the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a powerful assembly created by the new law and headed by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. The council, which has its first meeting on Friday, is charged with keeping watch over the entire financial system. At the same time, Bernanke, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair and other regulators affirmed the importance of their independence and the value of having divergent views within the council. Unlike the Treasury Department, which is part of the Obama administration, the others are independent regulatory agencies. “Coordination’s going to be extremely important,” Bernanke said. But he also said that independence “is very important for a lot of good reasons,” such as providing “multiple sets of eyes.” Bair said “there will be differences.” Mary Schapiro, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said the regulators already have had “lots of rigorous debate behind the scenes” on several issues. The new law, enacted in July, toughens government oversight of Wall Street and banks, provides stronger protections for consumers and gives the Fed and other regulators new powers to restrain risky financial practices. It’s aimed at preventing another financial crisis like the one that struck with force two years ago and plunged the country into a deep recession. The agencies are charged with writing scores of new rules to put meat on the bones of the overhaul law. As sweeping as the law is, Congress left much of the substance of the new rules to the discretion of regulators. The rule writing, just under way, already has drawn intense lobbying from financial industry interests. Bernanke also said the Fed is helping Treasury identify companies that are so big and so interconnected that their failure could take down the entire financial system. Those companies – which are likely to include Wall Street firms, big hedge funds and insurance companies – would be subject to tougher regulations. The law includes a process for shuttering big, complex financial companies using money from investors and loans from Treasury. __ AP Economics Writer Jeannine Aversa contributed to this report.

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Video: Indonesia’s Natalegawa Discusses South China Sea Dispute: Video

September 21, 2010

Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) — Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa talks about territorial disputes in the South China Sea. China signaled for the U.S. to stay out of disputes over the sea, three days before President Barack Obama is due to meet with regional leaders concerned over China’s territorial claims in the oil-and gas-rich waters. Portions of the South China Sea are claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. China claims almost the entire sea. Separately, China and Japan are locked in a diplomatic dispute centering on conflicting territorial claims in the East China Sea. (Source: Bloomberg)

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Cytta Delineates Medical Home Ecosystem, Adds New Director of Technology

September 21, 2010

PALM DESERT, CA–(Marketwire – September 21, 2010) –  Cytta Corp’s ( OTCBB : CYCA ) President, Gary Campbell, is pleased to announce that recent developments in the US healthcare system and managerially have allowed the Company to clearly delineate and greatly expand their business model of being an integration and solutions provider within the entire patient-centered medical home ecosystem.

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Antonio Garcia-Martinez: F*ck You, Money

August 16, 2010

Startup founders are in the unique position of having to seriously ask themselves the following cocktail party question: how much money would you need to live comfortably on for the rest of your life? That amount, whatever it might be, is known in the trade as ‘fuck-you money,’ i.e., the amount of money needed to be able to say ‘fuck you’ to everybody. (1) It’s a fascinating concept, for if you think of the astronomical economic gap between, say, a Malian subsistence farmer and a one-man economy like Rupert Murdoch, it’s really the only binary phase-change there on the sweep from $0 to $6.3 billion. Before that point, you’re just adding frosting on the lifestyle cake of your wage-slave existence. Beyond that point, you can forget about aspirational consumer buying of 48-inch flat-panel TVs. You suddenly confront the most existential questions in human life: what do I do with my life? What’s a good life? No one’s forcing me to do anything, so what do I do now? The reason why startup founders toy with this question, even in the earliest stages when such thoughts are almost purely masturbatory, has to do with the pre-startup soul-searching, which resembles almost pre-marriage counseling, foisted upon you by mentors (2) The way they couch it, of course, is more a suggestion to make sure all the founders in the startup have the same idealized exit fantasy, otherwise trouble is brewing down the road. Just this week the question became a little more real for us: an angel investor agreed verbally to invest in us (3) He immediately followed that up with the question: if Microsoft offered you $15 million for the company right now, would you sell? I rebutted that the two other founders together have more equity than me, so it’s not just up to me. He wouldn’t let up: yeah, but would you want to do it? He was clearly fishing to see if I would sell out early, quashing whatever investment thesis he had in us. I asked him if it would piss him off if we sold, and he said yes. To his credit, the angel immediately said that he would support whatever decision the founders took. As an aside, I find this investor behavior baffling. The company valuation he’d get in on would mean that such an acquisition would represent a 5x return, over something like three months. That’s a gargantuan return on an annualized basis. But he doesn’t want to put in $100,000 and get out $500,000, he wants to pull out millions and feel the cocksure validation the original Google investors must feel. It seems so beautifully irrational. (4) Back to the money: the issue made me re-visit the question more seriously. Before anything else, let’s do the numbers: money market funds yield around 4%. That’s $400K interest on $10MM, which is certainly a living wage, leaving aside inflation. Of course, it doesn’t have to last forever: human life is sadly finite. Crunching more realistic numbers, ‘fuck-you money’ is about $4.2MM for a 30 year old guy who plans on dying at 70 and wants to make $200K/year. Well within the payout picture of a fortunate startup founder whose company is acquired. Of course, the reality is you’re doomed if you’re even asking yourself the question. You know what I think? I think people who tell themselves ‘if I make $X million, then I’ll stop working and do what I want’ never make that $X million. They just don’t possess the relentlessness that makes it possible. I haven’t known that many hyper-wealthy people in my life, but at Goldman I used to sit 12 hours a day next to people whose annual incomes were greater than the capitalizations of many startups, and they possessed a rapacious greed breathtaking in scale. If they got paid $2MM that year, they’d want $4MM. Pay them $10MM, and they’d hanker for $50MM. Half a billion? They’d want to catch up to the Bill Gates of the world, and make several billion. Successful startup founders I’ve met seem no less ferocious. (5) So, will you sell out for fuck-you money? Evidently, the people who really face that question have already answered ‘no’ in their minds, in the insatiable hopes of yet greater scores. And those who would answer ‘yes’? Their ready willingness to join that club teasingly precludes their membership. 1. A related concept is FYIFV: ‘fuck you, I’m fully vested.’ This is what pre-IPO employees at companies like Microsoft and Google supposedly tell you when you ask them to change the bottle on the water cooler 2. The comparisons between startups and marriage are legion. To quote a brilliant essay from Paul Graham (he himself is quoting an unnamed startup founder): “One thing that surprised me is how the relationship of startup founders goes from a friendship to a marriage. My relationship with my cofounder went from just being friends to seeing each other all the time, fretting over the finances and cleaning up shit. And the startup was our baby. I summed it up once like this: ‘It’s like we’re married, but we’re not fucking.’” 3. In the immortal words of Samuel Goldwyn, that verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. But it’s the first ‘yes’ we’ve gotten, so we’re taking it seriously, like a 7th grader and his first kiss. 4. Even the most calculating economic agents get this wrong. Allow me to put my Goldman gossip hat back on very quickly, and recount another juicy tidbit from my Wall Street past that I only mentioned in passing in my previous piece. On Fridays, the entire desk would often play an interesting game. Everybody chucked their corporate ID in a sack, and anted up something like $20-$100 (depending on rank). Then, the head trader would remove the IDs one by one from the sack, reading out the names loudly across the entire floor. The last ID in the sack got the entire pot. It was winner take all and no splitting the pot at the end. When there were only 20 or so IDs left, things got interesting: a mob formed, and trading started. People with IDs left in the sack sold their IDs to the highest bidder, selling out early and monetizing rather than risking elimination. Fair value for an ID is a simple calculation: if the pot is $2,000 and there are 10 IDs left, then the option on one ID is just $2,000/10 = $200. That’s not the way the market traded though: IDs would inevitably sell for a premium, and the closer the process was to a close (i.e. the smaller the number of IDs left) the higher the premium got on a percentage basis. Mentally, it seemed people were irrationally willing to overbid for a large payout, and the likelier the payout, the more they’d overpay. Also, there were structural forces at work: it was Friday afternoon in New York, and people wanted the cash to blow on the weekend. I bet that steak at Peter Luger’s tastes even better if it was bought with the trading floor’s money. 5. To those employees at hugely successful companies like Google who managed to get to fuck-you money while holding down relatively junior jobs, I salute your sagacity at picking the right corporate wave to ride. That said, I wonder if you can take any more credit for your financial success than a trust-fund kid who won the ovarian lottery.

