WHen paying tax has moved from a social obligation to a task to be avoided

Apple Raises $17 Billion in Record Corporate Bond Sale - Bloomberg: "Apple Inc. (AAPL) sold $17 billion of bonds in the biggest corporate offering on record as the iPhone maker seeks to help finance a $100 billion capital reward for shareholders.
Apple issued $3 billion of floating-rate notes and $14 billion of fixed-rate securities in six parts with maturities from three to 30 years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Proceeds may help the company avoid repatriation taxes on its $102.3 billion of funds held overseas as Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook returns an additional $55 billion to shareholders through 2015 to compensate for a stock that’s been hammered by signs of slowing growth."

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CEO Pay 1,795-to-1 Multiple of Wages - no skirting around the issue- only skirting around laws

CEO Pay 1,795-to-1 Multiple of Wages Skirts U.S. Law - Bloomberg: "Former fashion jewelry saleswoman Rebecca Gonzales and former Chief Executive Officer Ron Johnson have one thing in common: J.C. Penney Co. (JCP) no longer employs either.

The similarity ends there. Johnson, 54, got a compensation package worth 1,795 times the average wage and benefits of a U.S. department store worker when he was hired in November 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Gonzales’s hourly wage was $8.30 that year.

Across the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index of companies, the average multiple of CEO compensation to that of rank-and-file workers is 204, up 20 percent since 2009, the data show. The numbers are based on industry-specific estimates for worker compensation.

Almost three years after Congress ordered public companies to reveal actual CEO-to-worker pay ratios under the Dodd-Frank law, the numbers remain unknown. As the Occupy Wall Street movement and 2012 election made income inequality a social flashpoint, mandatory disclosure of the ratios remained bottled up at the Securities and Exchange Commission, which hasn’t yet drawn up the rules to implement it. Some of America’s biggest companies are lobbying against the requirement.

“It’s a simple piece of information shareholders ought to have,” said Phil Angelides, who led the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which investigated the economic collapse of 2008. “The fact that corporate executives wouldn’t want to display the number speaks volumes.” The lobbying is part of “a street-by-street, block-by-block fight waged by large corporations and their Wall Street colleagues” to obstruct the Dodd-Frank law, he said.

Brand-Name Opposition

The leading opponent of mandatory pay-ratio disclosure is a Washington-based non-profit called the HR Policy Association, which represents top human resources executives at about 335 large corporations.

“We don’t believe the information would be material to investors,” said Tim Bartl, president of the group’s advocacy arm, the Center onExecutive Compensation. Accounting for country-to-country differences in wages and benefits at global companies would be costly, time-consuming and all but impossible, he said in an interview.

The group has brand names behind it: 17 companies on HR Policy’s board of directors have CEO pay ratios in the top 20 percent of S&P 500 corporations, Bloomberg data show. They include General Electric Co. (GE), with a ratio of 491; McDonald’s Corp. (MCD), at 351; and AT&T Inc. (T), at 339.

Growing Ratio

These multiples are based on CEO pay for either the fiscal year ending in 2011 or 2012, as disclosed in the companies’ most recent filings before noon on March 26. Because most companies don’t disclose their average workers’ pay, Bloomberg used U.S. government data on worker compensation by industry. The average ratio for the S&P 500 companies is up from 170 in 2009, when the financial crisis reduced many compensation packages. Estimates by academics and trade-union groups put the number at 20-to-1 in the 1950s, rising to 42-to-1 in 1980 and 120-to-1 by 2000.

“When CEOs switched from asking the question of ‘how much is enough’ to ‘how much can I get,’ investor capital and executive talent started scrapping like hyenas for every morsel,” said Roger Martin, dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, in an interview. “It’s not that either hates labor, or wants to crush their lives. They just don’t care.”

Johnson’s Multiple

J.C. Penney’s Johnson, who was replaced on April 8 after less than 18 months on the job, had the highest pay multiple, based on $53.3 million in compensation reported in the company’s 2012 proxy. The former retailing executive at Apple Inc. (AAPL) took the top job after agreeing to walk away from unvested Apple shares valued at about $80 million.

“The money I earned at Penney’s in 2012 was entirely to replace money earned at Apple,” Johnson said in a telephone interview. “If Penney’s had waited until April 2012, they wouldn’t have had to pay me a penny. The board wanted me to start sooner.”

Comparing his earnings to the $29,688 average compensation for a department store worker is the equivalent of stacking the length of a loaf of bread -- give or take a few slices -- against the height of the Empire State Building.

Johnson, who says he resigned, was replaced on April 8 after less than 18 months on the job. Six days earlier, the Plano, Texas-based chain filed its 2013 proxy reporting his most recent annual compensation as $1.9 million, with no bonus, stock, options or incentive pay. The company declined to comment, said Joey Thomas, a spokesman.

Worsening Morale

Pay-ratio supporters, led by activist investors and trade unions including the AFL-CIO and the $52.4 billion United Auto Workers Retiree Medical Benefits Trust, say mandatory disclosure would help inform shareholders on advisory say-on-pay votes at companies’ annual meetings.

“Executive pay at some companies is excessive and leads to a number of risks, in particular the risk of damage to the company’s social license to operate and the risk of worsening employee morale,” said Tim Macready, chief investment officer of the Christian Super pension fund in Australia, which has about $700 million under management. The pay ratio is a “useful metric in identifying and dealing with both of these risks.”

Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (ANF), the clothing retailer, and Simon Property Group Inc., the real estate investment trust that owns and manages shopping malls, had the second- and third-highest ratios. Ninety percent or more of the CEO compensation at each company was in stock or option awards that vest over time -- in Simon’s case, eight years -- yet are required to be reported in the year granted. If such multiyear awards were reported in the years they vested, the ratios would drop.

Say-on-Pay Votes

Both companies lost say-on-pay votes last year, getting 24 percent and 26 percent of voting shareholders’ support respectively, according to proxy solicitor Georgeson Inc. Typically, more than 90 percent of voting shareholders back the non-binding resolutions at S&P 500 corporations.

Abercrombie CEO Michael Jeffries got $48.1 million, according to the New Albany, Ohio-based company’s 2012 proxy. That’s 1,640 times the average clothing-store worker’s $29,310 in pay and benefits. Jeffries’ stock-appreciation rights -- valued at $43.2 million in the proxy -- had no realizable value as of April 25 because the share price fell.

His next compensation report won’t include any equity awards and “will be a fraction of the number reported in 2012,” Phil Denning, a company spokesman, said in an e-mail.

At No. 3, Simon Property Group, CEO David Simon’s $137.2 million in compensation for 2011 was 1,594 times the average pay of $86,033 among employees of funds, trusts and other financial vehicles.

Method Criticized

Investors thought the package “too large,” according to the company’s April 4 proxy. In response, the CEO and the board compensation committee reduced the amounts he qualified for in the early and final years of the eight-year agreement. The committee also tied annual incentive awards more closely to a performance measure called funds from operations and created a peer group of companies for comparing results.

Simon Property’s latest proxy, filed after the cutoff for Bloomberg’s analysis, reported the CEO’s 2012 compensation at $17.2 million, which would have reduced his pay ratio to about 168.

Hugh Burns, a spokesman for the Indianapolis-based company, criticized Bloomberg’s analysis as outdated. It “creates a completely misleading result that grossly overstates and inaccurately portrays David Simon’s compensation and makes any comparison meaningless,” he said.

Dodd-Frank Differences

Bloomberg’s ratio is based on the SEC-required summary compensation table that companies publish in their shareholder proxy statements. It includes the CEO’s salary, bonus, perks, changes in pension accruals and the current value of stock-based awards made in the disclosure year.

The ratio differs from what Dodd-Frank requires in at least two respects: It’s drawn from government pay-and-benefits data aggregated by industry instead of from each company’s actual payroll; and it compares CEO pay to the average for all non- supervisory employees in the U.S. The law calls for the ratio to be based on the median of all employees worldwide, including managers and executives other than the CEO.

Bloomberg’s method is similar to one the Center on Executive Compensation suggested as an alternative to Dodd- Frank’s in a Nov. 11, 2011,letter to the SEC.

U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat who authored Dodd-Frank’s pay-ratio requirement, heard little objection when he proposed it in March 2010, said Michael Passante, a former legislative aide -- “except for one group,” the center.

Five Meetings

Since then, HR Policy Association representatives have conferred with SEC officials on the pay-ratio rule at least five times and the center has addressed at least four letters to the agency opposing it, the regulators’ records show.

The non-profit group shares offices and staff with the Washington law firm of McGuiness & Yager, which lobbies Congress and federal agencies on compensation and benefits issues. Senior partner Jeffrey McGuiness is listed as the association’s CEO. Bartl, at the compensation center, is a partner in the firm.

McGuiness didn’t respond to requests for comment. Bartl declined to answer questions after an initial interview.

HR Policy took in $7.2 million from members and conferences in 2011 and turned over $1.2 million to the compensation center, according to its 2011 tax filing.

McDonald’s Chair

Richard Floersch, chief human resources officer of Oak Brook, Illinois-based McDonald’s, has chaired the board committee that oversees the executive-compensation center, according to an entry that appeared on HR Policy’s website earlier this month. It has since been deleted.

Former McDonald’s CEO James Skinner, who retired in June, was No. 66 on the Bloomberg list with a CEO-to-worker pay ratio of 351 in 2011.

“We’re proud that more than 40 percent of McDonald’s leadership, including three former CEOs, started their careers working in our restaurants,” said McDonald’s spokeswoman Rebecca Hary in an e-mail.

Honeywell International Inc. (HON), No. 16 on Bloomberg’s list with a ratio of 633, joined HR Policy’s board this year. The association “discusses a wide variety of topics, not all of which Honeywell supports and not all of which are relevant to Honeywell,” said spokesman Rob Ferris in an e-mail.

The SEC, which has so far written 39 of 94 rules called for under Dodd-Frank, has no deadline for completing the pay-ratio provision. In February, Commissioner Luis Aguilar suggested that companies voluntarily disclose their ratios until the agency can develop its rule.

Repeal Sought

“Companies that can justify the amount that they are paying their CEOs and employees shouldn’t be fearful of the ratio,” Aguilar, a Democrat, said in an interview. Bartl, at the compensation center, responded with a letter asking Aguilar to “retract” his statement.

SEC Chairman Mary Jo White, who took office this month, and the three other commissioners declined to comment.

U.S. Representative Bill Huizenga, a Michigan Republican, is sponsoring legislation to repeal the pay-ratio requirement. It “doesn’t do anything other than play politics,” he said in an interview. “It doesn’t lend any useful, helpful, analytical type of information.”

