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Judge Refuses To Block Indiana Law Stripping Funds For Planned Parenthood

by AP on May 11, 2011

Huffington Post…

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana won a key victory in its fight to cut off public funding for Planned Parenthood Wednesday when a federal judge refused to block a tough new abortion law from taking effect, a move that could boost Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels’ image among social conservatives as he considers running for president. U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt denied Planned Parenthood of Indiana’s request for a temporary restraining order despite arguments that the law jeopardizes health care for thousands of women. Planned Parenthood wanted to keep funds flowing while it challenges the law signed this week by Daniels. The judge’s decision allows the cuts to take effect immediately. Pratt said the state has not had enough time to respond to Planned Parenthood’s complaint and that the group did not show it would suffer irreparable harm without a temporary restraining order. A hearing was scheduled June 6 on the request for a preliminary injunction, and Pratt said she will rule on the matter before July 1, when new abortion restrictions included in the law are set to take effect. “We are deeply disappointed that the judge decided not to stop this unconscionable law from impacting Hoosiers seeking preventive, reproductive health care,” said Betty Cockrum, president of Planned Parenthood of Indiana, in a statement released Wednesday. “The ruling means that Hoosiers who rely on federal funding have lost access to their crucial and lifesaving preventive health care at Planned Parenthood of Indiana.” Sue Swayze, legislative director for Indiana Right to Life, said she was thrilled with the judge’s decision not to issue a temporary restraining order. “This isn’t about health care services,” she said. “This is about abortion.” The funding cuts are part of a new law that also bans abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy unless there is a substantial threat to the woman’s life or health. The law could improve Daniels’ status among social conservatives as he considers standing for president in 2012. Advocates are touting Indiana as the one of the most “pro-life states in the nation” and have praised Daniels for signing the law. The measure wasn’t part of Daniels’ legislative agenda and he didn’t advocate publicly for it. But he said he supported the abortion restrictions all along and that the move to defund Planned Parenthood hadn’t changed his mind. The bill was originally intended to cut all public funding, but Planned Parenthood of Indiana spokeswoman Kate Shepard said the state conceded in court Tuesday that some family planning funds would not be affected. The total amount of funding at issue now is about $1.4 million, Shepard said. Cockrum said Wednesday’s court ruling means that 9,300 Medicaid patients at Planned Parenthood’s 28 locations will lose services from their preferred provider. Planned Parenthood also said it will have to stop providing disease intervention services to hundreds of people in 22 counties. But state Sen. Scott Schneider, a Republican from Indianapolis who sponsored the measure to defund Planned Parenthood, said there are other clinics around the state that can provide health services. “The case made by Planned Parenthood is nothing more than a false alarm and their claims that women will go without health services are false,” Schneider said in a statement Wednesday. “Our new law will allow Planned Parenthood to continue to receive taxpayer funding if they simply stop performing abortions. The decision is now theirs to make.” Indiana’s law may also put the state at risk of losing $4 million a year in separate federal family planning grants. It also bans abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy unless there is a substantial threat to the woman’s life or health. That’s four weeks less than previously allowed. The abortion provisions would take effect July 1.

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Judge Refuses To Block Indiana Law Stripping Funds For Planned Parenthood

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Judge Rules Debt Agency Can’t Contact Woman Via Facebook

by AP on March 9, 2011

Huffington Post…

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — A Florida judge has ordered a debt collection agency to not use Facebook or any other social media site in an attempt to locate a woman over a $362 unpaid car loan. Judge W. Douglas Baird also ordered Mark One Financial LLC of Jacksonville, Fla. to refrain from contacting the woman’s family or friends on Facebook. The order is part of a lawsuit that Melanie Beacham filed last August against the debt collection agency. According to court documents, Beacham said Mark One sent messages to her and her family on the Facebook networking site to have her call the agency about the debt. Billy Howard, the woman’s attorney with the Morgan and Morgan law firm in Tampa, said the debt collectors violated Beacham’s privacy. He said they also violated a provision of Florida’s consumer protection law that prohibits debt collectors from harassing people. Howard said that in the past four months, nearly a dozen potential clients have contacted him because debt collectors have used social media sites to track them down. “It’s the beginning of an epidemic,” Howard said, calling it “another weapon” debt collectors can use. Beacham’s claims Mark One contacted her six to 10 times a day by phone, sent her a text message, contacted her neighbor and sent a courier to deliver a letter to her workplace, according to court documents. Mark One did not return a message Wednesday from The Associated Press. Last November, the agency said it would not discuss Beacham’s case and denied any wrongdoing. The company acknowledged that its collectors use Facebook to find people when they don’t respond to other means, like letters and phone calls. Social media experts and lawyers like Howard say that debt collectors are increasingly trying new tactics to contact people who owe money. In one Chicago case, a man was friended on Facebook by a young woman in a bikini. The account turned out to be a debt collector’s, something the man realized only when the “friend” posted a message on his wall: “Pay your debts, you deadbeat.”

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Judge Rules Debt Agency Can’t Contact Woman Via Facebook

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Kathleen E. Christensen: The False Choice: A Flexible Job or a Good Job?

February 13, 2011

Workplace flexibility: eighty percent of American employees say they want it, nearly half of job seekers rate it as a higher priority than salary, and thousands of companies have embraced it as an efficient way to keep employees happy and boost business productivity. But despite all this, there is still a widespread misconception that workplace flexibility is only appropriate to a certain type of job. A simple job, the thinking goes, can be accomplished by someone working off-site, or working non-traditional hours, or sharing a job with another part-time employee; but “serious jobs” still require rigid, traditional work schedules and set-ups. This line of thinking is epitomized by the dilemma facing a worker who wrote into The Wall Street Journal ‘s Ask The Juggle this week: The reader, a working mother, has an opportunity to step into a new job with her current employer that would allow her to work from home one or two days a week. The new job would give her flexibility to spend more time with her two young children….The problem is, the job isn’t that exciting, and she is overqualified for it. Taking it also wouldn’t help her resume much in any future job search… It’s not just working moms, but employees of all stripes who face this quandary: to take the flexible job or the good job? But it raises a more important question: why is this employee–clearly talented enough to hold a challenging position–only offered flexibility if she takes a worse job? Instead, why can’t she and her employer work together to find a way to make the job she has more flexible? The answer, of course, is that making a challenging job flexible is, well…challenging. But it’s not impossible. The pioneering employers who have won Alfred P. Sloan Awards for Business Excellence in Workplace Flexibility have shown that there are many different routes to workplace flexibility . Innovation in other countries has shown that even doctors, lawyers and business leaders stand to benefit from increased flexibility . As Sue Shellenbarger said in her thoughtful response to this reader, “most jobs require some sacrifices. Trade-offs like this are what make the juggle such a nonstop challenge. The right answer is different for everyone.” Perhaps working form home twice a week isn’t possible with this woman’s job. But maybe it is possible to shift when the work is done so that a spouse or other family member can be home when this mother is at work. Maybe it’s possible to let her share the job with another talented employee. Or maybe this mother and her employee need to come up with a completely new way to match this job with her life. The point is that every job, no matter how demanding or challenging, can be tweaked to make it more flexible. And, a wide array of research has shown that workers across the spectrum are more efficient when they have flexibility over how, when and where their work gets done. Perhaps the biggest misconception about workplace flexibility is that it means working less. It doesn’t. I have seen many examples of employees who get more work done when given flexibility in when, where and how they do their work. This isn’t about decreasing the number of hours someone works or giving them fewer responsibilities. It’s about customizing a job so that it fits with a life. Oftentimes this even means the employee works more. Almost always it means that they work better, are more engaged with their job, and less likely to leave the company. We need to move past this outdated image of a good worker as someone who has no life or family issues distracting them from work. A good worker is someone who figures out how to fit their job with their life and family responsibilities so that they are not distracted from either. Because of the many benefits it offers to both employees and employers, workplace flexibility is now included in the Department of Labor’s definition of a “good job.” Every business should make it possible for each employee to sit down with their manager and figure out how to make their job fit with their life. If they take the time to do this, they’ll end up with more productive employees and more efficient businesses. No talented employee should have to answer the question, “do I want a good job or do I want a flexible job?” Instead, each of us should be asking, “how do I make my good job a flexible job?”

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Robert Kuttner: Where’s the Protest at Home?

January 30, 2011

On Saturday, I crossed paths with a few hundred protesters marching from Cambridge to Boston to call for the resignation of Egyptian President Mubarak. By appearance, they were a mixture of Arab-Americans, locals, and people from assorted other backgrounds. The loud, peaceful march was almost startling, because you hardly see street protests in America these days, even in liberal Massachusetts. The Boston Globe quoted one Egyptian-American woman saying that middle class anger in Egypt has swelled with unemployment and inflation. “You can’t live a fairly decent life without being rich,” she said. In 2011, you might say the same about downwardly mobile America. But where are the protests in our country? Where is the leadership connecting the dots… between the financial meltdown, the record profits and bonuses on Wall Street, the continuing collapse of home equity, the joblessness, and the assault on public services in the name of budgetary prudence? For the moment, the small amount of citizen protest seems to belong to the Tea Parties. However, the Republican responses to President Obama’s State of the Union address showed a total vacuum of plausible remedies. Obama’s own address was a blend of this president at his best — invoking the aspirations that we share as Americans, some very nimble packaging of progressive themes in unassailable patriotic language — but combined with a fair amount of needless pandering to the right. As strategist Drew Westen parsed the speech at a recent conference of progressive Democratic legislators, some passages seized the political high ground and then defined it in a progressive way. We are the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices; the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers; of Google and Facebook. In America, innovation doesn’t just change our lives. It’s how we make a living. Our free-enterprise system is what drives innovation. But because it’s not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research, throughout history our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and inventors with the support that they need. That’s what planted the seeds for the Internet. That’s what helped make possible things like computer chips and GPS. ….. Our infrastructure used to be the best — but our lead has slipped. South Korean homes now have greater Internet access than we do. Countries in Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do. China is building faster trains and newer airports. Meanwhile, when our own engineers graded our nation’s infrastructure, they gave us a “D.” We have to do better. America is the nation that built the transcontinental railroad, brought electricity to rural communities, and constructed the interstate highway system. The jobs created by these projects didn’t just come from laying down tracks or pavement. They came from businesses that opened near a town’s new train station or the new off-ramp. Pitch perfect. What logically follows from the president’s invoking of the history of American prosperity is a call for more public investment in 21st century infrastructure. This is not in-your-face partisanship, but the astute marketing of a progressive message and ideology that contrasts radically with the conservative one. But then the president said this: Now that the worst of the recession is over, we have to confront the fact that our government spends more than it takes in. That is not sustainable. Every day, families sacrifice to live within their means. They deserve a government that does the same. So tonight, I am proposing that starting this year, we freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years. This would reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade and will bring discretionary spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president. This freeze will require painful cuts. Already, we have frozen the salaries of hard-working federal employees for the next two years. I’ve proposed cuts to things I care deeply about, like community action programs. My friend Westen was incredulous. Why would a Democrat give aid and comfort to a right wing ideology that is also wrongheaded economics? Why sacrifice Medicaid and programs for kids for the sins of the bankers? Why add fuel to the right’s attack on public employees? People watching the speech rightly wondered: How do you freeze domestic spending — and also dramatically increase outlay on 21st Century infrastructure? How do you win public support for more desperately needed public investment when you brag that you will reduce domestic spending to its lowest share of the economy since the Eisenhower years? In the 2008 election, people with incomes of under $50,000 supported Obama and the Democrats by wide margins. But the kind of mixed messaging in the president’s State of the Union address reinforces political anomalies such as the 2010 mid-term election, where white working class voters supported Republican House and Senate candidates by a staggering margin of 30 points. The administration’s mixed signals on aid to Wall Street are so potent that in the 2010 election, a majority of voters who blamed the collapse on Wall Street nonetheless voted for a Republican candidate for Congress. On January 17, the New York Times published a letter to the editor from a woman named Susan Kross, of upstate New York, praising governors for “reining in labor unions.” The shocker was her concluding paragraph. She wrote, “I was reared on a family farm where pennies were always pinched, every day was a workday, and there was no such thing as a pension or vacations, let alone paid ones.” Such is the state of ideological muddle and confused self-interest that a hard working rural, middle-class American could disdain pensions and paid vacations as unnecessary luxuries too good for working people. This woman’s family farm, if it has truly been in her family for generations, probably survived thanks to the New Deal. She gets her crops to market thanks to government-subsidized highways, and uses modern farming methods thanks to USDA. Her parents and grandparents, who benefited from Social Security, most likely did not share her contempt for pensions and paid vacations. This moment cries out for a combination of clear leadership and mass protest. The protesters shaking the foundations of despotic regimes in the Middle East are a blend of people who want radical Islam in temporary coalition with those who want western-style tolerance, democracy, and a semblance of honest and competent government. They are united only by their disgust with the corrupt status quo. But you have to admire them for acting on their frustrations. This wave of citizen protest is a reminder that insurgent moments can break out and spread with little warning. But you never know whether a genuine revolution from below leads to a Jefferson, a Mandela, a Havel, a Roosevelt — or a Hitler, Mussolini, or in current circumstances radical Islamists who reject everything secular, tolerant, and democratic about the Enlightenment. The United States may possess more than half of the world’s arms, but it is powerless to control this kind of popular uprising. As protest spreads and regimes that America propped up are toppled, we don’t know whether the successor governments will be pluralist Muslim democracies like Turkey and Indonesia, radical fundamentalist states like Iran, or military dictatorships. But half a century of American investment in strongmen like Mubarak to contain popular unrest is collapsing along with his regime, and US influence in the Middle East is very likely to decline. President Obama took office with more good will in the Middle East than any recent president, just as he kindled a new generation of hope at home. It remains to be seen whether his administration can credibly identify the United States with the aspirations of hundreds of millions of ordinary Arabs, and thereby nudge a turbulent region in the direction of tolerant democracy rather than fundamentalist rage. It also remains to be seen whether Obama can finally be the ally of drastic reform at home. If not, the domestic rage about the economy will continue to belong to the far right. It’s great to see Americans demonstrating in solidarity with ordinary Egyptians. But the next time I cross paths with a robust protest march, I’d like to see citizens protesting the wreckage of American prosperity by Wall Street and the too feeble response by our government. Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos. His latest book is A Presidency in Peril .

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Dennis Whittle: Art at a Distance

January 7, 2011

“Several hundred people attend our openings over the web.” That is what a woman at Robert Lange Studios

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eBay User Turns Tables On Scammer With Great Trick, Serves Up Justice

December 16, 2010

Gizmodo flags this excellent and hilarious post on Reddit in which user BadgerMatt tells how he turned the tables on a woman who bought sports tickets from him on eBay for $600 and then refused to pay, claiming that she “overbid and my husband won’t let me buy these.” BadgerMatt was then unable to sell the tickets to people who had made lower bids, so he used a technique called the ” glim-dropper ” to trick the woman into paying what she owed. I created a new eBay account, “Payback” we’ll call it, and sent her a message: “Hi there, I noticed you won an auction for 4 [sporting event] tickets. I meant to bid on these but couldn’t get to a computer. I wanted to take my son and dad and would be willing to give you $1,000 for the tickets. I imagine that you’ve already made plans to attend, but I figured it was worth a shot.” At 11:30pm she responded to Payback: “I’ll do it for $1,100, no less. I can meet you at the game if you agree. I need your phone number.” At 11:35pm, Payback wrote: “Deal. Here is my number…” (Thanks Google Voice for the throwaway number). She called a few minutes later and made Payback “promise” to go through with the deal. She emphasized that she’d be out a lot of money if Payback backed out. Payback swore he would never do such a thing. At 11:45pm, the woman emailed me: “Fine. I’ll buy them. But you have to drop them off at my house tonight. I’ll have the cash ready.” So at fucking midnight I drove to her house across town and met her on the road in front of her apartment building. She was a nasty and rude individual. Things didn’t get any better when I told her I wanted an extra $20 for the trouble of driving there at midnight (yeah, pushing my luck, I know). It became very awkward and she literally threw 31 $20 bills at me. I counted them before handing over the tickets. I said, “thanks for the great transaction” as she flipped me off while walking away. At 10:00am she called Payback to make sure they were still on for the exchange. Payback said that he could no longer go to the game and wouldn’t be able to do the exchange. She blew her fucking top and I swear to god started speaking in tongues. Payback said, “Ma’am, this is eBay, not a car dealership” and hung up. I got a rabid email 10 minutes later telling me that I was going to hell and that she’s reported me to the local police, FBI, and… the fire department. WTF? She knew she’d been had and sent him an unhinged and profanity-laden email threatening him. He reprints the email in his Reddit post. It is well-worth reading. BadgerMatt wonders if he did the right thing. We think justice was served. What do you think?

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Republicans Criticizing Elizabeth Warren’s Lack Of Transparency Had No Problems With Dick Cheney

November 24, 2010

Recently enough that you may still recall it, a secretive, paranoid man who had previously headed a major multinational energy company found himself vice president of the United States. This man deliberated privately with the heads of major oil companies as his administration set up a new energy policy that, perhaps coincidentally, wound up being strikingly generous to oil companies. The same man played a crucial role in leading the nation into a disastrous and costly war in a country that — again, perhaps coincidentally — held the world’s second-largest oil reserves. When, at the time, a few annoying sticklers for detail suggested there were problems with this flavor of policymaking, that perhaps it would have been better to hold deliberations in public so that people other than the heads of giant energy companies could have a say in the nation’s handling of energy, they were derided by this man and members of his party as naive and idealistic. Why clutter up the proceedings with citizens, journalists and other nudges who do not know how to get oil out of the ground? Leave things to the experts, we were told. So it is nothing short of astonishing to absorb the current spectacle. Republican members of the House — the same people who defended national troglodyte Dick Cheney in his effort to block public scrutiny on oil policy — are now criticizing the way Elizabeth Warren is making preparations for a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as if it were some sinister plot to destroy the republic. The White House’s appointment of Warren “circumvented the advice-and-consent process and undermined one of the key checks and balances in our Constitution,” declared Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, and Rep. Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) in a letter addressed Monday to the inspector general at the Treasury. “Treasury Department officials have provided little or no transparency with respect to their activities such as which organizations are meeting with Treasury officials.” Far be it from anyone to defend the Obama Treasury against charges that it lacks transparency. From its handling of its feckless homeowner-aid program, sold as a fix to the foreclosure crisis, to its administering of the Wall Street bailouts begun by its predecessors, this Treasury has been a maddening and combative model of misinformation, evasion and outright dishonesty. Again and again, it has sided with Wall Street over the public’s right to know, protecting Goldman Sachs and Bank of America in much the same way Dick Cheney lavished his nurturing ways on Halliburton and Exxon. But this idea that Republicans in Congress are now pursuing the public interest in challenging Warren’s authority, trying to derail her devious plot to make the world safe for people with credit cards and bank accounts, is nothing short of hilarious. It is a brazen exercise in what regular people call balls, one that must be admired for its sheer, breathtaking nature. Vice President Cheney, you will recall, had previously run Halliburton, a company that makes its money helping multinational energy firms extract more precious black liquid from the earth. This gave him an Oklahoma-sized conflict of interest when it came to deliberating on energy policy. It was fair to assume he would not be a particularly aggressive proponent of tighter energy-efficiency standards or an advocate for capping carbon emissions to limit climate change. He also played a central role in the nation’s national-security apparatus just as the deliberations — and perhaps that is a generous word — commenced on the ultimately horrible decision to invade Iraq. Cheney not only had personal truck with the heads of the oil majors, a clubby relationship with people who had every financial incentive to push for greater consumption of oil, but also the reasonable expectation of financial enrichment himself on the other side. Much as Larry Summers and Robert Rubin used their time at the Clinton Treasury to open up fresh profit-making opportunities for high finance in ways contrary to the public interest before landing on Wall Street, where they made enough to live like Maharajahs, Cheney could certainly have set himself up for a lucrative return trip to the oil patch. In short, the less-than-transparent way he handled energy policy could reasonably have been expected to hide some sweet goodies for powerful companies whose interest might have deviated from the public’s. Elizabeth Warren, the woman tasked with creating the CFPB, on the other hand, is a longtime law professor, an author of respected books on the breakdown of the American middle class, and a darling of consumer advocates. Are Republicans suggesting that she is using her current position to set up a consumer protection bureau that is so to the liking of consumer advocates that she could some day cash in with a plum job at, say, the National Consumer Law Center? Are they intimating that she stands to benefit in some way by using her new agency to damage the public interest? And how to square the Republican demands to know where she is drawing counsel with the Bush administration’s stonewalling on efforts to glean Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson’s conversational partners as he was crafting plans to send $700 billion in bailout funds to his old compadres on Wall Street? In the most generous reading, the Republicans really believe the rhetoric in their broadside and are clinging to a cultish reverence for free markets, one so extreme that they are adamant that the same bankers who brought the economy to its knees should enjoy the freedom to try it again. But don’t bet on that reading. The demands for transparency from a party that has only recently regained an appreciation for constitutional jurisprudence is merely the latest example of its oppose-everything mantra, a dynamic we are stuck with right up until the next presidential election. It is a cynical ploy premised on the belief that American memories run short — so short that we have already forgotten how today’s ardent protectors of due process are the same people who allowed Dick Cheney to run energy policy like an elaborate Christmas morning for oil companies.

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Douglas M. Branson: Women CEOs in the Fortune 500 — A Single Step Forward, Four Steps Back

November 18, 2010

My book, The Last Male Bastion – Gender and the CEO Suite at America’s Public Companies (Routledge 2010), appeared just last March. The book featured profiles of the 21 women who actually have reached the corner officer at large U.S. public companies, including references to the 22nd (Ursula Burns at Xerox). Ms. Burns took office after the manuscript had gone to print. There have been several twists and turns since that time, with the overall effect being a distinct setback. The total number of women CEOs has fallen, from 15, or 3% of the Fortune 500, which represented the high point, to 12, then in September back up to 13, then most recently back to 12, or 2.4%, where it now rests. When in 2009 Ursula Burns took office it was a historic moment, not because the number of women in office had reached a new high. It hadn’t: Burns replaced another woman, Anne Mulcahy, who had been Xerox’s CEO since 2002. The female CEO number stayed at 15. What was historic was that Ms. Burns became our first African American woman CEO. Very rapidly, though, three women CEOs resigned their positions. Mary Sammons, CEO of Rite Aid, Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, resigned, perhaps be she was tired. Once a high flier in the 1990s stock market, Rite Aid has fallen further and further behind the industry leaders, CVS and Walgreens. For a time the stock has flirted with a price under $1.00, which could mean delisting from the New York Stock Exchange. Sammons and her team seemed never able to pull the company out of its tail spin. Christina Gold, CEO of Western Union, re-located to outside Denver, stepped down later this spring. She simply retired. Then, in early summer came word that Brenda Barnes, CEO of Sara Lee, Downer’s Grove, Illinois, herself a widely publicized corporate CEO, had a severe stroke in her mid-50s. In June she took a leave of absence, followed in August by her resignation. Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts (KKR), the buyout firm has expressed interest in acquiring Sara Lee and taking the company private but, initially at least, Sara Lee’s management rejected the overtures. So, quite rapidly, the number of women CEOs had dropped from 15 to 12. The number rebounded slightly in late September when Campbell’s Soup, of Camden, New Jersey, announced the selection of Denise Morrison as CEO, succeeding Douglas R. Conant. Ms. Morrison is a food industry veteran, who rose through jobs at Proctor & Gamble, Pepsico, Nestle S.A., Nabisco, and Kraft Foods, before joining Campbell’s. She also evidences a common pattern of women who have made it to the top. They side stepped from one company to another, often several times in their careers, before they reached senior management. Only Anne Mulcahy at Xerox and Susan Ivey at Reynolds America are female CEOs who spent most all of their careers with a single company. The number of women on corporate boards of directors in the U.S. has been basically flat for 5 years now, according to Catalyst, the leading women’s advocacy organization. Catalyst, too, inflates the number, counting the number of directorships which are held by women as the number of female directors. The latter number is significantly less, as numbers of women, many of them prominent, allow themselves to be token, or corporate governance ornaments, serving on 4, 5, 6 or 7 corporate boards. The number of women trophy directors has rapidly increased as of late whereas the species has all but disappeared among men. Then, most recently, in late October, 2010, Susan Ivey at Reynolds America announced her retirement from the CEO position. Her stepping down is quite confounding, as she is only 51 and her leadership at RAI has been unparalleled. She led the company into smokeless tobacco, where future growth will be. She resurrected defunct premium brands, marketing them with premium panache but non-premium prices. The stock’s price hovers near an all-time high and the dividends are robust, to say the least. So, in the immediate year almost past, we have had one new appointment (Morrison) and four resignations (Sammons, Gold, Barnes and Ivey); one step forward, four steps back.