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Ravi Sawhney: Our Heroes’ Journey

August 16, 2010

The hero’s journey, a timeless storytelling narrative championed by Joseph Campbell in academic circles, has become a fundamental part of the thinking at our firm because it helps the entire team of designers and engineers better comprehend and align the emotional path consumers take while interacting with products, experiences or other aspects of design into our innovation approach. Stepping back and thinking more holistically about our world today outside the product/consumer lens made me realize that while consumers certainly are heroes in many ways, especially when their dollar votes favorably for your product, store, or service, the truth is they are not the true heroes. Our true heroes are the soldiers, sailors and airmen who too often go unsung, especially these days amid the lingering ‘overseas contingency operations.’ This observation really rang home to me recently while being re-routed through DFW airport after missing my initial flight. I was thrilled to be surrounded by so many young men and women in uniform, and very pleased while overhearing a conversation on an escalator when a stranger reached out and thanked one of the soldiers for his contributions to the country. The soldier was visibly very touched, as were several of the scene’s observers; however, I found it extremely distressing to see that many people continued to treat this soldier and the others as if they were invisible. What I overheard next was a complete shock — the soldier went on to explain that when he arrived stateside after completing his tour of duty, instead of receiving the hero’s welcome as deserved, he and others too often received disdain and even profanity directed their way. Now, I’m not a proponent of war, or conflict resolution by violence, but haven’t we learned the difference between a controversial policy decision we don’t support, and the men and women simply following orders to implement the decisions of their commanders? Why must our veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan suffer many of the same prejudices, animosity and vitriol encountered by Vietnam vets returning home more than 30 years ago? As business people, if we can understand and empathize with our consumers, surely we can do the same for those in uniform — to recognize and provide them a much needed and deserved feeling of affirmation, respect and gratitude. So, the next time you see a soldier, please simply talk to them and show your admiration and thanks for putting our well being above their own, for all their sacrifice and for that of their families, and for the sense of honor their sense of duty inspires throughout America. While it may be awkward in some respects to initiate such a conversation, I know in doing so you’ll have the most rewarding experience of your entire week.

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Adam Green: Google Goes "Evil"

August 9, 2010

I just got off a media conference call with Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg. They announced a new policy recommendation that would kill the Internet as we know it, if implemented by FCC Chair Julius Genokowski and other policy makers. The Google/Verizon deal ( also posted online ) basically says: The old “wireline” Internet that will be irrelevant in a few years? We propose a “new, enforceable prohibition against discriminatory practices” on that. New “wireless services” (aka the entire future of the Internet)? No equivalent nondiscrimination rules for that, but we'll “create enforceable transparency rules.” That way, as Americans lose access to the free and open Internet, they can visibly watch it go away. Just in case “wireless services” doesn't encompass the entire future of the Internet, a new class of “new services” is envisioned, which Schmidt and Seidenberg actively differentiated from “the public Internet.” Basically, through private contracting, big corporations could deal directly with the Verizons and AT&Ts of the world to create the next YouTube, maybe dangle it without discrimination to the public just long enough for us to be hooked, and then discriminate like hell over it. But don't worry, the FCC will “monitor the development of these services.” Google, a company that I've long admired and currently hold thousands of dollars of stock in, just “went evil.”

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Rebecca Abrahams: Document Hold Filed Against U.S. Chamber of Commerce & American Crossroads for Alleged Money Laundering, Insider Talks

August 9, 2010

Election fraud attorney Bob Fitrakis is sending letters today to attorneys representing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American Crossroads requesting that they retain all documents, emails, accounting records and other records. This “document hold” is the first step toward legal action based on the groups’ alleged laundering of illegal campaign contributions from large corporations. Fitrakis, in a telephone interview, explained, “We are planning on notifying the groups [as part of our] investigation and we’re requesting that they hold all those documents pertaining to what we believe is an illegal money laundering scheme.” The Chamber, run by its CEO Tom Donohue, serves as the political attack dog for big business, spending hundreds of millions to crush attorneys general and judges friendly to the corporations. In 2008 alone, the Chamber spent nearly $35 million almost entirely on Republican pro-business candidates in state and federal elections. According to SourceWatch, the Chamber has an aggressive strategy to rein in “activist judges and attorneys general,” and challenge anti-business measures in court, taking a lead role in tort reform and supporting pro-tort reform candidates. The strategy is brilliant. Donohue solicits millions from corporations facing class action suits and tort liability to fund these campaigns, all the while providing anonymous cover for corporate giants. In many cases, the Chamber masks its own involvement through front groups. Fitrakis says the Chamber has funneled illegal campaign contributions through groups like Citizens for a Strong Ohio, the Law Enforcement Association of America and many others, serving as the central point of a wide scale money laundering scam. “We know in the past the Chamber directly solicited various major donors – primarily people connected with transnational corporations. So that was part of that process. And also we know that they used then Governor Taft in Ohio back in 2002 and he ended up, of course, pleading guilty to multiple misdemeanor charges of accepting gifts from lobbyists. So it appears well known politicians are solicited and in some cases, the Chamber twists the arms of people but sometimes they don’t have to do that to get these anonymous donations. And then they kind of steer them all to one organization and they move them around to targeted politicians.” The goal, Fitrakis says is to create an unbalanced right wing court. “What they really want to do is control the Supreme Court here in Ohio as they successfully did in Texas because that allows them to do a variety of things. They can promise things like pro-corporate decisions because they know if they eliminate the entire opposition, which is what they did in Ohio. They took a moderate court in the ’90s which was 4-3 Republican to Democrat [sic] and with a couple of Republicans, at least one, having a very moderate, slim vote and they were able to essentially stack the entire court with Republicans that all lean strongly towards corporations. And if you don’t really have any balance on the court itself none of the other judges, if they’re all from one party and one mindset are all pro-corporate, you know those people aren’t going to raise the ethical issues in private or in public and that’s what you want – clearly judges that have a multi-national corporate perspective that know they’ve been elected by essentially illegal, anonymous money laundering schemes.” Fitrakis says there’s also a connection between the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the 2004 presidential election in Ohio as well as in other areas of the country. He says the Chamber is now directly linked to American Crossroads, a Republican political organization led by Karl Rove and its recent 501c4 spinoff, American Crossroads GPS. Former Chamber counsel Steven Law is now working for American Crossroads. “It looks like a systematic attempt connected to the Chamber, which was [previously] recognized by the Ohio Election Commission to move anonymous money into the state, and the question now is whether or not American Crossroads involves the same people. Because Karl Rove has been tied to a lot of these tactics in the past and it looks like American Crossroads may be little more than the latest extension following the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United. There’s a variety of groups moving in trying to set up anonymous donations now in the state.” Last January, a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the government may not ban corporate political spending in candidate elections. But the Court did uphold the right of states to enact other campaign finance laws including those requiring the disclosure of contributions. But Fitrakis says that donating to the U.S. Chamber or to American Crossroads runs counter to these laws. “When you look at why you do that, you know they’re doing more than mere public advocacy. They’re creating something where they can hide who’s really behind the curtain and the job of course, is to rip that curtain back and when you do, it’s usually the same people – large companies, corporations that want the entire economy deregulated and that’s why in fact you create the 501c4 and eventually they’ll create a 501c3. Because really all you have to do is adjourn the meeting, the non-profit meets and we have a long tradition of anonymous donations and then the 501c4 meets and it can do a little more in advocacy but it’s not a 527. But the key factor is that the donations can be anonymous. It’s a great business without transparency, without being accountable.” Fitrakis may be on to something. According to a letter from a U.S. Chamber of Commerce employee, who wishes to remain anonymous, companies that give money to the Chamber are promised their donations will not be disclosed, even to the Government. “They are given specific instructions on how to circumvent campaign finance regulations. This is what Mr. Donohue uses to up the ante with companies so they will give more money. Mr. Donohue has given these same instructions to our lobbyists to pass on to companies… Mr. Donohue also promises companies that the Chamber’s lawyers, lobbyists and public relations will provide a wall of protection for them in case they have any troubles with regulators or law enforcement officials, and he uses examples of past members who have been able to hide behind the Chamber…. It is a fact that the Chamber coordinates directly with the Republican Party on issues, ads, legislation, candidates and everything else. Steve Law is in daily contact with Mr. Donohue and he was chosen to lead the Karl Rove group American Crossroads so there would be that coordination. That group is the de facto Republican National Committee.” The insider adds Donohue is also milking the Chamber’s corporate donors to support his lavish lifestyle but could not confirm whether the Chamber has filed false reports to the IRS. “I can say for certain that there is a vast amount of secrecy about what money comes in and what it is used for. I can say that there have been large cash transactions that have taken place that I do not believe have been ever placed in any accounting system. I also know that money meant for one thing has actually been redirected to another thing on orders from Mr. Donohue and without the knowledge of the company that gave the money. I also know that if there was an audit done of the Chamber’s finances and cross referenced to those companies that gave money, there would be vast discrepancies between income and outlays.” The whistleblower says Donohue is arrogant enough to believe that even if he is exposed that he can still beat the system. “Can he be caught? Here is his attitude. The Federal Election Commission will not do anything to him because it has no power. Congress will not do anything because he owns too many of the members. So the only thing he fears is the United States Department of Justice, but he already has a game plan if he hears even a words that they are going to investigate him – attack, accuse the DOJ of a political hit job, call on his Republican allies to demand Eric Holder’s job.” Bob Fitrakis served on the legal team that sued the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for creating a front group called Citizens For A Strong Ohio. The organization solicited corporations for funding by promising them anonymity and used those funds to run attack ads against Ohio Supreme Court Justice Alice Resnick, in violation of Ohio’s campaign finance laws. In 2003 the Ohio Elections Commission and three courts ruled that the Chamber had to reveal the names of campaign ad backers.

