Is it good news or just bad news in disguise?

The good news.

The Dow was up 122 points or 1.2% and the S&P 500 was up 1.5% on Friday after the Federal Reserve reported consumer borrowing increased by 2.43% although credit card and other kinds of revolving credit declined by 2.3% following a 16 month trend of declines.  Auto loans were up 5.01% in January and made up the lion’s share of the increase in borrowing, up for a second month.

The Department of Labor reported unemployment held steady at 9.7% as the economy only lost 36,000 jobs in January, less than what analysts had been expecting.  This fact plus the increase in consumer borrowing and the decrease in overall revolving credit are leading analysts to believe the economy is stabilizing.

The not-so-good news

The rationale that consumer borrowing is going to save the day is unsustainable.  The fact unemployment is holding steady is encouraging, but I find it hard to get excited over the fact unemployment didn’t go up and we didn’t lose as many jobs as were expected.  9.7% is still way too high considering even if the economy generated 150,000 new jobs every month it still wouldn’t keep up with the increase in population growth.  The number of temporary workers increased for the fifth month in a row in February by 47,500, up 11% from this time last year which means the work is there but employers don’t have enough confidence to hire full-time employees.  The Labor Department reported Thursday productivity increased to an annual rate of 6.9% in the fourth quarter, despite the high number of job losses, but workers can’t be expected to keep up this pace forever.

Don’t buy into the rhetoric. Read the rest of this entry »

Do mass firings improve or hurt performance?

The American Federation of Teachers and the AFL-CIO are up in arms over the firing yesterday of all the teachers and administrators at Central Falls High School in Central Falls, Rhode Island – 93 in all.  The high school had consistently been ranked in the bottom 5% of all schools in Rhode Island, only 7% of the school’s 11^th grade students were proficient in math, and less than half the schools seniors graduate.

The Department of Education is cracking down on poor performing schools throughout the country and giving states four options:

1. School closure.
2. Takeover by a charter school or school management organization.
3. Follow a “transformation model” and lengthen the school day and make other changes.
4. “Turnaround” which requires firing the teaching staff and rehiring no more than 50% of those teachers the following year.

The teachers and the teachers’ union wouldn’t support option three unless they received pay increases which led the school board to decide on option 4.

Many people think this is a horrible way to improve students’ academic performance and are shocked at the school board’s decision.  But what if this was a business or a retail store?  Would everyone feel the same way? Read the rest of this entry »

Easy ways to improve your memory

Think of all the things you could do with a better memory – remember prospective client’s names you’ve only met once, rattle off facts about your products and services with ease to your customers, never forget your anniversary (again), etc.  With a better memory you could get better grades in college, advance your career, and greatly improve your income potential.

Most of us already use the more common memory tricks like mnemonics – Roy G. Biv to remember the major colors of the spectrum (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet), or Every Good Boy Does Fine for the line notes of the treble clef, and simple repetition, which is drilled into us at an early age.

I’ve put  together a list of some lesser known memory boosters and cheats for you, easy ways to help you:

- Recall almost any fact with ease,

- Remember faces and names,

- Associate facts with a date,

- And develop an uncanny ability to recall every word said.

So prepare to amaze your friends, family, and colleagues with your new found cognitive abilities: Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not much of a football fan, and when friends ask me who I’m rooting for I’ve been know to say “Is that the game with the pointy ball?”  But I’ve always looked forward to the Super Bowl’s commercials because in the past they’ve been some of the best TV viewing of the year.  Millions of dollars and thousands of manhours spent by the best and the brightest minds in the advertising industry to create 30 seconds of commercial perfection.

For the last few years though the commercials have been so bad I might actually have to start watching the game for entertainment.  There were so many awful commercials during Superbowl XLIV it was hard to narrow the list down to just five. I understand consumers are bombarded with thousands of media messages daily so it’s a necessary marketing evil to do outrageous and shocking things to burn a company’s brand into our psyches (e.g. Punxsatawney Polamalu), but these five are just so bad the only thing they’re burning is the companies’ advertising dollars.

A good advertising strategy will positively link a company’s brand with their marketing message (e.g., Go Daddy = domain names + women’s breasts).  However, I had to watch some of the commercials that made my list two or three times and I’m still not 100% sure what they’re trying to sell me (e.g. the US Census).  And the Number 1 Worst Commercial was so bad I couldn’t even bring myself to watch it once – I’m going to have to rely on some brave volunteer to watch it for me and explain it to me in short sentences with small words.

I was going to do a best of/worst of post but FinancialSamurai.com did a great job of highlighting the best Super Bowl ads so I’ll just take a stab at the worst of the bunch. However, be warned – I wouldn’t recommend watching all five bad ads in one sitting:

Read the rest of this entry »

Want to be happier?

