Alligator Birthday Pool Parties: Kids' Birthday Party Ideas Reach New Depths in Florida - YouTube

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With spiking tuition costs, insurmountable loan balances, and the unemployment rate for recent college graduates hovering around 53%, it’s clear that a college education hasn’t gotten the best rap lately. Despite the ongoing financial woes across the globe, though, many think that college is still worth the investment.

A new study shows that we’ve continued to flock to institutions of higher learning, enrolling at record rates over the past few years.

Not surprisingly, the percentage of adults with degrees soared highest in developed nations, reaching 30% in 2010. But which of these nations can boast the status of most educated?

Based on a study conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 24/7 Wall St. compiled a list of the 10 countries with the highest proportion of college-educated adult residents. but topping the charts is:

Canada — the only nation in the world where more than half its residents can proudly hang college degrees up on their walls.

In 2010, 51% of the population had completed a tertiary education, which takes into account both undergraduate and graduate degrees.

Canada commanded the top spot in the last study in 2000, but even still has shown serious improvement. A decade ago, only 40% of the nation’s population had a college degree.

Snagging the number two most-educated spot was Israel, which trailed Canada by 5%. Japan, the U.S., New Zealand and South Korea all ranked with more than 40% of citizens having a higher-education degree.

The top 10 most-educated countries are:

1. Canada

2. Israel

3. Japan

4. United States

5. New Zealand

6. South Korea

7. United Kingdom

8. Finland

9. Australia

10. Ireland

Read the original article here at 24/7 Wall St., for a detailed breakdown of each nation and its education status.

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/09/27/and-the-worlds-most-educated-country-is/#ixzz27tyRxBIw

Source:

And the World’s Most Educated Country Is… | NewsFeed | TIME.com

Link: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/09/27/and-the-worlds-most-educated-country-is/?xid=newsletter-newsfeed






Alligator Birthday Pool Parties: Kids' Birthday Party Ideas Reach New Depths in Florida - YouTube

Forbes Thought Of The Day

“ Business demands faith, compels earnestness, requires courage, is honestly selfish, is penalized for mistakes, and is the essence of life. ”
— William Feather

Think about how to Grow Rich

My formula for success is rise early, work late, and strike oil.
- Paul Getty

The Lonely Redemption of Sandy Lewis, Wall Street Provocateur - NYTimes.com

This is a fascinating story about a guy who grew up on Wall Street....

   Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

 ANGRY Sandy Lewis, an ex-broker who once manipulated a stock price to make a point, at his Essex, N.Y., farm. “There’s no rational structure” on Wall Street, he says.

September 15, 2012

A Lonely Redemption 

By MICHAEL POWELL and DANNY HAKIM


ESSEX, N.Y. — Striding barefoot through the fields of his farm in the Adirondacks, S. B. Lewis, known as Sandy, is talking without pause, gesturing this way and that in a soft summer rain.

That Mr. Lewis is in a rage is not unusual. A few days earlier, he had watched as the computerized stock trading of Knight Capital ran amok.

“If Knight blows, six firms follow, and the whole corrupt thing goes up,” he said. “Predator banks and hedge funds run the market for their pleasure — there’s no rational structure, nothing!”

He is just warming up. News reports have revealed a world he knows intimately. Goldman Sachs pays vast fines to avoid prosecution for mortgage securities fraud. Barclays manipulates interest rates. The Senate exposes HSBC as a racketeering enterprise, laundering money for drug cartels. Banks are laden with bad assets.

And Wall Street, Washington, the press corps, everyone sits and stares like so many dumb cows.

“The complicity on Wall Street is sickness!” Mr. Lewis says. He fixes you with his laser stare. “If you think the big firms are being honest” — his tone slides streetwise — “well, sweetheart, go think something else!”

The temptation is to dismiss Mr. Lewis, 73, as a crank, except he once ruled as an eccentric genius of arbitrage, with a preternatural feel for the tectonic movements of the markets. He has railed for decades about venalities now on daily display. Rude truth is his currency.

He knows Wall Street’s heights. He helped hire Michael R. Bloomberg, and he invested the money of two former Securities and Exchange Commission chairmen, making a fortune in the 1980s. And he knows its depths, since he pleaded guilty to stock manipulation in 1989, and was barred from the Street.