The bill reprises one filed in March 2011 by former Representative Nan Hayworth, a New York Republican, who lost re- election last year. Political action committees associated with companies on the HR Policy board gave $78,416 to Hayworth’s 2012 campaign. Her contributions from the same companies totaled $22,000 in the 2010 cycle, Federal Election Commission records show. She didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Registered Lobbyists

Seven companies with pay ratios in the top 20 percent of all S&P 500 corporations registered to lobby on the measure: Tyco International Ltd. (TYC), GE, Johnson Controls Inc. (JCI), Prudential Financial Inc. (PRU), McDonalds, AT&T and Lowe’s Cos. Each was also represented on HR Policy’s board last year. Except for McDonald’s, none responded to requests for comment.

Pay-disclosure rules have been controversial since the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 imposed requirements for regular reporting of executives’ compensation on public companies.

The rank and file were sure to seethe with discontent, wrote National Biscuit Co., later Nabisco, in a 1936 petition to the SEC. Only “criminal curiosity” underlies such interest, wrote Congoleum-Nairn Inc., a manufacturer of linoleum flooring. The comments are cited in a history of the era’s corporate-pay debates by Harwell Wells, an associate law professor at Temple University in Philadelphia.

Suggestion Rejected

James Cotton, a retired securities attorney for International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), may have been the first to propose mandatory disclosure of the CEO pay ratio. He said it would have “a significant impact by either lowering the excessive executives’ compensation or raising the average compensation of employees and managers” in a 1997 article in the Northern Illinois University Law Review. He got the idea shortly after joining IBM in 1970, Cotton said in an interview.

The young attorney, an Army captain during the Vietnam War, said he was listening to managers discuss how to handle the company’s cash when he proposed giving out raises.

“They looked at me like there was something wrong with me,” Cotton recounted. “They said, ‘We can’t do that.’” For years after that, he said, he kept an eye on the CEO’s pay and IBM’s cash holdings, both of which increased.

Informing Workers

Cotton said he mailed his law review paper to the SEC, members of Congress and some unions, including the AFL-CIO, and then forgot about it. Now retired at 73 and almost blind from glaucoma, he didn’t know until recently that the ratio’s disclosure was included in the Dodd-Frank Act.

The ratios will help inform workers, he said. “‘Am I going to get ripped off? Or am I going to get a fair price for my labor?’ If there’s anything I want to happen, it’s that.”

Nowhere was the pay multiple higher last year than at J.C. Penney, where Rebecca Gonzales made $13,797.15 at a store in Tulsa, Oklahoma, according to her 2011 wage and tax statement.

One month after Johnson joined the company as CEO, during the December 2011 holiday rush, Gonzales fell over a box of hangers at work, and said she couldn’t immediately stand up.

“All I remember is seeing black,” she said.

A doctor at an urgent care clinic ordered her to stay off her swollen knee, she said. When she returned to work, she ran a cash register from a chair until a manager took the seat away, she said. Unable to work, she filed a claim for temporary disability benefits in state Workers’ Compensation Court in February 2012. She’s the sole wage earner for her disabled husband and two school-age children.

Thank-You Note

A month later, the company warned she’d lose her job if she didn’t return within 30 days, according to a letter she received. Two weeks later, it wrote again.

“Your employment with jcpenney has been terminated,” the letter stated. “Thank you for joining the jcpenney team!”

A judge ordered the company to pay Gonzales $1,516 for the temporary total disability. She filed a wrongful-termination claim in federal court seeking at least $75,000 more. That suit is pending.

Hers was one of 43,000 jobs the company cut last year as Johnson’s retailing strategy failed to take hold. The share price fell by half between the time he took the CEO post and left it.

In January 2012, Johnson sold almost half the 1,660,578 shares he’d been granted, for $32.2 million. He still owned almost 893,000 shares, with warrants on 7.3 million more, as of J.C. Penney’s April 2 proxy. He made the sales “entirely to pay taxes,” Johnson said.

Top Six

In all, the company awarded six top executives $190 million for the fiscal year that ended in January 2012, according to its proxy. All subsequently left the company.

Johnson’s predecessor, Myron E. Ullman -- who received $34.6 million in pay and retirement benefits in his final year -- got $1 million to come back, a recent filing shows.

“The irony of the CEO pay ratio is that most people’s experience of J.C. Penney will be the people who are paid the least, and treated most like commodities,” said Harvard Business School professor Rakesh Khurana.

For now, Johnson and Gonzales are unemployed. The former cashier says she’s looking for work.

To contact the reporters on this story: Elliot Blair Smith in Washington at esmith29@bloomberg.net; Phil Kuntz in New York atpkuntz1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Gary Putka at gputka@bloomberg.net"

Vocation, not vacation, as serious education

What Germany Can Teach the U.S. About Vocational Education - Businessweek: "A new report from the College Board, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, offers a variety of useful ideas, such as larger grants for students who take heavier college course loads. Tougher schedules show that students are serious about graduating.

That’s one good approach. But let me suggest another, which Germany has pioneered.

Our friends in Germany know—as we should—that some students are bored by traditional studies; some don’t have the aptitude for college; some would rather work with their hands; and some are unhappy at home and just need to get away. They realize that everyone won’t benefit from college, but they can still be successful and contribute to society.

Americans often see such students as victims. Germans see these students as potential assets who might one day shine if they’re matched with the right vocation. And it has a system in place—a partnership of employers and unions with government—to do the matching and provide the necessary training."

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Meetings - good times for Bullshit Bingo

Want to boost the economy? Ban all meetings | Marina Hyde | Comment is free | The Guardian: "Indeed, I'm told by some that the higher up you get in the world of meetings, the more stage-managed they are. Decisions aren't made there: they're just ratified. The old "information sharing" justification is apparently cobblers too, because if you have to wait till the meeting to get the information, then you're really not relevant enough to be at the meeting.