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Modigliani’s $68.9 Million Woman Auctioned At Sotheby’s

November 7, 2010

The auction season is off to a solid start at Sotheby’s where works by Amedeo Modigliani, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso were up for auction. Although the works for auction were largely considered mediocre or inferior examples by these famous names, it was a record-breaking auction and shows art’s steady recovery. Modigliani’s 1917 portrait “Nude Sitting on a Divan (The Beautiful Roman Woman),” a seductive painting of a nude woman, was sold for $68.9 million, well above the estimated price and a new record for the artist. Like several other works up for auction, the Modigliani has previously been on the market in recent years, sold by Sotheby’s in 1999 for $16.7 million (a record for the artist at the time). The painting, described in the catalogue as a “post-coital rendering,” was sold early on in the sale and got the auction off to an excited start. A water lilies painting by Monet sold for $25.7 million. It was one of two works sold by Marilyn Arison, wife of late billionaire Ted Arison, who sold the works to benefit the nonprofit YoungArts. The couple bought the painting for $9.9 million in 1998. Several works by Matisse were also up for auction. His “Dancer in an Armchair With a Checkered Floor” sold for $20.8million. It has also been sold recently, in 2000 for $7.4 million and 2007 for $21.7 million. Another work by Matisse, a bronze called “Deux Negresses” was sold for $8.4 million. Another Matisse painting, a portrait of model Titine Trovato failed to sell with an estimate of $8 million. (It also failed to sell at a Sotheby’s auction in 2008 with an estimate of $18 million.) It was not such a good night for Picasso, whose “Man With a Flag,” 1969, sold for $5.3 million, which was the lower end of the estimated sale price. A second work, “Man and Woman With a Bouquet”, 1970, went unsold. In the end, the auction totaled $227.6 million, which was in the middle of the estimated total sales price. The sale included 61 lots, a quarter of which went unsold, including works by Francis Picabia, Joan Miro, Picasso and Matisse. While the auction has been deemed a success, many agree the sales were sensible with average or overpriced works not faring well. Rory Howard, a private art dealer from London, was quoted in the New York Times referencing the appeal of the big names for sale at more reasonable prices: “It’s designer brands for new buyers. Art as fashion.”

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Caroline Simard: Women in Leadership and the Glass Cliff

October 30, 2010

As the mid-term elections draw near, I have been following with interest the large number of female candidates and political influencers. Forbes ‘ ” Top 25 women political influencers ” include women from the left and the right. Whether I agree with the politics of these female candidates or not, and whether I would vote for them or not, I applaud that more women are running and getting their voices heard, and serving as role models for the next generation. While women heads of state are still a rarity, the field of politics has made some progress in gender representation considering that women only got the right to vote 90 years ago — a fact that will never cease to amaze me, considering how my generation has always taken this right for granted). As more women assume leadership positions, we however have to be aware of a very real and very damaging form of potential bias against women candidates: the Glass Cliff. This body of research shows that women are more likely to be chosen for leadership positions when the position itself is precarious — that is, when the risk of failure is high. This phenomenon, coined by academics Alex Haslam, Michelle Ryan, and their colleagues, shows that when a job description entails an organization or group in “crisis,” individuals are more likely to choose a woman for that position: in this article , Haslam says his research shows “There seems to be an unwritten law that says ‘think female, think crisis…’ If a company is doing well, then the ‘jobs for the boys’ rules still apply, but if it is in trouble, no man wants to give the job to their friends it seems, so for many the answer is to get in a woman.” Indeed, their research has shown that in both the board room and politics, women are more likely to be put forth for those precarious positions — the situations where success is unattainable. Back to politics, perhaps the best example of a Glass Cliff political appointment was Kim Campbell. I am not sure anyone remembers, but Canada did have a woman head of state… for 132 days. Kim Campbell was the 19th Prime Minister of Canada, and lasted 4 months in the job. After 9 years as Prime Minister, in 1993 Conservative Party lead Brian Mulroney was facing supremely low approval ratings, and the discontent for his party was high. His party was facing an almost assured loss in the upcoming general elections. Mulroney resigned, knowing he couldn’t lead his party to victory. Many thought the party would then elect up-and-coming candidate Jean Charest; instead, the party picked Defense Minister (and inexperienced campaigner) Kim Campbell. Campbell became de-facto Premier upon Mulroney’s resignation and led her party into the mandated general election 4 months later, which saw the liberals take control of the country and of a record number of seats lost for the conservatives. After Campbell’s ouster on the heels of this humiliating defeat, party leadership was then handed over to Jean Charest, who had in effect been spared being identified with the humiliating defeat of the elections. At the time in my twenties and living in Canada, I was not a conservative voter but I was embarrassed that our only ever woman head of state would have been associated with such a dismal failure (4 months in office!). When I read the Glass Cliff research a few years ago, I immediately thought of Campbell. Do people always pick the woman candidate when the situation is dismal? No. If this were the case, Hilary Clinton would have been ensured the presidency two years ago, inheriting a mess of epic proportions. (An interesting point is that researchers suggest that the glass cliff phenomenon applies not only to women but other minority groups — in the case of the race for the Democratic nomination, two minority candidates were vying for the post (Clinton and Obama)). Regardless, this body of research is critical for people to be aware of — in politics and in companies, genuine efforts to advance more women in leadership positions can backfire if women are being chosen for precarious projects. In our own work with women in high-technology, women in senior leadership positions often discuss how they are consistently given the “messy”, under-resourced, “clean up” projects. One research report also finds that there is a greater price to pay for women who fail under such conditions. In your experience, are women more likely to be picked for leadership positions that involve messy, high-risk projects? Do you think this will influence people’s votes on Tuesday?

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Donna Flagg: Why Dressing for Business Should Not Resemble a Visit to a Sex Club

October 19, 2010

This story gets worse by the minute. One more word from Ines Sainz and I think my head might explode. Just last week, she was once again in the press and making no sense. Actually, she was defending her appearance and her right to dress like a bimbo by saying, “I like to look good, but that in no way makes me any less dedicated to the sports journalism world … I’m proud of being a woman and I’m not shy about hiding it. However, this in no way makes me any less of a professional.” Uh, yes, Ines. Yes, it absolutely does. That’s the whole point. The fact that she dresses like she works in a night club (when she doesn’t) and thinks it’s not only okay, but appropriate, is exactly what makes her “less of a professional.” No one in the business world says we need to hide that we are women, at least not that I know of. But, let’s face it. Boobs all up in everyone’s face and pants painted on in no way help the general public register the extent to which one belongs to the female gender, or not. The other thing that utterly escapes me is her proclamation that she will no longer enter the locker rooms due to this whole scandalous mess with the big bad Jets. Ahem. Isn’t that her job? Isn’t that the job of every sportscaster who interviews athletes? What makes her think that dressing like a floozy excuses her from the basic core function of her role? I mean, could this get anymore screwed up? Who decides for themselves, within an organization the size of the NFL, that they will be the exception to the rules by which everyone else plays? We call that a bonafide qualification (BFOQ) of the job and if you can’t do it, then you can’t do the job. Over and out. It’s like your average, everyday person saying to his or her boss, “I’m not doing my weekly reports anymore. Tough nuggies.” Is she joking? Granted, she is a smokin’ hot sportscaster … and by the looks of the way she walks around, she knows it and she needs the rest of the world to know it too. Still, it was the Jets who got dinged for making her feel uncomfortable? Gimme a break. An article in The Daily News shortly after the “incident” quoted Sainz as saying that the reason she was no longer going to go into the locker rooms was because she didn’t want to “be the focus.” Bulls**t. Has anyone actually seen what this woman wears to work? It’s laughable. I mean that, in a Jessica Rabbit caricature sort of way. Then we had the Jets whose coach offered a personal and genuine apology and I’m left asking, “What is wrong with this picture?” It is not she who owes the Jets an apology for walking into their locker room, of all places, so scantily clad? Here we have everyone tiptoeing around poor Ms. Sainz’s sensibilities and defending her right as a woman to sexualize herself and dress any way she damn well pleases, in the name of what? Feminism? Please. That’s the same argument they make in the sex and prostitution industries, which I suppose goes precisely to the heart of the matter. Dressing for sex in a sex club is totally appropriate. Not so in spectator sports, however. I’m sorry, in business life, being judged on what you wear and how you present yourself is a reality to which everyone is subjected, Ms. Sainz and her revealing, suggestive, man-teasing outfits not withstanding. Presumably, we all go to work to get paid for the job we’ve been hired to do, women and men alike. Imagine if a man came to work in a Speedo all greased up and muscular. People would wonder. And not only that, he would be told to put some clothes on. A wise woman once told me that it was best to be attractive, but not attracting, when dressing professionally for work. What a simple and profound concept it was. Perhaps a tidbit Ms. Sainz might like to take to heart. There is a subtle, but significant difference. Sexing it up versus being pleasant to look at tell two very different stories about a woman. Women do, and will continue, to get a bad rap when they appear as though they are trying to attract, and therefore manipulate, men by exploiting their “assets.” Whether they actually are or not is irrelevant. It’s the impression they make and an inescapable one at that. Sorry girls, slutty just does not fly if you want to be taken seriously. Image: iStockphoto

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Antonio Garcia-Martinez: Pseudorandomness, Or How I Got Into Y Combinator and Had a Child With a Woman I Barely Knew, Almost Simultaneously

October 8, 2010

Forms, forms, everywhere are forms Filling out an online form can change your life. I filled out two such forms. One was an online dating profile at Match.com around June 2009. The second was the application to Y Combinator in February 2010 1 . Little did I know then how these two forms would guiltily conspire to change everything. Guitar Strings in Half Moon Bay [ February 21, 2010 | 10:36 AM] 2 Sunday morning phone calls often have far-reaching implications. Anything that interrupts a matinal sabbath repose is bound to stir things up. It was Matt McEachen calling about guitar strings, and his inability to find any in the small ocean-side village he resided in. We start an idea katamari 3 and roll it everywhere, picking up just about every piece of local search, social media, marketing and technology we know about. The end result is a crazy scheme to turn local shopping on its head by joining backend inventory control (think small-business Quickbooks) with front-end Web shopping databases (like Google shopping). Our ball of ideas grows bigger than us, and rapidly gets its own momentum. Our startup baby needs a midwife. We’re filling out an application to Y Combinator the day before the deadline. My co-founders are unconvinced as to the wisdom of this. We had real jobs. The money on offer was paltry. The equity taken was large. The idea so vague and ill-formed it might just vanish like smoke in a breeze. I’m a sucker for a fine prose style, so I print out and give a copy of this essay to both. That essay is the gateway drug of startups, it is entrepreneurship crack and meth rolled into one 4 . The co-founders are convinced. We submit the written portion of the application. Love on the installment plan [ June 5, 2009 ] Match.com conversation turns into a first date. First date followed by a random run-in at the boatyard. Her ex-boyfriend is there too, and we make friends. Random run-in turns into a dumping. It’s too weird I know her ex-boyfriend. Dumping turns into ambiguous opera outing with date and her friend. Opera outing followed by brunch at her place. Brunch leads to dinner. Dinner leads to a pornographic scene on her kitchen counter. Mayhem breeds more mayhem. And now she’s pregnant. Present at the creation [ February 17, 2010 | 1145 PM ] All that remained was a one-minute video presenting ourselves and what we wanted to do 5 . I was in the initial throes of a Joaquin Phoenix-esque descent into anti-social malaise, whose principal expression was the growth of a truly Fidel Castro-sized beard. The thought did occur that I might look like an uncouth barbarian. Screw it, YC would get me beard and all. As in almost every YC activity, the challenge with the video was to distill down a lot of complex stuff to impossibly short time constraints 6 . By 11:50 PM I had it down to a minute and ten seconds. I go to email it to Posterous 7 to discover Gmail has a 30GB email limit. More editing, at lower resolution, and by 12:30 we have a video (deadline was at midnight). A miss is as good as a mile. ESPN, Maxim, and a No. 2 hair clipper. [March 6, 2010 | 11:34 AM ] The Razor’s Edge in Alameda is a wormhole in spacetime to the American 1950s. Girlie mags on the racks, ESPN on the TV, and an old, crusty barber who’ll crack racist jokes or discuss auto repair with equal panache. I tell him to do something interesting with my Yeti’s beard, and he sets to work with razor and scissor. He fancies me a thick goatee and thin moustache. I look like I just got released from either San Quentin or trucker’s school. Si quieres hacer reír a Dios, cuéntale tus planes 8 [ March 7, 2010 | 8:35 PM] If you had been standing on the corner of Broadway and MacArthur in Oakland the night of March 7, 2010, you would have seen a curious sight. A heavily pregnant woman, bent over in pain and scarcely able to walk, was being half-carried, half-dragged across the street by a tall, goateed man. The woman could barely stand, and needed to pause and cling to either the man, or any fixed object, to support herself as they struggled across the last couple hundred feet. Every twenty feet or so, the woman would double over and gasp in pain, bringing everything to a halt. The man was simultaneously trying to check for traffic, keep his female companion from collapsing, keep in tow a large hastily-packed suitcase, and navigate the whole lurching ensemble toward the emergency room door. That goateed man, gentle reader, was me. The woman was a former City of London derivatives trader. She was 37 weeks pregnant. We had known each other for 39 weeks. James Brown and Mr. Limpy [March 21, 2010 | 4:00 PM ] Two hours before we’re due in Mountain View, over thirty miles away, we decide to do our first end-to-end test of the system, entering a UPC code, extracting product information, and generating a product page. Our test product thus far had been Mr. Limpy, an imposingly large rubber phallus, the sort of gag gift you buy for a bachelorette party (or God knows what), and it had worked astonishingly well so far. That wouldn’t do for the Y Combinator pitch for obvious reasons. Argyris is an indie-music junkie, and was still anchoring an evening spot at KZSU, Stanford’s student radio station. I start rifling through one of his mountains of CDs and trying them one by one. No dice. They’re all weird, niche bands even Amazon hasn’t ever heard of. I flip quickly through the entire pile, trying to find the most mainstream thing imaginable. James Brown’s ‘In the Jungle Groove’ flashes by, and I try it. Amazon recognizes it, and returns a cover photo and product description. We’re golden. I carefully make sure no user has Mr. Limpy 9 in their product database, and we pile into Argyris’ VW beetle for the drive down to Mountain View. Along the way, I pull out, what else?, the James Brown CD and we listen to ‘Sex Machine’ as we barrel along the 101. Argyris and I agree that if we get funded, we’re declaring the Godfather of Soul our official patron saint. St. James of Augusta would see our company through. Mucosal plug 10 [ March 7, 2010 | 9:30 PM ] Amanda passed out on a gurney and began bleeding profusely. I watched with increasing alarm as red streaks traced bloody spiderwebs across her thighs. The nurses milled around like bored bureaucrats at a foreign post office, and talked about paperwork and the weather. The milestones of birthing are measured in centimeters. Seven centimeters dilated; too late for anesthesia, too late for fashionable breathing exercises. It was show time. I invite anyone with a philosophical bent to witness a human birth and observe as unstoppable forces meet immovable objects, with neither yielding. Modern medicine does little to resolve this paradox made flesh. The only real difference between the bloody, screaming tableau before me and that of, say, my grandmother’s birth a century ago in rural northern Spain, by candlelight, in some country home, were the little plastic packets of mineral oil, like the salad dressing at a Denny’s, that nurses would regularly crack open and pour over the heaving, tumescent mass down south 11 . It was a sweaty, white-knuckle affair shattered by piercing shrieks of pain that resonated across the maternity ward, and which the heavy institutional doors the nurses slammed shut did little to stifle. I quietly entertained Mad Men -esque bouts of nostalgia for an unknown time when men simply paced nervously and smoked in some other room while the dirty business was done elsewhere. After two hours of battle, old flesh yielded bloodily to new, and Zoë Ayala came into the world. As some sort of perverse parting gift, I was given the honor of cutting the umbilical cord. As thick as a man’s finger, and a sort of pus-like yellow film over a deep purple core, it yielded to my snipping with a pair of small scissors, making a satisfying ‘snap’ as I sheared the last fleshy connection between mother and child. Zoë wailed mightily. The nurse plopped her on a stainless steel scale, topped by two infrared heating lamps, like the french fry station at a McDonald’s. Length and weight taken, she used a thick, cotton blanket like a tortilla and wrapped up Zoë. She put the baby burrito in my arms. For the first time, Zoë settled, the tight swaddling fooling her into thinking, for a few minutes, that she was back in the warm embrace of a mother’s womb. She looked unbelievably small and frail and unready for a cold, hard world. Shake your moneymaker [March 21, 2010 | 3:45 PM ] So there I was looking like Captain Morgan 12 with Argyris and Matthew and the partners of YC. There was a large and official-looking clock, like something you see poolside at the Olympic swimming competition, to the left of the desk by Jessica. It read “10:00″ and started counting down immediately. Paul Graham demolished immediately whatever premise we had of a demo script by greeting us with my application sound bite: “so, you’re creating the Charles Schwab of local product marketing…” What followed was a meandering rough-and-tumble debate about local search. Trevor would chime in with a tough question, McEachen would begin to respond, but not before Paul jumped in with another, which Argyris would field. I would chip in on one of the going threads, but not before another one started. It was all over much too soon. We came out of the demo and, to a man, thought we had completely blown it. We were heartened somewhat when Paul Graham chased us out the door to ask us a follow-up question, then immediately disheartened again when we pitched the idea to a YC alum who was milling about 13 . We decided to go to the Rose and Crown in Palo Alto to drown the worries. Before we had managed to order the first round, we had a phone call from Paul Graham offering to back us, which we accepted after a bit of discussion 14 . Back at home that night, after all the excitement, Zoë slept in her cocoon of blankets, and took no notice of the idea that had just been birthed alongside of her. The two applications aren’t unrelated, even in content. One of the Y Combinator questions asked you to name one non-computer system that you’d hacked in some interesting way. My answer concerned a man-in-the-middle attack I once did on Craigslist personals. I placed an ad as a woman seeking a man, and as a man seeking a woman, and then simply crossed the email streams by forwarding mail from one to the other, and vice versa. Most Craigslist personals didn’t even have photos back then, so the switch went undetected, even after the couples had met. I handed off the relationship by telling one that the other’s email address had changed, from my fake one to the real one, and likewise vice versa. For all I know, those couples are still together and having kids. They probably don’t know to this day what happened or what brought them together. [ ↩ ] The date and time are my lame way of juxtaposing two convoluted processes which evolved on different time scales, but culminated around the same time. Another way to think about these is like the computerized timestamp that adorns the first few seconds of a cutaway scene in every Jason Borne or Tom Clancy film ever made. You know, “Cairo: 0345 GMT”, in the lower right hand corner, in green monochrome typeset, complete with beep-y computer noises. [ ↩ ] If the concept is foreign to you, check out this. It’s basically a massive ball of disparate stuff. The Japanese invented a quirky and strangely addictive video game of the same name, in which you roll this ball all over the earth. The end result is you have this immense, lurching ball, with everything from cows to a tractor sucked into it, being rolled over hill and dale. You have to see it to understand it. Being slightly drunk helps. [ ↩ ] For more fine startup erotica, check out Jessica Livingston’s Founders at Work . Paul Graham’s chapter is especially good. [ ↩ ] Don’t do as we did and wing it. PG has said more than once that if there was one thing in the application he would keep at the expense of everything else, it’s the video. So get it right. [ ↩ ] The final climactic demo is now down to two and a half minutes. 2.5 minutes! I couldn’t really explain how a salt shaker works in that time, much less how we’ve built the future of online marketing. Tough. Get used to it, entrepreneur. Everyone else is in the same jam. [ ↩ ] Another YC quirk: any piece of YC administrative or technical machinery will use a YC company’s product, if possible. It’s a product patriotism verging on extremism. The day PG funds an airline startup, you can be sure that’s the only thing he’ll ever fly again, and he’ll expect you to do the same. I fully expect PG to use AdGrok if he ever advertises anything. [ ↩ ] A Mexican proverb which translates as: if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans. The Old Bugger must have had a chuckle over this one. [ ↩ ] To be fair, I’m probably guilty of introducing Mr. Limpy into the AdGrok memepool. The idea was a sort of negative reinforcement anti-prize: if you broke the code build, or did something amusingly and uniquely stupid, you’d win the Limpy Prize for that week. Ideally, the prize would be gifted in a Godfather-esque scene, whereby the guilty hacker would suddenly find a disembodied phallus inside a drawer or under some papers on their desk, and they’d clutch at it madly while screaming at the top of their lungs. The reality of course was that we each would have earned a Limpy prize four or five times over during those early days of development. [ ↩ ] You don’t want to know what that is. Really. [ ↩ ] The oil was a lubricant to get the head through at the final moment, when it looked like the birth was really hitting the apex of improbability. [ ↩ ] The ‘Captain Morgan’ was the moniker bestowed by Paul on our first official meeting, once YC started. Evidently, he expected me to keep that ridiculous piece of facial hair. The disappointment with which its disappearance was met made us all kind of think that the crazy goatee might have been why he funded us. This is the same meeting where he talked us out of the idea he we pitched at the demo. AdGrok, in current form, is actually plan ‘J’. [ ↩ ] YC alums typically hang around on pitch day, to put aspiring YCers through their paces and give them some advice on their pitches. The idea is to quiet anxieties. This one, intentionally or no, did exactly the opposite. [ ↩ ] Note, Paul kind of expects an answer immediately, and our hemming and hawing was in poor form. So make up your minds beforehand [ ↩ ]

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William Lazonick: High Health Care Costs Emanate From Business, Not Government

September 23, 2010

At one of the town hall meetings that preceded the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), President Barack Obama read an exhortation from a woman enrolled in Medicare: “I don’t want government-run health care. I don’t want socialized medicine. And don’t touch my Medicare.’” This woman should perhaps now count herself fortunate that the ACA is law. She will be eligible for preventive health care with no out-of-pocket expenses as part of an ACA program that will save tens of thousands of lives per year and generate huge health care savings. Long before the passage of the law, the government was highly involved in the US health care system. In 2008 public expenditure on health care was $3,507 for every man, woman and child in the U.S., and private expenditure was $4,031. The United States spends far more on health care than any other country, but the main discrepancy is in private spending, not public spending. Compared with France for example, in 2008 US public expenditures per capita were 22 percent higher, but private expenditures per capita were 391 percent higher. Yet, in contrast to France and other European nations which provide universal medical coverage, about 47 million Americans – some 16 percent of the US population – were uninsured in 2008. The United States clearly has a problem of out-of-control health care costs. The problem resides, however, in the business component of costs, not in the government component. What Americans should be worrying about is how to regulate the businesses that get rich when we get sick. The ACA takes steps to limit the boundless profiteering that has become customary in the U.S. health care system. By tackling key sources of waste, fraud and abuse, the law starts us on a road to cost containment. Here are some examples: Overcharging for health insurance. The leading health insurers in the United States deliver low-quality, high-cost coverage. The biggest among them use virtually all of their enormous profits to do enormous stock repurchases. That means that a significant percentage of an insurance premium goes simply to boost the insurer’s stock price, which in turn jacks up executive pay. During the past decade four of the biggest insurers — UnitedHealth Group, WellPoint, Aetna, and Cigna — did combined stock buybacks of $62.9 billion, more than their combined net income. States have two new tools to prevent health plans from gouging consumers. First, 46 states have received grants from the US Department of Health and Human Services to investigate premium rate increases. This funding will give states the resources to review the complicated actuarial explanations filed by insurance companies and to judge whether premium increases are justified. In addition, plans will now be required to devote a minimum percentage of their premium revenue to medical care instead of administration, executive salaries, profits, lobbying and administrative waste. Plans will owe their customers rebates if they fail to spend at least 80 percent (individual and small group) or 85 percent (large group) of premium dollars on medical expenses. Over-investment in expensive equipment. The U.S. has about 26 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) units per million population, more than double the average of 11 units in all economically advanced nations. Japan has 43 units per million population, but under the country’s single-payer insurance system, the cost of a scanning session in Japan is about one-tenth the typical charge in the United States. The ACA addresses this problem by adding a new sales tax on the purchase of expensive equipment and changing the formula that Medicare uses to pay for imaging services in order to avoid overpayment. In addition, there are new disclosure requirements so patients will know if their doctor is rewarded financially for prescribing a particular imaging test. Overcharging for prescription drugs. The prices that Americans pay for drugs are about double the prices in other advanced countries. Since the 1980s, major pharmaceutical companies have successfully argued in Congress against the regulation of drug prices, claiming that high profits are needed to fund research and development. Yet a large portion of the profits of these companies is devoted to repurchasing their stock. For the decade 2000-2009, Pfizer bought back $50.6 billion, equivalent to 65 percent of its profits and 66 percent of its research spending, and Amgen repurchased $25.8 billion, about equal to its net income and R&D. While we await regulation to confront this troubling inconsistency, the ACA takes steps to reduce the cost of drugs. Already this year more than one million Medicare beneficiaries have received $250 checks to help offset drug costs after falling into the prescription drug donut hole, and starting next year, seniors will get a 50 percent discount on brand name drugs when they enter the donut hole. The ACA also expands access to a prescription drug discount program for children’s hospitals and other community providers. At the root of the high cost of health care in the United States is a highly financialized business system. The ACA is an important step toward significant health reform. Until we control the behavior of business corporations in the health care sector, as parts of the law begin to do, Americans will continue to grapple with extraordinarily high health care costs.