President Bill Clinton pardoned him, and a federal court judge later said Mr. Lewis acted out of pure reforming impulse.

But he remains in self-imposed exile.

Mr. Lewis wants to flip over Wall Street’s paving stones and search for worms. 

He relies on his singular strength: he discerns patterns where most see random data. He forecast the financial meltdown of 2008 that vaporized Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers. In 2006, he warned a Bear Stearns executive: “Bear is toast. Get out now!”

Lehman Brothers, he notes, certified it was in good health in June 2008 and issued stock, attracting investment, including from the New Jersey Teachers’ Pension and Annuity Fund. Secretly, Lehman was on an intravenous drip, poisoned by bad debt.

“My respect for their brains is too great to think Lehman’s top guys didn’t know they were conveying the cynical impression of health,” Mr. Lewis said.

He is no less suspicious of Goldman Sachs, which has alumni sprinkled across the upper reaches of government. 

In a tough spot, Goldman obtained extraordinary permission to make an overnight metamorphosis from investment bank to traditional bank holding company.

“Can I prove this was a wired deal? Absolutely not,” Mr. Lewis said. “Am I certain of it? Only 100 percent.”

As for the whirling, three-million-shares-per-second casino of Wall Street? He sees it as rigged. “I would not risk stocks under any circumstances,” he said, “because we don’t know when this thing is going to blow.”

Nothing about Mr. Lewis is easy. He delights in sending scabrous, insulting, free-associative mass e-mails to journalists, financiers and members of Congress. Show annoyance, and he doubles down. “You know what I do with tension?” he said. “I ratchet it up!”

Not surprisingly, some dismiss him as a nut. As striking are those who pay careful heed.

“Sandy’s right; government created a banking oligopoly with no accountability,” said Peter Solomon, a friend of Mr. Lewis’s who runs an investment banking firm.

Arthur Aeder, a retired accounting executive, was twice fired by Mr. Lewis. “Not many antagonize Goldman just for the hell of it,” Mr. Aeder said. “Most people think, ‘I have a family to feed.’ ”

Mr. Lewis is no less harsh on himself. After a visit, he handed us laptops containing every furious e-mail he had sent and received over 10 years.

“The Wall Street ethic broke decades ago,” he said by way of goodbye. “The stink is terrible.”

MR. LEWIS was born to Wall Street royalty — his father, Cy, was managing partner at Bear Stearns from 1949 to 1978. His parents were characters out of a Fitzgerald novel: his father was Jewish, debonair and domineering; he desired power, wealth and a beautiful woman — wife or mistress, that mattered little. His mother, Diana Bonnor, a member of the Protestant establishment, was beautiful, brilliant and no less formidable. She cared about social justice and status and was profoundly uninterested in mothering.

“I never remember her at breakfast,” recalled Roger Lewis, Mr. Lewis’s younger brother. “High tea? Oh, yes. Cocktails? Yes! But breakfast? Never.”

Cy doted on Sandy while Diana screamed at the boy, striking him with a hair brush when he refused to read, he said. A willful child, the boy stopped speaking for days and sometimes retreated onto a window ledge, sitting high above Park Avenue.

Another brother, John, renounced wealth, bought clothes in thrift shops and became a well-known legal-aid lawyer. Roger got off to a fine start on Wall Street until the Grateful Dead moved into his town house before Woodstock. He ingested gobs of LSD, was arrested on charges of selling drugs and served time. “I broke all the bonds of polite behavior,” Roger said. “Prison was pretty fascinating.”

When Sandy Lewis was 10, his parents shipped him off to Chicago and Bruno Bettelheim’s Orthogenic School, an institution for emotionally disturbed children. The first day, he held his breath until he nearly passed out. But he credits the school with saving his life; Bettelheim became a second father.

“He had Bruno’s traits: he was arrogant, controlling, all powerful — and generous,” recalled George Kaiser, a former teacher at the school.

Mr. Lewis saw in Wall Street a three-dimensional chess game played at great velocity. “Brain not brawn, and the smartest wins, yes!” he said.

