Five years ago this month, before Lehman Brothers imploded and the global economy lurched to a halt, Fannie Mae issued a report that encapsulated the financial system’s biggest problem. The mortgage-finance company, which was wobbling on account of rising defaults, tried to reassure investors that it had $47 billion in capital, which was considerably more than the $30 million required by law. At the time, the report’s authors seemed to fear that some investors might think Fannie was too cautious. In any event, a month later, that protection seemed like a joke. Fannie may have conformed to the rules, but the rules didn’t conform to reality. (The New York Times Magazine)
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Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth presented her uncle, company chief executive Donald E. Graham, with a once-unthinkable choice at a lunch meeting at downtown Washington’s Bombay Club late last year. The paper was facing the like­lihood of a seventh straight year of declines in revenue, with one preliminary budget estimate showing the possibility of $40 million in losses for 2013. And despite years of heavy investment in new digital offerings, there was little sign that robust profits were about to return, she reported. (The Washington Post)
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The parking lot at Fair Isaac Corp. in San Rafael, Calif., is empty when Michelle Davis pulls in at 6 a.m. For the next 8-½ hours, the 36-year-old analytics director will shuttle through nearly back-to-back meetings at FICO, a company best known for calculating consumer credit scores. At 2:30 p.m., the mother of three will leave work to pick up her children from summer camp. Technically, she's off the clock, but she'll keep an eye on her BlackBerry long into the night. (The Wall Street Journal)
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Some skills may be awesome but not in demand: While a sonnet might take your breath away, iambic pentameter doesn't have a high market demand. But some skills by any industry are wanted just as sweetly--and as founders of Pandora, Quora, and White Rabbit suggest, we can start developing them today. Here's where to start. (Fast Company)
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Now that LinkedIn has become the standard place to present your professional history and credentials – not to mention the fastest way to check somebody else's – the humble résumé has lost its once-hallowed position as the canonical version of your professional identity. Your LinkedIn profile should be the most-viewed and most current version of your professional life. That has many people asking: Do I even need an old-fashioned résumé anymore? The answer is a highly qualified "yes". (Harvard Business Review)
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Smart companies have figured out that happy workplaces mean bigger bottom lines and winning the talent battle. Which is only good news for you. (Fast Company)
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We live in a time of chronic dissatisfaction in the workplace. Gallup's 2013 State of the American Workplace study found that as many as 70% of working Americans were unfulfilled with their jobs, 18% to such an extent that they are actively undermining their co-workers. This is a marked increase in workplace dissatisfaction from 2010, when Conference Board found that 55% of Americans were dissatisfied with their jobs. (Harvard Business Review)
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It’s a midlevel sales job, a big step down from the senior position she held before she had children and quit work. When she was first hired, in May 2011, her salary was just a fifth of what she earned at her peak. But, she said, she wasn’t complaining. All around her, she saw women her age scrambling to find work, some divorcing and losing their homes. She liked to help them, editing their résumés, polishing cover letters, pumping up tearful friends who forgot what they were worth after years without a paycheck. (The New York Times)
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Bank of England governor Mark Carney has said the Bank will not consider raising interest rates until the jobless rate has fallen to 7% or below. Mr Carney said he expected this would require the creation of about 750,000 jobs and could take three years. The UK unemployment rate currently stands at 7.8%. (BBC News)
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Last week, fast-food workers around the United States yet again walked off the job to protest their low pay and demand a wage hike to $15 an hour, about double what many of them earn today. In doing so, they added another symbolic chapter to an eight-month-old campaign of one-day strikes that, so far, has yielded lots of news coverage, but not much in terms of tangible results. (The Atlantic)
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As companies expand globally, it's even more crucial to understand the differences between professionals in different markets. New research by Thomson Reuters demonstrates that emerging market professionals are increasingly driven by entrepreneurial values and optimism, leaving their Western counterparts in the dust when it comes to putting innovation and rewarding work before salary. (Harvard Business Review)
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The menu of repayment options available for struggling borrowers is a key benefit of taking out federal instead of private student loans, but new data show that many students aren’t taking advantage of the government’s programs. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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Not yet registered? Pre-registration discounts are available through August 15, so register today and begin planning for an unforgettable networking, career building and professional development experience in Houston. View our full Pre-Conference Planning Guide for help planning your journey to Conference.