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Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inks 126,493-SF Office Deal

July 26, 2010

Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc., the cancer biopharmaceutical company, signed for 126,493 square feet at 249 E. Grand Ave. in South San Francisco, CA. The deal includes 68,738 square feet subleased from Exelixis and the entire first and second floor space leased…

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The Highlights Of The Financial Reform Bill (PHOTOS)

July 16, 2010

Congress just passed a sweeping overhaul of America’s financial regulatory system. The financial bill cleared the Senate by a vote of 60 to 39, and is to be signed into law by President Obama next week. Among its other provisions, the 2,300-page piece of legislation creates a consumer protection office housed within the Fed, it establishes a registered derivatives exchange that will shed light on an otherwise opaque market, and it expands regulators’ authority to limit risk-taking and break up ailing financial firms and institutions that threaten the economy. But that’s not all. The bill contains a plethora of regulatory repairs. For those of us who don’t have time to read the entire 2,300-page document, here’s the Associated Press has put together some of the main highlights from the new-born bill.

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The Highlights Of The Financial Reform Bill (PHOTOS)

July 16, 2010

Congress just passed a sweeping overhaul of America’s financial regulatory system. The financial bill cleared the Senate by a vote of 60 to 39, and is to be signed into law by President Obama next week. Among its other provisions, the 2,300-page piece of legislation creates a consumer protection office housed within the Fed, it establishes a registered derivatives exchange that will shed light on an otherwise opaque market, and it expands regulators’ authority to limit risk-taking and break up ailing financial firms and institutions that threaten the economy. But that’s not all. The bill contains a plethora of regulatory repairs. For those of us who don’t have time to read the entire 2,300-page document, here’s the Associated Press has put together some of the main highlights from the new-born bill.

Read the full article →

The Highlights Of The Financial Reform Bill (PHOTOS)

July 16, 2010

Congress just passed a sweeping overhaul of America’s financial regulatory system. The financial bill cleared the Senate by a vote of 60 to 39, and is to be signed into law by President Obama next week. Among its other provisions, the 2,300-page piece of legislation creates a consumer protection office housed within the Fed, it establishes a registered derivatives exchange that will shed light on an otherwise opaque market, and it expands regulators’ authority to limit risk-taking and break up ailing financial firms and institutions that threaten the economy. But that’s not all. The bill contains a plethora of regulatory repairs. For those of us who don’t have time to read the entire 2,300-page document, here’s the Associated Press has put together some of the main highlights from the new-born bill.

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Marc Stoiber: Mitigation: The Wrong Way to Look at Green Innovation

July 7, 2010

I had the good fortune to sit down with Guy Dauncey this week. Dauncey is an author and speaker on climate change , and always has great insights into the sociological side of sustainability. When I asked his thoughts on green innovation, he said most companies and governments have it wrong. They continue to frame the story of climate change as a problem that they want to make go away — in short, they limit their thinking to mitigation. Mitigation, Dauncey said, is by definition the act of minimizing loss or damage suffered. As he wrote in his recent essay ‘Seven New Ideas,’ the mitigation mindset: …sends a very unfortunate message, encouraging people to think of the world’s current energy, forestry and farming regimes as ‘normal’, and just in need of some adjustments and emissions reductions to make the climate threat go away. This encourages a defensive, unimaginative approach to the climate problem. Losing With the Kyoto Soccer Team Dauncey had a very timely analogy. He asked what would happen if the framers of the Kyoto Protocol were a soccer team. Based on their mitigation mindset, they would likely always play in full defense, hoping they could stop global warming from scoring too many goals. Following this reasoning, a 0-0 draw would be seen as a victory. Certainly, having a strong defensive game is vital. But without exception, winning requires a team to play offense. And that doesn’t happen unless they have a vision of success. Envision the World You Want. Then Start Innovating. Whether it’s soccer, war, the establishment of democracy, or the fight for a sustainable planet, a positive outcome always begins with a vision. Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t change American segregationist politics with a limiting “Let us mitigate the evils of our society.” Instead, he framed his vision with the awe-inspiring ” I Have A Dream ” speech. John F. Kennedy’s vision was just as grand: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.” The clarity, inspiration, and awesome magnitude of Kennedy’s goal successfully launched the Apollo project . Indeed, sustainability leaders have annexed the term Apollo to catalyze a vision of a clean energy revolution. Today, we can see that vision framed in Obama’s call for a rapidly accelerated clean energy policy. It remains to be seen whether his clarion call inspires Americans to the dramatic shift in thinking necessary to get this project into orbit. Grand, Yes. Unreasonable, No. The concept of a world sustained by clean energy and infinitely renewable resources may seem hopelessly optimistic. Until, as Dauncey says, one considers that our relationship with fossil fuels spans a mere 200 year slice of time. If we spent thousands of years prior harvesting energy from firewood, does it seem far-fetched that we might spend thousands of years in the future harvesting energy from clean sources that already exist? Using this analogy, we see why corporations cling to the concept of mitigation. It allows them to hang onto the status quo, or perhaps change it by degrees, which limits discomfort and doesn’t challenge thinking. Although this defensive stance has been proven time and again to lessen innovation, progress, and profit, it is inevitable when there’s no grand vision for the future to take its place. When business leaders dare to proclaim a grand vision, the results can be exhilarating. You only need to look as far as Dupont’s remarkable green transformation, or GE’s Ecomagination , to see proof. Fortunately, the current ‘triple threat’ of recession, health care insecurity, and climate crisis are creating a growing tide of dissatisfaction with the status quo — precisely the motivator executives need to put their foot down and proclaim a new way forward. A Vision That Works for Your Company. To become reality, a bold vision needs to work on a number of levels: Does the vision reinforce your brand? A vision needs to be a projection of both what is possible, and what consumers expect from you. A computer company with a vision for creating zero waste electronics recycling makes sense. A computer company creating green apartment buildings does not. Does the vision engage your entire team? JFK mobilized an army of scientists to bring the Apollo vision to life. Martin Luther King Jr inspired millions to march. Involving your entire team in the creation and execution of your vision will fuel the excitement, and most likely lead to results that surpass your original dream. Does the vision come with a timeline, steps for execution, and progress measurement? A vision should be a reach — but not a prayer. Your team needs to know they have the resources to get the job done. They also need to know their performance will be measured on hitting specific targets on time, and on budget. Without these practical considerations, your team will be quickly demoralized, and your leadership called into question. With these guidelines in mind, corporations can frame their vision, boldly explore new green space and create new innovation. The results will be exciting, profitable, and anything but limiting.