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Mark Miller: Doing the Math on Early Social Security Benefits

August 20, 2010

A recent column on how to maximize your Social Security benefits inspired some readers to fire up their spreadsheet programs. The column was excerpted from my book, The Hard Times Guide to Retirement Security . It delivered this message: most — but not all — Americans will do better over the long haul by waiting until full retirement age to file for Social Security benefits. This message is tough for some to accept. Why wait until age 66 to get something that you can take at age 62? Here’s the core of my argument: For most people, filing early at 62 is a costly mistake that will mean forgoing thousands of dollars in lifetime benefits — in some cases, hundreds of thousands. Although you can file for benefits at 62, most of us will receive larger lifetime payouts by waiting, if at all possible, until we reach age 66, or even 70. However, there are several caveats to this, and it’s a bit of a gamble, because the math all depends on how long you live. Under the Social Security rules, your lifetime benefits will be reduced based on an actuarial projection of your longevity, if you file before the current full retirement age of 66. Starting at 62 means you retired four years early, the net effect: Your annual benefits will be reduced permanently by a total of 25 percent. OK, readers — fire up your spreadsheets! “I don’t believe that your recent advice to delay receiving Social Security payments in order to get a higher monthly amount adds up,” wrote Barry, a reader in the New York area. “The Social Security system is based on actuarial principles, therefore it is designed to pay out the same amount (for persons having the same wage history) no matter when they decide to collect. Thus there is no automatic windfall to be gained by waiting.” Barry goes on to construct a scenario (too lengthy and elaborate to reprint here), in which a 62-year-old person files for Social Security, invests it until full retirement age and comes out ahead at age 66 — assuming a 3 percent annual return, and leaving out income taxes for simplification purposes. “A rough calculation shows that by the time this person has reached the age of 66, he will have $50,600 in the bank as a result of the payments plus interest. The person who is waiting has nothing. This means that the first person has a substantial nest egg which he can use for emergencies or for things like vacations, cars, house improvements, gifts to grandkids, etc.” “My main point is that it is better to start collecting when you are first eligible (assuming you are not still working) because you accumulate a substantial nest egg plus you have money available when you are still young enough to really appreciate it.” Barry assumes that people actually will save this money rather than spend it. I’m not so sure, given human nature and our collective rocky record as savers. I also question the rate-of-return assumption, since we don’t want to invest Social Security money in the stock market or anything else that is risky. We’d need to park the Social Security payments at regular intervals in risk-free certificates of deposit, and current six-month CDs yield less than 1 percent. All that aside, I don’t mean to suggest that waiting to file is right for everyone. It can make sense to file at 62 if you’re in poor health and don’t expect to live long. Likewise, take benefits early if, due to the recession, you’re in desperate financial shape and must have the money now. And Barry is correct to point out that Social Security benefits are designed to be actuarially fair, assuming average life expectancy. But the system is based on averages that many people will beat. Research by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College (CRR) suggests that the “break-even” age is 81 — if you live past that age, you’ll receive greater lifetime benefits by waiting until your full retirement age. “Many people live longer than average and it is especially likely that one member of a couple will live longer than average,” says CRR’s Andrew Eschtruth. “For example, if the husband is the primary earner, he may die at the average age but his wife may live at least several years longer. If so, she would get her husband’s larger benefit rather than her smaller spousal benefit.” On the other hand, higher survivor benefits can be one reason for a married woman to file early. CRR’s research suggests that if a woman’s own earnings will yield a benefit ranging between 40 percent and 100 percent of the husband’s, she should claim benefits as early as possible. If the husband waits until age 69 to file, the woman will receive the maximum lifetime benefits by filing early and then receiving the higher survivor benefit upon the husband’s death. Further reading For those who would like to dig further into the weeds on this subject — or keep plugging data into their spreadsheets, here are two key studies from the Center for Retirement Research well worth reading. Why Do Women Claim Social Security So Early ? If individuals continue to withdraw completely from the labor force in their early 60s, a large and growing number will be hard pressed to maintain an adequate standard of living throughout retirement. Economic and demographic pressures are gradually eroding key sources of retirement income at the same time that increases in life expectancy mean that people can expect to live for 20 years, on average, after they stop working. And averages do not tell the whole story. When Should Married Men Claim Social Security? Most married men claim Social Security benefits at age 62 or 63, well short of the age that maximizes the expected present value of the average household’s benefits. That many married men “leave money on the table” is surprising. It is also problematic.

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HP Bribery Investigation Heats Up

August 13, 2010

WASHINGTON — Hewlett-Packard Co. said Thursday it is cooperating with U.S. and German authorities investigating allegations that three company executives used bribes to win a contract to sell computer gear to the Russian prosecutors’ office. German prosecutors have been looking into whether the executives, plus at least six accomplices who did not work for the company, paid bribes totaling 8 million euros (about $10.3 million) to win a 35 million-euro contract to supply computers, software and hardware to the Russians. Prosecutors say at least two of the executives no longer work for HP. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the Justice Department has asked HP to hand over internal documents to German prosecutors after they complained that the company had refused to provide them with relevant records. The Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating possible violations of the foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits bribes of foreign officials. Russian officials, who raided HP’s Moscow offices in April at the request of German prosecutors, have joined the investigation, too. “HP is and has been fully cooperating with all authorities on this matter,” the company said in a statement. The Justice Department and SEC declined comment to The Associated Press. The latest development came just days after HP CEO Mark Hurd abruptly resigned following an investigation into sexual-harassment claims. The company said it found that its sexual harassment policy wasn’t violated, but it uncovered falsified expense reports connected to dinners and other meetings with the woman who made those claims, Jodie Fisher. Hurd has settled with Fisher for an undisclosed sum. HP, based in Palo Alto, Calif., is the world’s No. 1 personal computer maker. The contract for the Russian deal was signed in 2000, and the deliveries continued until 2006 or 2007, German authorities have said. The three executives were arrested in Germany and Switzerland in December and later freed on bail. The participants are suspected of offenses including breach of trust, tax evasion and money laundering, authorities said. Authorities say it’s unclear who took the bribes, which flowed through a network of foreign firms and bank accounts. The matter came to the attention of Dresden prosecutors when a tax office in Germany’s Saxony state inspected a local company whose account was used in the kickback scheme, authorities said.

Read the full article →

Steve Parker: Exclusive First Drive! Nissan’s 2011 Leaf EV

July 16, 2010

We have driven the future, and you can, too, sometime after the beginning of the new year. We took some short road test drives recently and one of the cars we flogged was Nissan’s 2011 Leaf EV. And while Toyota’s Prius gas/electric hybrid has been the Official State Car of Santa Monica for some years now, Leaf is definitely worthy of taking a shot at the title and could well prove successful in its efforts. In fact, the latest Leaf press preview was hosted at the Sheraton Miramar Hotel, smack in the center of the beach town. The challenge to Toyota has been made, and it might get ugly. Turns out all the excitement isn’t so much about the car’s performance, technology, styling or even interior design. It’s the car itself — the fact that it comes to life at a time so many other EVs, hybrids, extended-range hybrids and alternative fuel vehicles are hitting the marketplace. Customers will have a lot of info, maybe too much, to sort through when making their next vehicle choice. It’s bound to be shunned by some of the “holier than thou” who think cars should be banned entirely. But Leaf will be embraced by others, especially the so-called “hyper-milers,” who spend their days coming up with ways to suck even more energy out of every last atom in their batteries. Leaf is, without doubt, a history-making car. In terms of performance Leaf is about what we expected but it’s still, by default, a revolutionary and historic vehicle, the first EV to be mass-produced by a major car company in the “modern era” (post-WWII) and sold worldwide. Weighing in at a hefty 3,500 pounds (the battery pack alone is 600), Leaf will begin its U.S. sales sometime around the end of this year. Nissan announced this past week that Leaf’s on-board battery will be warranted for 8 years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first. Nissan, along with Japanese battery-maker NEC, has formed a new corporation specifically to make Leaf’s batteries in Japan. For model year 2013, Nissan has plans to officially open its own dedicated battery-making facility in Tennessee for cars built in the U.S. Using laminated Lithium Ion batteries (Li-Ons for short), these batteries have been highly-developed by Nissan engineers to keep Leaf going for 100 miles after a charge, with a top speed of about 94 miles per hour. Now sit down, listen and learn something. Sorry, just wanted to see if you were still paying attention. There are three different charging methods for Leaf including “portable” charging, which uses a standard 110-volt wall plug-in charger which comes with the car. The portable method takes about 18 to 20 hours to make Leaf’s battery go from 0 to 100 per cent filled. “Installed charging” is the second method. When buying the Leaf, customers can also order an installed home charging unit. This method, using a 220-volt receptacle, takes around 8 hours to fully recharge Leaf. The home unit costs about $2,200, installed, but there are rebates and tax credits which can pay up to $2,000 of the total cost to encourage this option. Now, just as in auto racing, how fast you want to go depends on how much you want to spend, and this next option will be expensive, especially for Nissan and Aerovironment, the company working with Nissan on charger development and installation. “Quick charging” plans call for Leaf’s battery to be charged up to 80 per cent of capacity in only 30 minutes. Nissan engineers envision these quick chargers installed in busy shopping mall and office building parking lots, on major routes between cities ala truck stops and wherever else there might be a burgeoning population of EVs and plug-in hybrids needing a little love from the electric gods. We’ve gone over some of these specs before so let’s get down to it: How is Leaf on the streets? The Leaf we drove delivered about what we expected. The car is very intuitive; Nissan knows what we’re thinking when we get into the driver’s seat. All controls are in familiar places and operate accordingly, though, as on almost all the hybrids we’ve driven so far, there are some gimmicky eco-gauges and -controls that don’t seem altogether necessary (one allows the driver to “build a tree” as their eco-friendly driving style continues and improves for a period of time). The battery is under the car, as near the center as possible to help locate the center of gravity and help with handling. Nissan was smart to do this because they are going to catch a lot of hell for the car’s heft; perhaps Valerie Bertinelli and Jason Alexander can take fellow Jenny Craig clients to meetings and help Leaf lose a little bulk, too. Nissan Leaf interior Our test Leaf was, Nissan told us, about 90 per cent of what the final production version will look, feel and sound like. And the news is good in those areas: the car has an extreme style and much of that comes from use of a wind tunnel to design the car and cut down on that nemesis of EVs, wind noise. For instance, the highly-stylized headlamps with curves and lines that appear to go every which way are functionally manipulating oncoming air so it goes above and below the side mirrors, not right smack into it as on most cars and trucks. Even the radio antennae is specially shaped to cut noise and add to the vortex pushing the car along from the rear. These little things pay off as Leaf is very, very quiet; it’s like the local library. It’s so quiet, Nissan engineers tell us, that they had to engineer-in a certain amount of noise so pedestrians know there’s a car coming their way. We’re not kidding. The interior has a surprising amount of head room and that makes the entire car seem taller and wider than it really is from a passenger’s point of view. It’s a nice visual trick. Both front and rear seats do not offer what we would call “generous” legroom, but by no means would you think you’d be calling the chiropractor after a trip to Las Vegas in any seat on Leaf. You’ll have to go to a dealer to see the instrument panel up close and personal. Words simply can not do it justice. It’s colorful, animated and I understand the next-generation Leaf will come with 3D glasses. Well, it isn’t really that involved, so let’s just say the dash is, uh, “busy”. A single center tunnel mounted joystick-like appendage keeps Leaf in or out of its single forward gear. Leaf uses Nissan’s start system which allows engine start/stop by touching the brake and pushing a dash-mounted button with the key still in your pocket (or pocket book). Fit-and-finish inside and out was better than in most prototypes we’ve seen through the years. And with our test car not being a complete, sale-able Leaf, that bodes well for the car’s quality when it does go into production. As another Nissan engineer told us, “We’re still not through with it yet.” Steering is electrically boosted and was a little light for my tastes. I like to feel more connected to the road. Brakes are four-wheel anti-lock discs and seem up to the job, at least on the streets of Santa Monica. It is a bit surprising, though, the first time in the car, that due to the car’s heavyweight stance, drivers have to hit the brakes harder than they might in their previous compact car to slow or stop Leaf. That ABS braking system also creates battery-charging power through regenerative braking. Leaf gets off the line well as do all EVs and gas/electric hybrids. That’s because electric motors exhibit all their torque instantly, while a gas engine has a “torque curve” which brings the torque up gradually as the revs get higher. So Leaf drivers, like Prius owners before them, know that at the daily “Stop Light Grand Prix” they can take-on and beat just about any other car on the road. For the first 200 feet, at least. The audio system is superior for a car of this size and price (after tax credits and etc.) and allows plugging-in your iPod and all the other latest gizmos. Leaf has everything from 3D nav (not kidding this time) to Bluetooth. Let’s talk price. There are two Leaf models, a base (SV) and a step-up model called SL. Because SL is only $940 more than the SV, it seems the best bargain of the two. The SV is $25,280 while the SL rings the bell at $26,220. For both cars, there is a one-time $7,500 federal tax credit available (do the math yourself; I’m terrible at it), and, in California, the State Air Resources Board makes available another $5,000 tax credit. Your state may also offer similar credits, so check with your local Department of Motor Vehicles before buying an EV or hybrid to see what’s available. And $2,000 of the $2,200 cost of the installed home charger can be deferred; your dealer will fill you in. Similar to what Toyota did when their Prius first went on-sale, Nissan is using the Web to take “reservations” (a $99 “down payment” holds one for you) and let you stay in-touch with Leaf enthusiasts, get the latest news on technical highlights and Leaf availability, etc. Check-out www.NissanUSA.com and cruise around until you find “Leaf”. Finally, there’s an anomaly which not only Nissan but all companies making any kind of plug-in EV or hybrid need to think about: after a car-maker sells 200,000 units of whatever plug-in they’re making, that federal tax credit goes away. It’s almost a given that the new Prius plug-in hybrid and certainly the Leaf plug-in EV will fall victim to this rule. Nissan assures us their top execs are brainstorming to come up with a solution, so the woman who buys a Leaf one day and gets the $7,500 credit finds that her friend who bought one the next day does not get that credit. Nissan’s Leaf, GM’s Volt, Toyota’s plug-in gas/electric hybrid Prius and several other zero- or ultra-low-emission cars are about to go on-sale, all within about a year of each other. It’s an exciting time for those who are fascinated by the technology of these cars as well as their future possibilities, and Leaf will not be the butt of jokes using the words “glorified golf cart,” Leaf is a real car which will generate intense interest among the public worldwide.

Read the full article →

Steve Parker: Exclusive First Drive! Nissan’s 2011 Leaf EV

July 16, 2010

We have driven the future, and you can, too, sometime after the beginning of the new year. We took some short road test drives recently and one of the cars we flogged was Nissan’s 2011 Leaf EV. And while Toyota’s Prius gas/electric hybrid has been the Official State Car of Santa Monica for some years now, Leaf is definitely worthy of taking a shot at the title and could well prove successful in its efforts. In fact, the latest Leaf press preview was hosted at the Sheraton Miramar Hotel, smack in the center of the beach town. The challenge to Toyota has been made, and it might get ugly. Turns out all the excitement isn’t so much about the car’s performance, technology, styling or even interior design. It’s the car itself — the fact that it comes to life at a time so many other EVs, hybrids, extended-range hybrids and alternative fuel vehicles are hitting the marketplace. Customers will have a lot of info, maybe too much, to sort through when making their next vehicle choice. It’s bound to be shunned by some of the “holier than thou” who think cars should be banned entirely. But Leaf will be embraced by others, especially the so-called “hyper-milers,” who spend their days coming up with ways to suck even more energy out of every last atom in their batteries. Leaf is, without doubt, a history-making car. In terms of performance Leaf is about what we expected but it’s still, by default, a revolutionary and historic vehicle, the first EV to be mass-produced by a major car company in the “modern era” (post-WWII) and sold worldwide. Weighing in at a hefty 3,500 pounds (the battery pack alone is 600), Leaf will begin its U.S. sales sometime around the end of this year. Nissan announced this past week that Leaf’s on-board battery will be warranted for 8 years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first. Nissan, along with Japanese battery-maker NEC, has formed a new corporation specifically to make Leaf’s batteries in Japan. For model year 2013, Nissan has plans to officially open its own dedicated battery-making facility in Tennessee for cars built in the U.S. Using laminated Lithium Ion batteries (Li-Ons for short), these batteries have been highly-developed by Nissan engineers to keep Leaf going for 100 miles after a charge, with a top speed of about 94 miles per hour. Now sit down, listen and learn something. Sorry, just wanted to see if you were still paying attention. There are three different charging methods for Leaf including “portable” charging, which uses a standard 110-volt wall plug-in charger which comes with the car. The portable method takes about 18 to 20 hours to make Leaf’s battery go from 0 to 100 per cent filled. “Installed charging” is the second method. When buying the Leaf, customers can also order an installed home charging unit. This method, using a 220-volt receptacle, takes around 8 hours to fully recharge Leaf. The home unit costs about $2,200, installed, but there are rebates and tax credits which can pay up to $2,000 of the total cost to encourage this option. Now, just as in auto racing, how fast you want to go depends on how much you want to spend, and this next option will be expensive, especially for Nissan and Aerovironment, the company working with Nissan on charger development and installation. “Quick charging” plans call for Leaf’s battery to be charged up to 80 per cent of capacity in only 30 minutes. Nissan engineers envision these quick chargers installed in busy shopping mall and office building parking lots, on major routes between cities ala truck stops and wherever else there might be a burgeoning population of EVs and plug-in hybrids needing a little love from the electric gods. We’ve gone over some of these specs before so let’s get down to it: How is Leaf on the streets? The Leaf we drove delivered about what we expected. The car is very intuitive; Nissan knows what we’re thinking when we get into the driver’s seat. All controls are in familiar places and operate accordingly, though, as on almost all the hybrids we’ve driven so far, there are some gimmicky eco-gauges and -controls that don’t seem altogether necessary (one allows the driver to “build a tree” as their eco-friendly driving style continues and improves for a period of time). The battery is under the car, as near the center as possible to help locate the center of gravity and help with handling. Nissan was smart to do this because they are going to catch a lot of hell for the car’s heft; perhaps Valerie Bertinelli and Jason Alexander can take fellow Jenny Craig clients to meetings and help Leaf lose a little bulk, too. Nissan Leaf interior Our test Leaf was, Nissan told us, about 90 per cent of what the final production version will look, feel and sound like. And the news is good in those areas: the car has an extreme style and much of that comes from use of a wind tunnel to design the car and cut down on that nemesis of EVs, wind noise. For instance, the highly-stylized headlamps with curves and lines that appear to go every which way are functionally manipulating oncoming air so it goes above and below the side mirrors, not right smack into it as on most cars and trucks. Even the radio antennae is specially shaped to cut noise and add to the vortex pushing the car along from the rear. These little things pay off as Leaf is very, very quiet; it’s like the local library. It’s so quiet, Nissan engineers tell us, that they had to engineer-in a certain amount of noise so pedestrians know there’s a car coming their way. We’re not kidding. The interior has a surprising amount of head room and that makes the entire car seem taller and wider than it really is from a passenger’s point of view. It’s a nice visual trick. Both front and rear seats do not offer what we would call “generous” legroom, but by no means would you think you’d be calling the chiropractor after a trip to Las Vegas in any seat on Leaf. You’ll have to go to a dealer to see the instrument panel up close and personal. Words simply can not do it justice. It’s colorful, animated and I understand the next-generation Leaf will come with 3D glasses. Well, it isn’t really that involved, so let’s just say the dash is, uh, “busy”. A single center tunnel mounted joystick-like appendage keeps Leaf in or out of its single forward gear. Leaf uses Nissan’s start system which allows engine start/stop by touching the brake and pushing a dash-mounted button with the key still in your pocket (or pocket book). Fit-and-finish inside and out was better than in most prototypes we’ve seen through the years. And with our test car not being a complete, sale-able Leaf, that bodes well for the car’s quality when it does go into production. As another Nissan engineer told us, “We’re still not through with it yet.” Steering is electrically boosted and was a little light for my tastes. I like to feel more connected to the road. Brakes are four-wheel anti-lock discs and seem up to the job, at least on the streets of Santa Monica. It is a bit surprising, though, the first time in the car, that due to the car’s heavyweight stance, drivers have to hit the brakes harder than they might in their previous compact car to slow or stop Leaf. That ABS braking system also creates battery-charging power through regenerative braking. Leaf gets off the line well as do all EVs and gas/electric hybrids. That’s because electric motors exhibit all their torque instantly, while a gas engine has a “torque curve” which brings the torque up gradually as the revs get higher. So Leaf drivers, like Prius owners before them, know that at the daily “Stop Light Grand Prix” they can take-on and beat just about any other car on the road. For the first 200 feet, at least. The audio system is superior for a car of this size and price (after tax credits and etc.) and allows plugging-in your iPod and all the other latest gizmos. Leaf has everything from 3D nav (not kidding this time) to Bluetooth. Let’s talk price. There are two Leaf models, a base (SV) and a step-up model called SL. Because SL is only $940 more than the SV, it seems the best bargain of the two. The SV is $25,280 while the SL rings the bell at $26,220. For both cars, there is a one-time $7,500 federal tax credit available (do the math yourself; I’m terrible at it), and, in California, the State Air Resources Board makes available another $5,000 tax credit. Your state may also offer similar credits, so check with your local Department of Motor Vehicles before buying an EV or hybrid to see what’s available. And $2,000 of the $2,200 cost of the installed home charger can be deferred; your dealer will fill you in. Similar to what Toyota did when their Prius first went on-sale, Nissan is using the Web to take “reservations” (a $99 “down payment” holds one for you) and let you stay in-touch with Leaf enthusiasts, get the latest news on technical highlights and Leaf availability, etc. Check-out www.NissanUSA.com and cruise around until you find “Leaf”. Finally, there’s an anomaly which not only Nissan but all companies making any kind of plug-in EV or hybrid need to think about: after a car-maker sells 200,000 units of whatever plug-in they’re making, that federal tax credit goes away. It’s almost a given that the new Prius plug-in hybrid and certainly the Leaf plug-in EV will fall victim to this rule. Nissan assures us their top execs are brainstorming to come up with a solution, so the woman who buys a Leaf one day and gets the $7,500 credit finds that her friend who bought one the next day does not get that credit. Nissan’s Leaf, GM’s Volt, Toyota’s plug-in gas/electric hybrid Prius and several other zero- or ultra-low-emission cars are about to go on-sale, all within about a year of each other. It’s an exciting time for those who are fascinated by the technology of these cars as well as their future possibilities, and Leaf will not be the butt of jokes using the words “glorified golf cart,” Leaf is a real car which will generate intense interest among the public worldwide.