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Management has traditionally been a worker's best way to get ahead and increase earnings, but at startups, where speed and autonomy are prized above all else, managers are often dismissed as archaic, or worse, dead weight. (The Wall Street Journal)
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Motorola Mobility, the faded cellphone pioneer purchased by Google last year, is about to release a flagship phone, the Moto X, that aims to make some functions easier and quicker. It does so by making the phone into a sort of sentinel, always listening for voice input, periodically displaying the time and notifications, and always waiting to turn on the camera when you twist your wrist – even while it is locked and the screen is off. And it achieves this without draining the battery. (The Wall Street Journal)
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Just five minutes and a genius business idea can help you to win big. Gone are the days of conventional business plan competitions. For this activity, three people will have five minutes each to sell their business idea to a mixed panel of venture capitalists, academic instructors and successful entrepreneurs – using only a whiteboard and marker. The winner will receive $10,000. The time is now to bring your best business idea to the table.
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Warby Parker sells a monocle. Which just about no one buys. But don't underestimate the value of a great brand statement. (Inc.)
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Facing rising penalties under the health-care law for high readmission rates, some hospitals are turning to tech entrepreneurs like Chris Corio of San Francisco for help. Mr. Corio's four-year-old startup sells technology that assists patients in completing the recovery process after getting discharged. Health-care experts say one of the leading causes for readmissions is failure by patients to follow doctor's orders once they leave a hospital. (The Wall Street Journal)
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Americans have made progress putting their finances in order and are ready to borrow again – giving the world’s largest economy another driver of spending and growth. Household net worth soared to a record high in the first quarter, Federal Reserve data show, and the financial-obligations ratio relating consumer debt to income matched the lowest in 33 years. (Bloomberg)
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Nearly four out of five U.S. students – including those in high school, community college, online college, or traditional college or university – work while in school, a survey by Citigroup and Seventeen magazine found, with the average working student putting in 19 hours a week during the school year. (MarketWatch)
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It costs $13,660 for an American to have a hip replacement in Belgium; in the U.S., it's closer to $100,000. Americans pay more for health care than people in many other developed countries, and Elisabeth Rosenthal is trying to find out why. The New York Times correspondent is spending a year investigating the high cost of health care. (NPR)
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"Shopping is cheaper than a psychiatrist." So said Tammy Faye Bakker, the late gospel singer whose extravagant mane suggested a lifetime spent exorcising her own psychological demons at the hair salon. But no laughing, Tammy was onto something. A well-timed trip to the mall is a long-approved variety of psychic medicine. No matter how preposterously officious the term "retail therapy" might sound to you, research has consistently found that shopping our way out of an emotional hole really does work. Sometimes. (The Atlantic)
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If you need to pass the PMP® or CAPM® exam and want to get the best project management learning experience in just 3 days, then CertifiNOW is the right choice for you. This project management learning program provides the best learning experience in a condensed amount of time, while also satisfying most, if not all, of your professional certification, education, and training needs. The CertifiNOW certification course reduces exam preparation time from an average of nine to twelve months, down to 3 days.
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The big news in newspapers – that Jeffrey P. Bezos is buying The Washington Post – was not even 24 hours old when shock and wisecracks about the unexpected $250 million deal began to give way to acceptance and even envy. What, many are asking, does Mr. Bezos, the billionaire founder and chief executive of Amazon.com, see in a 135-year-old newspaper that others do not? (The New York Times)
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For Time Warner Cable customers in major cities, the battle for the future of television is playing out before their eyes. The cable company blocked CBS-owned channels as the two sides fight over fees: Time Warner says CBS wants too much money for its programming, and it's trying to keep customers' bills down, while CBS says Time Warner pays more to carry far less popular channels, and it wants its fair price. (ESPN)
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It's going to be another ugly fall in Washington. The federal government runs out of money on Oct. 1, unless spending authority is granted to agencies for the new fiscal year. If Congress can't pass its spending bills by then, most of the government will shut down. (NPR)
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In every office, there are untold numbers of great ideas that never get heard, let alone put into action. Use these techniques to uncover your company's next game-changing idea. (Fast Company)
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Is the role of the manager to make decisions, or to make sure that decisions get made? The answer, of course, is both ‐ but many managers focus so much on the first role that they neglect the second. The reality, however, is that decision-making often is not a solo activity, but rather an orchestrated process by which the manager engages other people in reaching a conclusion. Doing this effectively not only improves the quality of the decision, but also ensures that everyone is more committed to its implementation. (Harvard Business Review)
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For customers, there is little not to like about Seamless. You pull up a website or an app, find a restaurant nearby, and pick out a few dishes to have delivered. Your credit card gets charged and you don’t have to speak a single word into the phone. (Bloomberg/Businessweek)
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The family of the late Henrietta Lacks finally got the chance to weigh in on how scientists use cells taken from her – without consent – more than 60 years ago. The National Institutes of Health and the Lacks family have agreed to give scientists access to the genetic sequence of the cells, with some restrictions to safeguard her relatives' privacy. NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins the agreement covering these so-called Wednesday, and how it came to be in the journal Nature. (NPR)
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