He came to conceive of the Street as a drainage system, every pipe connected to another. Inside information sluiced from brokerages to white-shoe law firms to investment houses.

He glimpsed this world when he returned to New York in 1964. He said he sat in the front of his father’s Cadillac limousine, listening as Cy and friends talked angrily about a partner who had impersonated a reporter for The New York Times and got a half-hour drop on a Supreme Court decision. The firm profited by trading ahead of the news.

Mr. Lewis said he confronted his father that night. Dad, you must fire that man. Cy shook his head: He is too valuable, Son.

“That,” Mr. Lewis said recently, “was when I realized that the trouble on Wall Street was systemic.”

He refused to sit at the Four Seasons trolling for inside tips and paying for call girls for clients.

He was fired by all the best firms: Salomon Brothers, White Weld, Dean Witter and Merrill Lynch. At Merrill, the chief executive officer at the time, Donald Regan, pursued a system to buy and sell stocks without using the exchange floor. Mr. Lewis came to see this creation as unfair to the public.

So Mr. Lewis, in speeches and work with the S.E.C., fought to make all sales transparent on the floor of the exchange. “In one of my periodic periods of unemployment, I walked down the street thinking, ‘O.K., now I’m going to sabotage Don Regan,’ ” he said. “I have six kids and I’m going to be eating worms.”

He worked briefly for Ivan F. Boesky, until he realized the arbitrage specialist was trolling for inside information. Mr. Lewis quit and Mr. Boesky was later imprisoned.

To find a place that would not fire him, in 1980 Mr. Lewis established S. B. Lewis and Company. The company’s returns were meteoric — over 50 percent annual returns after expenses. Former employees recall a brilliant arbitrageur who could, without warning, go to “Sandy World,” a mental planetoid with a population of one.

Mr. Lewis brokered the merger between Sandy Weill’s Shearson and James Robinson’s American Express.

“I told Robinson: ‘Weill’s got the brains; you’ve got great class. It’s perfect,’ ” Mr. Lewis recalled.

He had found success, a lovely wife and five boys and a girl, with a home in Short Hills, N.J. Except his volcanic pit never stopped rumbling.

IN November 1988, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the United States attorney, indicted Mr. Lewis on 22 charges, accusing him of manipulating the stock of a large insurer. Mr. Giuliani was a Savonarola in the canyons of mammon, and Mr. Lewis would fall beneath his sword.

Rivals shared laughs at Sandy the Moralist laid low. The trouble, however, took root not in venality but in his mania to police his industry. He had watched as insiders reaped profits by driving down prices before shares went public.

He laid a trap. He asked another securities firm to buy stock in the insurer to shore up the price. I’ll cover your losses and describe the payments as “investment banking services,” he told them.

Mr. Lewis hoped to deliver a delicious kick to the teeth of the insiders. He made not a dime; his firm was not involved in the offering.

Years later, a federal judge, William C. Conner, described Mr. Lewis’s action as “an act of market vigilantism in which Lewis in no way personally profited.” He was infuriated, the judge wrote, “by what he viewed as the unethical actions of arbitrageurs.”

“He was the Lone Ranger,” Mr. Solomon recalled, “and Giuliani treated him like a member of the corrupt club.”

Prosecutors threatened Mr. Lewis with 15 years if he went to trial. His wife, Barbara, urged him to cut a deal. He argued prison would be interesting. His bravado reinforced her fears.

Silver haired and trim, she looks at Mr. Lewis, still consumed: “I thought he would die. That was weak of me.”

He pleaded guilty to three charges, and the judge handed him three years’ probation and a $250,000 fine.

TELL us about Bill Clinton. Mr. Lewis cannot resist a smile; even by his standards, this is a weird tale.

In the summer of 1994, Mr. Lewis — in exile — got a phone call at his Maine home from his friend, Douglas S. Eakeley. Mr. Eakeley was also an old friend of Mr. Clinton’s.

I want you to go to a fund-raiser in Portland, Mr. Eakeley said, and talk with the president about his womanizing.

Is this, Mr. Lewis asked, an intervention?