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Laura Day: The Business of Intuition

June 14, 2010

Today’s market requires that you use all of our skills to compete. It is an exciting challenge and one that creates a need to discover parts of yourself that in easier times, you overlooked. In the long run, this will allow you to enrich all areas of your life. Intuition and the acquisition of wealth have a lot in common. There are many ways to arrive at each, and every individual has their own unique gift in doing so. In fact, it is the homogenization of the path that often impedes an effective strategy. As with intuition, the acquisition of wealth is mystified, when in fact, it’s based on realistic evaluation, data, self knowledge (whether yours or your company), adaptability and foresight. Both adaptability and foresight are the gifts of intuition. Where the budget dollar is spent on market research, it might be better spent on using the human resources you already have to acquire an accurate evaluation of your product or skills and a precognitive sense of the market in the future. This is especially valuable in your international market where the tools to evaluate a given “value” have not proven especially accurate. When you don’t have time for research or even an educated guess, intuition — that flash of accurate knowing — is your most reliable resource, especially if you train it. Usually, your intuition functions in emergencies, it’s the right decision you made in a split second, with little or no information that saved you. However, you don’t need to wait for an emergency to use it. In fact, the appropriate use of intuition will make you proactive enough that problems are solved before they occur. Scientific experiments demonstrating the ability of the human mind to both send and perceive information at a distance date back over fifty years, yet intuition has been cloistered in the realm of mysticism and scientific institutions. Where it really belongs is in the day-to-day structure of our life and its various endeavors. In How to Rule the World from Your Couch , I train your brain to get accurate, appropriate, actionable information in an efficient way, a way you have used inefficiently in the past. Intuition is not a strange skill acquired due to a vegetarian diet or a near-death experience. Intuition is the first capacity our brain had as babies and small children to survive in the absence of experience or reason. It can be redirected very easily to both gather and send information that will give you the edge in any market as well as helping you to find the niche where you and your company organically excel. How to Use Your Intuition to Create a Future “Market Map” Know your goals. Question your goals. People have a tendency to get stuck in a personal or corporate identity that calcifies and becomes vulnerable to market changes. If you cultivate a willingness to adapt and reinvent yourself, you will thrive. That said, if you don’t know your target it’s hard to hit it. So, know your goals. Forget out-of-the-box thinking and brainstorming. The reference point for each of these activities is something isn’t working. Throw away the box and allow perception to wander and document where your attention goes without editing. Odd as this may seem, write down a question, such as “how will our market change in the next year?” Ask your entire company (or all your friends) to write one page that will take place over a twelve month period. Tell them not to worry about the story or the writing, but to allow their attention to wander anywhere without editing anything. DO NOT TELL THEM THE QUESTION! Simply tell them you have an idea and this will help you fill in the blanks. Ask them to do it with a timeline. It sounds strange and uncomfortable at first, and it is. But, what you yield will amaze you when you apply it to the question you wrote and use a bit of interpretation to apply the data. Once you have your intuitive data, look at the other information you have available and come up with a plan. Nothing is the entire answer. Laura Day is the New York Times best selling author of PRACTICAL INTUITION and HOW TO RULE THE WORLD FROM YOUR COUCH. Newsweek named her the “$10,000-a-month psychic” and The Independent called her “The Psychic of Wall Street”. Laura has been featured on Oprah, CNN, Good Morning America, ABC News and other national and international media. Laura teaches mainstream professions how to integrate intuition into their process to create greater success. Laura teaches and lectures all over the world. HOW TO RULE THE WORLD FROM YOUR COUCH is her textbook on using intuition effectively. www.howtoruletheworldfromyourcouch.com

Read the full article →

Laura Day: The Business of Intuition

June 14, 2010

Today’s market requires that you use all of our skills to compete. It is an exciting challenge and one that creates a need to discover parts of yourself that in easier times, you overlooked. In the long run, this will allow you to enrich all areas of your life. Intuition and the acquisition of wealth have a lot in common. There are many ways to arrive at each, and every individual has their own unique gift in doing so. In fact, it is the homogenization of the path that often impedes an effective strategy. As with intuition, the acquisition of wealth is mystified, when in fact, it’s based on realistic evaluation, data, self knowledge (whether yours or your company), adaptability and foresight. Both adaptability and foresight are the gifts of intuition. Where the budget dollar is spent on market research, it might be better spent on using the human resources you already have to acquire an accurate evaluation of your product or skills and a precognitive sense of the market in the future. This is especially valuable in your international market where the tools to evaluate a given “value” have not proven especially accurate. When you don’t have time for research or even an educated guess, intuition — that flash of accurate knowing — is your most reliable resource, especially if you train it. Usually, your intuition functions in emergencies, it’s the right decision you made in a split second, with little or no information that saved you. However, you don’t need to wait for an emergency to use it. In fact, the appropriate use of intuition will make you proactive enough that problems are solved before they occur. Scientific experiments demonstrating the ability of the human mind to both send and perceive information at a distance date back over fifty years, yet intuition has been cloistered in the realm of mysticism and scientific institutions. Where it really belongs is in the day-to-day structure of our life and its various endeavors. In How to Rule the World from Your Couch , I train your brain to get accurate, appropriate, actionable information in an efficient way, a way you have used inefficiently in the past. Intuition is not a strange skill acquired due to a vegetarian diet or a near-death experience. Intuition is the first capacity our brain had as babies and small children to survive in the absence of experience or reason. It can be redirected very easily to both gather and send information that will give you the edge in any market as well as helping you to find the niche where you and your company organically excel. How to Use Your Intuition to Create a Future “Market Map” Know your goals. Question your goals. People have a tendency to get stuck in a personal or corporate identity that calcifies and becomes vulnerable to market changes. If you cultivate a willingness to adapt and reinvent yourself, you will thrive. That said, if you don’t know your target it’s hard to hit it. So, know your goals. Forget out-of-the-box thinking and brainstorming. The reference point for each of these activities is something isn’t working. Throw away the box and allow perception to wander and document where your attention goes without editing. Odd as this may seem, write down a question, such as “how will our market change in the next year?” Ask your entire company (or all your friends) to write one page that will take place over a twelve month period. Tell them not to worry about the story or the writing, but to allow their attention to wander anywhere without editing anything. DO NOT TELL THEM THE QUESTION! Simply tell them you have an idea and this will help you fill in the blanks. Ask them to do it with a timeline. It sounds strange and uncomfortable at first, and it is. But, what you yield will amaze you when you apply it to the question you wrote and use a bit of interpretation to apply the data. Once you have your intuitive data, look at the other information you have available and come up with a plan. Nothing is the entire answer. Laura Day is the New York Times best selling author of PRACTICAL INTUITION and HOW TO RULE THE WORLD FROM YOUR COUCH. Newsweek named her the “$10,000-a-month psychic” and The Independent called her “The Psychic of Wall Street”. Laura has been featured on Oprah, CNN, Good Morning America, ABC News and other national and international media. Laura teaches mainstream professions how to integrate intuition into their process to create greater success. Laura teaches and lectures all over the world. HOW TO RULE THE WORLD FROM YOUR COUCH is her textbook on using intuition effectively. www.howtoruletheworldfromyourcouch.com

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Gar Alperovitz: We’re Now Number 77 in Income Inequality (Tied With Turkmenistan)

