Wall Street is examining whether it will benefit from a little-known section of a broad new law that President Obama is expected to sign on Thursday. Provisions tucked into the so-called JOBS Act, or the Jumpstart Our Business Startups, will roll back some major securities regulations and parts of a landmark legal settlement struck almost a decade ago. (The New York Times)
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Where and when do you do your best thinking? For me, it's in the pool. As I power up and down the lanes, I rethink what I’ve learned. I now have the time and space to solve whatever problems have arisen. It’s an important meeting with myself, and I keep it religiously. Because the day I lose it, I’ve lost myself. (Fast Company)
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Welcome to the Permanent Job Search. From now on, all of us will be "looking" for a job even when we're not actually looking for a job. Employers are researching each of us digitally 24/7/365. Our resumes are perpetually available online in various forms, some of which we control and some of which we don't. Those of us who exert the necessary effort to maximize our digital reputations will be rewarded: opportunities will find us. Those of us who don't will miss out. (Harvard Business Review)
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Everyone knows why oil prices, at around $125 for a barrel of Brent crude, are so high. The long-term trends are meager supply growth and soaring demand from China and other emerging economies. And in the short term, the market is tight, supplies have been disrupted and Iran is making everyone nervous. (The Economist)
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Who's really effective at the office? To get a handle on that question, a handful of bosses are taking decision-making power out of the executive suite and asking employees to help identify – and reward – talent by experimenting with internal markets in which workers "invest" in co-workers' performance and ideas. (Wall Street Journal)
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How do you think most workers would respond if you asked them, "Do you feel more productive now than you did several years ago?" I doubt that the answer would be a resounding yes. In fact, even as workplace technology and processes steadily improve, many professionals feel less productive than ever. (The New York Times)
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Twenty-two years ago, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) used its clout to protest racial discrimination. The company joined other corporate sponsors in pulling television advertising from the PGA Championship which was being played at a whites-only Alabama golf club. (Bloomberg)
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The protracted European debt crisis and austerity measures have made career prospects for many of the continent's youth bleaker than ever. In Spain and Greece, nearly half of all those under age 25 are unemployed. But that's not the case in Germany. In stark contrast, Germany's youth employment is the highest in Europe, with only a 7.8 percent jobless rate. (NPR)
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A group of former World Bank officials has written a letter backing Nigeria's Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, to be its next president. Traditionally the post is given to the candidate put forward by the US, which this time is Dr Jim Yong Kim. (BBC)
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With its decision to take up racial preferences in admissions at public colleges, the Supreme Court has touched off a national guessing game about how far it might move against affirmative action and how profoundly colleges might change as a result. (The New York Times)
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Financial aid experts have long been telling graduate business students who have been working and might have forgotten their undergraduate days to learn to live like students again. Few, if any, have ever explained what that really means.(Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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Make plans now to join us in Indianapolis this September for a week of top notch networking, education and career development at the 34th Annual Conference. You can't afford to miss this amazing event. Registration is coming in May, so start your planning today!
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Last week BlackBerry makers Research In Motion imploded. In a decisive move the old guard was swept from senior management positions. Including, crucially, the oldest guard of all: cofounder Jim Balsillie. This week the new RIM's revealed it's tweaking its BlackBerry Enterprise Servers – the core engines that power much of the BlackBerry's fast mail handling, and its secure messaging – to support iOS. That's a concession it's lost the lion's share of the smartphone market to Apple. It's also a sign that a lot of mistakes have happened, and RIM is pushing the reset button. (Fast Company)
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If you haven’t yet laid eyes on the new iPad’s screen, you must. "Sharp" doesn’t begin to describe Apple’s upgrade in display quality. But here’s the kicker: Samsung, a company firmly aligned with Android and one of Apple’s largest competitors in the mobile space, is manufacturing the new iPad’s flagship feature. So, naturally, questions arise: Why are we seeing Retina displays in iPads but not in Samsung’s own Galaxy-branded tablets? Why would Samsung allow itself to be trumped by a mere customer? (Wired)
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The law that President Obama is set to sign this week is expected to unleash a wave of crowdfunding. That promises to give some startups access to capital they wouldn’t have had otherwise, but it could set up unwary entrepreneurs for a headache. (Entrepreneur)
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Patients cut back on prescription drugs and doctor visits last year, a sign that many Americans are still struggling to pay for health care despite the economic recovery, according to a study released Wednesday by a health industry research group. (The New York Times)
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Unable to sell his parents’ ocean-front timeshare for the past year, David Suder became so fed up he offered to give it away. They paid $8,000 for the Orange County, Calif. unit a decade ago, but since there are no willing buyers, and his 81-year-old mother, now a widow, can no longer afford the monthly maintenance fees, Suder says he doesn’t have a choice. (Smart Money)
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When lawmakers added a subsection to the tax code called the 401(k) more than three decades ago, they could not have imagined that this string of three numbers and a letter would become a fixture in the financial lexicon. Nor could they imagine the stress it would unleash. (Washington Post)
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Spring has sprung early around my neck of the woods, and with it the green shoots that portend flourishing growth. Spring also came early to the markets; most major stock market averages enjoyed one of their best first quarters ever — but rather than be viewed as the root of better days to come, many so-called experts are forecasting a turn for the worse. (MarketWatch)
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Welcome to the world of expense-account tightwads. Citing everything from habit to principle to commitment to their employer's bottom line, these workers go out of their way to keep expenses low, staying in bargain hotels, swearing off room service and scouring the Web for cheap flights.(Wall Street Journal)
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Private-equity executives, who spent millions of dollars successfully fighting efforts to raise taxes on their investment profits, may not escape a new 3.8 percent levy in President Barack Obama’s health-care law. (Bloomberg)
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Standing in line at security at San Francisco International Airport not long ago, family in tow, I dutifully pulled the laptop out of my bag and placed it in a separate bin for its solo trip through the X-ray machine. I also had an iPad in my backpack, so I caught the eye of a security agent. "Excuse me, does the iPad come out too?" (The New York Times)
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It happens. We’re all human. Everyone makes mistakes. It’s the way they’re handled that can mean success or failure to a business. Our team is no different. We work extra hard to fix problems quickly and earn back the trust of our employees or customers. (Inc.)
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Too many executives confuse what an innovation is with what an innovation would do for them if they had one. The solution? Think of innovation as an if-then argument. (MIT/Sloan Management Review)
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Most of us would like to change something about ourselves or our lives. We eat too much. We smoke. We don't exercise. We're stuck in the wrong job. We spend too much and save too little. We look for love in the wrong places. (Wall Street Journal)
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As the economy continues to take a toll on consumers' finances, a growing number of people are discovering that becoming roommates with mom and dad, or a 20- or 30-something son or daughter, helps to ease some of the financial pain in tough times. (CNN/Money)
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