Student housing called overcrowded, unsafe - Canada.com
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Filed under: Management, Insiders, Housing Executive compensation gone wild is a major pet peeve of mine. And if seven-figure pay packages plus restricted stock and options and country club memberships aren’t bad enough, some executives are now sticking their companies with the losses on homes they bought. Here’s how it works: A company wants to hire a new CEO but she’ll have to relocate to take the job. So the company agrees to make up any loss on the sale of the house. In this real estate market, that’s becoming more of an issue. Qwest (NYSE: Q) lost $1.8 million on Edward Mueller’s old home. Part of me doesn’t think this is such a massive deal. If that’s what it takes to recruit the executive, and the board is aware of the potential liability, it isn’t really any different from a higher salary. Current SEC rules that require companies to provide a summary compensation table showing the total value of the top officers’ pay packages including all perks make this less of an issue. Of course, some pay critics are using this as an opportunity to jump on the greed of executives and the supine nature of corporate directors. But the focus should remain on corporate governance and the fact that executive pay is too often absolutely unrelated to performance. Issues like relocation benefits make for good stories, but they’re really not the issue.
Filed under: Management, Insiders, Housing Executive compensation gone wild is a major pet peeve of mine. And if seven-figure pay packages plus restricted stock and options and country club memberships aren’t bad enough, some executives are now sticking their companies with the losses on homes they bought. Here’s how it works: A company wants to hire a new CEO but she’ll have to relocate to take the job. So the company agrees to make up any loss on the sale of the home. In this real estate market, that’s becoming more of an issue. Qwest (NYSE: Q) lost $1.8 million on Edward Mueller’s old house. Part of me doesn’t think this is such a big deal. If that’s what it takes to recruit the executive, and the board is aware of the potential liability, it isn’t really any different from a higher salary. Recent SEC rules that require companies to provide a summary compensation table showing the total value of the top officers’ pay packages including all perks make this less of an issue. Of course, some pay critics are using this as an chance to jump on the greed of executives and the supine nature of corporate directors. But the focus should remain on corporate governance and the fact that executive pay is too often completely unrelated to performance. Issues like relocation benefits make for good stories, but they’re really not the issue. Filed under: Consumer experience, Economic data, Politics, Housing, Recession The New York Times reports that more people are turning in criminals to pay their bills. Calls to tip lines are up as much as 44% since the first quarter of 2007. For example, calls are up 30% to the Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers hot line, up 44% to the San Antonio hot line, and up 25% or more to hotlines in Detroit, Omaha, and Beaufort County, N.C. Why? Tipsters tell operators they need the money for rent, light bills or baby formula. It sounds like 1984 to me. What’s the pay for a tip? It depends — programs in most places pay $50 to $1,000 for tips that bring results. And in some counties there’s a “gun bounty” if a weapon is recovered. In Sussex County, N.J., the average payment for a tip that results in an arrest is $400. With the median monthly income after tax of $838, this kind of money can make a large difference — especially with gasoline prices up to $4 a gallon. If you want to know where call volume is likely to increase the most, look to regions of the country with the highest foreclosure rates. That’s where desperate tippers are eager for fast payment. For example, Lee County, Florida, offers quick payments — within two weeks of the tip — and it had the highest rate for home foreclosures in the U.S. in February and March. Its once-plentiful construction jobs have evaporated and people are calling in tips to make up for the lost income. In Lee County, a man reporting drug activity got $450 for the tip — his second call in a week. The Times quotes Trish Routte, the Crime Stoppers coordinator there who recognized the caller’s voice: “He told me he really didn’t want to call but he just had a new grandbaby and he needed the money. Cash crunches are good for her business. As she put it: “We’re kind of banking on that, really. If it helps put dinner on the table for somebody, that’s wonderful.” To me it sounds like something out of George Orwell’s 1984. That was the book about a totalitarian state in which neighbors spied on neighbors and moms were forced to turn in their sons or daughters. And that’s quite an economic legacy to leave for the next administration. Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. Astronomers led by Simon Driver of Scotland’s University of St. Andrews have discovered that interstellar dust shades us from as much as 50% of the light emitted by stars and galaxies. The scientists compared the number of galaxies we could see “edge-on” against the number which were “facing us,” reasoning that dust would obscure more of the former, since we already receive less light from them. SPACE.com notes, “In fact, the researchers counted about 70 percent fewer edge-on galaxies than face-on galaxies.” A NYTimes report provides some additional details: “Interstellar dust absorbs the visible light emitted by stars and then re-radiates it as infrared, or heat, radiation. But when astronomers measured this heat glow from distant galaxies, the dust appeared to be putting out more energy than the stars. ‘You can’t get more energy out than you put in, so we knew something was very wrong,’ stated Dr. Driver. The results also mean that there’s about 20 percent more mass in stars than previously thought.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. An editor for the Telegraph, Roger Highfield, recently volunteered to allow a UK researcher to shut off the speech center of his brain with a high-powered magnetic pulse. Regular speech is controlled by a section of the brain called Broca’s area. Once the precise location is determined in the subject, a magnetic pulse can temporarily disrupt speech without impairing other cognitive functions. The link contains a video in which you can watch Highfield stutter and twitch while attempting to recite a nursery rhyme. A later test shows that he’s able to sing the rhyme without difficulty, since singing is controlled in a different part of the brain (as you might remember from Scott Adams’ speech disorder). Researchers believe that the ability to stimulate or quell activity in specific areas of the brain might help in treating conditions like epilepsy and migraine headaches. Read more of this story at Slashdot. |
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