June 9, 2010

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen can all too easily numb, but occasionally a few very simple numbers are worth pondering a bit more closely than others. Like these three: The United States now ranks number 77 out of 142 countries in the United Nations Human Development Report ‘s latest estimates of income inequality–tied with Turkmenistan, Tunisia and Georgia. In the 2009 OECD review of the 30 most advanced nations, the United States ranked 27th—ahead only of Mexico, Turkey and Portugal. Over the last quarter-century, IRS data indicate that the top one percent of American taxpayers increased their share of the nation’s total pre-tax adjusted gross income from 10 percent in 1980 to 23.5 percent (in 2007). These are not routine numbers. Yes, of course, we know there is great inequality in the nation. But something is going on here that is quite extraordinary. Consider the following bit of arithmetic: If the top one percent had not increased its income share from 10 to 23.5 percent in recent years, then the bottom 99 percent would obviously still have a 90 percent income share. Quite clearly, the top one percent has somehow been able to capture huge amounts that would normally have flowed to the bottom 99 percent. If the federal government — instead of the top one percent — had taxed away that 13.5 percent of income from the bottom 99 percent over this period, it would have been deemed an extraordinary outrage. The top one percent was, of course, taxed on what it took in, but in practice–after accounting for various deductions and loopholes–only at an effective rate of approximately 25 percent (including state and local taxes.) In 2007 they kept roughly $900 billion of the $1.2 trillion they gained in that year alone. If the federal government had collected this entire amount in taxes, it could have used $900 billion to offset a large share of the 2009 budget deficit of $1.4 trillion. If it were to capture amounts in this range annually for the next ten years it would dramatically reduce our current (and growing) $13 trillion national debt. Alternatively, of course, the funds could be used for health care, schools, new energy technologies and created much-needed public or private sector jobs. Or, quite simply, the amount taken from the bottom 99% could be returned in appropriate tax cuts. A good part of the income bonanza received by the top one percent derived from the recent unusual financial sector gains: The top one percent owns more than half of all stocks, bonds, and mutual fund assets; the bottom 90 percent own less than 10 percent. When the value of equity in homes and other assets are added in, the top one percent also owns more than the entire bottom 90 percent. It is difficult to argue that such shares, to say nothing of major changes in the distribution of income like those recorded in recent years, have anything to do with a commensurate contribution that might merit extraordinary compensation. Indeed, as the revelations of the financial crisis have so dramatically shown, often top dollar bonuses went to bankers and brokers who did little more than move financial paper at huge taxpayer cost. Building on the Nobel Prize-winning work of Robert Solow (and of Edward Denison), Lew Daly and I have recently pointed out that in general not only do income shares of the kind that flow to the top one percent have little to with what anyone has actually done to deserve; rather the flows are largely traceable to technologies that ultimately either were paid for by the public, or, more importantly, that derive from our collective inheritance of scientific and technological knowledge. Unfortunately, our national discourse is focused almost entirely on different questions. A new presidential panel — the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform — has begun meeting to try to find ways to cut spending and increase taxation at the margins. We are told nothing else can be done. Moreover, given our unwillingness to increase taxation, we can be sure that if changes occur, the big cuts will impact the same 99 percent at the bottom who have already lost huge shares of income to those at the top. The challenge posed by our Turkmenistan levels of inequality is to somehow jolt ourselves out of our usual complacency to open a very different dialogue. It is time to stop looking away as we tinker around the margins and the one percent continues on its merry way. Top marginal tax rates, we might remind ourselves, stood at 91 percent during the presidencies of both Democrats and Republicans (Truman and Eisenhower). Contrary to those who argue significant taxation must impede economic growth, these high tax rates coincided with the postwar boom, the period of greatest economic growth in all of American history.

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Fed Still Doesn’t Know How To Stimulate Lending To Small Businesses

June 3, 2010

Two years after the credit crunch mushroomed into a full-blown credit crisis, the Federal Reserve continues to search for answers in its quest to boost bank lending to small businesses, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke indicated today. Speaking at a conference on small business lending in Detroit sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Bernanke noted the drop in bank lending, yet expressed doubt on the reasons behind it or how to fix it. “Unfortunately, lending to small businesses has been declining,” he said in his prepared remarks . “Indeed, outstanding loans to small businesses dropped from almost $700 billion in the second quarter of 2008 to approximately $660 billion in the first quarter of 2010.” The approximate 5.7 percent drop is steeper than the 4.4 percent decrease in overall lending by U.S. banks, according to Federal Reserve data maintained by the St. Louis Fed. Outstanding loans at banks dropped by $303.4 billion from the end of the second quarter of 2008 (June) to the first quarter of 2010 (March). “Unfortunately, small business credit remains severely constricted,” the Congressional Oversight Panel, a federal bailout watchdog, acknowledged in a May report . “[L]ending plummeted during the 2008 financial crisis and remained sharply restricted throughout 2009. “[B]etween 2008 and 2009 [Wall Street banks'] small business loan portfolios fell by 9.0 percent, more than double the 4.1 percent decline in their entire lending portfolios. Some borrowers looked to community banks to pick up the slack, but smaller banks remain strained by their exposure to commercial real estate and other liabilities. Unable to find credit, many small businesses have had to shut their doors, and some of the survivors are still struggling to find adequate financing.” In his Thursday remarks, Bernanke presented the question as to whether the decline in lending is due to a reduction in the availability of credit, or whether it’s due to shrinking demand. “An important but difficult-to-answer question is how much of this reduction has been driven by weaker demand for loans from small businesses and how much by restricted credit availability,” he said. He didn’t answer it. “To be sure, the distinction between demand and supply is not always easy to make. For example, some potential borrowers have been turned down because lending terms and conditions remain tighter than before the financial crisis, perhaps reflecting banks’ concerns about the effects of the recession on borrowers’ economic prospects and balance sheets. “From the potential borrower’s point of view, particularly a borrower who has been able to obtain loans in the past, these changes may feel like a reduction in the supply of credit; from the lender’s point of view, the problem appears to be a lack of demand from creditworthy borrowers.” It’s up to the Fed to figure out which is having the greater effect so small businesses can get the financing they need. “Although lenders and borrowers may have different perspectives, our collective challenge is to help ensure that creditworthy borrowers have access to credit so that, should they choose, they can expand their businesses or increase payrolls, helping our economy to recover,” he said. To that effect, the Fed’s meeting in Detroit is one of 40 such gatherings that the Federal Reserve System is hosting across the nation. But the answer as to why credit has been so constrained — and ways to revive it — won’t come until later this summer, nearly two years after the height of the financial crisis. “The findings from the entire series of meetings sponsored by the Federal Reserve will be presented at a culminating conference at the Board of Governors in Washington later this summer,” Bernanke said. Meanwhile, small businesses continue to suffer from a drought of credit, imperiling the thus-far jobless economic recovery. “Small businesses have long been an engine of economic growth and job creation in America,” the Congressional Oversight Panel noted in its report. “More than 99 percent of American businesses employ 500 or fewer employees, and together these companies employ half of the private workforce and create two out of every three new jobs. “Because small businesses play such a critical role in the American economy, there is little doubt that they must be a part of any sustainable recovery.”

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Bids for California’s State Office Portfolio Top Estimates

April 28, 2010

The California Department of General Services (DGS) said it received more than 300 offers to purchase and lease back 11 state office properties. Multiple bids were received for the entire portfolio that totaled in excess of $2 billion. The bids were…

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The Comprehensive Goldman Sachs Metaphor Reel (VIDEO)

April 23, 2010

Are you confused by the recent bombshell civil fraud charges leveled by the SEC at Wall Street mega-firm Goldman Sachs? Can’t tell your collateralized debt obligations from your mortgage-backed securities? Well, today is your lucky day! Because we’ve gone through the entire past week’s worth of cable news (and even a little C-span from back in January ) and found the most coherent, concise, and clarifying metaphors and analogies to help you go from ignoramus to expert on the Goldman Sachs case in a convenient 5 minutes. WATCH: Video produced by HuffPost’s Ben Craw

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Krugman/Sorkin Feud: Clark Hoyt Weighs In

April 15, 2010

So, remember back on Monday, when it looked like Andrew Ross Sorkin and Paul Krugman were set to go all Aaron Burr/Alex Hamilton on each other, only with blogs? That was a fascinating time in our lives. We weighed in here , and you can read Andrew Leonard and Foster Kamer’s takes on the tilt, as well. But now, here’s the judgment of the New York Times ‘ Public Editor Clark Hoyt, who says , “One of these marquee columnists is right, and the other isn’t – and The Times owes its readers an explanation.” I suppose they do! [Sorkin] quoted Krugman as saying in a column last year: “Why not just go ahead and nationalize? Remember, the longer we live with zombie banks, the harder it will be to end the economic crisis.” Krugman did write those words, but a full and fair reading of the column where they appeared does not support the notion that he favored nationalizing the entire banking system. Nor did he say that without nationalization the banks would fail again, with a worldwide ripple effect. In fact, Krugman wrote that he agreed with Alan Greenspan, who had said, “It may be necessary to temporarily nationalize some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring.” Krugman’s argument for doing so was that, if the government was going to have to put up all the money to get the banks going again, it should get the ownership. Hoyt goes on to relate that he sent Sorkin “a message telling him that I did not think his citations supported his argument that Krugman had called for nationalizing the entire banking system.” Sorkin subsequently described the matter as “an issue of semantics.” Krugman’s response was that he just simply never, ever advocated for a government takeover of “all banks.” Andrew Rosenthal, who oversees the Times ‘s op-ed page, backed Krugman, and Bill Keller, the Times ‘s executive editor, said that if Sorkin erred, “he – and we – should correct it, of course.” (It seems to me that Keller’s subtext there was basically, “Gah, why are you coming to me with this junk, whatever, run a correction I guess, pffffff.”) Hoyt’s final analysis: I think the right thing to do is to simply acknowledge that, in trying to quickly summarize Krugman’s nuanced position, Sorkin over-simplified and got it wrong. One hundred years from now, the Civil War reenactors of the future will recreate this whole chapter of our lives on the internet, so your great-grandchildren will have that to look forward to! [Would you like to follow me on Twitter ? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here .]