Read the full article →

Steve Parker: Exclusive First Drive! Nissan’s 2011 Leaf EV

July 16, 2010

We have driven the future, and you can, too, sometime after the beginning of the new year. We took some short road test drives recently and one of the cars we flogged was Nissan’s 2011 Leaf EV. And while Toyota’s Prius gas/electric hybrid has been the Official State Car of Santa Monica for some years now, Leaf is definitely worthy of taking a shot at the title and could well prove successful in its efforts. In fact, the latest Leaf press preview was hosted at the Sheraton Miramar Hotel, smack in the center of the beach town. The challenge to Toyota has been made, and it might get ugly. Turns out all the excitement isn’t so much about the car’s performance, technology, styling or even interior design. It’s the car itself — the fact that it comes to life at a time so many other EVs, hybrids, extended-range hybrids and alternative fuel vehicles are hitting the marketplace. Customers will have a lot of info, maybe too much, to sort through when making their next vehicle choice. It’s bound to be shunned by some of the “holier than thou” who think cars should be banned entirely. But Leaf will be embraced by others, especially the so-called “hyper-milers,” who spend their days coming up with ways to suck even more energy out of every last atom in their batteries. Leaf is, without doubt, a history-making car. In terms of performance Leaf is about what we expected but it’s still, by default, a revolutionary and historic vehicle, the first EV to be mass-produced by a major car company in the “modern era” (post-WWII) and sold worldwide. Weighing in at a hefty 3,500 pounds (the battery pack alone is 600), Leaf will begin its U.S. sales sometime around the end of this year. Nissan announced this past week that Leaf’s on-board battery will be warranted for 8 years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first. Nissan, along with Japanese battery-maker NEC, has formed a new corporation specifically to make Leaf’s batteries in Japan. For model year 2013, Nissan has plans to officially open its own dedicated battery-making facility in Tennessee for cars built in the U.S. Using laminated Lithium Ion batteries (Li-Ons for short), these batteries have been highly-developed by Nissan engineers to keep Leaf going for 100 miles after a charge, with a top speed of about 94 miles per hour. Now sit down, listen and learn something. Sorry, just wanted to see if you were still paying attention. There are three different charging methods for Leaf including “portable” charging, which uses a standard 110-volt wall plug-in charger which comes with the car. The portable method takes about 18 to 20 hours to make Leaf’s battery go from 0 to 100 per cent filled. “Installed charging” is the second method. When buying the Leaf, customers can also order an installed home charging unit. This method, using a 220-volt receptacle, takes around 8 hours to fully recharge Leaf. The home unit costs about $2,200, installed, but there are rebates and tax credits which can pay up to $2,000 of the total cost to encourage this option. Now, just as in auto racing, how fast you want to go depends on how much you want to spend, and this next option will be expensive, especially for Nissan and Aerovironment, the company working with Nissan on charger development and installation. “Quick charging” plans call for Leaf’s battery to be charged up to 80 per cent of capacity in only 30 minutes. Nissan engineers envision these quick chargers installed in busy shopping mall and office building parking lots, on major routes between cities ala truck stops and wherever else there might be a burgeoning population of EVs and plug-in hybrids needing a little love from the electric gods. We’ve gone over some of these specs before so let’s get down to it: How is Leaf on the streets? The Leaf we drove delivered about what we expected. The car is very intuitive; Nissan knows what we’re thinking when we get into the driver’s seat. All controls are in familiar places and operate accordingly, though, as on almost all the hybrids we’ve driven so far, there are some gimmicky eco-gauges and -controls that don’t seem altogether necessary (one allows the driver to “build a tree” as their eco-friendly driving style continues and improves for a period of time). The battery is under the car, as near the center as possible to help locate the center of gravity and help with handling. Nissan was smart to do this because they are going to catch a lot of hell for the car’s heft; perhaps Valerie Bertinelli and Jason Alexander can take fellow Jenny Craig clients to meetings and help Leaf lose a little bulk, too. Nissan Leaf interior Our test Leaf was, Nissan told us, about 90 per cent of what the final production version will look, feel and sound like. And the news is good in those areas: the car has an extreme style and much of that comes from use of a wind tunnel to design the car and cut down on that nemesis of EVs, wind noise. For instance, the highly-stylized headlamps with curves and lines that appear to go every which way are functionally manipulating oncoming air so it goes above and below the side mirrors, not right smack into it as on most cars and trucks. Even the radio antennae is specially shaped to cut noise and add to the vortex pushing the car along from the rear. These little things pay off as Leaf is very, very quiet; it’s like the local library. It’s so quiet, Nissan engineers tell us, that they had to engineer-in a certain amount of noise so pedestrians know there’s a car coming their way. We’re not kidding. The interior has a surprising amount of head room and that makes the entire car seem taller and wider than it really is from a passenger’s point of view. It’s a nice visual trick. Both front and rear seats do not offer what we would call “generous” legroom, but by no means would you think you’d be calling the chiropractor after a trip to Las Vegas in any seat on Leaf. You’ll have to go to a dealer to see the instrument panel up close and personal. Words simply can not do it justice. It’s colorful, animated and I understand the next-generation Leaf will come with 3D glasses. Well, it isn’t really that involved, so let’s just say the dash is, uh, “busy”. A single center tunnel mounted joystick-like appendage keeps Leaf in or out of its single forward gear. Leaf uses Nissan’s start system which allows engine start/stop by touching the brake and pushing a dash-mounted button with the key still in your pocket (or pocket book). Fit-and-finish inside and out was better than in most prototypes we’ve seen through the years. And with our test car not being a complete, sale-able Leaf, that bodes well for the car’s quality when it does go into production. As another Nissan engineer told us, “We’re still not through with it yet.” Steering is electrically boosted and was a little light for my tastes. I like to feel more connected to the road. Brakes are four-wheel anti-lock discs and seem up to the job, at least on the streets of Santa Monica. It is a bit surprising, though, the first time in the car, that due to the car’s heavyweight stance, drivers have to hit the brakes harder than they might in their previous compact car to slow or stop Leaf. That ABS braking system also creates battery-charging power through regenerative braking. Leaf gets off the line well as do all EVs and gas/electric hybrids. That’s because electric motors exhibit all their torque instantly, while a gas engine has a “torque curve” which brings the torque up gradually as the revs get higher. So Leaf drivers, like Prius owners before them, know that at the daily “Stop Light Grand Prix” they can take-on and beat just about any other car on the road. For the first 200 feet, at least. The audio system is superior for a car of this size and price (after tax credits and etc.) and allows plugging-in your iPod and all the other latest gizmos. Leaf has everything from 3D nav (not kidding this time) to Bluetooth. Let’s talk price. There are two Leaf models, a base (SV) and a step-up model called SL. Because SL is only $940 more than the SV, it seems the best bargain of the two. The SV is $25,280 while the SL rings the bell at $26,220. For both cars, there is a one-time $7,500 federal tax credit available (do the math yourself; I’m terrible at it), and, in California, the State Air Resources Board makes available another $5,000 tax credit. Your state may also offer similar credits, so check with your local Department of Motor Vehicles before buying an EV or hybrid to see what’s available. And $2,000 of the $2,200 cost of the installed home charger can be deferred; your dealer will fill you in. Similar to what Toyota did when their Prius first went on-sale, Nissan is using the Web to take “reservations” (a $99 “down payment” holds one for you) and let you stay in-touch with Leaf enthusiasts, get the latest news on technical highlights and Leaf availability, etc. Check-out www.NissanUSA.com and cruise around until you find “Leaf”. Finally, there’s an anomaly which not only Nissan but all companies making any kind of plug-in EV or hybrid need to think about: after a car-maker sells 200,000 units of whatever plug-in they’re making, that federal tax credit goes away. It’s almost a given that the new Prius plug-in hybrid and certainly the Leaf plug-in EV will fall victim to this rule. Nissan assures us their top execs are brainstorming to come up with a solution, so the woman who buys a Leaf one day and gets the $7,500 credit finds that her friend who bought one the next day does not get that credit. Nissan’s Leaf, GM’s Volt, Toyota’s plug-in gas/electric hybrid Prius and several other zero- or ultra-low-emission cars are about to go on-sale, all within about a year of each other. It’s an exciting time for those who are fascinated by the technology of these cars as well as their future possibilities, and Leaf will not be the butt of jokes using the words “glorified golf cart,” Leaf is a real car which will generate intense interest among the public worldwide.

Read the full article →

Steve Parker: Exclusive First Drive! Nissan’s 2011 Leaf EV

July 16, 2010

We have driven the future, and you can, too, sometime after the beginning of the new year. We took some short road test drives recently and one of the cars we flogged was Nissan’s 2011 Leaf EV. And while Toyota’s Prius gas/electric hybrid has been the Official State Car of Santa Monica for some years now, Leaf is definitely worthy of taking a shot at the title and could well prove successful in its efforts. In fact, the latest Leaf press preview was hosted at the Sheraton Miramar Hotel, smack in the center of the beach town. The challenge to Toyota has been made, and it might get ugly. Turns out all the excitement isn’t so much about the car’s performance, technology, styling or even interior design. It’s the car itself — the fact that it comes to life at a time so many other EVs, hybrids, extended-range hybrids and alternative fuel vehicles are hitting the marketplace. Customers will have a lot of info, maybe too much, to sort through when making their next vehicle choice. It’s bound to be shunned by some of the “holier than thou” who think cars should be banned entirely. But Leaf will be embraced by others, especially the so-called “hyper-milers,” who spend their days coming up with ways to suck even more energy out of every last atom in their batteries. Leaf is, without doubt, a history-making car. In terms of performance Leaf is about what we expected but it’s still, by default, a revolutionary and historic vehicle, the first EV to be mass-produced by a major car company in the “modern era” (post-WWII) and sold worldwide. Weighing in at a hefty 3,500 pounds (the battery pack alone is 600), Leaf will begin its U.S. sales sometime around the end of this year. Nissan announced this past week that Leaf’s on-board battery will be warranted for 8 years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first. Nissan, along with Japanese battery-maker NEC, has formed a new corporation specifically to make Leaf’s batteries in Japan. For model year 2013, Nissan has plans to officially open its own dedicated battery-making facility in Tennessee for cars built in the U.S. Using laminated Lithium Ion batteries (Li-Ons for short), these batteries have been highly-developed by Nissan engineers to keep Leaf going for 100 miles after a charge, with a top speed of about 94 miles per hour. Now sit down, listen and learn something. Sorry, just wanted to see if you were still paying attention. There are three different charging methods for Leaf including “portable” charging, which uses a standard 110-volt wall plug-in charger which comes with the car. The portable method takes about 18 to 20 hours to make Leaf’s battery go from 0 to 100 per cent filled. “Installed charging” is the second method. When buying the Leaf, customers can also order an installed home charging unit. This method, using a 220-volt receptacle, takes around 8 hours to fully recharge Leaf. The home unit costs about $2,200, installed, but there are rebates and tax credits which can pay up to $2,000 of the total cost to encourage this option. Now, just as in auto racing, how fast you want to go depends on how much you want to spend, and this next option will be expensive, especially for Nissan and Aerovironment, the company working with Nissan on charger development and installation. “Quick charging” plans call for Leaf’s battery to be charged up to 80 per cent of capacity in only 30 minutes. Nissan engineers envision these quick chargers installed in busy shopping mall and office building parking lots, on major routes between cities ala truck stops and wherever else there might be a burgeoning population of EVs and plug-in hybrids needing a little love from the electric gods. We’ve gone over some of these specs before so let’s get down to it: How is Leaf on the streets? The Leaf we drove delivered about what we expected. The car is very intuitive; Nissan knows what we’re thinking when we get into the driver’s seat. All controls are in familiar places and operate accordingly, though, as on almost all the hybrids we’ve driven so far, there are some gimmicky eco-gauges and -controls that don’t seem altogether necessary (one allows the driver to “build a tree” as their eco-friendly driving style continues and improves for a period of time). The battery is under the car, as near the center as possible to help locate the center of gravity and help with handling. Nissan was smart to do this because they are going to catch a lot of hell for the car’s heft; perhaps Valerie Bertinelli and Jason Alexander can take fellow Jenny Craig clients to meetings and help Leaf lose a little bulk, too. Nissan Leaf interior Our test Leaf was, Nissan told us, about 90 per cent of what the final production version will look, feel and sound like. And the news is good in those areas: the car has an extreme style and much of that comes from use of a wind tunnel to design the car and cut down on that nemesis of EVs, wind noise. For instance, the highly-stylized headlamps with curves and lines that appear to go every which way are functionally manipulating oncoming air so it goes above and below the side mirrors, not right smack into it as on most cars and trucks. Even the radio antennae is specially shaped to cut noise and add to the vortex pushing the car along from the rear. These little things pay off as Leaf is very, very quiet; it’s like the local library. It’s so quiet, Nissan engineers tell us, that they had to engineer-in a certain amount of noise so pedestrians know there’s a car coming their way. We’re not kidding. The interior has a surprising amount of head room and that makes the entire car seem taller and wider than it really is from a passenger’s point of view. It’s a nice visual trick. Both front and rear seats do not offer what we would call “generous” legroom, but by no means would you think you’d be calling the chiropractor after a trip to Las Vegas in any seat on Leaf. You’ll have to go to a dealer to see the instrument panel up close and personal. Words simply can not do it justice. It’s colorful, animated and I understand the next-generation Leaf will come with 3D glasses. Well, it isn’t really that involved, so let’s just say the dash is, uh, “busy”. A single center tunnel mounted joystick-like appendage keeps Leaf in or out of its single forward gear. Leaf uses Nissan’s start system which allows engine start/stop by touching the brake and pushing a dash-mounted button with the key still in your pocket (or pocket book). Fit-and-finish inside and out was better than in most prototypes we’ve seen through the years. And with our test car not being a complete, sale-able Leaf, that bodes well for the car’s quality when it does go into production. As another Nissan engineer told us, “We’re still not through with it yet.” Steering is electrically boosted and was a little light for my tastes. I like to feel more connected to the road. Brakes are four-wheel anti-lock discs and seem up to the job, at least on the streets of Santa Monica. It is a bit surprising, though, the first time in the car, that due to the car’s heavyweight stance, drivers have to hit the brakes harder than they might in their previous compact car to slow or stop Leaf. That ABS braking system also creates battery-charging power through regenerative braking. Leaf gets off the line well as do all EVs and gas/electric hybrids. That’s because electric motors exhibit all their torque instantly, while a gas engine has a “torque curve” which brings the torque up gradually as the revs get higher. So Leaf drivers, like Prius owners before them, know that at the daily “Stop Light Grand Prix” they can take-on and beat just about any other car on the road. For the first 200 feet, at least. The audio system is superior for a car of this size and price (after tax credits and etc.) and allows plugging-in your iPod and all the other latest gizmos. Leaf has everything from 3D nav (not kidding this time) to Bluetooth. Let’s talk price. There are two Leaf models, a base (SV) and a step-up model called SL. Because SL is only $940 more than the SV, it seems the best bargain of the two. The SV is $25,280 while the SL rings the bell at $26,220. For both cars, there is a one-time $7,500 federal tax credit available (do the math yourself; I’m terrible at it), and, in California, the State Air Resources Board makes available another $5,000 tax credit. Your state may also offer similar credits, so check with your local Department of Motor Vehicles before buying an EV or hybrid to see what’s available. And $2,000 of the $2,200 cost of the installed home charger can be deferred; your dealer will fill you in. Similar to what Toyota did when their Prius first went on-sale, Nissan is using the Web to take “reservations” (a $99 “down payment” holds one for you) and let you stay in-touch with Leaf enthusiasts, get the latest news on technical highlights and Leaf availability, etc. Check-out www.NissanUSA.com and cruise around until you find “Leaf”. Finally, there’s an anomaly which not only Nissan but all companies making any kind of plug-in EV or hybrid need to think about: after a car-maker sells 200,000 units of whatever plug-in they’re making, that federal tax credit goes away. It’s almost a given that the new Prius plug-in hybrid and certainly the Leaf plug-in EV will fall victim to this rule. Nissan assures us their top execs are brainstorming to come up with a solution, so the woman who buys a Leaf one day and gets the $7,500 credit finds that her friend who bought one the next day does not get that credit. Nissan’s Leaf, GM’s Volt, Toyota’s plug-in gas/electric hybrid Prius and several other zero- or ultra-low-emission cars are about to go on-sale, all within about a year of each other. It’s an exciting time for those who are fascinated by the technology of these cars as well as their future possibilities, and Leaf will not be the butt of jokes using the words “glorified golf cart,” Leaf is a real car which will generate intense interest among the public worldwide.

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`Dead Border’ Thwarts Growth as Chinese Pay Price for Backing North Korea

June 14, 2010

By Bloomberg News June 15 (Bloomberg) — Business is slow at sportswear maker Li Ning Co. ’s store in Tumen, China, says Wang Qian, who sells World Cup-themed athletic shoes emblazoned with German and Italian flags. Across the Tumen River is North Korea, whose closed economy discourages growth in northeastern China, the country’s industrial heartland as recently as two decades ago. Tumen’s annual per-capita gross domestic product, at 16,000 yuan ($2,342), is two-thirds of the national average. Young adults, including ethnic Koreans, are leaving for better opportunities, especially in South Korea. “Most of the people here are over 40, and they’re not the type who buy a lot of sportswear,” said Wang, 22. More than 70 million Chinese who live in provinces on the 1,415-kilometer (880-mile) North Korean border are paying a price for their government’s 60-year alliance with the totalitarian regime in Pyongyang. Trade with South Korea, China’s fourth-biggest commerce partner, is routed toward coastal cities, and projects including a development zone on the Tumen River delta — where China, North Korea and Russia meet — may languish unless Kim Jong Il allows some economic freedom, according to Jin Qiangyi at Yanbian University about 50 kilometers from Tumen. “The border is a dead border,” Jin, an ethnic Korean and director of the Institute of Northeast Asian Studies, said in a telephone interview. While China is encouraging North Korea to open up, it “is refusing. It is very difficult.” Communist Regime One reason is China’s economic and political support for North Korea’s communist regime, which began when China came to North Korea’s aid in the 1950-1953 Korean war. China accounted for 79 percent of the North’s 2009 international trade, according to the Seoul-based Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency. China provides almost 90 percent of energy imports and 45 percent of the country’s food, according to a July 2009 report by the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations. Two-way commerce between China and North Korea, at $720 million from January through April, was still about 1 percent of the $63 billion total between China and South Korea, according to Chinese trade data. That gap is evident in Tumen, a city of 136,000 across the river from the North Korean town of Namyang. A group of about 20 peasants could be seen in Namyang through binoculars on June 4, tending a rocky field on the slope of a deforested mountain. A lone cow grazed in the marsh near the river, which flows to the Sea of Japan about 90 kilometers away. Border Shootings Two men ran across the 69-year-old two-lane bridge into China, glancing quickly back at the North Korean side. Hours earlier, three Chinese citizens had been shot dead by North Korean guards near a similar crossing hundreds of miles to the southwest. The guards have been “more tense” in recent weeks, said a 41-year-old Tumen woman hawking North Korean money and pins. They have held up transit of Chinese traders as tensions between the two Koreas rose following the March 26 sinking of a South Korean warship, said the woman, who gave only her surname, Li, because she said she feared being punished for divulging information to a foreign reporter. North Korea said May 26 it would sever all ties with the South following a report by a South Korean-led international panel concluding a North Korean torpedo sank the ship, killing 46 sailors. Near-Empty Streets Tumen’s streets were largely devoid of traffic, and a rock band from the provincial capital of Changchun played to only a scattering of onlookers steps from the Li Ning store. Shopkeepers had a ready explanation: emigration to South Korea by the region’s ethnic Korean population. More than 92 percent, or 1.78 million, live in Jilin, Heilongjiang and Liaoning provinces, with the heaviest concentration in the prefecture encompassing Tumen. South Korean statistics back up their claim. There were 363,087 ethnic Koreans from China living legally in South Korea last year, compared with 310,485 in 2007, according to the Ministry of Justice . Salaries in South Korea are one attraction. A 45-year-old taxi driver surnamed Zhang said his wife obtained a forged marriage certificate showing she was married to a South Korean. She works in a factory there, making air conditioners and earning the equivalent of 10,000 yuan a month, five times his wages. She saves 80,000 yuan a year and plans to return to China soon, he said. Zhang didn’t want to use his full name because of his wife’s illegal means of obtaining a visa. Better Business “There’s nothing to do around here,” said Sun Xiaoyu, a Tumen shopkeeper selling South Korean-made snacks and drinks. “Business would be much better if we bordered South Korea.” North Korea’s 2008 GDP was about 2 percent of South Korea’s $930.9 billion total, according the most recent data from South Korea’s central bank . China has targeted the region for accelerated development in a program called “Revitalize the Old Northeastern Industrial Base.” One goal is encouraging technology companies to open manufacturing facilities, replacing jobs lost a decade ago when state-owned plants were closed in China’s transition to a more market-driven economy. China also should encourage peaceful Korean reunification to help spur growth, Jin said, although the increasing tension makes that a distant prospect right now. “We must just wait,” he said. — Michael Forsythe . With assistance from Bomi Lim in Seoul, Stephen Engle in Beijing and Inyoung Hwang in New York. Editors: Melinda Grenier , Ken Fireman To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Forsythe in Beijing at mforsythe@bloomberg.net

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Douglas M. Branson: Track Records and Trickle Downs: Will Elected Women Officals Benefit Other Women?

June 7, 2010

As a corporate shareholder, you can neither deny office to a corporate executive with whom you disagree, nor play a direct part in promoting one with whom you are in tune. All a shareholder can do is communicate her preferences and desires to the corporation’s board of directors, which, by law, has exclusive power over appointment and dismissal of corporate officers. Shareholders elect directors; they have no direct say in the appointment of officers. When corporate officers switch hats, and run for political office, you can — that is, affect matters directly. You can vote for them as a candidate in a primary election, or in the general election, or both, or you can vote against them. Your vote will have a direct effect. But upon what will you base your vote? Corporate managers have defined, quantifiable track records. Politicians running for election have track records as well but they are not so well-defined, may be rather mixed or messy, and usually spark endless debate about their comparability. You can, and probably should, seek out and, at least in part, base you vote on these track records. As CEO 10 years, Meg Whitman and eBay had an astounding record of 40 quarters of increased revenues and increased profits. The share price increased 53 fold while she was in office. As a candidate for governor, Meg Whitman comes with other baggage, such as her illegal receipt of shares in over 100 hot IPOs, indicating a large moral blind spot, and her willing status as a trophy director, serving on far too many public corporation boards (see my blog, ” The Would Be Governor From Goldman Sachs ,” May 4, 2010). Her track record as a corporate manager, however, is exemplary. By contrast, Carleton Fiorina, who is running for the U.S. Senate, occupied the corner suite at Hewlett-Packard for 6 years (1999-2005). On her “watch,” the corporation’s record was less than spotty. H-P missed more than several key projections of revenues or profits which Fiorina had made. After an initial honeymoon, the stock price nose dived from the mid 50s to as low as 15.50, and stayed there (see my blog, ” Ex CEO Wannabe Politician (Carly Fiorina) Hides Her Spots ,” May 7, 2010). Fiorina’s track record is miserable, although she attempts to dodge the effect by maintaining that her actions set the stage for the remarkable success of Mark Hurd, Fiorina’s successor. With women candidates for office, however, there are other track records which may be of interest. One is the “trickle down” effect. When women have occupied the CEO suite at major corporations, a sometimes byproduct has been an increased number of women on the board of directors. Thus, under CEO Andrea Jung, Avon Products has had 5 women directors. Angela Braly’s Wellpoint Corporation has had 5 directors who are female. At Golden West Financial (sold to Wachovia Bank in 2007), CEO Marion Sandler sat on a board with 4 other women, for a total of 5 of 9 directors. The trickle down effect is well documented. Pepsico’s board has 4 women directors. Indra Nooyi is the CEO. Sara Lee has 4 women directors. Brenda Barnes is the CEO. The list goes on but, of course, the list is not too long: only 15 major U.S. corporations have female CEOs. Let’s now look at Fiorina’s and Whitman’s track records. Under their auspices, neither Hewlett-Packard nor eBay added a single women director, despite each woman having been in office a considerable period of time. H-P had one holdover director who was a woman while eBay had none. Moreover, Fiorina went out of her way to deny the existence of a glass ceiling, stressing that “a competitive industry cannot afford sexism,” as well as denying any other impediment to women in business. On the Today Show, Fiorina proclaimed that gender had never held her back, “I have spent a lifetime believing that what is most important is what’s inside the package.” Ms. Fiorina pointedly refused to accept the title “role model for women.” Post H-P, in her 2007 autobiography, Tough Choices, Ms. Fiorina sings a strikingly different tune. According to her, she encountered sexism at every turn of her career and all, or most all, of her many failures are attributed to sexism toward her and her programs. The other source of track record information is the proxy data. Annual proxy statements corporations file with the SEC must list the 5 highest paid executives. Seven of the 15 corporations with female CEOs have at least one other woman among the top 5 executives (Avon, BJ’s Wholesale Clubs, Reynolds America, Sunoco, Wellpoint, Sunoco, Xerox, and Yahoo) while 8 do not (ADM, Dupont, Kraft, Pepsico, Rite Aid, Sara Lee, TJX Cos., and Western Union). Among the latter, save for the female CEO, all the other top executives are men. At eBay the evidence is inconclusive. The proxy statement lists Lorrie Norrington, Vice-president eBay Marketplace, among the 5 highest paid executives. It is unclear whether Ms. Norrington attained that position under Meg Whitman or under Whitman’s successor, John Donahoe. Candidate Firoina’s record here is just as atrocious as her record with respect to selection of directors. There is no evidence that Fiorina promoted or attempted to promote any women to senior management during Fiorina’s 6 year tenure at Hewlett Packard. Women voters may well find of interest female candidate’s track records with respect to hiring, promotion and mentoring of other women in business. With female candidates who have been corporate CEOs, those records, while not comprehensive, do provide some basis for decisions on that score and, possibly, for voting on election day.

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Liz Ryan: Job-Hunting While Pregnant?

May 21, 2010

Dear Liz, I find myself in the situation of having two interviews for jobs that, so far, sound like the perfect fit for me. I am also 20 weeks pregnant. I am still able to ‘cover it up’ more or less, although I am not sure I really want to do that. In a perfect world, I would like to march in there, full belly showing proud and announce that, yes, I will need all of October off, but I am your gal! I know how all of this works once you get the job and THEN get pregnant. This part is a whole new world to me. How much do I say or not say…if anything at all? Should I do my best to cover it up and then tell them once an offer has been made? That seems dishonest. Do I say anything about my plans for childcare once he is born … because I do have a plan. Any advice or shared experience would be greatly appreciated! Janelle Dear Janelle, Congratulations on your wonderful baby news! Here are some thought on your situation: JOB-HUNTING WHILE PREGNANT It’s happening all over: A woman is laid off while she’s pregnant and finds herself job-hunting as her due date approaches. Another woman’s organization tanks, and she finds herself out of work just as she realizes that that she’s expecting. A third finds her consulting business too slow to sustain her financially, so she starts a job search during her second trimester. The important thing to know about pursuing a job search during pregnancy is that it can be done. While your pregnancy is a factor in your job search — and more of a factor if your due date is coming up quickly or if, for instance, you’re expecting more than one baby — being pregnant is no reason to put off a job search. You will need to incorporate your post-baby plans into your interview conversation, so that you’re ready to answer questions about your return to work, your ability to manage your job with a newborn, and so on. But the fact that you’re expecting shouldn’t be the primary, or even a major, focus of your discussions during interviews. If you’re not “out” with your pregnancy — if you haven’t reached the point where you’re generally letting people know about your condition — it’s not necessary or appropriate to say anything about it during an interview or when you’re considering a job offer. Would you tell a relative stranger something you haven’t told your best friends yet? Some women worry that if they keep quiet about their pregnancy, later they’ll get sideways looks from the boss, who will never trust them again. Don’t put that pressure on yourself. When the day comes to share your good news, after a month or two of productive employment at your new company, you’ll say, “Sally, I wanted to let you know that Jack and I are expecting! The baby is due in February, and I feel great.” That’s the whole message; you don’t need to get into who knew what when, and no one will be likely to be so tacky as to inquire. If anyone does ask, “Didn’t you know this when you were interviewing here?” you can smile and say, “We’re just official as of this week, and we’re so excited.” If your pregnancy is well established, you should be prepared to discuss the logistics of your maternity leave and return to work during the job interview. Most of us in the business world are well trained (sometimes by unhappy experience) not to ask a woman if she’s pregnant, so don’t be self-conscious about your growing tummy. You should bring up the topic, well into the interview (don’t even bother if you’re completely uninterested in the job). You say to the interviewer, “Henry, may I ask you a few specific questions? Great. First, I’m curious about the relationship between the business development group and the sales organization here at XYZ Association. Oh, really? Terrific. Thanks. Secondly, I’m expecting a baby in September. I have some ideas about maternity leave and how I will manage things while away from the office, and I’d love to touch on that today. Excellent. The third is ….” This way, you get the information out and let the organization know that you’re not planning to fake your way through this big life change, that you have a plan, and that you’ll be extremely responsible when it comes to managing your job through the new-baby time. Is there a danger that you’ll be passed over as a candidate simply because of your condition? Frankly, yes. If the organization has two excellent candidates, and you are one, and the other one is not expecting, you could lose out. But if you are the right person for the job and seem well prepared for both the new job and your other life changes, many employers will take the correct long view — what’s three months of maternity leave out of a long and successful relationship? In your confidence-inspiring remarks about your plans, you don’t need to go into exhaustive detail. Your prospective employer doesn’t need to know who will be watching the baby or whether or not you’ll be nursing, for instance. But it might be helpful to throw in facts that will show you’re not going to fall apart upon baby’s arrival. For example, if this is your second child, you could mention that your past maternity leave went smoothly. One caution: Be sure to guard against the natural impulse to oversell your flexibility. Don’t say, “I’ll only take two weeks maternity leave!” It’s more important to focus on your skills, your experience, and your enthusiasm for the job and the organization than to feel you have to apologize for or explain away your wonderful expectant state. Do invest in a professional interviewing wardrobe. Remember what they say: Pregnancy makes you radiant. Let yourself shine with confidence and delight in your wonderful situation and remember that you’re a terrific job candidate. The squirmer in your belly doesn’t take anything away from that; if anything, he or she adds to it.