What the vast majority of meetings do is confer status on those blowhards "leading" them, or attendees who really should find other ways to validate themselves. Even Cobra – the snazzy-sounding Whitehall crisis response meeting – is widely griped about, with Scotland Yard's formerly most senior anti-terrorism officer complaining it was "cumbersome and bureaucratic", full of people "jockeying for position", and slowed everything down.

But on people go. Gazillions of meetings are held every day, with every one presumably regarded as an indispensable step toward something worth attaining. What would winning the game of meetings even look like? I suppose you'd battle up all the levels, and finally ascend to the ultimate meeting: one to which you'd actually want to go to. Maybe you'd get in on the Meeting of Meetings, which would be something like that meeting where Obama and Hillary and the joint chiefs watched Osama bin Laden's compound being stormed live. But was that really a meeting?In the photos it looked so passive as to be more like a movie night.

As a last word on meetings, I keep thinking of that radical Dutch urban planner who did away with all traffic lights in various towns, and found road safety dramatically improved. If only, instead of making fatuous interventions on some footballer's disciplinary breach Cameron did something similarly useful with his time. Imagine if he could announce that for one week – in fact, make it a month – all meetings in all workplaces in all Britain were to be banned. People would simply have to muddle through, reclaiming the civilised mores of a time before the answer to everything was to have a meeting. Who knows, a meetingless Britain might even prove that holy of holies for George Osborne – the entirely free initiative that would significantly boost the economy."

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Wealthy, not Healthy, Recovery

Wealthiest Americans Only Winners in Recovery, Pew Says - Bloomberg: "The U.S. economy has recovered for households with net worth of $500,000 or more, a new study shows. The recession continues for almost everyone else.

Wealthy households boosted their net worth by 21.2 percent in the aftermath of the recession, according to the study released today by the Pew Research Center. The rest of America lost 4.9 percent of household wealth from 2009 to 2011.

Pew attributed the disparity to gains during that period in the stock and bond markets, benefiting affluent households, while the housing market’s decline hit others harder. The report underscores the nation’s growing income inequality, with the top 13 percent of households recovering their losses from the 18- month recession that ended in June 2009, and the rest of the country continuing to hemorrhage wealth.

“The results are entirely sensible, but depressing,” said Richard Fry, a Pew senior research associate and co-author of the study by the Washington-based organization. “It’s a stark story of two Americas.”"

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Taking Suppliers to the Cleaners, Tide-ing up Working Capital

P&G, Big Companies Pinch Suppliers on Payments - WSJ.com: "P&G is actually late to this game. It currently pays its bills on average within 45 days, faster than the 60 to 100 days that other consumer products makers and large companies in other industries generally take, according to industry experts. The company is looking to move its payment terms to 75 days and recently started negotiations with suppliers, people familiar with the matter said.

To help suppliers deal with the changes, P&G is working with banks that will offer to advance cash to suppliers after 15 days for a fee, some of the people said. The changes are expected to be phased in over three years and ultimately could affect hundreds of companies, the people said.

Across industries, corporations like DuPont Co. DD +1.02% and J.C. Penney Co. JCP +0.33% are trying to reduce the amount of cash tied up in day-to-day operations by taking more time to pay suppliers, collecting faster from customers or reducing manufacturing and inventory costs."

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Greening one's health

BBC News - Green spaces boosts wellbeing of urban dwellers - study: "Using data from 5,000 UK households over 17 years, researchers found that living in a greener area had a significant positive effect.

The findings could help to inform urban planners and have an impact on society at large, they said.

The study is published in the journal Psychological Science.

The research team examined data from a national survey that followed more than 5,000 UK households and 10,000 adults between 1991 and 2008 as they moved house around the country.

They asked participants to report on their own psychological health during that time to estimate the "green space effect".

Dr Mathew White and colleagues at the European Centre for the Environment and Human Health found that individuals reported less mental distress and higher life satisfaction when they were living in greener areas.

This was true even after the researchers accounted for changes over time in participants' income, employment, marital status, physical health and housing type."

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Fleet of feet, not fleeting fame- Paula R.

Paula Radcliffe recalls her 'impossible' London marathon record run | Sport | The Observer: "On 13 April 2003, Paula Radcliffe set a world record in the London marathon that was dubbed unbeatable. London's then race director, and former 10,000m world record holder, Dave Bedford described her time of 2 hours 15 minutes and 25 seconds as "the greatest distance running performance I have seen in my lifetime, it ranks in my mind with the impact of Bob Beamon's long jump in 1968." Beamonesque … And as her physio would describe it, simply something else – like travelling to Mars.

Radcliffe's achievement sent reverberations around the world. Not only had the Briton beaten her own world record of 2:17.18 set the year before in Chicago – knocking a minute and a half off the efforts of the previous holder, the formidable Catherine Ndereba – but she had sliced off almost two minutes more. Those margins of improvement were, at the time, simply unimaginable.

A decade on and no woman has come within 2½ minutes of that run. Radcliffe still dominates the all-time records list and her name appears beside the three fastest marathon times in history."

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Monarchs in steep decline: 'Round Up" the usual suspects is not so easy

Tracking the causes of monarch butterfly decline | Environment | guardian.co.uk: "University of Kansas insect ecologist Orley R. "Chip" Taylor has been observing the fragile populations of monarch butterflies for decades, but he says he has never been more concerned about their future.

