Pants suits, that is. TVNewser over at MediaBistro caught anchor Ainsley Earhardt proudly undoing the journalistic legacy of Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer et al:
The credit crunch finally sorta hits Silicon Valley
Here’s a fascinating little development. From Michael Arrington at TechCrunch:
Up to 20% of venture backed startups may have been convinced by their financial advisors to put much of their spare cash into something called Auction Rate Securities, on the promise of money market-like liquidity with better returns. Now, that money is
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When a sex scandal torpedoes a career
Like everyone else in the New York region today, I’m thinking a lot about Gov. Eliot Spitzer.
Unless you live in the Biodome (does that even exist anymore?), you know that the crusading governor of New York admitted yesterday to involvement in a prostitution scandal. I first heard the news yesterday afternoon when I overheard an editor …
Inflation does what Hank Paulson and Chuck Schumer could not
From the front page of today’s WSJ:
A rising tide of inflation pressure around the globe is putting more stress on the beleaguered U.S. dollar, as central banks from China to Chile fight rising prices by letting their currencies strengthen.
China’s yuan has already appreciated nearly 3% against the dollar this year, putting it on pace
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Somewhere, Jack Grubman is smiling
Actually, that somewhere is probably in or around Grubman’s Upper East Side town house, a few blocks away from the apartment where Eliot Spitzer spent the morning explaining to his advisers exactly what kind of trouble he’s in. But wow, what a story! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a politician travel from Shining Ethical Beacon to pile o’ …
There’s still a pay gap, folks
You’ve come a long way, baby. But you’ve got 16% left to go.
That’s the pay gap between working men and women worldwide, according to a new global report from the International Trade Union Confederation. It’s worst in Asia. Here, from the Guardian:
The ITUC study showed women got paid 33.4 percent less then men in Japan, 31.5 percent
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Ben Bernanke’s 2 a.m. feeling of terror
Reader (and tennis buddy of my Dad) Jim Haynes writes:
I think the Fed has effectively abandoned its traditional aversion to inflation, and might even welcome a modest increase in its rate. This is why:
1. Although Alan Greenspan in his autobiography would have us believe that he didn’t make any important mistakes while Chairman of the
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Need to ace that job interview? Pop a pill
Somehow, in my seemingly endless naivete, I long assumed that performance-enhancing drugs were confined to the rarified worlds of, I don’t know, performance. Professional baseball; Olympic gymnastics; Project Runway designers just before Bryant Park. (I’m kidding; I have no way of knowing if designers pop pills. But if they don’t, …
CapitalistCast: Saving old industrial cities from the scourge of over-cross-collateralization
In the past, when I’ve see an old industrial building standing unused in some place like Richmond, Calif., or Bridgeport, Conn., I always figured it was just basic economic forces keeping it empty. Nobody could find a valuable enough use for the property to justify the cost of fixing it up or tearing it down and replacing it. Plus the …
American workers find new, recession-oriented ways to waste time
I’m feeling a little better today. Not well enough to do much actual work, but well enough to look through my e-mail inbox and find stuff like this:
Leadership IQ conducts an annual survey of workplace slacking, and 6,447 workers completed both the February 2007 and February 2008 surveys. In February 2007 these workers reported wasting
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Power to the Halfricans (and other halves)
We called ourselves halves.
Where I grew up, we were the majority—we children of mixed race, usually Asian and something else. My international community in Kobe, Japan, was lousy with us. So was our frequent vacation spot, Hawaii, where I was recently told that two out of three babies born of late are of mixed heritage.
It was only …
Why do writers make stuff up?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot this week as the saga of Margaret Seltzer—a.k.a. Margaret P. Jones—unfolds. You probably have, too. As Motoko Rich reported in The New York Times:
In “Love and Consequences,” a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native
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