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Liz Ryan: Five LinkedIn Networking Questions

May 17, 2010

Dear Liz, I saw that a friend of mine (who’s a first-degree LinkedIn connection of mine) knows a guy I want to meet. How do I use LinkedIn to reach the guy, since I don’t have his email address? Thanks, Jerome Dear Liz, When you find the “target” person’s LinkedIn profile (by searching on his name, for instance, using the People Search function of Linked that you’ll find in the upper right-hand corner of almost every LinkedIn page), click on the link next to his photo, called Get Introduced Through a Connection. Assuming the fellow is a first-degree connection of your friend, you’ll be one “hop” away from him (your mutual friend is the hop) and you’ll be able to reach out to him, through her. (Her contact settings may prohibit overtures from other LinkedIn users, but that’s your best bet.) The site will prompt you to create two messages – one to the guy, and one to your friend — as you make the friend-of-a-friend outreach. Best, Liz Dear Liz, No one I know is actually connected on LinkedIn to a woman I’m interested in contacting. Am I sunk? Thanks, Carolyn Dear Carolyn, No way! The world of people is getting more porous by the minute. For starters, you can see whether you’re a member of any LinkedIn Groups in common with the woman you want to reach. If you are, you can reach her that way (assuming her contact settings allow overtures from other LinkedIn users). If you don’t have any Groups in common, you can still reach her by upgrading your LinkedIn membership to allow you to blast off InMail messages to other users. Cheers, Liz Dear Liz, I’m job-hunting and not working. I can’t decide whether to leave my LinkedIn headline the way it is now (“Product Manager, Acme Dynamite”) or change it to show that I’m job-hunting. Is that too desperate? Thanks, Jacob Dear Jacob, Desperate? If you don’t use your LinkedIn profile, specifically your headline (the field just under your name) to let people know you’re job-hunting, they’ll assume you’re still over at Acme Dynamite. There are desperate ways to job-hunt (a sandwich board on the entrance ramp to the freeway springs to mind) but an accurate LinkedIn headline isn’t one of them. Change your headline pronto, to “Tech Product Manager ISO Next Startup to Grow” or something that describes you. Headhunters and hiring managers troll LinkedIn all the time looking for available talent, and you want them to find you (and contact you), rather than move on, so make this change now! Also, make sure your LinkedIn profile has all the keywords in it that will help hiring managers and recruiters find you. Regards, Liz Dear Liz, I am on LinkedIn but I don’t have any first-degree contacts. Is that a big drawback for me? Thanks, Lucille Dear Lucille, That’s a big drawback! LinkedIn is an incredible research tool, a connection-and-introduction engine, and a sort of collective Rolodex for professional people. All of these capabilities grow exponentially when you develop a network of first-degree (and simultaneously, second-and-third degree) connections. Start by downloading your Outlook, Gmail or another address book to see which of your friends is already using LinkedIn. These are the first people you’ll invite to join your network, because these guys are already using the site and can join your network (you’ll join theirs in the same instant) with only a click or two. After that, check out the Colleagues tab to see which co-workers from your past jobs is using LinkedIn, and invite them to join your network, too. There’s a ton to say on the topic of inviting people to join your LinkedIn network — get in touch with me to learn more about that. Yours, Liz Dear Liz, I have a LinkedIn profile but it’s not very complete. Will that make a difference in my use of LinkedIn? Thanks, Corey Dear Corey, By all means Corey, build out your LinkedIn profile when you have a chance. Your profile is where people learn about you – not just the bare facts of where you’ve worked and for how long, but how you write ( = how you think), your perspective on your career, your contacts (a credibility-builder if there ever were one), your glowing endorsements from other LinkedIn users, your full-text resume if you like (and other documents that speak to your career cred – let’s say, a Powerpoint presentation and a white paper), your Groups, your education — the possibilities are nearly infinite! Your LinkedIn profile is a wonderful, free professional billboard for you. Don’t give it a cursory once-over. Build that puppy out, Corey! It will take you about an hour to do that thoroughly, and your personal brand will get much stronger from that moment forward. Best, Liz

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Sheila Bair, FDIC Chief, Traded Angry Emails With Fellow Regulator Over WaMu Collapse

April 16, 2010

Dealbreaker published a copy of an August 2008 email OTS Director John Reich sent to Sheila Bair after she emailed him about her desire to “discuss contingency planning” in the event that Washington Mutual experienced “an emergency closing.” Elsewhere, Reich wrote that he could not “believe the continuing audacity of this woman,” but to her directly, he wrote:

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In-Flight Smokes Entice Hundreds to Break Law 20 Years Following U.S. Ban

April 9, 2010

By John Hughes and Jeff Green April 9 (Bloomberg) — Passengers smoke on U.S. jetliners at least twice a week, according to authorities, breaking the law without creating an international incident like an episode this week. The Federal Aviation Administration has brought 696 cases, some for civil fines of thousands of dollars, against people caught smoking aboard airliners in the last five years, said Diane Spitaliere , an agency spokeswoman. Lighting a cigarette on a plane has been banned for 20 years. “People do not always act in a rational or sane manner,” said Richard Bloom , director of terrorism and security studies at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona. “With air marshals on planes and other new rules, there are still folks trying to beat the system.” Carriers don’t have data on how often passengers attempt a smoke, though “these events still do happen,” said David Castelveter , a spokesman for the Air Transport Association trade group in Washington. “When crew members find you smoking, you are reported, and they turn you over to authorities,” said Castelveter, whose group’s members include Delta Air Lines Inc. , AMR Corp.’s American Airlines and Southwest Airlines Co. The implications of trying to enjoy a cigarette onboard were brought into focus April 7, when a diplomat from Qatar allegedly attempted to do so on a United Airlines flight. Fighter Escort Mohammed Al-Madadi, who helps manage the Qatar embassy in Washington, was smoking in the lavatory, said a law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity. When a flight attendant confronted him, he said he burned plastic on his sandal to mask the smell, the official said. The comments were interpreted as threatening, and two fighter jets were scrambled to escort the flight of the UAL Corp. unit to Denver. Al-Madadi was released from custody yesterday, said Alison Bradley, a spokeswoman for the embassy. The diplomat is going back to Qatar because he lost his ability to function effectively after the incident, a U.S. official said. While most FAA cases against smokers aren’t posted publicly, one of the few that is shows the agency sought a $3,300 penalty in 2004 against a Scottsdale, Arizona, woman. According to the agency’s complaint, the woman “went to the lavatory and smoked a cigarette” on a Southwest flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Las Vegas. Since 1990 The woman responded in a letter that she and “one of my girlfriends went to the bathroom together, entering into a cloud of smoke, so we quickly fixed our lipstick and returned to our seats.” Her response, included in a federal regulatory docket, also said, “We insisted that we did not do it.” The woman later withdrew her request for a hearing on the matter before an administrative law judge. The disposition of the case hasn’t been made public. The FAA’s Spitaliere said she didn’t immediately have records on how many of the 696 cases resulted in fines or were dismissed. The smoking ban took effect in 1990 aboard U.S. flights, and the agency extended it to international trips starting in 1996, said Laura Brown , an FAA spokeswoman. Northwest Airlines , which has since become part of Delta, voluntarily imposed a smoking ban more than a year before the 1990 law took effect, said Douglas R. Laird , who was the carrier’s security chief at the time. Smoke Detectors “It helped our business,” as both non-smoking and smoking passengers said they appreciated the clearer cabin air, said Laird, now president of the Laird & Associates Inc. consultancy in Reno, Nevada. “In the first year or two there were quite a few incidents” of people trying to smoke, Laird said. “They would sneak a smoke in the lavatory until it became clear it wasn’t tolerated and you could get arrested. Incidents went way down.” Smoke detectors, which the FAA requires in all aircraft lavatories, alert flight crews to would-be violators. Even that doesn’t stop all would-be violators, said John Eakin, whose Air Data Research in Helotes, Texas, collects air safety data. “There’s a reason it’s against the law to tamper with smoke detectors in the lavatory,” Eakin said. “People must have tried it.” To contact the reporters on this story: John Hughes in Washington at jhughes5@bloomberg.net ; Jeff Green in Southfield, Michigan, at jgreen16@bloomberg.net

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Kagan, Two Judges Said to Be Considered by Obama for High Court Vacancy

April 3, 2010

By Greg Stohr April 3 (Bloomberg) — The Obama administration, eyeing the possible retirement of U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens , is focusing on three candidates to succeed him, a White House official familiar with the deliberations said. The group includes U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan and federal appellate judges Diane Wood and Merrick Garland , the person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Stevens, who will turn 90 on April 20, told the New Yorker magazine in March that he will decide soon whether he will step down. He hasn’t communicated his intentions to the White House one way or another, the person said. President Barack Obama hasn’t begun discussing particular candidates with aides, and the list of leading candidates could change in the coming weeks, the person said. “We’ll be prepared if a vacancy arises, but there’s no vacancy on the court, and there’s no short list awaiting a potential vacancy,” White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said in an e-mail. White House officials expect that any retirement announcement would come after the high court’s last argument of its current term, on April 27, the person said. The administration is preparing to move quickly with a nomination, the person said. Kagan, 49, and Wood, 59, interviewed with Obama last year before he appointed Sonia Sotomayor to succeed David Souter on the high court, according to a different White House official. Garland, 57, was one of nine candidates the White House considered for that vacancy, though he didn’t meet with Obama. First Woman Kagan is the first woman to serve as solicitor general, the federal government’s top Supreme Court advocate. She took that post after serving as the first female dean of Harvard Law School , her alma mater. Kagan won praise from conservatives and liberals alike for smoothing over the ideological tensions that plagued Harvard Law School before she became dean in 2003. Still, her nomination to become solicitor general was divisive. She won confirmation on a 61-31 vote, with some Republicans voicing concern about her lack of courtroom experience and her opposition to on-campus military recruiting at Harvard. Wood, a judge on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago since 1995, has developed a reputation there as an intellectual jurist willing to take on her more conservative colleagues Richard Posner and Frank Easterbrook . A graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, Wood is an antitrust expert, serving as deputy assistant attorney general under President Bill Clinton . Sided With Government Garland, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, is perhaps the most conservative of the trio, often siding with the government on criminal questions. A Harvard Law School graduate, he worked in the Clinton administration’s Justice Department, overseeing the Oklahoma City bombing investigation and the successful prosecution of Timothy McVeigh . For last year’s vacancy, officials also considered Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano , Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan and then-Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears of the Georgia Supreme Court. Martha Minow , who succeeded Kagan as Harvard Law School dean, is also a possibility for the Stevens seat, the first White House official said. To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net .

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Kagan, Two Judges Said to Be Candidates for Possible Supreme Court Vacancy

April 2, 2010

By Greg Stohr April 2 (Bloomberg) — The Obama administration is focusing on three candidates for the U.S. Supreme Court in the event Justice John Paul Stevens retires, a White House official familiar with the deliberations said. The group includes U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan and federal appellate judges Diane Wood and Merrick Garland , the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Stevens, who will turn 90 on April 20, told the New Yorker magazine in March that he will decide soon whether he will step down. He hasn’t communicated his intentions to the White House one way or another, the person said. President Barack Obama hasn’t begun discussing particular candidates with aides, and the list of leading candidates could change in the coming weeks, the person said. “We’ll be prepared if a vacancy arises, but there’s no vacancy on the court, and there’s no short list awaiting a potential vacancy,” White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said in an e-mail. White House officials expect that any retirement announcement would come after the high court’s last argument of its current term, on April 27, the person said. The administration is preparing to move quickly with a nomination, the person said. Kagan, 49, and Wood, 59, interviewed with Obama last year before he appointed Sonia Sotomayor to succeed David Souter on the high court, according to a different White House official. Garland, 57, was one of nine candidates the White House considered for that vacancy, though he didn’t meet with Obama. First Woman Kagan is the first woman to serve as solicitor general, the federal government’s top Supreme Court advocate. She took that post after serving as the first female dean of Harvard Law School , her alma mater. Kagan won praise from conservatives and liberals alike for smoothing over the ideological tensions that plagued Harvard Law School before she became dean in 2003. Still, her nomination to become solicitor general was divisive. She won confirmation on a 61-31 vote, with some Republicans voicing concern about her lack of courtroom experience and her opposition to on-campus military recruiting at Harvard. Wood, a judge on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago since 1995, has developed a reputation there as an intellectual jurist willing to take on her more conservative colleagues Richard Posner and Frank Easterbrook . A graduate of the University of Texas School of Law, Wood is an antitrust expert, serving as deputy assistant attorney general under President Bill Clinton . Sided With Government Garland, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, is perhaps the most conservative of the trio, often siding with the government on criminal questions. A Harvard Law School graduate, he worked in the Clinton administration’s Justice Department, overseeing the Oklahoma City bombing investigation and the successful prosecution of Timothy McVeigh . For last year’s vacancy, officials also considered Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano , Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan and then-Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears of the Georgia Supreme Court. Martha Minow , who succeeded Kagan as Harvard Law School dean, is also a possibility for the Stevens seat, the first White House official said. To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net .

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Richard Zombeck: ShameTheBanks.org Gaining Momentum

March 28, 2010

Since www.shamethebanks.org was launched on March 23 and announced on the Huff Post, the site has received thousands of visitors. Homeowners have been submitting stories , commenting on articles and stories, and downloading hundreds of mortgage related documents that are available on the site. The content on the site has received over 13,000 hits and continues to gain momentum. In the site’s short time on the web it’s been featured on moveyourmoney.info , with the tag line, “Want to tell people how you were abused by the big banks? Share your story at ShametheBanks.org , where you can read other horror stories and stay up to date on how government policies affect you.” Denise Richardson, consumer advocate and owner of GiveMeBackMyCredit.com , wrote in her recent Sun Sentinel post, “ShameTheBanks.org is a great non-commercial location for consumers to share their stories about fighting the banking system, lowering their interest rates, or advocating for student loan rights. It is also a resource, providing homeowners with mortgage and loan information drawn from across the Internet and beyond, all in one location.” Richardson also sent us an e-mail shortly after the site was announced on Huff Post . “I never heard of the site, so went to see if it was a legit site — I was thrilled that it was,” she wrote eluding to the enormous number of commercial sites offering similar information at a cost to already cash-strapped and desperate homeowners. Unfortunately not every site covering the crisis is as dedicated to helping homeowners or grateful to see another site as Richardson is. Earlier this month, in an effort to inform Congress and the powers that be about the daunting experiences homeowners were facing in getting loan modifications, I visited homeowner forums to solicit stories from people. On a recent visit to one forum I posted a request for information from homeowners who had received trial modifications and been granted permanent modifications. I wanted to repudiate the amount of “successful” modifications banks and servicers have claimed. The owner of the site banned me from the site the same day, claiming that I was self promoting, though it was difficult to read his response amongst the ads on the site. Over the last year, while blogging about the crisis, I have received a number of e-mails from homeowners recounting their stories and difficulties in getting any relief in this crisis. Each story is different and was sent with the hope that comes with media attention. As I wrote in my last post, “Every once in a while a story will pop up in the press about a homeowner being unfairly treated by a bank, like this Indiana couple who were denied a modification by GMAC for making their payments early . The bank is contacted by the media, the situation is rectified, the bank explains it away and inevitably they simply go back to business as usual with the rest of their customers -the ones who didn’t get media attention.” Initially people contacted me with trepidation and reserve, asking me to not mention them by name or location for fear that publicizing their plight would lead to retribution from the banks. A couple of weeks ago, facing a pile of e-mails, a few of us got together and decided to put a site together for people to tell their stories. I contacted each of the homeowners who had e-mailed me to inform them of shamethebanks.org and our intention. I fully expected to get push back and more misplaced fear. My inbox was brimming the next morning. “YES, you have my permission to use my case or words in anyway that will help another realize they are not alone and make the point the banks are scamming us by double and triple dipping ONCE they can do what they do to get our homes to auction,” was just one e-mail I received from Catherine Drake. She and her husband are among the many who have had enough and feel they have nothing to lose by coming forward and telling their story. Lori Kelly wrote, “Feel free to use my first and last name. I have nothing to hide. Except maybe the HAMP police,” she wrote. She now blogs on the site. The site is riddled with information, stories from homeowners are coming in every day, and the blogs are active. The contributors to the site are homeowners, consumer lawyers, and even some who worked for loan servicers. A few of the members have blogs on the site . Each of them is dedicated to one purpose: Helping homeowners find information and give them a voice they otherwise may not have had. The majority of of the comments are empathetic as people respond to the stories and blog posts.”I don’t even know you, but your story hits home with me,” one reader posts. Banks aren’t the only ones angering homeowners. People frustrated with how elected officials have responded to this situation leave their comments as well. “I went to Senator Feinstein’s office a few weeks back as I had petitioned for a meeting. I thought I was going to meet her, but ended up in a room with a twenty-something aide,” writes one reader. Another woman told me that Congressman Mike Conway of Texas told her, “I don’t get involved in the private sector.” Bank of America recently announced a plan to reduce principal after a tongue lashings from the White House. Treasury’s March report of modifications to date by servicer show’s Bank of America as having modified less than 10 percent of its eligible loans. There is little confidence among homeowners or economists that the bank will follow through with this recent announcement according to an NPR Radio broadcast . On March 4 Ocwen’s president, Ron Farris appeared before the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and said, “In Ocwen’s experience, negative equity increases the chance of a re-default by one-and-a-half to two times.” This assessment by Farris may be accurate, but it is in stark contradiction to his companies policies. In e-mail communications and phone conversations with Jennifer Levy, an Ocwen Bank Loan Workout Specialist and Farris’ own secretary, Linda Ludwig, about our loan, both women stated emphatically that Ocwen never reduces principal, despite what their executives are quoted as saying. Ludwig even accused us of taking what they said out of context. Ocwen has been ordered by a judge to clean up their accounting , calling it “systematic abuse” and repeatedly been given a grade of “F” by the Better Business Bureau, yet Congress continues to accept their testimony without verifying any of their claims. A successful loan modification from either of Bank of America or Ocwen has yet to be reported. The public relations departments of these firms has done an excellent job convincing Congress and homeowners who are not trouble that they are doing great things, but the reality of the situation for homeowners is far from great and we’re posting new stories as they come in. In just one week shamethebanks.org has managed to reach more people than we had hoped. We’re hoping the momentum will continue and eventually reach Washington. Help spread the word and the shame at ShameTheBanks.org and tell your story about the bank or elected official treating you shamefully. Let them know that their plan isn’t working and homeowners continue to be duped out of their money and their homes.

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Hatch Says House Democrats `Nuts’ to Think Sunday Vote Settles Health Care

March 20, 2010

By Nicholas Johnston March 20 (Bloomberg) — Republican Senator Orrin Hatch said Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives are “nuts” to think tomorrow’s vote on health-care legislation will resolve the issue. If the measure passes, Senate Republicans have enough votes on at least two points of order to alter the measure and send it back to the House for a second round of votes, Hatch said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt ,” airing this weekend. “If those people think they’re only going to vote on this once, they’re nuts,” Hatch said as House Democratic leaders rounded up support before the scheduled vote on President Barack Obama ’s top domestic priority. The senator from Utah also said the approach Democrats are using to pass the legislation in the House may be unconstitutional because the House and Senate aren’t voting on “exactly the same language.” The second-ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee , Hatch also said Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens , 89, is “likely” to announce he is stepping down next month. That would allow Obama to name his replacement, and Hatch suggested Solicitor General Elena Kagan and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano as possibilities. ‘Pick Another Woman’ “I suspect he’s going to try and pick another woman or somebody from some ethnic group that hasn’t had a chance to be on the court,” Hatch said. Replacing Stevens would be Obama’s second pick for the nine-member court. Last year he named Sonia Sotomayor , the first Hispanic justice, to the court to fill the seat vacated by David Souter . On the issue of terrorism, Hatch, a member of the Senate intelligence committee, said the U.S. “may very well catch Osama bin Laden ,” the leader of the al-Qaeda network. “We are knocking off the top 20 one by one,” Hatch said. He criticized Attorney General Eric Holder for telling lawmakers March 16 that bin Laden isn’t likely to be captured alive. “I don’t think he should have said that,” Hatch said. Asked if he knew whether bin Laden’s capture is imminent, Hatch said, “I couldn’t say even if I did.” College Football On college sports, Hatch called the Bowl Championship Series , which oversees the college football national championship game, “a corrupt system” that funnels billions of dollars to “privileged conferences.” The Department of Justice has told Hatch it is considering whether to investigate the BCS for possible violations of antitrust law. “It’s a corrupt system and frankly we really do need to change it,” said Hatch, who turns 76 on March 22. “And I understand why they’d try and hold onto it. It’s a gravy train to them that nobody seems to look at or supervise or review.” Hatch said one of the points of order raised against the health-care legislation in the Senate would be related to the effect on Social Security revenue, and he expects Republicans will have the votes to win on that because it would require 60 votes to overturn. Less Revenue A proposed tax on high-end insurance plans would be scaled back under the House measure, which would mean less revenue for the Social Security system, Republicans say. That would violate Senate rules, they say. Democrats and two independents who usually side with the party have 59 seats in the 100-member body. The legislation represents the most significant health-care revamp since the Medicare program for the elderly was created in 1965. Under it, Americans would have more access to preventive care, Democrats say. Also, young adults could stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26. The measure has a 10-year $940 billion price tag. Hatch, who was first elected to his seat in 1976, predicted “outright warfare” in the Senate if Democrats use a process called reconciliation that would allow the chamber to pass the health-care measure with a simple majority. “That’s going to be something they’re going to have to live with the rest of their lives,” Hatch said. To contact the reporter on this story: Nicholas Johnston in Washington at njohnston3@bloomberg.net

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Hatch Says `Nuts’ to Think Sunday Vote Will Resolve Health Bill’s Debate

March 19, 2010

By Nicholas Johnston March 19 (Bloomberg) — U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch , a Utah Republican, said Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives are “nuts” to think that Sunday’s vote on health-care legislation will resolve the issue. Senate Republicans have enough votes on at least two points of order to alter the measure and send it back to the House for a second round of votes, Hatch said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt ,” airing this weekend. “If those people think they’re only going to vote on this once, they’re nuts,” Hatch said as House Democratic leaders rounded up support before the scheduled March 21 vote on President Barack Obama ’s top domestic priority. Hatch warned that the approach Democrats are using to pass the legislation in the House may be unconstitutional because the House and Senate aren’t voting on “exactly the same language.” The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee , Hatch also said Supreme Court Associate Justice John Paul Stevens , 89, the longest serving member of the court, is “likely” to announce he is stepping down next month. That will allow Obama to name his replacement, and Hatch suggested Solicitor General Elena Kagan and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano as possibilities. ‘Pick Another Woman’ “I suspect he’s going to try and pick another woman or somebody from some ethnic group that hasn’t had a chance to be on the court,” Hatch said. On the issue of terrorism, Hatch, a member of the Senate intelligence committee, said the U.S. “may very well catch Osama bin Laden ,” the leader of the al-Qaeda network. “We are knocking off the top 20 one by one,” Hatch said. He criticized Attorney General Eric Holder for telling lawmakers March 16 that bin Laden isn’t likely to be captured alive. “I don’t think he should have said that,” Hatch said. Asked if he knew whether bin Laden’s capture is imminent, Hatch said, “I couldn’t say even if I did.” On college sports, Hatch called the Bowl Championship Series , which oversees the college football national championship game, “a corrupt system” that funnels billions of dollars to “privileged conferences.” The Department of Justice has told Hatch it is considering whether to investigate the BCS for possible violations of antitrust law. ‘Gravy Train’ “It’s a corrupt system and frankly we really do need to change it,” Hatch said. “And I understand why they’d try and hold onto it. It’s a gravy train to them that nobody seems to look at or supervise or review.” Hatch said one of the points of order raised against the health-care legislation would be related to the effect on Social Security revenue, and he expects Republicans will have the votes to win on that because it would require 60 votes to overturn. A proposed tax on high-end insurance plans would be scaled back under the House measure, which would mean less revenue for the Social Security system, Republicans say. That would violate Senate rules, they say. Democrats and two independents have 59 seats in the 100- member body. The legislation represents the most significant health-care revamp since the Medicare program for the elderly was created in 1965. Americans would have more access to preventive care and young adults could stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26, Democrats say. The measure has a 10-year $940 billion price tag. Hatch predicted “outright warfare” in the Senate if Democrats use a process called reconciliation that would allow the Senate to pass the health-care measure with a simple majority. “That’s going to be something they’re going to have to live with the rest of their lives,” Hatch said. To contact the reporter on this story: Nicholas Johnston in Washington at njohnston3@bloomberg.net