Monarchs are beloved for their spectacular migration across Canada and the United States to overwintering sites in central Mexico — and back again. But a new census taken at the monarchs' wintering grounds found their population had declined 59 percent over the previous year and was at the lowest level ever measured.

In an interview with Yale Environment 360 contributor Richard Conniff, Taylor — founder and director of Monarch Watch, a conservation and outreach program — talked about the factors that have led to the sharp drop in the monarch population. Among them, Taylor said, is the increased planting of genetically modified corn in the U.S. Midwest, which has led to greater use of herbicides, which in turn kills the milkweed that is a prime food source for the butterflies.

"What we're seeing here in the United States," he said, "is a very precipitous decline of monarchs that's coincident with the adoption of Roundup-ready corn and soybeans.""

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Where there is SMoke...

Cigarette industry is ‘evil’, says John Crown - Oireachtas News Updates | The Irish Times - Thu, Apr 18, 2013: "The cigarette industry is “evil’’, Independent Senator John Crown said.
Prof Crown, an oncologist, said it should be seen as an industry that needed to be stamped out completely. “We should put it on notice that it is our intention to make the activity which it does completely and comprehensively illegal within a meaningful time-frame,’’ he added. He said he believed Minister for Health Dr James Reilly was a committed campaigner toward the goal of making Ireland a tobacco-free society. “Like those of us who have been privileged to be members of our profession and other caring health professionals, we do tend to get a different perspective on the reality of the evil that is this industry, ’’ he added.

‘Evil industry’
“It is an evil industry and we need to call it what it is. At no level, within our body politic, be it local government, national government, legislature, Civil Service or the EU, should we in any sense be engaging with the tobacco industry."

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P&G- Cleaning out the suppliers, flow with the Tide?

P&G taking longer to pay suppliers, offers financing - Yahoo! Finance: "(Reuters) - Procter & Gamble Co (PG.N) is increasing the time it takes to pay for supplies and offering financing to help mitigate the impact a longer payment cycle could have on small and midsize businesses, the household products maker told suppliers earlier this month.
P&G plans to increase the time it takes to pay suppliers by as much as 30 days, which could free up to $2 billion in cash, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The world's largest household products company is seeking to pay its bills in 75 days from the average of 45 days it takes currently, the paper said.
In a letter dated April 5 on a P&G website for suppliers, the company said that its "working capital program will focus on moving to longer payables with our external business partners."
The letter from Chief Purchasing Officer Richard Hughes said that P&G discovered that its payment cycle was out of line with those of its competitors. Hughes said in the letter that P&G planned to offer supply chain financing through banks."

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center of learning and technology hub?

Boston Marathon bombs made from pressure cookers - The Times of India: "Indeed, one of the witnesses interviewed on television recalled the Mumbai carnage that took place when she was visiting. Incidentally, there were no Indians reported among the victims although Boston has a significant population from the sub-continent because of its reputation as a center of learning and technology hub."

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Great for Bullshit Bingo: Financial Literacy

Why 'financial literacy' is a bunch of hooey – and why the banks promote it | Helaine Olen | Money | guardian.co.uk: "April is National Financial Capability Month. You know what that means. We will be subject to many a tedious lecture, telling us how the financial crisis would not have happened if only those darn, irresponsible Americans knew how to handle their funds. And, of course, we'll believe it.

Almost all of us are sure that if someone, somehow, can convince us to improve our financial knowledge, all will be right in the world of our wallets. Goodbye balloon mortgage payments, hello responsible financial decision making. Of course, we're always talking about the other guy. But I digress."

So take a few classes, and learn to manage your money. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke says it is the right thing to do: "Among the lessons of the recent financial crisis is the need for virtually everyone – both young and old – to acquire a basic knowledge of finance and economics."

Sounds great. But it's not true.

As I discovered when I researched my recent book, Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry, financial literacy or capability or whatever you want to call it is a bunch of hooey. It promotes the false equivalence that the victims of the financial shenanigans of the past several years are as responsible for the financial crisis as the financial services sector, the ultimate creator of all those financial products of mass destruction.

Think about it this way: did you take on a collateralized debt obligation? Did your neighbor? (Readers in Manhattan and Fairfield County, Connecticut, you shouldn't answer this question.)

Bank of America

So you get outfits like Bank of America, which debuted a financial literacy series created with the Khan Academy, a provider of educational content. As the press release announcing the effort puts it: "Bank of America and Khan Academy recognize that no matter where you are starting from, the best way to improve long-term financial success is by changing habits slowly, step by step."

This is the same Bank of America where a few years ago an executive named Ric Struthers blamed the housing crisis not on the organizations like Countrywide Financial, which it bought in 2008 despite the fact that it was at the epicenter of such mortgage practices as liar loans and deceptive marketing to consumers, but on the people who fell victim to the housing crisis. He said:

It all starts with financial literacy. If we had done that many years in the past, especially in the mortgage industry, we wouldn't be having some of the problems we are having today. People would be paying a little more attention to the loans they signed up for.

This sentiment is far from uncommon. "Financial illiteracy is a major contributor to the economic struggle that many Americans face and plays a large role in the nation's growing economic crisis," reads one paper from an outfit called the National Financial Educators Council, which offers programs in – well, you guessed it. "Financial education is the key to reviving the American dream for millions of Americans."

No mention at Bank of America or the National Financial Educators Council of one particularly noxious financial habit: median income in the United States fell by more than 12% between 2000 and 2012, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. If there is a class in how to fix this one, sign me up.