As it happens, Mr. Lewis possesses a sixth sense for psychic pain. He can pick the addicted, the sick and the depressed out of a crowd. His fractured childhood and pathological candor give him an expert hand with the singed.

He rounded up Barbara and a friend, Dr. Stanley Evans, and drove to see Mr. Clinton at the Holiday Inn by the Bay.

Mr. Lewis introduced himself. “You’re Doug’s friend?” the president said, according to Mr. Lewis and Dr. Evans. “Wait, we’ll talk.”

The Secret Service escorted Mr. Lewis, his wife and the doctor into the kitchen, and the president followed.

“Sir,” Mr. Lewis recalled saying as he stared at Mr. Clinton. “Doug thought maybe I should spend a weekend with you. It would be the two of us only.”

Mr. Lewis said the president was taken aback. “What is this about?”

“Sir,” Mr. Lewis said, “this is about your most personal business. You probably won’t be too happy with me by Monday morning, but I think we can avoid a train wreck.”

The president’s face flushed. Dr. Evans realized his friend was confronting the president about his extramarital affairs. “I thought Sandy had lost his mind,” he said.

The weekend session never took place. Revelations of the president’s sexual dalliance with Monica Lewinsky came years later.

Mr. Eakeley is circumspect. “Sandy has incredible intuition and intellect, and I knew he could help if the president could stand it,” he said. “Sandy may have alarmed the president, but I don’t think he repelled him.”

Mr. Clinton’s office declined to comment.

So it goes for Mr. Lewis on his walk, decades long, through the wilderness. One night, he said, he yanked a truck driver out of a fiery wreck on the New Jersey Turnpike, only to discover that the driver had Mafia connections. He said a mob representative told him he could call in his i.o.u. anytime; Mr. Lewis declined, politely.

He became the de facto impresario of the Clinton Correctional Facility, a prison near his farm in the Adirondacks, arranging frequent performances. The prison has housed a who’s who of the criminal and homicidal, from Lucky Luciano to the serial killer Joel Rifkin.

Recently, Mr. Lewis brought in Helena Baillie, 30, an accomplished violinist who is akin to his surrogate daughter, to perform Bach’s “Chaconne” in the Church of St. Dismas, the Good Thief. Many prisoners were in tears.

Mr. Eakeley said Mr. Lewis might be better for his exile. One of Mr. Lewis’s sons, John, is not convinced. He sees a father become “walking id.”

“Giuliani,” he said, “obliterated some part of him.”

In 2000, Mr. Eakeley and former Attorney General Nicholas deB. Katzenbach worked pro bono and submitted a pardon application to Mr. Clinton. In January 2001, just before leaving office, the president signed it.

Six years later, Judge Conner overturned the S.E.C. order that barred Mr. Lewis from Wall Street. “Federal regulations now outlaw the very practice his actions were meant to thwart,” the judge noted.

No cloud of mellow descended. Mr. Lewis trailed the S.E.C. counsel out of the courthouse. “I will rip your guts out,” he bellowed. “Letter to follow!”

A few days later, he looked at the mountains and experienced an epiphany: “I’ve gotten my redemption, and no one cares.”

THE phone rings and Mr. Lewis, in midsentence of a long disquisition, picks up the receiver. A North Country car dealer asks about the economy.

“Yes? Yes!” he listens for 30 seconds. “It’s going to get a lot worse. We’ll be burning scrap wood in our fireplaces before it’s over. Goodbye!”

Among residents of this rural land, Mr. Lewis has a reputation as a savant. He warned that the housing market was overheating years ago and sold several properties. He converted to cash before the 1987 stock crash.

Still, he could not complete the last act in his redemptive play. Financiers with White House connections solicited his advice during the 2008 crisis. But he was not invited into the circle of advisers who, to his mind, poorly served this young president.

As a Wall Street friend warned in an e-mail: “Sandy, you constantly kill yourself. You exhaust folks.”

Mr. Lewis considers his plight over a dinner with Barbara. His eyes are red, his voice a rasp. “I’m bright as hell, but I’m impossible to live with.” Barbara nods. “I am in a state of outrage all the time.” Barbara nods. “I bring this Orthogenic morality to everything on Wall Street, and it’s unsustainable.” Barbara, dry as gin, says, “No kidding.”