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Obama Skirting Illinois in Campaign Visits as Democrats Confront Scandals

March 17, 2010

By John McCormick March 18 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama has campaigned for embattled Democrats this year in Massachusetts, Colorado and Nevada. There’s one trouble spot he’s so far stayed away from: his adopted home state of Illinois. Democrats’ travails since Obama last visited in July include a U.S. Senate contender facing questions about his family’s bank and a lieutenant-governor candidate who withdrew following reports he allegedly once held a knife to the throat of a former girlfriend. The state’s former Democratic governor, Rod Blagojevich , faces a corruption trial June 3. With congressional majorities at stake in the November elections, Obama may be called on to appear with and raise money for candidates in states such as Missouri, Indiana and Ohio, where analysts predict close races. Nowhere will the outcome be viewed as a reflection on his presidency as much as in Illinois, where Obama began his political career. “I’m not sure he should come right now,” said David Yepsen , a former political writer who is director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Obama has battled suggestions that he is a product of “Chicago-style” politics since his 2008 presidential campaign. Traveling to Illinois, where four of the past eight governors have faced criminal charges, could give Republicans ammunition to reignite that storyline. Incentive to Visit Still, Obama has an incentive to visit Illinois later this year and campaign aggressively for Democrats, Yepsen said. “He is going to get tarred with the outcome in Illinois whether he comes here or not,” he said. “It is going to be portrayed as a referendum on him.” Matt Lehrich, a White House spokesman, declined to comment on the likelihood of an Obama campaign visit this spring or summer in Illinois, where unemployment was 11.3 percent in January, compared with a national average of 9.7 percent. One candidate eager for a visit is Alexi Giannoulias , the Democrat seeking the U.S. Senate seat Obama held until he was elected president. Giannoulias, 34, is running against five-term Republican Representative Mark Kirk , 50. “Hopefully before November, yes,” Giannoulias told reporters in Chicago on March 11, when asked whether he expected the president to campaign with him in Illinois. Broadway Bank Republicans have linked Giannoulias’s campaign to a controversy surrounding his family’s bank. The family must raise at least $75 million by late April to meet demands of regulators threatening to close their Broadway Bank because of commercial real-estate losses. Last week, a Chicago restaurateur who gave more than $100,000 to Giannoulias was charged with defrauding banks by writing about $1.8 million in bad checks. Nick Giannis , 62, is also a former Obama donor. He gave $4,600, the maximum allowed by law, to Obama’s presidential bid in September 2007, campaign finance records show. The owner of the Boston Blackie’s chain in Chicago also donated $2,000 to U.S. Senate candidate Obama in 2003 and 2004. Obama’s campaign plans to donate to charity the contributions to it from Giannis, said Brad Woodhouse , a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. The National Republican Senatorial Committee seized on the bank issue, asking in a March 9 news release whether Obama would “campaign alongside” Giannoulias. The Republicans also told reporters that the White House had sought to convince Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to run instead of Giannoulias because she has a longer political track record and doesn’t have ties to a troubled bank. Obama recognized Giannoulias, a basketball buddy, as a “potential member of Congress” during a March 9 White House event celebrating Greek independence. Earlier that day, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs promised Giannoulias White House support. Dropout From Race In the Illinois lieutenant governor’s race, Democrats are searching for a new candidate following Scott Lee Cohen’s decision to drop out less than a week after winning the Feb. 2 primary. Cohen was arrested in 2005 on battery allegations involving a former girlfriend; he denied the charges, which were dropped when the woman failed to attend a court hearing, the Associated Press reported. Obama’s job approval in Illinois is 56 percent, according to a Rasmussen Reports survey taken March 8 that had a 4.5 percentage point margin of error. His national rating in Gallup’s tracking poll has dropped below 50 percent this week. Giannoulias sought to take advantage of Obama’s popularity in Illinois yesterday, criticizing Kirk for telling supporters at a private function in suburban Chicago March 12 that Republicans are “on the way to making this guy a one-termer.” ‘Political Points’ In a statement, Giannoulias said Kirk and Republicans “care more about scoring political points for their party than listening to the people.” The statement about Obama was first reported by Politico. Stu Rothenberg , editor of the non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report , said an Obama appearance in Illinois would increase fundraising and turnout. “If Obama is going to help anywhere, he’s going to help there,” he said. Democrats in Illinois say they would like to see the president back home sooner rather than later. “I don’t think you want to run the risk of waiting too late to come,” said Kwame Raoul , a Democrat who holds the state Senate seat on Chicago’s South Side that Obama once held. “I don’t think it’s a place he can afford not to come.” To contact the reporter on this story: John McCormick in Chicago at jmccormick16@bloomberg.net .

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Ryan Mack: Open Letter to Magic Johnson: Please Stop Promoting Financial Predators!

March 17, 2010

Dear Mr. Johnson: I remember when I used to play basketball in high school and my father bought me a tape called Showtime . It was about your life and I must have watched it at least 100 times. Your story inspired me to no end and I was always motivated to practice that much harder, take a few extra shots, and become a student of the game. I didn’t go on to play college basketball, but I thank God every day for those skills that I learned from the game because I use the same skills of work ethic, diligence, and determination today as an entrepreneur. Along with many who have assisted me, I owe a small part of my success simply from watching you. When I became a business man, I began to follow your career and my respect for your business acumen began to grow tremendously. Your real estate development activities that provide housing for 100s in communities across the country; your purchasing of many Starbucks franchises in areas where there were traditionally none and creating employment; I have sat in your theater in Harlem many times and have heard great things about your other theaters; and I have heard tremendous reviews from the talks that you provide teaching others how to create wealth. I have always thought that you were a strong model of fiscal responsibility and wealth creation. My admiration continued until, as someone who teaches financial literacy, I was doing research on financial predators and perusing the sites of various financial predators. I was shocked when I went to a Rent-A-Center site and heard a basketball bouncing. I recognized the sound and immediately thought, “What does basketball have to do with Rent-A-Center?” I scrolled down to see you bouncing the ball wearing the large smile that I grew up with. Then I began to see your face on television and hearing your voice on the radio telling people how great Rent-A-Center was. I knew full well that Rent-A-Center was a financial predator but I decided to go my own research to learn more about Rent-A-Center. I figured that I must be misinformed because a man like you who has taught and exemplified ownership as a principle of wealth creation, there had to be something more to Rent-A-Center that I must have missed. So I simply made a few calls to 6 Rent-A-Centers in the New York City area acting as if I was a customer to see what sort of great deals they were offering. What I found was quite disturbing. The Sofa and Love Seat: Mr. Johnson … did you know that at your Rent-A-Center that they are pushing a sofa that retails for $900 and has a weekly payment rate of $19.99? Did you also know that if you stuck to the RAC schedule you would only own it after 78 weeks meaning that you paid $659 in interest at a rate of 80%? Why would you promote this product when you could promote being responsible and saving $19.99 per week until you can purchase the same $900 sofa in just 44 weeks and save $659 in interest over 34 weeks? The Leather Sofa and Love Seat: Mr. Johnson, did you know that the leather sofa and love seat that RAC is promoting retails for about $2000 and under their payment plan you need to pay $30.99 per week for 78 weeks until you own it? This means that you would have to pay a very modest (using RAC standards) 26% interest rate and about $417 in interest. Why would you promote this product when a family can own the same $2000 sofa outright if they just saved $30.99 per week for 63 weeks? This way they would save $417 in interest and would have 15 additional weeks that they could continue to put money away for a rainy day, retirement, etc. The 26 Inch Sony Bravio Television: Mr. Johnson, did you know that the company you are promoting is selling a 26 Inch Sony Bravio television that retails for about $550, and making those who want to own it pay $17.99 per week for 104 weeks? This means that if they wanted to own it the RAC way they would be paying out $1321 in interest at a 163% interest rate! Why would you promote this when the same family could do what we did while growing up and just stuck with the black and white TV, with the hanger antennas, that we had to turn the channel using pliers for a while? While this family was making do with the cheap television they could save the $17.99 per week in a high yield savings account each week, do this until they can own the same $550 TV after only 30 weeks, and save $1,321 in interest payments over 74 weeks. The 52 Inch Sony Bravio TV: Mr. Johnson, I would think that you believe like I believe … people who can’t afford to purchase a TV shouldn’t even think about buying a big screen television! In this consumer-oriented society why are you promoting extravagant, superficial items to people who can hardly even afford to pay bills on a monthly basis? Did you know that this television, under the terms of RAC, one can own after 116 weeks of paying $59.99 per week? The TV only retails for $1900 and if they pay for the full 116 weeks they would have paid out $5,059 in interest and a total of $6,959 total for a $1900 television! Seriously Mr. Johnson, were you made aware of this consumer abuse when you accepted the checks to promote it? This same television, if someone saved $59.99 in a high-yield savings account per week, they could own this television in 31 weeks and save 85 weeks of payments and over $5000 in interest! It doesn’t stop at Rent-A-Center, Mr. Johnson, because I also have heard you on the radio promoting the refund anticipation loan as well through your endorsement of Jackson Hewitt. The refund anticipation loan plays upon the fact that many people are expecting to receive their tax return, can’t wait for the money, so they created a way to make exorbitant profit from other peoples’ misery. Let me give you a scenario: A single mother in the inner city goes to get her taxes done and her tax preparer at Jackson Hewitt estimates that she should be getting a $1000 tax return. Then the preparer asks if she has any pressing bills that require her immediate attention. She thinks about the light bill, the gas bill, and the rent. Then she thinks about the fact that her son needs a new pair of shoes as his only pair of shoes have a hole in the bottom, they just increased the bus fair and the price of her monthly pass was increased by 15%, the day care just called and stated that their prices are also going up, and her job just announced that they were going through another round of layoffs. All of these things together make it sound much more responsible to get the refund much sooner than later. However, the preparer left out a few details. The first detail that he left out was the fact that if she gets automatic deposit into her account the amount of time of which she would get the loan and her actual refund could be as little as a week a part. Also, there are a few fees that he rushed over. When one accounts for these fees along with the already high interest rate the woman may have to pay interest on the loan that could range from 100 – 500%! Lastly, if the woman decides to take the loan, the refund is an “estimate” of her actual return. If there was a wrong calculation and she only gets half of what she expected (which happens frequently), she is still on the hook for the entire amount of the loan AND the interest! Mr. Johnson, do you really think that this is fair? Do you really believe that this action is empowering to the community? Did you know that those who have the least are targeted the most? According to IRS data, of the 8.7 million who received a refund anticipation loan in 2007, 67% received an Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) while only 17% of the entire US population received the EITC in 2007. The EITC program is designed to assist the working poor, so when you see that 2/3rds of those who received an RAL came from only 17% of the population it is clear who those who are in the refund anticipation loan business are marketing to. Mr. Johnson, I give you much praise and respect for all of your accomplishments. However, I cannot allow your recent endorsements of such predatory products to go without reproach. I do not deny the personal responsibility that exists in the people to be able to learn and implement principles of financial literacy. If someone goes to Rent-A-Center and pays exorbitant interest for a television or sofa, or if an individual pays 400% interest on a refund anticipation loan that should have never been applied for, the ultimate fault lies with the individual. However, even though your actions are not illegal, your support for these products is immoral and I implore you to take additional measures of consideration of the repercussions of your actions to those in communities across this country. I would love to join with you in the teaching of the community to attempt to reverse the damage and loss of billions of dollars that communities across the country have lost to these financial predators. I look forward to and welcome your response.

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Juliette Frette: Women Dominate… Almost!

March 12, 2010

As semi-inspiring as it may seem, the idea that women almost dominate is not actually a slogan to lead the new generation of powerful women. Instead, it is a simple description of our current stature in the United States workforce. According to an article by Karen Kornbluh and Rachel Homer called ” Paycheck Feminism ,” women are gaining on men in the workplace. Kind of. Numerically speaking, women now comprise almost more than 50% of paid workers. Which might make sense, as women also outnumber men in terms of world population by a slight margin. Should we thus occupy the corresponding jobs in that case? Would that be equality? Yet on an interesting and significant note, the recent economic downfall actually contributed to the higher proportion of female workers, as the majority of those who were laid off are men. Still, with or without the fiscal fiasco, women have been consistently gaining on men for years, and were thus destined to reach this inevitable threshold anyway. Yes. Women will dominate. And soon. So what does this mean for you? Shall we turn the tables and install a matriarchy once and for all? To even the scales of his story with our dictatorship? > groan< Sounds like a lot of work. Not that women are strangers to work. On the contrary: women still work the double or the triple day, fulfilling household duties even though they occupy more paid occupations than ever. Nevertheless, they do not make the same amount of money as men do for the same positions. Luckily though, the stats are improving. According to the aforementioned article, women make approximately $.79 for every male dollar — an improvement from when we made an average of $.70 for each male dollar a few years ago. Yes, we have advanced 9 cents. Fantastic! So are we done inching our way through societal glass ceilings? Probably not (or rather, hopefully not). In contrast to popular delusion, is not a ‘post-feminist’ era. That would imply that we are beyond the need for feminist progress and equality, which is apparently not the case. As illuminated by our authors in recent studies, which have mirrored previous ones from years gone by, our current institutions still favor “Leave it to Beaver” style family units that for the most part, no longer exist as a majority percentage of the population. In other words, most women no longer stay home while their husbands work to support the family. The proverbial ‘she’ does everything — and men are starting to share more household and child-rearing responsibilities. While doing everything is not necessarily a ‘bad thing’ for men and women, the institutions that regulate our society might need to accommodate the changing needs of the new generation. As feminist observers of the phenomenon, Kornbluh and Homer suggest the following revisions, which could be a great start to a better, more equal world. One glaring truth that strikes us right to the core is how women are shamelessly charged more for health insurance simply because of their gender. As quoted in their article: Women tend to pay more for individual health-insurance policies, even if they don’t include maternity benefits. Some insurers charge women as much as 50 percent more, while employers pay more per individual in their group health plans if their workforce is predominately women — a system known as ‘gender rating.’ Indeed: there it is in black and white. And to add insult to injury, women are more and more often refused coverage or charged extra for ‘preexisting conditions’ such as previous pregnancies. Or even more ludicrous: a woman can be denied health insurance or charged a higher premium if she has been a victim of domestic violence! Health insurance matters aside (as we all know that the system is fraught with corruption), the authors also advocate for granting benefits to part-time workers. Since part-time workers are disproportionately women due to family and care-taking responsibilities, such a measure would lend greater security to those who are already disadvantaged — an action that may lessen the blow of the uneven playing field. Furthermore, the notion of government-mandated maternity leave could very much help women succeed in their burgeoning roles in society’s new major work force. As such, a mandated paternity leave might also contribute to our goals for social equality. If ‘it takes two’ to create a child, then it stands to reason that both parents should be able to care for that child, and thus why not officially allow men to do so without relinquishing their jobs? And finally, equal pay for equal work would be nice. Although we are getting close, it will not happen without our consistent efforts. In the meantime however, the authors suggest that revamping the tax system so that married couples are no longer placed in higher tax brackets could be beneficial to women and society at large. An over-inflation of incomes that often overtaxes the lesser paid of the pair (which tends to be the woman), being taxed as a part of a married couple unit rather a separate indvidual may be largely unfair to all American families. Volunteering another aspect of potential tax reform, Kornbluh and Homer also support the idea of paid childcare as a viable tax-deductible business expense, especially if it allows an otherwise home-bound parent to work. While these are only some suggestions for improvement, there are of course countless ways to further our goals as we become a more productive, egalitarian society. Ultimately, ‘we the people’ definitely have the power to change and / or demand institutional reform that will be benefit the highest good of both men and women.

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Patricia Handschiegel: The New Power Girls: Women In Business, Women In Business Need You

February 18, 2010

The little girl playing in a comfortable suburban living room barely notices the subject Oprah Winfrey is talking about on the TV that sits idly in the backdrop, yet is fully aware of the presence of the popular talk show host, who at the time was just getting started on her road to multi-million dollar success. Awards, movies, book clubs, etc. were yet to come. Popular culture at the moment is all about women working, breaking barriers and accomplishing everything from supporting the household to single motherhood. Reruns of movies like Mr. Mom, Tootsie, and 9 to 5 play in a continuous loop on cable networks like HBO. The little girl is inspired. By age 17, while many of her friends dream about future weddings and children, she has her sights on being a bonafide business woman with her own multimedia company. Not long after, she’s working her way to doing just that. It’s 1980s and 90s. That little girl is me. I am forever thankful that I had the exposure that I did to smart, accomplished women while growing up. Not just on television but also in my home. Had I not, you may not be reading this column right now. Yet, despite that there are more women like Oprah Winfrey than ever, more women doing big things in business, more women breaking barriers and obstacles down, an enormous number of ambitious women across the country lack women business mentors and role models. In fact, studies show that it is one of the biggest obstacles women in business face, and a potential culprit for why certain industries still lack in attracting executives from the female gender. “Female role models are crucial for women in business,” said Page Adams-Geller, founder of Paige Premium Denim , a fashion apparel company that has been said to earn upwards of millions in sales every year. Adams-Geller receives tons of email from young women who want to work in the fashion industry, as models, designers, stylists or run their own companies. “I am happy that I can help in any way I can by being a good example.” Its not just young women or old women but all women that benefit from seeing examples of the various things people can be. Role models like Michelle Obama, Hilary Clinton, Arianna Huffington, Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, and all kinds of women doing big things in business aren’t just shaping the women of tomorrow but the women of right now too. It’s prompted dozens of companies, organizations and universities to implement programs to help women reach the top. “Women have to help each other,” said Barbara Adachi, National Managing Principal, Initiative for the Retention and Advancement of Women at Deloitte . The company has had an array of efforts to mentor and promote women workers for dozens of years. As Adachi and I talk shop via phone, I think to the group of women that I have met and know, the real life network of some 500 plus women founders and executives from across the country that the New Power Girls series is loosely based on. We work together, we play together, and we all support each other in business. Need a good book agent? There’s someone who has been published. Want to take a foray into the internet world? Plenty of women who will step up to share insight and help. “I’d be lost without my group,” said Miss Meghan founder and New Power Girls co-creator Meghan Cleary. Like many women founders, Meghan equally lends her experience and skills to other women in business. It’s something I’ve noticed common among the female entrepreneurs I know. They’re not just interested in benefiting the bottom line, but lending a hand and being an example for other women to do so as well. When it comes to strengthening the present and future for women everywhere, Power Girls play their part. If you’re a woman in business, help another woman coming up the ranks and you’ll benefit women everywhere.

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Lula Loses to `Chipmunks’ as Brazilians Reject Election-Year `Propaganda’

February 17, 2010

By Jonathan J. Levin and Maria Luiza Rabello Feb. 17 (Bloomberg) — A new movie about Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva , one of the most expensive ever produced in Brazil, is falling short of its blockbuster expectations as the president’s record popularity fails to bring box-office profits. Ticket sales for “Lula: the Son of Brazil ” totaled 6.93 million reais ($3.7 million), representing 818,337 spectators, from its Jan. 1 debut through Feb. 7, according to Filme B , which tracks movie sales. That trails the 5 million viewers the film’s producers said they hoped to attract and the 4.4 million spectators who paid 34 million reais to see Twentieth Century Fox’s “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel ” since Jan. 8. Brazilians are staying away because the movie is political propaganda they are too sophisticated to fall for 25 years after the military dictatorship ended, said Agripino Maia , Senate leader for the opposition Democrats Party. The movie depicts Lula’s progression from poverty in Brazil’s countryside to the slums of Sao Paulo while glossing over events that may be seen as unflattering. “One thing is to approve of his government as something that is going reasonably well, and another thing is to worship a personality,” said Bolivar Lamounier , a risk analyst and partner with Sao Paulo-based Augurium Consultoria. “That’s something Brazilians don’t take very well.” Opposition leaders such as Maia say the film portrays Lula in an excessively flattering manner, intended to bolster the candidacy of Cabinet Chief Dilma Rousseff , who the president hopes will succeed him after October’s election. Film’s Timing A spokesman for the president’s office, who cannot be identified under its policy, said the government has no involvement of any kind with the film and won’t comment. Paula Barreto, whose family runs the Rio de Janeiro-based LC Barreto production company behind the film, said the movie wasn’t meant to provide an electoral boost to Lula or his allies. She rejected suggestions its release was timed to provide maximum support for Rousseff, saying a financing shortage caused by the global credit crisis, not politics, delayed its debut by several months into the start of the election year. Lagging sales show how Brazilian politics under Lula remain divided along class lines, according to Barreto. “The Brazilian elite doesn’t like Lula, but the majority of his supporters can’t afford to buy the admission tickets,” she wrote in a Jan. 14 e-mail interview. Polls have Rousseff in second place before the vote. Last month, she narrowed the gap with Sao Paulo Governor Jose Serra in a runoff to 7 percentage points from 19 points in November, according to a poll by Sensus released Feb. 1. The CNT/Sensus poll surveyed 2,000 people from Jan. 25 to Jan. 29 and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points. Political ‘Propaganda’ The movie’s publicity tells viewers “You know the man, but not his story.” It covers the years 1945 to 1980, when the union leader was arrested under orders from the military dictatorship, ending before his first run for government office in 1982 and his successful bid for Brazil’s presidency in 2002. In an early scene, an adolescent Lula stands up to his violent, alcoholic father, foreshadowing the adult Lula’s speaking out against Brazil’s dictatorship as head of the nation’s largest steel workers’ union. At another point, as a union leader, Lula gives a speech without a microphone as a stadium of enraptured spectators repeat his discourse word-by- word so that the people in the back rows can understand their working-class hero. The movie tells the side of Lula’s story that most Brazilians already know, according to film critic Marcelo Janot, a contributor to Rio de Janeiro-based O Globo newspaper. There’s no mention of Lula fathering his first daughter, born in 1974, out of wedlock before leaving the mother for another woman. ‘City of God’ “Lula: the Son of Brazil,” which debuted at 350 theatres nationwide, cost almost twice as much to make as Brazil’s 2002 Academy Award-nominated “ City of God .” The biographical film cost 12 million reais to produce, tying a record set in 2003 by “Carandiru” without considering inflation. The producers spent an additional 3.5 million reais on publicity. The budget seemed justified given Lula’s status as the most popular president since Brazil became a republic in 1889, says David Fleischer , a political scientist at the Federal University of Brasilia. A constitutional ban on three consecutive terms means Lula, who had 72 percent approval rating in a poll published Dec. 18 by Datafolha , won’t be on the ballot in October for the first time since democracy was restored in 1985. Rousseff has never run for elected office. To broaden her appeal, she’s looking to wrap herself in Lula’s accomplishments, Fleischer said. Lula’s Accomplishments Lula, 64, has more than doubled the minimum wage to 510 reais from 200 reais since taking office in January 2003 and through cash handouts has helped lift 19 million Brazilians out of poverty. Economic growth has averaged 3.4 percent a year, according to International Monetary Fund data . The film opens at theaters in Argentina and Chile next month, and will reach Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico in July, said Eduardo Costantini, whose Costa Films company bought the distribution rights for Latin America. In Brazil, Lula’s fame and domination of politics are secure regardless of the film’s performance, says producer Barreto. “He already has enough popularity,” Barreto said. “He doesn’t need the movie for that.” To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan J. Levin in La Paz at JLevin20@bloomberg.net ; Maria Luiza Rabello in Brasilia at mrabello@bloomberg.net

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Costa Rica elects 1st Woman President in Landslide

February 8, 2010

Costa Rica elects 1st Woman President in Landslide

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Manisha Thakor : LIVE IT, LOVE IT, EARN IT: a chat with Wall Street Journal bestselling author, Marianna Olszewski