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Fortune’s Stanley Bing: The Stuff That CEOs Are Made Of

March 22, 2010

I’m sure there are many more important events going on in the world of business and finance today, but I don’t care. I’m too grouchy to write about them. I flew in from the left coast last night and didn’t get my normal three hours of shuteye on the plane. That’s because in the cabin with me was one of those horrendous, narcissistic, noisy, infantile Chief Executive Officer types. She kept all of us awake for the entire flight with her temper tantrums, squeals of outrage and general outlandish behavior. No one, not even her exhausted handlers, could control her. Which was pretty remarkable, because she couldn’t have been more than two feet tall on her tiptoes. That’s right. The young executive in question was a toddler of about two, and the way she manipulated everybody around her, making their lives miserable and ruining their peace of mind, can only be compared to the antics of successful senior officers, who have maintain this particular style since birth. First, upon boarding, she had a huge problem with her seat. So she screamed and yelled her head off for about an hour, solid. I had made a critical mistake. I was in a perfectly comfortable and quiet location in Business, but was upgraded. That’s always a flattering experience. Who questions such a move? From now on, I will. “Are there any insane babies in the First Class cabin?” will be my immediate question. A nice quiet seat location in Purgatory beats a luxury cabin in Hell any day. So the little baby screamed and yelled until we took off, and then, sobbing noisily, fell into a torpor until the food arrived. Then she vocalized a little more and threw it around the room for a while. I was strongly reminded of a mogul I know who, when served food from the wrong deli in the G4 not too long ago, actually hurled a chicken leg at the head of the flight attendant. Nobody spanked him, either. About halfway through the flight, the littlest CEO grew tired of fussing and decided to squeal in a high-pitched, siren kind of thing. For her own amusement, you know. She would emit this piercing noise, and then crack up at some private joke that was of absolutely no interest to anybody else. I had a boss like that once. He’s retired now, and spends most of his time in some kind of philanthropic effort. By the time we were landing, more than five hours into this ordeal, the entire First Class cabin was in a state not unfamiliar to anybody works one of these guys. Everybody was on edge. Nobody looked each other in the eye, for fear that somebody would do something to annoy the monster. All we wanted to do was get out of there. And the teeny tyrant babbled on, a river of barely intelligible needs constantly burbling from her, running around the enclosed space we were all to share as relative equals, commanding the entire attention of all who were in her vicinity. Not one of us stopped her. She reigned supreme. I wish I could tell you that reason, equality and good manners triumphed in the end. But it did not. And today, I find myself wondering what life must be like for those who must work for her full-time. Whatever power it is she possesses, they should probably bottle it and teach it at Wharton. Maybe they already do, come to think of it.

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Fortune’s Stanley Bing: The Stuff That CEOs Are Made Of

March 22, 2010

I’m sure there are many more important events going on in the world of business and finance today, but I don’t care. I’m too grouchy to write about them. I flew in from the left coast last night and didn’t get my normal three hours of shuteye on the plane. That’s because in the cabin with me was one of those horrendous, narcissistic, noisy, infantile Chief Executive Officer types. She kept all of us awake for the entire flight with her temper tantrums, squeals of outrage and general outlandish behavior. No one, not even her exhausted handlers, could control her. Which was pretty remarkable, because she couldn’t have been more than two feet tall on her tiptoes. That’s right. The young executive in question was a toddler of about two, and the way she manipulated everybody around her, making their lives miserable and ruining their peace of mind, can only be compared to the antics of successful senior officers, who have maintain this particular style since birth. First, upon boarding, she had a huge problem with her seat. So she screamed and yelled her head off for about an hour, solid. I had made a critical mistake. I was in a perfectly comfortable and quiet location in Business, but was upgraded. That’s always a flattering experience. Who questions such a move? From now on, I will. “Are there any insane babies in the First Class cabin?” will be my immediate question. A nice quiet seat location in Purgatory beats a luxury cabin in Hell any day. So the little baby screamed and yelled until we took off, and then, sobbing noisily, fell into a torpor until the food arrived. Then she vocalized a little more and threw it around the room for a while. I was strongly reminded of a mogul I know who, when served food from the wrong deli in the G4 not too long ago, actually hurled a chicken leg at the head of the flight attendant. Nobody spanked him, either. About halfway through the flight, the littlest CEO grew tired of fussing and decided to squeal in a high-pitched, siren kind of thing. For her own amusement, you know. She would emit this piercing noise, and then crack up at some private joke that was of absolutely no interest to anybody else. I had a boss like that once. He’s retired now, and spends most of his time in some kind of philanthropic effort. By the time we were landing, more than five hours into this ordeal, the entire First Class cabin was in a state not unfamiliar to anybody works one of these guys. Everybody was on edge. Nobody looked each other in the eye, for fear that somebody would do something to annoy the monster. All we wanted to do was get out of there. And the teeny tyrant babbled on, a river of barely intelligible needs constantly burbling from her, running around the enclosed space we were all to share as relative equals, commanding the entire attention of all who were in her vicinity. Not one of us stopped her. She reigned supreme. I wish I could tell you that reason, equality and good manners triumphed in the end. But it did not. And today, I find myself wondering what life must be like for those who must work for her full-time. Whatever power it is she possesses, they should probably bottle it and teach it at Wharton. Maybe they already do, come to think of it.

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Sen. Jon Tester: Wall Street Reform Ends ‘Too Big to Fail’

March 18, 2010

You’ve probably already seen the ads on TV or heard them on the radio. Out-of-state groups are shelling out millions to sway your opinion on a very important bill I’m working on in the Senate Banking Committee — a bill that finally ends the era of “too big to fail” on Wall Street. I can see why some folks with a lot of money to burn don’t want this bill to pass. They don’t want it to pass because it finally puts referees on Wall Street. And without refs on Wall Street, business has been brisk for a handful of well-off Americans. But our entire economy almost collapsed a year-and-a-half ago because there were no referees on Wall Street. And sadly, hardworking, honest taxpayers — and our entire economy — paid the price. The bailouts President Bush asked for in 2008 weren’t the answer. That’s why I voted against both of them. The best way to fix this problem — and to prevent it from happening again — is to rewrite the rules. To require big banks and huge financial institutions to play by those rules. And to take “too big to fail” out of the equation. The Wall Street reform bill, which combines good ideas from Republicans and Democrats — does just that. It will create a bipartisan council of regulators to serve an “advance warning system” to snuff out problems well before they hurt the entire economy. It will streamline existing regulators, giving them the power to write rules and enforce them on America’s biggest banks. The bill will not, however, affect Montana’s banks. Montana’s Main Street banks and credit unions played by the rules during the financial crisis. I made sure this bill won’t create more hassles or costs for banks that do honest business. A few weeks ago, a secretive organization called the Committee for Truth in Politics saturated Montana’s airwaves with TV and radio ads. The ads called Wall Street reform a “bailout.” Why? Good question. Calling the Wall Street reform a “bailout” — even though it isn’t — is a poll-tested way get folks to be against it. In response to those ads, thousands of callers were automatically patched into my office to tell me, “vote against the bailout.” Many callers were relieved — and confused — to learn that Wall Street reform is not a bailout. No matter how you spin it. This bill is just the opposite. The fact is, Wall Street reform will finally make some much needed changes to the way things work, to protect the good actors on Main Street — and across middle America — from the bad actors on Wall Street. And it ends “too big to fail.” I’ve posted the Wall Street reform bill online at tester.senate.gov/legislation . You can also follow the progress of the bill at facebook.com/senatortester . As this very important legislation moves through Congress, I’ll make sure it’s the best possible bill for Montanans. And I’ll make sure we have an honest debate based on the facts.