Mr. Lewis sees a banking system in unstable remission. Goldman answers to no one. China and Europe are wobbling, deflation is at the door, another crash is coming.

“The criminality is astounding,” he says. “You have a complete confusion between principal and principle.”

He is pacing again. “You don’t understand what it is to find someone on Wall Street who tells it like it is. You want to get real? Baby, let’s do the full root canal!”









This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 23, 2012

An article last Sunday about S. B. Lewis, known as Sandy, a former Wall Street broker who turned into a critic, misstated, in some editions, the given name of one of his former teachers at Bruno Bettelheim’s Orthogenic School in Chicago. He is George Kaiser, not Charles.





The Lonely Redemption of Sandy Lewis, Wall Street Provocateur - NYTimes.com

 Link:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/nyregion/the-lonely-redemption-of-sandy-lewis-wall-street-provocateur.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

Wall Street Deceit

 

A Lonely Redemption

By MICHAEL POWELL and DANNY HAKIM 

 

For years Sandy Lewis has railed against Wall Street's deceit. But vindication isn't sweet.

Quotes

It is a socialist idea that making profits is a vice; I consider the real vice is making losses. 

- Winston Churchill

 

"They can conquer who believe they can."
- Virgil




 If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Deutsche Bank: Gold Is Money - Business Insider

 

flickr / Lewis Minor

It's become a tireless debate: goldbugs seem to cling to the shiny yellow metal with a religious fervor not usually displayed by anyone toward other asset classes, and it's been known to frustrate some who don't share their views.

Gold often gets lumped in to investment forecasts with other "commodities" – real, consumable things like oil or food.

But Deutsche Bank analysts Daniel Brebner and Xiao Fu say gold is seriously misunderstood, and in a new report – wherein they update their gold target to $2000/oz sometime in the first half of 2013 – they explain that "gold is not really a commodity at all."

The undisputable evidence for the case that gold is money, according to the Deutsche Bank analysts:

While it is included in the commodities basket it is in fact a medium of exchange and one that is officially recognised (if not publically used as such). We see gold as an officially recognised form of money for one primary reason: it is widely held by most of the world’s larger central banks as a component of reserves.

That's their take. But there's more – the analysts differentiate between "good money" (gold) and "bad money" (fiat paper currency):

We would go further however, and argue that gold could be characterised as ‘good’ money as opposed to ‘bad’ money which would be represented by many of today’s fiat currencies. In describing gold as such we refer to Gresham’s Law – when a government overvalues one type of money and undervalues another, the undervalued money (good) will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money (bad) will flood into circulation.

What's interesting is that all of the arguments against gold propogated by the anti-goldbugs – that it's not really a consumption good, that it serves no industrial purpose, etc. – are all the exact reasons why Brebner and Xiao call gold "good money."
The analysts elaborate on this point in the report:

In our view the ideal medium of exchange must balance the paradox of representing value while having little intrinsic value itself. There are very few media which can do this. 

Fiat currencies physically have no use other than that which is prescribed to them by government and accepted by the public. That fiat currencies cost little to produce is of a secondary concern and we believe, quite irrelevant to the primary purpose.

Gold is neither production good nor consumption good. Jewellery we see as a form of storage or hoarding (the people of Portugal have all but exhausted their personal gold stores – hoarded in the form of jewellery – having converted them to survive the crisis).  

If gold did have a meaningful commercial use we believe that it would make the metal less attractive as a medium of exchange as the value of the metal in whatever market it was used in could periodically interfere with its medium-of-exchange role...

Other characteristics are important of course in fulfilling the requirements for ‘good’ money: indestructibility, divisibility, transportability and universal acceptability.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/deutsche-bank-gold-money-2012-9#ixzz26uC0xuCX

Deutsche Bank: Gold Is Money - Business Insider

Lululemon Sell-Off - The Short Sellers are circling

 Shares of yoga pants maker lululemon athletica are getting slammed this afternoon. 

*Benzinga is reporting that there's a rumor circulating that David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital is shorting the stock.