Wouldn’t you like to be happier? That is, without the aid of prescription pharmaceuticals? Most people spend their lives chasing after things they think will make them happy, like money, careers, or relationships, only to discover they’re no happier than they were before.

You would think winning the lottery would make you the happiest person in the world, but studies show lottery winners go back to their previous levels of happiness within five years.  If you get an unexpected windfall the areas of your brain that register pleasure light up temporarily, but if you receive that same amount on a regular basis (like a paycheck) it doesn’t have the same effect.

The opposite is also true for people who suffer terrible losses.  Studies show that paraplegics have the same level of happiness after one year as do lottery winners.  Our brains adjust to our environment and our circumstances and return to a sort of preset happiness baseline.

So does this mean nothing will keep us happy? That we should give up chasing after those things we think will make us happy? Even though money doesn’t bring lasting happiness it does buy some really cool stuff, a good career can bring a sense of fulfillment and purpose, and married couples are reported to be happier and married men for some reason tend to live longer than single guys.  And if you follow these five tips from the experts on being happy you can have all these things and more happiness, too: Read the rest of this entry »

Are powerful people more likely to cheat?

Are people with questionable morals just naturally drawn to positions of power and authority, or does the power that goes with the position change people for the worse?

Researchers at Northwestern University in Illinois and Tilburg University in the Netherlands developed a series of experiments to answer this question.  Groups of student volunteers were asked to recall and write about times in their lives when they were in a position of high and low power, and the process of mentally reliving these events would “prime” the volunteers for the study.  Half the group would be in a mindset of high power and the other in one of low power, and each group was then given one of two tasks to perform.

Half of each group was sent to a private room, given a pair of ten-sided dice, and told to report to a lab assistant the number from 0-100 they rolled (the first dice rolled was the tens digit and the second was the ones digit).  The lab assistant would then give the subject a corresponding number of lottery tickets for a drawing to be held after the study was completed, so the higher the number they rolled the more tickets they would receive.  There was no one to witness the rolls of the dice and the participants were on the honor system to report the number to the lab assistant.

The results: Read the rest of this entry »

What's your definition of failure?

Before I give you my definition I want you to stop for a second and think about your personal definition of failure.

Is your definition of failure not accomplishing something you set out to do?  If this is the case, then every “successful” person you’ve ever heard of is a failure.  People typically don’t get things right the first time they attempt them, or the second, third, or fourth time for that matter.

Thomas Edison is said to have tried at least ten thousand different ways to perfect the incandescent light bulb.  When asked about his failures he simply replied Read the rest of this entry »

Know when to outsource and when to do it yourself

Companies and the government know it’s more cost effective to hire contractors to do certain kinds of work.  It just doesn’t pay to attempt to do everything in-house, especially highly technical work and routine administrative jobs.  Most of our IT staff and administrative help are contractors, and about half of my department’s positions are contracted out.  It’s a good working arrangement for us because if we need additional help we ask for more contractors and when there’s less work the contractors move on to other jobs.  Not always the best deal for them necessarily, but our contractors are compensated well and their kind of work is still in pretty high demand so ours always have someplace to go when they leave us.

So if it’s advantageous to outsource highly technical work and administrative jobs why do we insist on doing everything for ourselves at home? Read the rest of this entry »

Run your personal finances like a corporation

Wouldn’t it be nice if your life and personal finances were run as orderly and efficiently as a major corporation?  Follow these 5 steps and you’ll be well on your way to running your personal finances as smoothly as a well-oiled corporate machine.

1. Get approval for major purchases.

Even if you have a corporate card with no credit limit you’re eventually going to have to answer to the bean counters.  Adopt this attitude toward your personal credit card and ask your significant other to review your purchases and do the same for him or her.  No significant other?  Draft a close friend or family member to audit your credit card statement and in turn offer to do the same for them.  This way your purchases will be as transparent as any corporate financial report and you’ll probably be a lot less likely to make impulse buys.

2. Make decisions by committee.

Proverbs 15:22 says “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.”  Take this to heart the next time you have a major decision to make, whether it’s for a major purchase, an investment, refinancing, credit card offer, etc.  Read the rest of this entry »

How do you deal with a blowhard?

I was scanning through Aesop’s Fables for Children looking for stories I could tell my kids and rediscovered how the  “children’s” fables were just as appropriate for grown ups.

Aesop’s fables are credited to a slave and storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC, although its questionable Aesop ever existed and the stories may actually be far older.  Most of the characters are animals with human-like behavior and each short story has a moral.

Three of the stories in particular reminded me of difficult people I’ve had to deal with in the past, who I’ll affectionately refer to from hereon as the Blowhard, the Guy Who Never Gives an Inch, and the Jerk with the Hot Temper.

The Blowhard

The Blowhard is the North Wind in the fable The North Wind and the Sun, which gives an example of two different approaches to solving a problem. Read the rest of this entry »