January 19, 2010

This is an interview with the super inspiring money expert and life coach Marianna Olszewski … author of the newly released book Live It, Love It, Earn It . Marianna is the embodiment of the American Dream. From a modest start (living over a butcher shop with her parents and four siblings) she climbed her way to the upper echelons of Wall Street as the founder and CEO of Madison Financial Management LLC, a broker-dealer and hedge fund marketing company. Here’s what Marianna has to say on the subject of achieving financial prosperity. 1. Why do you focus on women in both this book and your speaking/ coaching work? Do you think women need different advice or more advice? Women just think differently about money than men. They make it more emotional than men. Over the past few years, woman after woman has come to me filled with anxiety and fear. Some of these women were in such high debt that they couldn’t sleep at night. I really wanted to share with them the ability to recreate their lives – I was there once, too. I was that same person, and I changed my life. Also, women need to look at their lives and examine why they feel they have a struggle around money – wanting it, making it, and having it. I’m here to tell them is ok, it’s good. 2. If a person could read only 1 chapter of your book, which should it be? Chapter Six, “Claim Your Power.” This chapter talks about taking your power back around money, people, places and things. I believe it starts with a strong belief in yourself and owning your power. It’s about saying I’m not the victim any more. I’m going to live the life of my dreams. I love all the chapters in the book, but this one gives you the tools to identifying what’s draining you. It also teaches how to release the power that worry has over you. 3. As you’ve marketed this book & spoken to women about money what’s the most common personal finance question you’ve been getting over the past 6 months? How to get out of debt. Across my coaching classes and seminars, 8 out of 10 women ask about how to get out of debt. Mostly it is credit card debt. Some of it is foreclosure related. And a lot of it is IOUs to everyone from the hairdresser t to the person who helped build their website. I tell them the first step to getting out of debt is that you have to stop taking on new debt. The biggest tool for that is understanding why you are taking on the debt in the first place. A lot of women deal with their emotions through shopping. The second thing I tell them, which is so big, is that you have to make peace with debt, you have to be grateful for what it brought into your life. Once you shift from anger to acceptance and gratitude, then you can move on. It’s just like with an ex – if you are still angry about the past, there is not space for someone new to come into your life. 4. Do you think the increased interest we’re seeing in savings right now will continue when the economy turns? Women say they are all saving but they still have tons of debt, often that they are only paying the minimum on. We have to get through all this personal debt. Until we get over that debt we can’t really save. 5. If a woman is getting started learning about personal finance, after reading Live It, Love It, Earn It, what else do you recommend she do to self-educate? Get a couple of friends that also want wealth and prosperity and create an abundance group. You can start with as few as 2-3 people. Go over the exercises in Live It, Love It, Earn It. Say what you are grateful for. State your 3 biggest financial desires. When you share those thoughts with another woman you open up to the universe. Say, “I want to make XX amount this year, I want to go on a vacation,” etc. Some women can’t even voice that. But it’s so powerful when you do. 6. As you’ve built out your business, what 2 or 3 habits have helped you the most in balancing it all? A strong belief in myself – if you don’t believe in yourself, no one else will. It’s simple but true Persistence – I’m very persistent, if someone says no I keep trying. If I fail I try again. Persistence is so key. Action – You can never take too much action. Take as much as you can. Many women are afraid to ask for what they want and go for what they want. It’s nicer in society if we don’t ask for what we want. The most important thing in life is to ask for what you want. 7. You talk about flow in your book – how to you personally get in the state of flow? Follow my passion, if you do something that you really enjoy doing and do it well you get in flow. When I was 13 years old I never played house, I played office. My flow is money, business, finance. It’s my passion. When I deal with my finances or hedge funds, I am in my flow, I’m connected, and I just love it. Once you follow your passion, creative things come out of that. 8. What advice do you have to women starting a business and looking for a mentor? I tell anyone starting a business to find 1-3 people who have gone through it 10 to 15 years ahead of them, that have the time to give back, and to slowly befriend them and learn about their experiences. Let the relationship build gradually, and if you aren’t getting a response, move on. 9. You say “NO is a complete sentence” – why is that word so darn hard for so many of us women to use? Women are very generous and giving. We are always saying yes to everyone. We want to help everyone. We’ll stay late to help the boss, to help anyone. We want to be of help and of service. It’s hard to say no because we don’t want to hurt anyone. 10. Five years from now, where do you see yourself professionally? And how can women keep track of what you are up to? I see myself writing a few more books – one on couples & money and one on mommies & money. I also see myself lecturing and helping women, and maybe creating a foundation to help mentor women. Right now I’m working with Dress for Success, a wonderful organization. They will be using Live It, Love It, Earn It in a financial education program they are launching in cities across 13 different states. My vision is to help women through more charitable and mentoring type programs. To keep track of what I’m doing, visit www.LiveItLoveItLearnIt.com , it’s updated regularly with my upcoming events. You can follow Marianna on Twitter at @LiveLoveEarn

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Sarah Hicks: Feminomics: The Unique Role of Native Women in the U.S. Economy

December 22, 2009

From an economic standpoint, will 2010 be the year of the woman? As part of the Roosevelt Institute’s ongoing ‘Feminomics’ series, running on the New Deal 2.0 blog , I was asked to reflect on women’s changing economic roles. Here’s my take on how despite high odds, Native women are at the forefront of rebuilding the American economy. The economic gap between white people and communities of color has its origins in centuries of racist and classist American policy. The Homestead Act — a policy that is often seen as offering unprecedented opportunity — involved the confiscation of Native land and the offer of that land to a “diverse group” of white males! As our land was stolen, white women and African-Americans were excluded from opportunities to become members of America’s emerging middle class. Today in many Native communities, economic crisis is not an occasional disaster — it is a daily reality. Native communities face the scourge of high unemployment and poverty rates, health disparities, and substandard housing and infrastructure. Back in 2000, when the national unemployment rate was less than half of today’s level, the U.S. Census reported on-reservation Native unemployment at 22 percent. The socioeconomic profile of Native women hews closely to that of Native people as a whole. For every dollar earned by a non-Hispanic white male, Native women earn less than 60 cents. In some states with high Native populations the ratio is closer to 50 cents. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research , Native women are “more likely to be in poverty than any other major racial or ethnic group.” One in four Native women live in poverty, and in states like Montana and South Dakota, the figure is above 40%. College attainment data for Native women are slightly better than for Native men, but only 13.7 percent of Native women possess a bachelors degree or higher — a rate more than half that of white women. Native women outpace their male counterparts by 10 percent in employment and managerial or professional positions, but they are much less likely than white women to hold those positions. A profound problem for tribal policymakers is that timely and accurate socioeconomic data for American Indians and Alaska Natives is sorely lacking. The Bureau of Labor Statistics essentially excludes on-reservation unemployment rates (often at levels well beyond 50 percent) in their monthly unemployment reports. This means the unemployment rate for states with high Native populations is likely considerably understated. The Census Bureau also identifies Native people as the population facing both the most pronounced socioeconomic disadvantage and the least accurate Census data, yet their annual report on poverty and health insurance in America does not include Native data owing to “insufficient sample size.” You may think that in light of these staggering statistics, it is hard for Native women (or men!) to hold out hope for a better future. But you’d be wrong. Tribes across the country are on the forefront of innovations to address our economy’s toughest problems. As one of the three types of government recognized in the U.S. Constitution (federal, tribal, and state governments), tribes offer unique innovations that make valuable contributions to the policy debate about the economic recovery. Investments in tribal governments support policy innovations that can be — and have been — replicated to deal with some of America’s most challenging economic struggles. Native women are in the lead when it comes to rebuilding Indian Country. From Kimberly Teehee , President Obama’s Senior Policy Advisor for Native American Affairs, to the many Native women who own 8(a) government contracting businesses; from Elouise Cobell , lead plaintiff in the litigation that challenged the U.S. government mismanagement of Indian trust funds, to the many aspiring Native scholars we work with, women are on the frontlines of building a brighter future for Native communities. In this time of economic crisis and uncertainty, Native women continue to face staggering odds, but we also see immense opportunity. Together with our non-Native partners in government and the private sector, we expect Native women to play a critical role as tribes make unique and significant contributions to America’s economic recovery. This post originally appeared on New Deal 2.0 .

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Hot Seat for SEC Chief Schapiro Won’t Cool Off: Susan Antilla

December 21, 2009

Commentary by Susan Antilla Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) — The chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission has a past that is fast coming back to haunt her. Mary Schapiro’s story has none of the lurid details of philandering celebrity golfers or hedge fund titans who get sued by ex-wives for concealing marital money. Her history and two pending lawsuits, though, raise an important question for investors: Is the woman who oversees the U.S. financial markets someone willing to fudge the facts to get things done? If what I heard in federal Judge Jed Rakoff’s New York courtroom last week is even close to accurate, I’d say that it’s time for some serious conversations as to whether Schapiro is the person we should entrust to the top SEC job. Schapiro was chief executive officer of the self-regulatory organization National Association of Securities Dealers in 2006 when it and the New York Stock Exchange decided to combine their regulatory operations, which ultimately became known as Finra. NASD pulled out all the stops to pitch the deal, putting on a 26-city promotional tour to persuade its 5,100 members to vote to change the bylaws so the merger could get done. To hear NASD’s take on the transaction, outlined in a Dec. 14, 2006, proxy statement, in notes from the roadshow, in a telephone pitch script and in a video promo by Schapiro, it was an early holiday gift to members, offering the chance to reduce duplicative regulation once the two regulators joined as one. Additionally enticing was that, in anticipation of cost savings, NASD would pay $35,000 to each of them. Sounding Ungrateful Ungrateful though it might sound, two Finra member firms sued Finra, Schapiro, and other Finra officers. Standard Investment Chartered Inc. and Benchmark Financial Services Inc. said in lawsuits filed in 2007 and 2008 that the defendants breached their fiduciary duty, misled brokers about the merger terms, shortchanged the brokers in the payment, and unjustly enriched themselves with soaring compensation. Schapiro’s compensation rose to $3 million from $2.1 million once the combination was completed in July 2007. Chief among their claims is that Schapiro and NASD lied when they told members the organization couldn’t pay more than $35,000. “Based on our consultation with the Internal Revenue Service, a larger payment is not possible,” Schapiro said in a Webcast to members. How she knew that before members voted in January 2007 remains a mystery: the IRS letter to NASD on the matter was dated March 13, 2007. Chump Change Thirty-five thousand bucks is chump change to a big brokerage firm. But for smaller NASD members — 672 of them had revenue of less than $75,000 in 2006, according to a voting analysis produced by NASD in the litigation — it sounded like real money. The proxy assured them “a larger payment is not possible” because of laws governing tax-exempt organizations. The NASD cited IRS rules in a similar line in a telephone script dated Dec. 20, 2006, and produced by NASD in the litigation. What the IRS really said remains under seal at the insistence of Finra. In court on Dec. 16, though, it began to look like that $35,000 number was low-balled by a significant amount. Rakoff asked a lawyer for Standard Investment and Benchmark, Jonathan Cuneo of Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuca LLP, what damages he was claiming on behalf of his clients. To reveal the numbers, the lawyer would have to base his answer on the IRS information that lawyers for Schapiro and Finra have fought to keep under wraps. So Cuneo asked the judge if he wanted him to refer to those numbers in open court. Rakoff said yes. With that, Cuneo said the IRS letter would have allowed “something like $35,000 to $76,000” on top of the $35,000 that each NASD firm got. Double or More In other words, while Mary Schapiro and others at NASD were saying that members couldn’t get more than $35,000 because the IRS had said so, the real number turned out to be at least double that, based on what Cuneo said. John Heine , an SEC spokesman, declined requests to comment on Schapiro’s behalf. Brendan Intindola , a Finra spokesman, told Bloomberg in an e-mail that “There is no way to know how those numbers were created,” and that they are “inaccurate.” But neither Intindola nor the defense lawyers questioned by Rakoff on Dec. 16 would offer any evidence to back up the claim of inaccuracy. Finra has asked the court to dismiss the case, saying the organization and its officers operate as regulators and have immunity from damage suits. Finra has said in court filings that the SEC reviewed the IRS payment issue and concluded “that NASD has made a prima facie showing that these representations were not misleading.” But it barred the plaintiffs from sharing the unsealed documents with the SEC in July 2007. Who’s in charge here, anyway? Finra continues to fight to keep the information under seal. Bloomberg News and two other news organizations have asked Rakoff to open the files. He will hear arguments on Jan. 14. Schapiro was one of NASD’s biggest cheerleaders for the NYSE merger. She may come to regret ever saying that the IRS wouldn’t let her member firms get a penny more than they received. ( Susan Antilla is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.) Click on “Send Comment” in the sidebar display to send a letter to the editor. To contact the writer of this column: Susan Antilla in New York at santilla@bloomberg.net

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Method Ad ‘Shiny Suds’ Pulled Over Sexism Complaints (VIDEO)

December 13, 2009

The environmentally-friendly cleaner brand Method has pulled a controversial viral video that compared toxic household soaps to sexual aggressors. The spot, made in support of the Household Product Labeling Act , shows once-friendly bathtub cleansing suds heckling a woman as she showers. The bubbles become increasingly insistent, finally chanting “loofah!” while the woman nervously covers herself. Many viewers were put off by the video , finding the image of a woman sexually harassed by her household products disturbing and the use of such behavior as a cleaning joke insenstive to assault victims. After receiving numerous complaints, Method took the video offline. “Due to the sensitive nature of [concerned viewers'] concerns we chose to take down the video,” a spokeswoman for the company said . Treehugger called the ad ” hilarious .” Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter!

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Russian Billionaires May Spend $81 Million at London Sales as Demand Rises

November 30, 2009

By John Varoli Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) — Auction houses in London start selling as much as 49 million pounds ($81 million) of Russian art today, hoping that spending by billionaires will help the market further recover after a year of decline. Sotheby’s sells 19th-century and early 20th-century paintings this evening, followed by another sale tomorrow. Christie’s International holds auctions on Dec. 1, 2 and 3. MacDougall’s, an auction house specializing in Russian art, has sales on Dec. 2 and 3. Bonhams also holds a 168-lot sale today. In a sign that wealthy Russians are returning to the market, Sotheby’s in New York sold $13.8 million of Russian art on Nov. 2, beating the top presale estimate of $9 million. The Russian government forecasts some economic growth in 2010, after the country’s economy shrank about 10 percent in 2009’S first half as prices declined for commodities such as oil. “The recent New York sales confirmed a recovery,” said William MacDougall , co-director of MacDougall’s. “It may be a while before volume and overall results recover to the June 2008 peak. We’re clearly past the worst.” London auction houses form the center of global Russian art sales. Most works are sourced from private American and European collections, while most buyers are from Russia and Ukraine. “Ukrainian buyers have been important to us from our first auction five years ago,” MacDougall said, “typically 20-30 percent of the market, sometimes more.” In June, MacDougall’s top buyer was Alina Aivazova, wife of the mayor of Kiev. Topless Woman MacDougall’s offers 460 lots that have a presale estimate of 12.5 million pounds to 17.6 million pounds. It has the most expensive lot of the week, a picture of a topless woman by Zinaida Serebriakova with an estimate of 1 million pounds to 1.5 million pounds. MacDougall’s also offers Nicholas Roerich’s modernist “Sangacheling” (circa 1924) that shows a Buddhist monk sitting alone in mountains, and Vladimir Baranoff-Rossine’s “Femme Cubiste” (circa 1920). Both have estimates of 500,000 pounds to 700,000 pounds. “Russia was a net exporter of art for about 90 years — 1910 to 2000,” said MacDougall. “There is a lot abroad, and this is now being reversed.” Sotheby’s offers 540 lots with a presale estimate of 14.8 million pounds to 21.2 million pounds. These include 110 Imperial items, with many works by Romanov jeweler Faberge. The auction house’s most expensive lot is Alexandra Exter’s “Venice” (1925) with an estimate of 900,000 pounds to 1.2 million pounds. The painting is one of her first works painted in Paris after she fled the Soviet revolution. Christie’s offers 578 lots that have a presale estimate of 6.5 million to 9.3 million pounds. It has another Roerich painting, “Legend” (1923), showing a medieval scribe standing on a mountain and with an estimate of as much as 900,000 pounds. The most expensive lot at the Bonhams sale today is Ivan Aivazovsky’s “The Morning Catch” (1870), which may fetch 150,000 pounds to 250,000 pounds. Bonhams hasn’t provided a total presale estimate. ( John Varoli writes for Bloomberg News. Opinions expressed are his own.) To contact the writer on the story: John Varoli in Kiev at jvaroli@gmail.com .

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Palmer Open to Talks With Rinehart on $14 Billion Australian Coal Projects

November 22, 2009

By Jesse Riseborough and Heidi Couch Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) — Billionaire Clive Palmer would consider sharing port and rail lines with Australia’s richest woman Gina Rinehart to cut the combined A$15 billion ($14 billion) cost of their two Queensland coal projects. “If she’s got a couple of billion dollars and she’d like to put it down on the table, we’re happy to share infrastructure,” Palmer, 55, said in an interview in Brisbane, adding he hasn’t had talks with Rinehart. “If she hasn’t got the cash we’ll have to wait until she gets it.” Palmer and Rinehart are seeking to fund coal and iron ore projects in partnership with Chinese state-owned enterprises to tap surging demand after iron ore and thermal coal prices tripled this decade. Palmer is seeking as much as $3 billion in the initial public offering of Resourcehouse Ltd. in Hong Kong. Resourcehouse is aiming to start building the China First coal mine, port and rail project in the Galilee Basin in Queensland next year and has agreed sales accords with Metallurgical Corp. of China Ltd., which will also help arrange financing. “China First coal has got the right to mine 1.4 billion tons of coal, which is enough to keep Hong Kong fires burning for the next 20 to 40 years,” Palmer said in the Nov. 20 interview. “That’s just the beginning.” Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting Pty. is seeking to start a coal project in 2012 and has sought Chinese partners to help develop it. Hancock director Tad Watroba couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. Initial Offering Palmer has been gauging demand for a $2 billion to $3 billion Hong Kong IPO for Resourcehouse being managed by UBS AG and Macquarie Group Ltd., according to a preliminary share sale document e-mailed to fund managers Nov. 9. It’s in talks with Export-Import Bank of China for A$5.5 billion in debt funding for the coal project and has signed sales accords with unidentified Chinese state-owned power companies, Palmer said. China Metallurgical has agreed to buy a 10 percent stake in the project for between A$700 million to A$800 million. It’s also agreed to purchase 75 percent of the estimated 40 million tons a year in sales from the mine, he said. Palmer, Australia’s fifth-richest and chairman of Resourcehouse, was the only person in the top-10 of Business Review Weekly Magazine’s annual rich 200 list whose wealth increased last year. Palmer’s fortune more than doubled to A$3.4 billion, according to the list that was published in May. He also owns the Gold Coast United soccer club . Richest Woman Rinehart is chairwoman of closely held Hancock, founded by her father Lang who discovered the mines that made Australia the world’s biggest iron ore exporter. She is Australia’s fourth richest person with an estimated wealth of A$3.5 billion. Hancock’s Alpha mine is estimated to produce 30 million tons of power station coal a year for at least 30 years and the project is estimated to hold in excess of 3.5 billion tons of the fuel, according to a presentation on Hancock’s Web site. The railroad is estimated to cost A$2.5 billion, the mine will cost A$3 billion and the port will cost A$2.5 billion. Macquarie said in a Nov. 6 report the China First mine is estimated to cost A$3.4 billion, rail A$2 billion, port and infrastructure at A$1.8 billion and other project costs at about A$300 million. Resourcehouse’s potential IPO comes as United Co. Rusal, the world’s largest aluminum maker, studies raising as much as $3 billion in a Hong Kong IPO by December, two people familiar with its plan said last month. Investor Response “If there is going to be an IPO in Hong Kong we will have to get a good response from investors to raise the sort of funds that we will need to do in the public market,” Palmer said. Palmer is seeking to tap investor demand for coal and iron ore producers after the Bloomberg World Mining Index almost doubled this year because of a rebound in demand for commodities , driven by China. This quarter may be the busiest for Hong Kong IPOs since the U.S. subprime-mortgage market collapse triggered a global stocks rout in 2007. “We’ve been very successful doing deals outside IPOs and extracting good value,” Palmer said. “To be attractive an IPO has got to be able to be a better financial alternative. I’m not sure whether they are or not at this stage.” To contact the reporters on this story: Jesse Riseborough in Melbourne at jriseborough@bloomberg.net ; Heidi Couch in Sydney hcouch@bloomberg.net .

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Palmer Open to Talks With Rinehart on $14 Billion Australian Coal Projects

November 22, 2009

By Jesse Riseborough and Heidi Couch Nov. 23 (Bloomberg) — Billionaire Clive Palmer would consider sharing port and rail lines with Australia’s richest woman Gina Rinehart to cut the combined A$15 billion ($14 billion) cost of their two Queensland coal projects. “If she’s got a couple of billion dollars and she’d like to put it down on the table, we’re happy to share infrastructure,” Palmer, 55, said in an interview in Brisbane, adding he hasn’t had talks with Rinehart. “If she hasn’t got the cash we’ll have to wait until she gets it.” Palmer and Rinehart are seeking to fund coal and iron ore projects in partnership with Chinese state-owned enterprises to tap surging demand after iron ore and thermal coal prices tripled this decade. Palmer is seeking as much as $3 billion in the initial public offering of Resourcehouse Ltd. in Hong Kong. Resourcehouse is aiming to start building the China First coal mine, port and rail project in the Galilee Basin in Queensland next year and has agreed sales accords with Metallurgical Corp. of China Ltd., which will also help arrange financing. “China First coal has got the right to mine 1.4 billion tons of coal, which is enough to keep Hong Kong fires burning for the next 20 to 40 years,” Palmer said in the Nov. 20 interview. “That’s just the beginning.” Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting Pty. is seeking to start a coal project in 2012 and has sought Chinese partners to help develop it. Hancock director Tad Watroba couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. Initial Offering Palmer has been gauging demand for a $2 billion to $3 billion Hong Kong IPO for Resourcehouse being managed by UBS AG and Macquarie Group Ltd., according to a preliminary share sale document e-mailed to fund managers Nov. 9. It’s in talks with Export-Import Bank of China for A$5.5 billion in debt funding for the coal project and has signed sales accords with unidentified Chinese state-owned power companies, Palmer said. China Metallurgical has agreed to buy a 10 percent stake in the project for between A$700 million to A$800 million. It’s also agreed to purchase 75 percent of the estimated 40 million tons a year in sales from the mine, he said. Palmer, Australia’s fifth-richest and chairman of Resourcehouse, was the only person in the top-10 of Business Review Weekly Magazine’s annual rich 200 list whose wealth increased last year. Palmer’s fortune more than doubled to A$3.4 billion, according to the list that was published in May. He also owns the Gold Coast United soccer club . Richest Woman Rinehart is chairwoman of closely held Hancock, founded by her father Lang who discovered the mines that made Australia the world’s biggest iron ore exporter. She is Australia’s fourth richest person with an estimated wealth of A$3.5 billion. Hancock’s Alpha mine is estimated to produce 30 million tons of power station coal a year for at least 30 years and the project is estimated to hold in excess of 3.5 billion tons of the fuel, according to a presentation on Hancock’s Web site. The railroad is estimated to cost A$2.5 billion, the mine will cost A$3 billion and the port will cost A$2.5 billion. Macquarie said in a Nov. 6 report the China First mine is estimated to cost A$3.4 billion, rail A$2 billion, port and infrastructure at A$1.8 billion and other project costs at about A$300 million. Resourcehouse’s potential IPO comes as United Co. Rusal, the world’s largest aluminum maker, studies raising as much as $3 billion in a Hong Kong IPO by December, two people familiar with its plan said last month. Investor Response “If there is going to be an IPO in Hong Kong we will have to get a good response from investors to raise the sort of funds that we will need to do in the public market,” Palmer said. Palmer is seeking to tap investor demand for coal and iron ore producers after the Bloomberg World Mining Index almost doubled this year because of a rebound in demand for commodities , driven by China. This quarter may be the busiest for Hong Kong IPOs since the U.S. subprime-mortgage market collapse triggered a global stocks rout in 2007. “We’ve been very successful doing deals outside IPOs and extracting good value,” Palmer said. “To be attractive an IPO has got to be able to be a better financial alternative. I’m not sure whether they are or not at this stage.” To contact the reporters on this story: Jesse Riseborough in Melbourne at jriseborough@bloomberg.net ; Heidi Couch in Sydney hcouch@bloomberg.net .