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Neil K. Shenai: Ben Bernanke Deserved Confirmation

February 3, 2010

That was a close one. Despite growing furor over his handling of the US economy, prudence beat populism as the Senate confirmed Dr. Ben Bernanke for a second term as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Given the number of challenges he faces, I am half surprised that he was willing to take the job again in the first place. His Federal Reserve continues to monetize government borrowing, known elsewhere as seigniorage but in advanced industrialized states as quantitative easing , as both our public and private sectors remain mired in unsustainable levels of debt. Unemployment is in the double digits. Our entire fiscal solvency depends on continued Chinese willingness to finance our deficits. And the primary driver of institutional change, the legislative process, waxes between ambivalence and hysteria about the problems that face our country today. These are trying times, which further underscores the need for chairman Bernanke’s continued presence as Fed chief. America dodged a bullet when we confirmed chairman Bernanke for a second term. Here is why: 1) Confirmation of Ben Bernanke ensures central bank independence. One of the most critical tenets of long-term economic growth is the presence of a politically independent central bank. Observers such as Huffington Post’s own Sheldon Filger conveniently neglect the importance of insulating the Federal Reserve from short-run political pressures. The reason why we need an independent central bank is simple yet often misunderstood. Essentially, we do not want elected politicians, subject to the whims of the mass electorate, responsible for monetary policy. Indeed, conducting monetary policy sometimes entails shouldering unpalatable short-run costs for long-run gains. Situations of low unemployment and rising inflation call for higher interest rates to curb economic activity, thereby lowering inflationary pressures and sometimes creating cyclical unemployment. We need an independent central bank because when the economy does start growing again, the Federal Reserve should aggressively curb its emergency lending provisions enacted during the height of the crisis to diminish inflation expectations. A populist-backed Fed chairman would be less likely to accept this trade-off, which would have far more destabalizing consequences for the economy than simply enduring a period of slightly higher unemployment in the name of price stability. 2) Charges of his errors in judgment are overblown Certain accounts of the financial crisis cling to some version of this narrative: Chairman Bernanke failed to anticipate and aggressively pop the housing bubble, keeping interest rates too low for too long. Then, Bernanke foolishly allowed Lehman Brothers to fail, thereby undermining the entire financial services sector and creating the panic that led to the global financial crisis of 2008. His response of monetary loosening further indebts generations of Americans, and his Fed is ill-equipped to prevent another crisis from forming. Such popular accounts rely on the logical pitfalls of hindsight bias and monocausal reasoning. Yes, in hindsight, it was clear that the risks that had built up in the financial sector could topple the entire global financial architecture. The bursting of the housing bubble could not be contained. But to pin the entire crisis on Bernanke is to ignore the most important takeaway of the financial crisis: our entire society as a whole was a priori blind to the potential of financial meldown. Homeowners borrowed with impunity; politicians from both parties expanded and encouraged more lending from the housing agencies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; China continued to fuel global imbalances, thereby lowering long-term borrowing costs in the United States; and regulatory oversight, some of which was the Fed’s fault, aided and abetted a Wall Street driven by leverage and speculation. Responsibility for the financial crisis cannot be pinned on one man and one institution, Ben Bernanke and the Fed, anymore than we can blame repressive Arab governments exclusively for terrorism, or Barack Obama for the failure to close the Guantanamo detention center. Social outcomes like economic cycles depend on multiple causal pathways, of which monetary policy was one part. 3) Bernanke is simply the best man for the job As we learned in painful detail during the height of the crisis, the entire global economy depends on confidence. Without confidence in the financial system, consumers do not save, banks do not lend, and economic activity could halt altogether. Any nascent economic recovery will depend on market confidence in the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Given his experience of the tumult of the crisis, he is in a unique position to see the American economy through to recovery. Any other potential replacement would lack this unique vantage point. For our regulators, experience is everything, and we should not undervalue the benefit of Bernanke’s continuity on the macroeconomic psyche of the global economy. This is not to say that Bernanke is flawless. His notable reticence on the need for stronger financial regulations and on US fiscal profligacy challenges his credibility. But by and large, Bernanke deserved a second term as Fed chairman. As Americans come to terms with the realization that our economic challenges will not be solved overnight, our politicians must also resist the urge to favor expedient political payoffs over long-term economic gains. The confirmation of Bernanke shows that our political system does have this capacity for restraint in the name of prudence. For the sake of our country, let’s hope that Bernanke’s confirmation is a sign of things to come, instead of a blip on our legislative radar.

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2006: Best U.S. Cities To Buy Real Estate And Homes | Kingston …

January 3, 2010

Eager to know the top cites in America where one can safely invest? Here are the best real estate markets in the entire country according to a recent report.

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Mutual Funds: Top Income Equity Funds

December 28, 2009

Today we are featuring top-performing Income equity mutual funds , which primarily invest in equity securities of companies in search of income. Investors can find such funds by checking out the entire list of the Zacks #1 Rank

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Toby Barlow: How a billionaire can make a billion dollars.

December 27, 2009

I didn’t think I should have to write this. They should be smart enough to figure it out themselves, these infamous titans of industry. But then I saw how Bernie Madoff fleeced the lot of them and I thought, maybe these aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed, even if they are made out of solid gold. So, as we enter into the new year I would like to present a simple plan that will make anyone in the top .00001 income bracket a appallingly huge amount of money: Buy Detroit. No, not in the metaphorical sense, you wouldn’t want to follow Daimler, Cerberus, and Fiat down the old nasty Chrysler rabbit hole. I mean it in the literal sense. What you do is very quietly, so as not to inflate any prices, buy up all the available real estate in the Motor City; the skyscrapers, the housing, the vacant lots, as much as you can possibly embrace in those little seersucker arms of yours. Okay, now, before I have even gotten started, I can sense you tut-tutting. You’re saying Detroit is a loser’s game. “Why, I’d rather buy swamp land in Florida.” you mutter. But just hold on, how did you get where you are today? You zigged while others zagged, right? Or your grandfather exploited slave labor, either way, bear with me, because you are still missing the critical second part of my plan. If you are a decent billionaire, you own things. Not just private jets and houses in the Hamptons, but also companies. You own insurance companies, banks, candy companies as well as various industrial entities that manufacture things like porta-potties and dining cars. Companies that have employees. Companies that need to be based somewhere. Plus, if you are reasonably savvy – and perhaps you are – you already own the buildings they work in. So, step two is simple, sell those buildings. The profits from a single one of your New York office buildings could pay off your entire Detroit real estate junket. See, already you’ve broken even. Then, in the final step, you relocate all those companies of yours to their shiny new corporate headquarters in heart of Southeast Michigan. Give them incentives to live down near their work so that they’ll buy your residential property. Some employees might groan about relocating, but too bad for them, you didn’t get where you are by coddling ninnies. And guess what, that’s another great thing about Michigan, there are lots and lots of idle workers, whatever you need, skilled, highly skilled (we have more engineers per capita than any other state) as well as the completely and utterly unskilled. So, I don’t have to spell out the rest, do I? Real estate values will quickly soar as other companies, encouraged by your brazen move, make similar leaps into what will still be an incredibly affordable market. The momentum will build as the ever-frenzied media piles on. Then you can sit back on your mega three story yacht with the dancing girls and the piles of diamond encrusted caviar and just watch as the value of your entire portfolio exponentially soars in less than two or three years. Detroit is ready. With a new mayor and an all new city council, any prospective investor in the area will find a capable, competent, and welcoming partner. There is a whole vast metropolis here on sale cheap, with freeways, an international airport, and a number of conveniently located White Castle drive thrus. In short, all the infrastructure any ambitious business tycoon could possibly need. And guess what, if you want, we’ll even let you buy our football team. Think about it.

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NEXUS ONE: Google Phone To Hit Stores Next Year

December 13, 2009

On Saturday, Google posted a message on its Mobile Blog referring ambiguously to a new mobile phone ‘concept’ device that Google’s employees had been given to test. This new device, the blog said, “combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities.” So what is this mysterious new product? According to reports, it is Nexus One, Google’s first attempt at a cell phone that it will sell directly to consumers , with software designed entirely in-house. The phone is being manufactured for Google by HTC Corp., reports said. It runs Android, the operating system for mobile phones that Google developed. But unlike the more than half-dozen Android phones made by phone manufacturers today, Google designed virtually the entire software experience behind the phone ice separately. Google has designed virtually the entire software experience behind the phone, from the applications that run on it to the look and feel of each screen. The direct sales move by Google could alienate wireless carriers and handset makers that offer Android phones and do not want to compete with Google, WSJ said adding that Google has repeatedly said that its goal is to have hundreds of Android phones rather than one. TechCrunch has more details here .

