As I sit here working late at night, with a couple of new posts looking like they will become books in themselves, I started wandering YouTube and found some recent interviews of Francis Fukuyama and Fareed Zakaria. I’ve read too much of Fukuyama’s output over the past seven years, finding The Great Disruption and Trust pretty compelling. But that has …
Why You Can’t Trust Unemployment Rates
In comparing this current collapse to 1929-1932, you hear economists talk about how the unemployment rates are so different. Back then, almost a quarter of the workforce was out of work. Today, the number is still below 7%. (I’m America, so these arguments are all US-based.) There’s a problem with this thinking, because the current unemployment statistics no longer adequately …
Reforming CEO Compensation
There’s a lot in the press these days about the irresponsibility of CEOs who lied, covered-up and generally made a lot of cash while destroying billions of dollars of value. For example, here’s something from the Vault’s article on “Are CEO’s Ready To Face Career Instability?“: As [reviled Lehman Brothers CEO] Richard Fuld’s Congressional testimony aptly underscores, if ever a …
They Told Me About the Collapse 12 Months Ago
When I returned last week to the small city in northwestern Indiana where I live, it struck me that most Americans do not share my feeling that the world fundamentally shifted. They see it as something happening out there. Partly it’s because a lot of my neighbors don’t have retirement funds invested — I live in a youngish, blue-collar section …
Incentive-Based Compensation Destroys Productivity
Wall Street Online (through Yahoo!) is reporting that the stock market has had a major affect on the main compensation method in many industries: incentives. Unless the market increases substantially, with the DJI running back up towards 12 000 or 13 000, the options that were granted for the last five years are not worth what they were optioned at, …
Networking for Jobs
The New York Times has a business article on networking in your job hunt. It’s a pretty decent article. I’m no networking maven but I regularly get things from folks in my network. There’s nothing stunning in the article’s advice, but it is worth looking at because you can forget this in your discouragement. Some of it’s best advice is …
Depression History Part 2: Wars and Despots Rising
We’ve already looked at the American stock market activity from 1928-1942, bookending the collapse and America’s entry into the war at Pearl Harbor in Dec. 1941. Today I’ll look at Europe and the rise of despots, which is currently happening again. I am speculating on what is likely to happen. That means that I am doing no more than making …
Crisis Week: Price the Placebo Appropriately
Reuters, the global english news service, reports on this months Ig Nobel Prize awards: the award for Medicine goes to a team “who showed that high-priced placebos work better than cheap fake medicine.” This has implications for pricing your services during the Crisis.
![Employees at Mid-Continent Refinery [ca. 1943 Tulsa, OK (LOC). By John Vachon]](https://i0.wp.com/www.manasclerk.com/wpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/2179123915_75b400bf47_o-men-group-Employees-at-Mid-Continent-Refinery-c-1943-Tulsa-OK-LOC-Vachon-John-e1377964113665.jpeg?fit=862%2C519&ssl=1)
Crisis Week: "all employees are vulnerable"
FastCompany.com has posted an article on how the current crisis might affect you career (seen on Yahoo! Finance). It’s a mostly useless article except for the Mitchell Feldman’s comment in the third paragraph: “the real answer is that all employees are vulnerable right now.” Which is about like saying that they have no idea.
Crisis Week
I have sat on my remarks about the current financial crisis for several weeks now. I’m taking this week to address it as it pertains to your career. I’m not an expert in some of the topics I will discuss. You need to correct me where I have facts wrong. Also, I will be speculating on what is likely to …