Showing posts with label Forbes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Forbes. Show all posts

Monday, June 1, 2015

"excessive financialization"

June 01, 2015 Forbes , GDP 0 Comments
Wall Street Costs The Economy 2% Of GDP Each Year 

By Steve Denning, May 31, 2015, Forbes

“Wall Street is back,” says the New York Times, and the economic cost is high. The excessive financialization of the U.S. economy reduces GDP growth by 2% every year, according to a new study by International Monetary Fund. That’s a massive drag on the economy–some $320 billion per year. Wall Street has thus become, not just a moral problem with rampant illegality and outlandish compensation of executives and traders: Wall Street is a macro-economic problem of the first order.

How has this happened? Properly scaled, the financial sector is a good thing. The financial sector plays a healthy role in translating products and services into exchangeable financial instruments to facilitate trade in the real economy. Through deposits, banks channel citizens’ savings to businesses that can use them productively. Through mortgages, workers can trade their promise of future wages for a home. Through insurance, homeowners are able to share financial risks and avoid financial catastrophe.

Read the full story: www.forbes.com

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Monday, March 16, 2015

We'll Never Get Full Story

March 16, 2015 Forbes , Hillary Clinton Email Scandal 0 Comments
Al Sharpton, Hillary Clinton, Lois Lerner Share Recordkeeping Tips 

By Robert W. Wood, Mar. 16, 2015, Forbes.com

We may never get the full story of Hillary Clinton’s emails, or Lois Lerner’s for that matter. Both were savvy enough to be selective. One can add Al Sharpton to the clever trio, although his contribution to the game may be more old-fashioned: fires that destroy tax records. In his own low tech way, Rev. Sharpton has managed to keep tax problems under raps that would be catastrophic for mere mortals.

As Americans look for receipts and pour over their records, some may be struck by the odd serendipity. Maybe we all will learn that no one in government knows how to use email except Hillary Clinton. Even before we knew that Mrs. Clinton never used the State Department email system, President Obama was adamant that there was no smidgen of corruption at the IRS. Employees were confused. Cincinnati went rogue. Etc.

Read the full story:  www.forbes.com

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Saturday, January 3, 2015

The real world consequences

January 03, 2015 Adam Levin , Cyber Security 0 Comments
How The Sony Hack Is Changing The Way I Work

Adam Levin, Jan. 1, 2015, Forbes

The trend here is simply too clear: Nothing is sacrosanct and nothing is beyond reach. And while there may be no way to keep prying eyes out of our email, there is a way to keep the most sensitive information pertaining to your business out of reach. With that thought foremost in my mind, it is, indeed, time to make some serious changes in 2015.

Read more: www.forbes.com

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Tuesday, December 9, 2014

No wonder he's okay with higher taxes!

December 09, 2014 Alex Crippen , Berkshire Hathaway 0 Comments
Buffett Now No. 2 As Shares Surge To All Time High

By Alex Crippen, Dec. 8, 2014, Cnbc.com

Warren Buffett is now the world's second-richest person as Berkshire Hathaway's stock rallied to an all-time high.

Forbes said its real-time ranking of the world's billionaires now estimates Buffett's wealth at $74.4 billion, about $1.5 billion more than Carlos Slim's $72.9 billion. Slim is now in third place.

Class A shares of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway closed at a record $227,800 after hitting an all-time intraday high of $229,374 in Monday's trading. They're up 28 percent for the year, trouncing the S&P's 11.5 percent gain, excluding dividends.

In March, Forbes estimated Buffett's fortune at $58.2 billion. He was No. 4 on the list at that time, behind Mexico's Slim with $72 billion and Spanish fashion executive Amancio Ortega with $64 billion.

Read the full story:  www.cnbc.com


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Monday, December 8, 2014

Hope--as important as education, training, luck

December 08, 2014 Business , Career 0 Comments
If You Can't Instill Hope, You'll Fail Miserably As A Leader

Kathy Caprino, Dec. 2, 2014, Forbes

This struck a deep chord in me, as my 18-years in corporate America was anything but hope-inspiring. In virtually all of my jobs, I watched senior leaders demeaning their staff, managers behaving abominably, and employees so threatened that they seemed to live only for crushing the hope out of anyone who might be deemed a threat.

Read more: www.forbes.com


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Wednesday, March 19, 2014

"Hollywood Favors High Tax, 'Gender Pay Equity'--Just Not in Hollywood" --Non-sexist reasons explain "gender pay gap."