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Frank Rich: White House Doesn’t Seem To Understand Public’s Wall Street Rage

November 7, 2009

The Obama administration does not seem to understand that this rage, left unaddressed, could consume it. It has pushed aside the entreaties of many — including Paul Volcker, the chairman of the White House’s own Economic Recovery Advisory Board — to break up too-big-to-fail banks. Those behemoths, cushioned by the government’s bailouts, low-interest loans and guarantees, are back making bets that put the entire system at risk.

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NAI Global – Commercial Real Estate Blogs: NAI Global Signs Former …

November 4, 2009

Based in Boise , and serving the entire Treasure Valley region, NAI Pinnacle is a full-service commercial real estate firm offering leasing, tenant representation, investment services, acquisitions/dispositions, due diligence and …

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Robert Reich: Breaking Up the Big Banks, and Why Congress Won’t Do It

October 26, 2009

And now there are five — five Wall Street behemoths, bigger than they were before the Great Meltdown, paying fatter salaries and bonuses to retain their so-called”talent,” and raking in huge profits. The biggest difference between now and last October is these biggies didn’t know then that they were too big to fail and the government would bail them out if they got into trouble. Now they do. And like a giant, gawking adolescent who’s just discovered he can crash the Lexus convertible his rich dad gave him and the next morning have a new one waiting in his driveway courtesy of a dad who can’t say no, the biggies will drive even faster now, taking even bigger risks. What to do? Two ideas are floating around Washington, but only one is supported by the Treasury and the White House. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong one. The right idea is to break up the giant banks. I don’t often agree with Alan Greenspan but he was right when he said last week that “[i]f they’re too big to fail, they’re too big.” Greenspan noted that the government broke up Standard Oil in 1911, and what happened? “The individual parts became more valuable than the whole. Maybe that’s what we need to do.” (Historic footnote: Had Greenspan not supported in 1999 Congress’s repeal of the Glass Steagall Act, which separated investment from commercial banking, we wouldn’t be in the soup we’re in to begin with.) Former Fed Chair Paul Volcker, whose only problem is he’s much too tall, last week told the New York Times he’d like to see the restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act provisions that would separate the financial giants’ deposit-taking activities from their investment and trading businesses. If this separation went into effect, JPMorgan Chase would have to give up the trading operations acquired from Bear Stearns. Bank of America and Merrill Lynch would go back to being separate companies. And Goldman Sachs could no longer be a bank holding company. But the Obama Administration doesn’t agree with either Greenspan or Volcker. While it says it doesn’t want another bank bailout, its solution to the ‘too big to fail’ problem doesn’t go nearly far enough. In fact, it doesn’t really go anywhere. The Administration would wait until a giant bank was in danger of failing and then put it into a process akin to bankruptcy. The bank’s assets would be sold off to pay its creditors, and its shareholders would likely walk off with nothing. The Treasury would determine when such a “resolution” process was needed, and appoint a receiver, such as the FDIC, to wind down the bank’s operations. There should be an orderly process for putting big failing banks out of business. But this isn’t nearly enough. By the time a truly big bank gets into trouble — one that poses a “systemic risk” to the entire economy — it’s too late. Other banks, competing like mad for the same talent and profits, will already have adopted many of the excessively-risky banks’ techniques. And the pending failure will already have rocked the entire financial sector. Worse yet, the Administration’s plan gives the big failing bank an escape hatch: The receiver might decide that the bank doesn’t need to go out of business after all — that all it needs is some government money to tide it over until the crisis passes. So the Treasury would also have the authority to provide the bank with financial assistance in the form of loans or guarantees. In other words, back to bailout. (Historical footnote: Summers and Geithner, along with Bob Rubin, while at Treasury in 1999, joined Greenspan in urging Congress to repeal Glass-Steagall. The four of them — Greenspan, Summers, Rubin and Geithner also refused to regulate derivatives, and pushed Congress to stop the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation from doing so.) Congress is cooking up a variation on the “resolution” idea that would give the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation authority to trigger and handle the winding-down of big banks in trouble, without Treasury involvement, and without an escape hatch. Needless to say, Wall Street favors the Administration’s approach — which is why the Administration chose it to begin with. If I were less charitable I’d say Geithner and Summers continue to bend over bankwards to make Wall Street happy, and in doing so continue to risk the credibility of the president, as well as the long-term financial stability of the system. Wall Street could live with the slightly less delectable variation that Congress is coming up with. But Congress won’t go as far as to unleash the antitrust laws on the big banks or resurrect the Glass-Steagall Act. After all, the Street is a major benefactor of Congress and the Street’s lobbyists and lackeys are all over Capitol Hill. The Street obviously detests the notion that its behemoths should be broken up. That’s why the idea isn’t even on the table. But it should be. No important public interest is served by allowing giant banks to grow too big to fail. Winding them down after they get into trouble is no answer. By then the damage will already have been done. Whether it’s using the antitrust laws or enacting a new Glass-Steagall Act, the Wall Street giants should be split up — and soon. Cross-posted from Robert Reich’s Blog.

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Fortune’s Stanley Bing: Plea$e, Mr. Feinberg! $ay it Ain’t $o!

October 22, 2009

So it’s finally coming down. The pay czar has studied the situation. Thought about it. And declared his intention to send a message. Pay for the top 175 executives at the financial institutions that took a bailout are to have their base pay cut by as much as 90%, and total comp by 50%. Seven companies will be affected. Their identities have not been announced, but I think we all know who they are. America has been waiting for quite some time to see some green blood in the water, and this move only begins to address the underlying rage our nation feels at Wall Street and its minions. Still, you have to feel a twinge of empathy for these 175 individuals who are the first to shoulder the blame for all that our financial institutions have done to screw up our economy. Thousands were involved, of course, but these 175 must stand in the forefront of their cadre, trembling, as their golden parachutes are folded up and put away, their ceremonial swords broken over the knee of the government. Think of the sacrifices that these few, unlucky individuals will have to bear! Here are just a few: — Significant and immediate cutbacks in philanthropic activity. — The new yacht will have to be cancelled. Last year’s model will have to do. — The private jet will have to go. At best a Netjet time share will fill in the gap, but it’s quite possible that from here on in some of these folks will have to fly commercial. That’s huge. — That third home in East Hampton or Malibu will be put on the block; some executives will even be down to just one primary residence. — No Easter break in St. Bart’s for the entire extended family, and the compound in Martha’s Vinyard will have to be leased out for the entire month of August. — Taxicabs instead of car and driver. While the occasional limo may be a possibility, waiting time is out of the question. — Some club memberships will have to be winnowed out, leaving perhaps only one golf and one beach and tennis club for the foreseeable future. — Support payments to former spouses will have to be renegotiated. Obviously, dire times call for dire measures. Whether the radical actions contemplated by the Federal Government are warranted, or are too much, too soon, has yet to be ascertained.

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I-many Promotes Lawrence Lindsey to Chief Development Officer

October 19, 2009

EDISON, NJ–(Marketwire – October 19, 2009) – I-many, Inc., the leading provider of Contract Lifecycle Management enterprise software and services, announced today its promotion of Lawrence Lindsey to Chief Development Officer at I-many. Mr. Lindsey has a proven track record at I-many in leading the Product Operations team for the last two and a half years. In his new role, Mr. Lindsey will drive product management, development, quality assurance, customer support and product release management for the entire I-many family of products.

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Commercial Doom And Gloom

October 10, 2009

Commercial real estate has been hard hit during the current property downfall, alongside the residential sector. The general outlook appears similar i. … Real Estate Article Two bills currently sit before Governor Schwarzenegger on the subject of loan modification in California. One would virtually cripple the industry and end the availability of assistance to distressed homeowners. The other would accomplish the stated. » Click Here to Read the Entire Article. …

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Commercial Doom And Gloom

October 10, 2009

Commercial real estate has been hard hit during the current property downfall, alongside the residential sector. The general outlook appears similar i. … Real Estate Article Two bills currently sit before Governor Schwarzenegger on the subject of loan modification in California. One would virtually cripple the industry and end the availability of assistance to distressed homeowners. The other would accomplish the stated. » Click Here to Read the Entire Article. …

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