Penn State

Colleges are also getting in on the financial literacy movement because, after all, one needs to do something about all that student debt, all $1tn of it.

Let's take a look at Penn State, a school the United States Department of Education College Affordability and Transparency Center deems to be one of the most expensive public four-year colleges in the country. How do you solve a problem like that?

Why, you set up a new office devoted to financial literacy, that's what, where students can learn how to "make better decisions about budgeting, borrowing and loan repayment". After all, as yet another press release put it: "As tuition costs increase and job opportunities become more selective, it is vital that college students have skills for personal financial planning."

When I emailed Penn State to ask about how financial literacy could compensate for such things as the fact that college tuition nationwide has more than doubled since 1980, this is the response I got from Daad Rizk, the head of the program:

Financial literacy helps students to treat education as an investment in their future. The real problem is not the rising cost of education, it is in the lack of financial planning and lack of financial literacy skills of making sound financial decisions.

Here is one thing I would suggest any financial literacy program at Penn State should emphasize: state funding provided 62% of the school's budget in 1970, vs 14% in 2012. This might go a long way toward explaining the explosion in both tuition and student loans at the school.

And another thing...

Oh, and another thing none of these outfits thinks it worth mentioning … financial literacy, even at the most basic level, doesn't work.

Survey after survey shows that high-school students who take mandated seminars in financial literacy know no more about basic financial concepts than students who didn't study the concept at all. As a recent study on the topic put it, these classes have "no impact on credit management outcomes, including: credit scores, credit card delinquencies, or the probability of declaring bankruptcy or experiencing foreclosure."

So why continue to push financial literacy? As journalist Jill Schlesingerrecently put it: "Many of these big companies promote their public education projects, while at the same time continuing to sell murky, complicated products."

Maybe there ought to be a law. Oh, right. Every time we try to do that, try to legislate something like plain vanilla mortgages, or restore the right of borrowers to jettison student debt in bankruptcy court, the financial services sector comes out against it."

Beet-ing Blood pressure with Beets

BBC News - Beetroot 'can lower blood pressure': "Drinking a cup of beetroot juice can lower blood pressure, researchers say.

Drinking 250ml (8oz) cut high blood pressure readings by 10mm of mercury (mmHg) in a study of 15 patients, bringing some into the normal range, the journal Hypertension reports.

Most marked after three to six hours, the effect was detectable a day later.

Scientists say the nitrate in beetroot widens blood vessels to aid flow. And many people with angina use a nitrate drug to ease their symptoms.

The researchers, from Barts Health NHS Trust and the London Medical School, who have been studying beetroot's blood pressure lowering effects for years, say more work is still needed."

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JIT vs. JIC Learning

Starbucks, Wal-Mart offer classes - for college credit - Yahoo! Finance: "A growing number of Fortune 500 companies, like Walmart, have grown tired of waiting for colleges and universities to produce the skilled workers they need and have started offering their own classes instead. And as an added bonus for employees: Many of these courses -- from Starbucks' Barista Basics to Jiffy Lube's finance fundamentals -- are eligible for college credit.
"What companies like is just-in-time learning that gives somebody a skill they need at the time they need it," says Mark Allen, a Pepperdine University business professor and author of The Next Generation of Corporate Universities. "What traditional universities do to a large extent is just-in-case learning.""

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Slowing rise of sea levels- phys.org

Cutting specific pollutants would slow sea level rise, research says: "The potential impact of rising oceans on populated areas is one of the most concerning effects of climate change. Many of the world's major cities, such as New York, Miami, Amsterdam, Mumbai, and Tokyo, are located in low-lying areas by the water.
As glaciers and ice sheets melt and warming oceans expand, sea levels have been rising by an average of about 3 millimeters annually in recent years (just more than one-tenth of an inch). If temperatures continue to warm, sea levels are projected to rise between 18 and 59 centimeters (7 to 23 inches) this century, according to a 2007 assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Some scientists, however, feel those estimates are too conservative.
Such an increase could submerge densely populated coastal communities, especially when storm surges hit. Despite the risks, policy makers have been unable to agree on procedures for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide. With this in mind, the research team focused on emissions of four other heat-trapping pollutants: methane, tropospheric ozone, hydrofluorocarbons, and black carbon. These gases and particles last anywhere from a week to a decade in the atmosphere, and they can influence climate more quickly than carbon dioxide, which persists in the atmosphere for centuries. Previous research by Ramanathan and Yangyang Xu of Scripps, a co-author of the new paper, has shown that a sharp reduction in emissions of these shorter-lived pollutants beginning in 2015 could offset warming temperatures by up to 50 percent by 2050. Applying those emission reductions to sea level rise, the new research found that the cuts could dramatically slow rising sea levels. Their results showed that total sea level rise would be reduced by an estimated 22 to 42 percent by 2100, depending on the extent to which emissions were reduced.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-04-specific-pollutants-sea.html#jCp...

Arctic Ice-Free by 2050? Time to bring the deep-freeze to environmental damage

Climate Change Seen Leaving Arctic Ice-Free by 2050 - Bloomberg: "The Earth’s northern polar region will be almost ice-free in the warmest months by 2050, sooner than previously estimated, according to a study by two federal government scientists who work on climate change.
The researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration used three separate methods to predict the sea- ice trends in the Arctic Ocean, and their estimates for 2020 to 2060 forecast elimination of most ice during the Northern Hemisphere’s warmest months, according to a statement.
The results show “very likely timing for future sea ice loss to the first half of the 21st century, with a possibility of major loss within a decade or two,” according to the paper by James Overland and Muyin Wang, who both study climate change and the Arctic. The paper was reviewed by other scientists and accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters.
“The large observed shifts in the current Arctic environment represent major indicators of regional and global climate change,” they wrote."