March 19, 2014 Academy Awards , Articles by Larry Elder 0 Comments
By Larry Elder 

Sunday's Academy Awards event showcased Hollywood's finest. Beautiful people in beautiful clothes saying lovely things about their industry -- a politically "progressive" business that gives nearly all of its political contributions to Democrats.

Democrats, of course, purport to believe that "the rich" do not pay their "fair share" in taxes. Democrats also believe in gender equality, that women should receive "equal pay" for "equal work."

Mogul Harvey Weinstein is rich, the kind of rich President Barack Obama refers to when he insists that "millionaires and billionaires" fail to pay their fair share in taxes. Weinstein, the producer of hit films like "Pulp Fiction," "Kill Bill" and "Rambo," clocks in with an estimated net worth of $150 million. He says he'd gladly pay more in taxes: "I'm happy to make an investment in America. I don't look at it as tax, evil! I say, OK, if I have to pay a little bit more, we'll get it back. ... But it's not like paying more, that you don't get it back. You get a better United States. ... I'm here to volunteer on the taxes."

Yet, Hollywood lobbies lawmakers to lower its own taxes. Pointing to a worrisome new study called "A Hollywood Exit," California lawmakers seek even larger tax credits and other incentives -- on top of the ones California already offers -- to halt so called "runaway productions." The Hollywood Reporter said, "The report lays out eight specific recommendations that it says can help stem the outflow of these jobs even in the face of 43 states and many foreign countries -- especially Canada -- offering tax incentives that often are greater and broader than the $100 million a year that California offers."

Thus, the increase in taxes that Weinstein is "happy" to pay is vastly exceeded by the increase in his bottom line, given the various tax breaks his industry lobbies for and receives.
On "gender equality," Obama in his last State of the Union speech, said, "Today, women make up about half our workforce. But they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it's an embarrassment. A woman deserves equal pay for equal work. She deserves to have a baby without sacrificing her job."

How does this apply to Hollywood?

Forbes compared the money paid to 2013's top 10 highest-paid male actors versus the top 10 highest-paid female performers. Not even close. The top 10 actresses made a total of $181 million. Their top 10 male counterparts made $465 million, which means the ladies made 39 percent of what the men raked in. "The top-earning actress, Angelina Jolie," wrote the Washington Examiner, "earned $33 million, roughly the same amount as the two lowest-ranked men."

Where are the pitchforks? Why aren't actresses filing a class action lawsuit? After all, Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which makes it easier for a plaintiff to claim wage discrimination. Where's the National Organization for Women?

If 77 cents on the dollar compared to men is considered unfair, exploitative and unacceptable, 39 percent is practically involuntary servitude! But we see no Hollywood Boulevard street demonstration. We see "no display of unity" in front of Hollywood's famous Chinese Theatre, with hundreds of ticked-off actresses, linked arm-in-arm, led by Susan Sarandon, Meryl Streep and Whoopi Goldberg singing, "We shall overcome." Nothing. No picketing. Not even a flyer or two.

But the silence can be explained.

Even actors clueless about economics 101 know that ticket sales determine an actor's value. Big-budget, testosterone-driven action films are a staple of the youth crowd that advertisers covet. They mostly star men. Cate Blanchett, in accepting her award for best actress, took a swipe at the industry's alleged sexism: "To those of us in the industry who are still foolishly clinging to the idea that female films with women at the center are 'niche' experiences -- they are not. Audiences want to see them and, in fact, they earn money. The world is round, people!" This is the round world where female actors pull in less revenue than men. These non-exploitative reasons account for the pay discrepancy, just as non-exploitative factors explain the notorious 77 percent "gap."

One more thing about Hollywood and the Democrats. The California governor is a Democrat. Democrats control both the state Senate and Assembly. No Republican holds a statewide office. Democrats have a "supermajority" in both state legislatures, outnumbering Republicans by about 3 to 1. They have given us a state with the highest state personal incomes taxes, the highest state sales tax and the highest state gasoline tax. Chief Executive magazine, citing high taxes and regulation, has given California the lowest ranking in its CEO opinion survey in business friendliness of all 50 states for nine years in a row.


But now the same Hollywood crowd that votes in the rich-don't-pay-their-fair-share party wants protection from the taxes that they want imposed on others. And the nominees for the biggest Hollywood leftwing hypocrites are ... Larry Elder
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