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Henkel Heir, Mistress Settle Suit on $48 Million Hirsts, Daughter Custody

November 10, 2009

By Lindsay Pollock Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) — Udo Fritz-Hermann Brandhorst, an heir to Germany’s Henkel AG & Co. fortune and a major art collector, avoided a public court case in New York by settling a lawsuit filed by his former mistress involving two Damien Hirst sculptures and a custody dispute. The settlement was reached Sunday night according to the woman, Venetia Kapernekas, and Brandhorst’s lawyers. Kapernekas, a 49-year-old New York art dealer filed a suit in federal court in Manhattan claiming an interest in the two Hirsts, which have been valued at an estimated $47.6 million, court documents show. The custody suit, involving their 8-year- old daughter, was being heard in New York County Family Court. Kapernekas has agreed to drop the federal suit and claims on the Hirsts in exchange for: custody of their daughter (Brandhorst gets visitation and vacation rights); a one-time payment of $100,000; a $500,000 trust for the daughter’s education; a loft on Wooster Street in Manhattan’s Soho district valued at about $5 million to be held in the daughter’s name as sole owner; $5,000 a month in child support; and $640,000 to cover Kapernekas’s legal expenses, according to Kapernekas. As part of her settlement, Kapernekas is able to sell a Warhol she received as a gift from Brandhorst, a heart-shaped blue-and-red painting from 1983 titled “Candy Box Open.” She had consigned the painting for sale for as much as $40,000 at Sotheby’s in London in February, along with another Warhol painting, titled “Heart,” which Brandhorst had given his daughter. Brandhorst’s lawyers blocked the sale and the works were withdrawn from the auction just before the preview began. Kapernekas cannot sell “Heart” because it belongs to her daughter. Brandhorst’s lawyers would not confirm the terms of the settlement agreement. Interest in Hirsts Kapernekas claimed she had an interest in the Hirsts, according to court papers, because in 2002 she wired $825,416.83 to a New York art dealer “to permit Brandhorst to purchase contemporary art at the Gagosian Gallery as an investment for Kapernekas.” Brandhorst paid $3 million for two Hirsts, including a 2002 20-foot-long pill cabinet titled “In this terrible moment we are victims clinging helplessly to an environment that refuses to acknowledge the soul.” Victor Wiener, an appraiser hired by Kapernekas’s lawyers, valued the piece at $35 million. Wiener valued the second Hirst, a 20-foot-tall painted bronze anatomical model titled “Hymn,” at $12.6 million. Brandhorst said he had sole title to the Hirsts and he “never agreed to invest plaintiff’s funds,” and “never agreed to ‘safeguard’ art for plaintiff for any period of time,” according to court filings. Brandhorst’s lawyer, Benjamin E. Rosenberg of Dechert LLP , declined to comment. ‘Substitute Payments’ Brandhorst says that he asked Kapernekas to wire the funds to Gagosian to avoid tax penalties, according to court papers. He says he gave her “substitute payments” of $20,000 a month from September 2002 to March 2008, totaling $1.24 million. He paid credit-card bills from August 2002 to January 2007 tallying $457,898, plus private-school tuition, according to court records. Brandhorst’s late wife, Anette Brandhorst, was the great- granddaughter of Henkel’s founder. She died of cancer in 1999. The couple began collecting art in 1971. He loaned a portion of his art collection to the state of Bavaria for the Museum Brandhorst, which opened in May. The collection comprises more than 800 artworks, including 100 Andy Warhols and 80 Cy Twomblys. Construction costs of $67 million were funded by Bavaria. Brandhorst met Kapernekas in 1997 when they were seated together at an art dinner in Cologne, Germany. Henkel, based in Dusseldorf, Germany, makes Loctite glues, Persil detergent and other consumer products. Last month it reported third-quarter earnings before interest and taxes of 385 million euros ($577 million) on sales of about 3.49 billion euros. To contact the reporter on the story: Lindsay Pollock in New York at lindsaypollock@yahoo.com ;

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Pfizer Gets New Trial on Prempro Damages; Court Upholds Breast Cancer Link

November 2, 2009

By Jef Feeley and Sophia Pearson Nov. 2 (Bloomberg) — Pfizer Inc. doesn’t have to pay more than $27 million in punitive damages to an Arkansas woman who blamed her breast cancer on the company’s menopause drugs, an appeals court ruled in ordering a new trial on the award. The U.S. Court of Appeals in St. Louis today upheld a jury’s March 2008 finding that the hormone-replacement drugs helped cause Donna Scroggin’s cancer and its award of actual damages. The three-judge panel also backed a judge’s decision to throw out the punitive award to Scroggin, who alleged two Pfizer units ignored or downplayed the risks of the drugs. “Scroggin presented sufficient evidence to submit the question of punitive damages to the jury,” the appeals court said in its 41-page ruling. “The evidence presented could allow a jury to find or infer that Wyeth was guilty of malicious conduct within the meaning of Arkansas law.” Scroggin was among 6 million women who took the pills to treat menopause symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats and mood swings. Pfizer’s Wyeth unit has said in U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings that it faces more than 9,000 lawsuits over its menopause drugs, which are still on the market. New York-based Pfizer completed the $68 billion purchase of Wyeth on Oct. 15. Liability Decision “We are pleased with the appeals court’s decision to set aside the punitive verdict, but disappointed that the court upheld the jury’s liability decision,” Pfizer spokesman Christopher Loder said in an e-mailed statement. “We are evaluating our legal options about next steps in this case.” Jurors awarded Scroggin about $2.7 million in actual damages over her claims the drugs helped cause her breast cancer. The appellate panel rebuffed Pfizer’s challenge to that award. It was the first review by an appeals court of a verdict favoring plaintiffs in a Prempro case, said Jim Morris, one of Scroggin’s lawyers. “Finally, we have an appellate court who has found it’s reasonable to conclude that Prempro causes breast cancer,” Morris said, adding that he’s looking forward to a new trial. “This jury could come back with $100 million for us this time. We don’t see this as a loss at all.” Pfizer’s lawyers argued that Scroggin received ample warning about the cancer risks tied to the company’s Prempro and Premarin drugs and chose to continue using them. They contended the entire jury verdict should be thrown out. Hormones Combined Wyeth’s sales of the drugs topped $2 billion before a 2002 study found women using the medicines had a 24 percent higher risk of breast cancer. Provera, on the market since 1959, was developed by Pfizer’s Upjohn unit, acquired in 2003 along with Pharmacia Corp. Until 1996, many menopausal women combined Premarin, Wyeth’s estrogen-based drug, with progestin-laden Provera to relieve their symptoms. That year, Wyeth combined the two hormones in its Prempro pill. Scroggin and other women contend executives at the Pfizer units turned a blind eye to studies raising questions about the link between hormone-replacement drugs and breast cancer to pump up sales of their drugs. U.S. District Judge William Wilson in Little Rock, Arkansas, found Scroggin’s lawyers couldn’t make a “clear and convincing case” that the company’s mishandling of the drugs warranted a punitive award. Still, Wilson upheld the jury’s finding that Pfizer’s drugs were one of the causes of Scroggin’s breast cancer. Tests Negative The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected Pfizer’s claims that Scroggin’s cancer was tied to genetics. Testing on the woman “came back negative for the most common breast cancer genes,” Circuit Judge Roger Wollman wrote. On the punitive damage issue, the appeals court found there was “sufficient evidence upon which a jury could conclude that Wyeth acted with reckless disregard to the risk of injury,” Wollman wrote. Because of procedural issues with some of the evidence Wilson allowed jurors to hear in the punitive phase, “a new trial may be had on punitive damages alone without injustice to the parties,” the judge said. The ruling comes a week after a Philadelphia jury ordered Wyeth to pay an undisclosed amount of punitive damages to an Illinois woman who developed breast cancer after taking Prempro. In September, the same jury awarded Connie Barton $3.7 million in compensatory damages over her cancer linked to Prempro. A judge sealed her punitive award until another Prempro trial in the same courthouse is completed. The case is Donna Scroggin v. Wyeth, 08-2555, 08-2711, 08- 2713, 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (St. Louis). To contact the reporters on this story: Jef Feeley in Wilmington at jfeeley@bloomberg.net ; Sophia Pearson in Wilmington at spearson3@bloomberg.net .

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Annie Toro: A Flexible Workplace Is a Happier, Healthier Workplace

November 2, 2009

As National Work and Family Month and Mental Health Awareness Month draw to a close, it’s a good time to reflect on the impact of flexible work arrangements on the health and well-being of employees and their families. Years of psychological research provide a strong foundation for flexible work arrangements, demonstrating the benefit to employees’ physical and mental health, as well as their family life. To promote this knowledge, the American Psychological Association created an Office on Work, Stress and Health that promotes research, training, practice and policy addressing these matters, including: a) Promoting understanding of work stress and its impact on the well-being and productivity of workers; b) Exploring organizational and behavioral interventions to reduce stress, illness and injury in the workplace; c) Studying the impact of changing work force demographics (e.g., aging workers, increasing proportions of ethnic and racial minorities and women) on health and safety in the workplace; and d) Building collaborative partnerships among psychology, industry, labor and federal agencies to reduce stress and health and safety risks in the workplace. For APA, issues impacting work, stress and health are of utmost priority. Our dedication to furthering initiatives that lead to a healthy workplace environment stems from our association’s mission to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people’s lives. These issues are particularly important under the sustained pressures of global competition on the U.S. work force. Psychologists are uniquely trained to address the behavioral aspects of change faced by our work force. Research provides us with essential information regarding changes in our society that speak to the critical need to prioritize workplace flexibility. However, public policy has not kept up with the realities of working families. Today’s families are more likely to include single parents, unmarried couples, same-sex couples — sometimes with children, and stepchildren. One of the most striking changes in U.S. families in the past 30 years is the increasing number of working women and the rate of mothers who work, especially mothers of infants and young children. Recently, California first lady Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress released a provocative report entitled “The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything” on the status of women in the United States and the drastic changes that have taken place in our country as a result of women’s entrance into the work force. The study is aimed at inciting what it calls “a national conversation about what women’s economic power means for our way of life.” Research tells us there is a positive connection between workplace flexibility and an individual’s work-life balance. For instance, employees who work in environments that provide flexible work hours also tend to experience fewer conflicts within their work, family and personal lives. However, when a workplace does not provide adequate flexibility, women are more likely than men to experience work-family conflicts and health-related distress, some studies show. Another key factor is employee perception of workplace culture. Many employees do not use such policies, even when they are available, because they are concerned that taking advantage of parental leave or flexible work schedules, for example, may be perceived as a lack of job commitment and could negatively affect their career advancement. Thus, it is imperative that employers not only support the employees by promoting their company’s flexible schedule options, but also create and maintain a culture that encourages use of these policies. Research shows that employers benefit from offering greater workplace flexibility. When employees receive the flexibility they need, there is less absenteeism and greater job satisfaction. Employees are more motivated to adopt healthier behaviors, sleep better and be involved in employer-promoted health education programs. Additionally, employers have lower health care utilization costs. Given the interest in issues affecting working families demonstrated by the Obama administration through the development of initiatives such as the White House Middle Class Task Force and the first lady’s efforts to bring much-needed attention to issues involving work-family balance, we hope to see the development of sound federal policies and initiatives that will lead to positive outcomes for employees, employers, families and our country as a whole.

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Labor Gains Obama Policies Rued by Companies From Cooper Tire to Walmart

October 29, 2009

By Holly Rosenkrantz Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) — Cooper Tire & Rubber Co. is paying tariffs on imported tires. Free-trade agreements sought by Caterpillar Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. are on hold. Delta Air Lines Inc. flight attendants may join a union. There’s a common thread running through these developments. Organized labor is gaining momentum under the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama . Though reaching their most-publicized goals — legislation making it easier to organize and a government-run health insurance program — remains in doubt, unions are making other gains through executive orders, rule changes and appointments. More advances may be ahead as regulatory nominees are confirmed. “You absolutely know something is going to happen to you, you just don’t know when,” said Michael Lotito , a San Francisco attorney at Jackson Lewis LLP who handles labor issues for companies. “There is going to be a flurry of labor action down the pike.” Their status is a change for labor officials, who say the Republican administration of George W. Bush was hostile to their agenda. “Welcome back to the White House!” Vice President Joe Biden said to union leaders who met with the president at the White House 10 days after his inauguration. John Sweeney , 75, who headed the AFL-CIO for 14 years before stepping aside last month, says he was invited to the White House once during Bush’s eight years in office. That was at the request of visiting Pope Benedict XVI, he says. The AFL- CIO is the nation’s largest union group. ‘Wandering in Wilderness’ Richard Trumka , 60, Sweeney’s successor, says he meets monthly with Obama, and that union representatives have “daily contacts throughout the administration.” Obama officials visit with labor leaders “frequently,” White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said. “After eight years wandering in the wilderness, unions have unprecedented access to the White House, and early directives and appointments have been encouraging for them,” said Harley Shaiken , a labor relations professor at the University of California at Berkley. Unions were among Obama’s biggest supporters in the 2008 election, with 68 percent of AFL-CIO members voting for him in so-called battleground states, according to an election night poll by Peter Hart Research Associates. Labor unions and their political action committees spent a record $450 million during the campaign to help Democrats win the White House and gain control of Congress. Obama sided with the United Steelworkers last month against tire makers such as Cooper Tire and imposed 35 percent tariffs on tires imported from China. Bush rejected putting tariffs on Chinese products all four times the issue came before him. Cooper Tire Cooper , the second-biggest U.S. tire maker after Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., produces low-cost tires in China and opposed the tariffs. The Steelworkers argued that a surge in Chinese tires threatened U.S. jobs. “It’s certainly been more difficult,” said Michelle Zeisloft, a spokeswoman for Findlay, Ohio-based Cooper. She declined to elaborate. Because of the tariffs, Cooper went from breaking even on imported tires to losing $14.50 on each one, according to a Sept. 21 report by JPMorgan Chase & Co. “This was done to support a fairly small pool of union workers,” Bill Trimarco, chief executive officer of closely held Hercules Tire & Rubber Co., also based in Findlay, said in an interview. “They won at the expense of companies like ours.” Complaints from business about union gains are an affront to workers, said Leo Gerard , president of the United Steelworkers. ‘That’s Pablum’ “All those ‘victories’ they are talking about — that’s pablum from those bastards,” Gerard, 62, said in an interview. “All we’re doing is standing up for jobs.” The Steelworkers also pressed for the “Buy American” provision included in Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus program adopted in February. Obama’s bailout of General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC saved jobs of United Auto Workers members, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters claimed victory when Congress scrapped in March a pilot program allowing Mexican trucks to deliver products in the U.S. “Unions have accomplished a lot with the administration in less than a year,” said Clayton Boyce , a spokesman for the American Trucking Associations in Arlington, Virginia. The trade group’s members include United Parcel Service Inc., FedEx Corp. and YRC Worldwide, Inc., the biggest U.S. trucking company by sales. Trade Deals Stalled The AFL-CIO and the Teamsters also led union opposition to a pending free-trade agreement with Panama. The U.S. Trade Representative’s office dropped plans for a vote on the measure in May, saying Obama wanted first to offer a new “framework” for how trade fits into other administration programs. He has yet to do that. Behind the Panama deal in the trade queue are tentative agreements with Colombia and South Korea, supported by companies including Caterpillar and Walmart. “We’re beyond being befuddled; we’re frustrated,” said Bill Lane , director of government affairs for Peoria, Illinois- based Caterpillar , the world’s biggest maker of construction equipment. “There is way too much focus on protectionist schemes that are intended to close the U.S. market.” Daphne Moore , a Walmart spokeswoman, declined to comment. The trade office “is actively working” on the agreements, spokeswoman Carol Guthrie said in an e-mailed statement. “A common misconception” is that the accords “were presented to this administration ‘sitting there with a bow tied around them ready to go,’ when in fact there is more work to be done,” she said. Delta Elections Delta Air Lines , the world’s largest carrier, would be more likely to lose union elections sought by flight attendants and machinists if a proposal by the AFL-CIO is approved. The workers asked the National Mediation Board in July and August to clear the way for an election. Last month, the AFL-CIO petitioned the board to revise procedures and allow a union if most of those voting approve, instead of a majority of all workers in the class. The board plans to announce a proposal in coming days to advance the union request on voting rules, people familiar with the matter said. Seven Republican senators said in a Sept. 30 letter that the board was delaying a decision on the union election while it considers the new vote-counting method. The AFL-CIO request is “unbelievable,” said Robert Corker , a Tennessee senator who signed the letter. “I think big labor is going to unfortunately be given an unlevel playing field” in the Obama administration, he said in an interview. The mediation board declined to comment. Former Union Leader The Obama administration in May added a former flight- attendants’ union leader to the three-person board, replacing a former lobbyist for Northwest Airlines, which is now part of Atlanta-based Delta. Another board member is a former pilot- union official. “You have two former heads of AFL-CIO unions at the NMB and they really are politicizing the process,” Delta CEO Richard Anderson said on a conference call with investors last week. “Our employees deserve to have union representation resolved promptly, using a process that is fair and consistent” by following existing rules, said Gina Laughlin , a Delta spokeswoman, in an e-mail. Delta is the least-unionized major U.S. airline. First Bill The first bill Obama signed into law as president, nine days after taking office, was a pro-labor measure. The so-called Lilly Ledbetter legislation, named for the woman who won a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, makes it easier to fight pay discrimination. More bills supported by labor, stalled in past years because of White House opposition, have Obama’s support and may get the votes to pass once they get on the legislative calendar. These include measures barring workers from getting fired because of their sexual orientation, stiffening penalties for violations of Occupational Health and Safety Administration regulations, and requiring companies to provide workers with a week of paid sick leave. Obama also has scrapped a number of Bush rulings opposed by unions. One required federal contractors to post notices telling workers they can limit their financial support of unions. Another let contractors be reimbursed for expenses that could be used to dissuade workers from forming a union. New Pictures Business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are fighting two labor-related Obama nominees still awaiting confirmation: National Labor Relations Board member Craig Becker, an attorney for the Service Employees International Union, and OSHA director nominee David Michaels, who has written a book criticizing industry opposition to regulations. “The failure to get some of the nominees in quickly has kept some of the agencies from moving, but once they’re in, the business community’s only recourse is litigation,” said Randy Johnson , who handles labor policy at the chamber , the nation’s largest business lobbying group. OSHA’s acting director, Jordan Barab , signaled a new tone at the agency in a speech to the Wisconsin AFL-CIO last month. One of the first things he did when he arrived, Barab said, was to replace pictures of OSHA managers displayed in a conference room with photos of workers who had been killed on the job. To contact the reporter on this story: Holly Rosenkrantz in Washington at hrosenkrantz@bloomberg.net .

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Vivian Norris de Montaigu: Sexism and the Workplace: Have We Come a Long Way (Baby)?

October 24, 2009

We need to stop listening to our mothers who tell us that if we want something from a man we have to be subtle enough to make them think they actually came up with the idea in the first place! We should take Norway as an example to follow and make sure all corporate boards are made up of at least 50% women. Then we should do the same for foundation boards and political representation. Why? Because the reality is that, even if you are a female executive at Goldman Sachs, you will never be part of the “boys’ club” — and guess what, it’s still a boys’ club. Women are still discriminated against because of the fact that they are women. They are paid less than men, in many places there is still no maternal leave to protect us when we have children, in fact we can pretty much bet that our careers will be over if we leave to start a family. I think back to the late 1980s and a job I had when I was twenty-two, working for a Texan, who seemed shocked when I asked him to sign an employee contract. Lucky for me, he signed it. But he also did the following: invited me to lunch in a very dark restaurant where they knew him and showed us to the far back corner table, cornered me in a warehouse where I was cataloging items in his antiques collection, and came up behind me while I was in the home office looking in the file cabinet and basically made me feel very uncomfortable. I finally quit, and when I did (via a two page letter outlining why I was quitting) he told people he fired me! Then there was an Italian boss I had who was five months behind paying me for work on a festival. When I pushed him to pay me he finally asked, “What? Don’t you have a boyfriend?” I looked at him aghast. What does having or not having a boyfriend have to do with getting paid for a job well done? Women are also usually known for not negotiating for higher salaries; they don’t even realize that they can ask. In France, not so long ago, I read a poll in which women executive assistants were asked if they would go away with their married bosses for a weekend if it meant bettering their careers — something like 60% replied in the affirmative! In other words, if you help the male peacocks feel powerful and like they are in control, you can gain a bit of power. But the reality is not many women in France are running big banks, or industries or business schools. But neither are they in America. Now imagine if you are a woman working in a country where you cannot even legally drive. How in the heck are we supposed to become empowered when we are treated like children? The Mad Men series may be sexy, but what is the most wonderful thing about the show is that Don Draper keeps ending up in the arms of more liberated modern women: the beatnik girlfiend living downtown who is free enough to let him go, the woman who inherits her family’s business, and eventually turns him down, and the power broking woman his own age whose mind and business sense is as sharp as his own — and who ends up in a car wreck with him, while the wife (who is about to blow) is on the edge of heading towards some serious female liberation. You can almost hear the call of the mid-life return to a college psychology degree a few seasons in the future, because the only way to stay married to these sexist men is to become their full-time therapist! In other words, Don Draper is a man whose time has come, and is almost over. He is the post-WWII American male anti-hero who has no place in the modern world. Yet all these cigar smoking execs who have brought us to the financial crisis have not figured that out yet. A real man empowers women. Insecure men need to feel like “the boss.” Women need to run their own companies, have decision making powers and have the same access to financial services, especially credit, as men. The fastest way to end up in poverty is for a woman to get divorced and be a single mother. Yet we have better payback rates for loans than men (look at the microcredit scores of up to 99 around the world in programs which loan primarily to women). The Obama administration needs to take a look at putting more women in charge of the economy. They are slowly “getting it,” but taking advice from the friends of Goldman Sachs (all men), is doing more harm than good. Those who are making the most sense right now are women: Sheila Baer at the FDIC, Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor who serves as the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the TARP program, and the first female recipient for the Nobel Prize in Economics, Elinor Ostrom, whose work focuses not on theories but real world economics and helping poor countries. Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham Soetoro, was a visionary in seeing how women, when given access to credit, could bring themselves out of poverty. It is too bad that she is not here now, at the right hand of Obama, advising him. But surely he knows how important women are to the world, he should, they raised him!

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"Debtors’ Revolt" Message Resonates (VIDEO)

September 29, 2009

When Ann Minch told the “evil, thieving bastards” at Bank of America they could stick her credit card debt in their “bailout pipe and smoke it,” the message resonated. Soon after Minch posted her declaration of a “debtors’ revolt” on YouTube , several blogs took notice. And after a profile here on HuffPost , Minch has been on a non-stop media tour, giving interviews to radio, TV, and print reporters on a near-daily basis. Minch threatened not to pay off her credit card unless Bank of America lowered her interest rate from 30 percent to 12.99 percent. Bank of America surrendered within five days . Minch’s media tour continues — and she isn’t the only one talking. Dozens of people have responded to Minch’s video with videos of their own and hundreds emailed this reporter to praise Minch. Some said they were jumping on the bandwagon and not paying off a credit card debt; more said they had too much to lose. But there’s a consensus about one thing: Credit card lenders are soaking hard-up customers after a $700 billion taxpayer bailout — people are mad as hell about that. Excerpts from the mailbag: “I just had my interest rate hiked the day after I paid the last bit of my balance in full,” wrote Matthew Merkovich of Santa Monica, Calif. “I currently owe nothing to any bank. My credit score is over 800. Regardless, my rates just got bumped up. Makes no sense. If I was going to use a credit card, I certainly won’t now. That will have to do for my own personal debtor revolt.” Gary Harper sent a note about how his letters to elected officials resulted in an appearance on an NBC News report on predatory credit card lending. Ruth Pepin in Bluffton, S.C. shared a letter she’d sent to Bank of America: I am in receipt of your letter of July 23, 2009, stating that my credit line has been reassigned to $3300 because of a history of delinquency with other creditors. I challenge your authority to do so based on facts that do not apply to this case. You are perhaps referring to an educational loan that I am repaying. I am a student and have received a deferment on repayment until I graduate next year. A deferment is not a default. I always pay my Bank of America credit card in a timely fashion. I always pay more than the minimum amount; indeed, I generally pay $200-$300 per month. Recently you raised my percentage rate from 5.9% to 12% for NO GOOD REASON. Again, I will restate that I always pay in a timely fashion in much more than the minimum amount. Recently, Bank of America was in the news as having a 2nd quarter profit of several BILLION. Your profit is obviously based on your usurious methods of money-handling. I demand that my original percentage rate of 5.9% be restored, and that my previous credit limit be restored. Mary McCurnin and Ron Bednar, a married couple living in Rancho Cordova, Calif., wrote separately but said the same thing in their letters: That they consider it “un-American” to pay off their credit cards. In subsequent phone interviews, McCurnin and Bednar explained how illness had ruined them financially. Click here to read the story about how they divorced in an effort to keep afloat financially . Here are some of the videos: For the most part, raw anger is the only thing that comes through clearly in the “debtors’ revolt” videos uploaded to YouTube. YouTuber efrasier21mbf says he was an assistant branch manager for Bank of America for two years before quitting his job because “Bank of America will stop at nothing to turn an insane profit at your expense.” He wants Bank of America to settle an account — the offer comes toward the end of the video: This woman says she’s angry about interest rate hikes on various cards. She says she can’t revolt against the “loan sharks” because her home is almost paid off: “I don’t know what to do.” In subsequent video uploads, she seems to have figured out one thing she can do — she transformed into a bear: “I find it interesting how our lawmakers can bail out our financial sector,” says YouTuber x684867, “and then during this economy when things are kinda tight our financial sector just kinda says screw you, pay your taxes, we need your money. We’ve lost a sense of humanity in this country.” “Folks, I’d just like to talk about Bank of America for just a minute, not going to spend a lot of time on it,” says YouTuber saveamerica100. “It’s not worth it. Actually, it is worth it. It’s worth putting them out of business, that’s for sure.”

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BlackBerry, Natasha Indexes Need Summer Attention: Matthew Lynn

July 21, 2009

Commentary by Matthew Lynn July 21 (Bloomberg) — You might think your summer vacation is nothing more than a week of lazing around, working out how some of those applications on your iPhone actually work, and getting reacquainted with your family. Not so. If you are smart, you can tell a lot about how the markets are going to evolve just by keeping a close eye on what is happening around the pool of a luxury five-star resort in Sardinia, Crete or the Algarve

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