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Arctic Ice-Free by 2050? Time to bring the deep-freeze to environmental damage

Climate Change Seen Leaving Arctic Ice-Free by 2050 - Bloomberg: "The Earth’s northern polar region will be almost ice-free in the warmest months by 2050, sooner than previously estimated, according to a study by two federal government scientists who work on climate change.
The researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration used three separate methods to predict the sea- ice trends in the Arctic Ocean, and their estimates for 2020 to 2060 forecast elimination of most ice during the Northern Hemisphere’s warmest months, according to a statement.
The results show “very likely timing for future sea ice loss to the first half of the 21st century, with a possibility of major loss within a decade or two,” according to the paper by James Overland and Muyin Wang, who both study climate change and the Arctic. The paper was reviewed by other scientists and accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters.
“The large observed shifts in the current Arctic environment represent major indicators of regional and global climate change,” they wrote."

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Not a Hair-Y Auction

MSTC bags e-auction contract from Tirupati for selling jewellry & sourcing items - The Economic Times: "KOLKATA: Of all the rags-to-riches stories in the country, MSTC Limited's rise from a metal scrap exporter to one of India's largest e-commerce firms is a rare case of divine blessings bestowing directly on a state-owned company. MSTC, a little-known Kolkatabased PSU, last fiscal helped TirumalaVenkateswara Temple, the country's busiest temple, raise about Rs 250 crore by selling tonnes of tonsured hair of devotees to wigmakers across the world through online auctions.


Buoyed, Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam, which administers the temple, now plans to take the same route to sell gold and silver jewellery from its famed hundi, or collection pot, where silver donations often exceed 500 kg a year. "For the first time, we are planning to start e-auctions of gold and silver jewellery offered by devotees. A high-level committee has been formed to fix the price according to purity of the metal," a TTD official said. So how come an unglamorous public sector company won the blessings of Lord Balaji, in one of the richest temples? "

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Fresh & Easy - not easy to be fresh

Tesco expected to scrap struggling US grocery chain Fresh & Easy | Business | The Guardian: "Trader Joe's, owned by the German supermarket giant Aldi Nord, has about 370 stores in the US and sells an estimated $1,750 (£1,140) in merchandise per square foot. The sales per square foot achieved by Fresh & Easy during its opening months was a mere $11 to $25.

Both businesses are owned by European retail giants, so why did only one win the west?

Like Fresh & Easy's 200 US stores, Trader Joe's strives to sell wholesome food at a low cost. The key difference between the two lies in Trader Joe's focus on customer experience – the cheery staff wear Hawaiian shirts, morning shoppers get free coffee and kids get rolls of stickers. Over at Fresh & Easy, customers fend for themselves at self-service checkouts.

In 1979, Trader Joe's founder, the US entrepreneur Joe Coulombe, sold the firm to the privately owned Aldi Nord, best known for its no-frills Aldi stores in mainland Europe. The Aldi chain in the UK and US is run by a separate German company, Aldi Sud, which is heavily tipped to pick up some of Fresh & Easy's stores and a distribution centre."

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Media and Julia- the bias that hurts

Gillard’s Bias Battle Replicated in Boardrooms Across Australia - Bloomberg: "Julia Gillard, Australia’s first female prime minister, is contending with national media condescension that replicates sensibilities in the nation’s corporations, according to three leading women executives.
“The press do give Julia a hard time and I think probably harder than if there’d been a male in that position,” Pru Bennett, head of corporate governance in the Asia-Pacific for BlackRock Inc. (BLK), told the Bloomberg Australia Economic Summit in Sydney yesterday. “This has contributed to the current way voters are thinking.”"

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Lending a helping hand - not Margaret Style

Margaret Thatcher was no feminist | Hadley Freeman | Comment is free | The Guardian: "This was hardly the first or even the worst example of a dig at Thatcher tinged so needlessly with sexism. Of all the things to criticise Thatcher for, calling her out for being a woman seems like something of a wasted bullet. Yet despite the attempts of some columnists to claim otherwise, Thatcher can't really be seen as "a warrior in the sex war", let alone as "the ultimate women's libber". Far from "smashing the glass ceiling", she was the aberration, the one who got through and then pulled the ladder up right after her. On the same edition of Channel 4 News, Louise Mensch named only three successful female politicians as part of her defence of Thatcher – and only one of those was a Conservative."

In truth, Thatcher is one of the clearest examples of the fact that a successful woman doesn't always mean a step forward for women. In 11 years, Thatcher promoted only one woman to her cabinet, preferring instead to elevate men whom Spitting Image memorably and, in certain instances, accurately, described as "vegetables". You may not be a fan of Edwina Currie but, really, was she any worse than John Gummer? "You would see MPs who came into any politics after I had and who were no better than me being promoted over my head," said Currie this week. "She had been offered the chance to get on and effectively she then refused to offer it to other people."

As Matthew Parris evocatively put it in Monday's Times, "She rather liked men (preferring our company, perhaps, to that of women), [but] she thought us the weaker sex.

..."

The Rub-Bush Debt

Bush Debt Load Endorsed by Republicans Now Rejected: Taxes - Bloomberg: "Republicans say putting the budget into balance by 2023 is necessary to help get the economy on track, with spending reductions alone and not raising taxes. Democrats say the cuts would hurt growth and instead want to stabilize the deficit in proportion to the size of the economy.
Not long ago -- and seemingly forgotten in the current debate about spending programs and tax reform -- Republicans said the deficits under George W. Bush were sustainable and in proportion to the size of the economy, while Democrats criticized Republicans and Bush for not reducing the deficit more quickly, Bloomberg BNA reported.
With the deficit-to-GDP ratio in fiscal 2012 at 7.0 percent, the switch in tone begs the question: Have times changed or have only the political winds shifted, reflecting the difference in control of the White House?"

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Flying- more stomach churning over the Atlantic

BBC News - Transatlantic flights 'to get more turbulent': "Flights across the North Atlantic could get a lot bumpier in the future if the climate changes as scientists expect.

Planes are already encountering stronger winds, and could now face more turbulence, according to research led from Reading University, UK.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, suggests that by mid-century passengers will be bounced around more frequently and more strongly.

The zone in the North Atlantic affected by turbulence could also increase.

Reading's Dr Paul Williams said comfort was not the only consideration; there were financial consequences of bumpier airspace as well.

"It's certainly plausible that if flights get diverted more to fly around turbulence rather than through it then the amount of fuel that needs to be burnt will increase," he told BBC News."

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The Sum of Music

How composers from Mozart to Bach made their music add up | Music | The Guardian: "What's the next number in this sequence? 5, 10, 20, 30, 36 … ? And the next in this? 640, 231, 100, 91 … ?

If you know your Mozart then you'll identify 43 as the number that comes after 36 in the first sequence. These are the opening lines of The Marriage of Figaro sung by Figaro as he measures out the room that he will share with Susanna once they are married. It's a curious selection of numbers that when added together comes to 144, or 12 squared: perhaps a coincidence or maybe a numerical representation of the impending union of Figaro and his bride Susanna.

The second sequence continues with 1,003, the number of Don Giovanni's female conquests in Spain. The other numbers are part of the famous Catalogue aria sung by Leporello, Don Giovanni's servant, which include his other conquests: 640 in Italy, 231 in Germany, 100 in France, 91 in Turkey.

Mozart loved numbers. Johann Andreas Schachtner, court trumpeter and friend of the Mozart family, wrote about the young Wolfgang: "When he was doing sums, the table, the chair, the walls and even the floor would be covered with chalked numbers.""

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Ice Melt in Peru's Andes- chilling reminder of climate change

Ice That Took 1,600 Years to Form in Peru’s Andes Melted in Only 25, Scientists Say - NYTimes.com: "Glacial ice in the Peruvian Andes that took at least 1,600 years to form has melted in just 25 years, scientists reported Thursday, the latest indication that the recent spike in global temperatures has thrown the natural world out of balance.

The evidence comes from a remarkable find at the margins of the Quelccaya ice cap in Peru, the world’s largest tropical ice sheet. Rapid melting there in the modern era is uncovering plants that were locked in a deep freeze when the glacier advanced many thousands of years ago.

Dating of those plants, using a radioactive form of carbon in the plant tissues that decays at a known rate, has given scientists an unusually precise method of determining the history of the ice sheet’s margins."

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Right time, right place = the way careers are made

Gross Says Buffett to Soros Careers Fueled by Expansion - Bloomberg: "“All of us, even the old guys like Buffett, Soros, Fuss, yeah - me too, have cut our teeth during perhaps a most advantageous period of time, the most attractive epoch, that an investor could experience,” Gross wrote. “Perhaps it was the epoch that made the man as opposed to the man that made the epoch.”
Gross, one of the co-founders in 1971 of Newport Beach, California-based Pacific Investment Management Co., is examining his legacy as the bond shop he built over four decades is seeking to adapt to an environment that looks very different from the bull market that fueled Pimco’s growth to one of the largest money managers in the world. The prospect of elevated market volatility, an aging population and climate change could make investing far more challenging in the coming decades, Gross said."

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Hefty weight = hefty price;

Airline introduces charges based on people’s weight - The Irish Times - Tue, Apr 02, 2013: ""Airlines don't run on seats, they run on weight, and particularly the smaller the aircraft you are in the less variance you can accept in terms of the difference in weight between passengers," the airline's chief executive Chris Langton told ABC radio in Australia.
The new rates range from $1 (€ 0.81) to around $4.16 (€ 3.39) per kilogram. When The Irish Times attempted to book a ticket today we were asked to submit our weight, including our luggage, when booking.
"We at Samoa Air are keeping airfares fair, by charging our passengers only for what they weigh," its website says. "You are the master of your Air 'fair', you decide how much (or little) your ticket will cost. No more exorbitant excess baggage fees, or being charged for baggage you may not carry. Your weight plus your baggage items, is what you pay for. Simple.""

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Chomsky on Democracy

Chomsky warns austerity policy has left European democracy in tatters - World News | Latest International News Headlines | The Irish Times - Mon, Apr 01, 2013: "Speaking ahead of a public lecture in Dublin this week, Prof Chomsky (84), a leading figure in the study of linguistics and a prominent critic of US foreign policy, said the European Central Bank was imposing unfair and counterproductive austerity measures on the people of Ireland and other EU member states hit by the debt crisis.
“I’m not a great admirer of the [Federal Reserve], but I think they’ve been much more constructive and thoughtful and progressive than the ECB has been. I mean, take Ireland. It was a crisis of the banks. It wasn’t the Government; it wasn’t the population. It’s fundamentally bank corruption,” he said."

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