Einhorn is famous for shorting companies like Lehman Brothers and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters before their stocks plummeted.

On separate occasions earlier this year, Einhorn words caused St. Joe's Company, Martin Marietta Metals, and Herbalife to instantly tanked.

lululemon athletica inc.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/lululemon-sell-off-2012-9#ixzz26uCtn05f

Source for chart:  http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/lulu/charts

Lululemon Sell-Off - Business Insider



Shares of Lululemon (NASDAQ: LULU [FREE Stock Trend Analysis]) have fallen sharply during Tuesday's trading session after more market rumors surfaced that David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital is short the stock. With less than two hours left in the trading day, LULU was down more than four percent and moving on very heavy volume. Around 3.1 million LULU shares had already traded hands on the day compared to a three-month daily average of just over 2.8 million.

LULU has been a top momentum stock in recent years, and the shares are up better than 347 percent over the last five years. Year-to-date, the stock has risen almost 64 percent, including a 21 percent gain over the last three months.

Given the strong growth at the yoga-inspired apparel retailer and the continued performance of the stock, LULU trades at a lofty valuation. The stock trades at a trailing P/E of nearly 50, a forward P/E of 33 and a PEG ratio of 1.56.

David Einhorn has been noted to target companies with high valuations in the past, such as Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (NASDAQ: GMCR) and Chipotle (NYSE: CMG).

(c) 2012 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

Find out why (and how) to incorporate ratings into your daily trading strategy by downloading this eBook written by Benzinga's Chief Ratings Strategist - Get the eBook now!

Posted in: News, Hedge Funds, Rumors, Intraday Update, Movers, General

VectorVest Stock Analysis. Find out Whether a Stock is a Buy, Sell or Hold. Get your Free Stock Analysis simply by clicking here!

 

 

 

Lululemon Falls on Rumor That Einhorn is Short

 Link:  http://www.benzinga.com/news/12/09/2920001/lululemon-falls-on-rumor-that-einhorn-is-short

Posts by Scott Rubin

Read more: http://www.benzinga.com/news/12/09/2920001/lululemon-falls-on-rumor-that-einhorn-is-short#ixzz26uF2HwFg

18 Tips For Success From Richard Branson - Business Insider

Richard Branson founded Virgin in 1970 at the age of 20, and he hasn’t looked back.

He’s the only entrepreneur to have built eight separate billion-dollar companies in eight different industries — and he did it all without a degree in business.

"Had I pursued my education long enough to learn all the conventional dos and don'ts of starting a business I often wonder how different my life and career might have been," he writes in his new book,

Like a Virgin: Secrets They Won’t Teach You at Business School.


1. Don't do it if you don't enjoy it.
Running a business takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears (and caffeine). But at the end of the day, you should be building something you will be proud of.

Branson says, "When I started Virgin from a basement in west London, there was no great plan or strategy. I didn't set out to build a business empire ... For me, building a business is all about doing something to be proud of, bringing talented people together and creating something that's going to make a real difference to other people's lives."

2. Be visible

Sir Freddie Laker, a British airline “tycoon.”

“Make sure you appear on the front page and not the back pages,” said Laker. “You are going to have to get out there and sell yourself. Make a fool of yourself, whatever it takes. Otherwise you won’t survive”.


3. Choose a unique name for your brand


4. You can't run a business without taking risks.


5. The first impression is everything. So is the second.

Branson thinks of one of his favorite sayings when advising about taking business risks: “‘The brave may not live forever—but the cautious do not live at all!’”

Every business involves risks. Be prepared to get knocked down, says Branson, but success rarely comes from playing it safe. You may fail, but Branson also dares to point out that "there's no such thing as a total failure."


6. Perfection is unattainable.


7. The customer is always right, most of the time.


8. Define your brand.


9. Explore uncharted territory.


10. Beware the "us vs. them" environment.

The workplace should be one in which the boss and his or her employees communicate well and work together toward the same goal. “If employees aren’t associating themselves with their company by using ‘we’, it is a sign that people up and down the chain of command aren’t communicating,” says Branson.

If you think there might be discrepancies or tension between employees and management, Branson advises to check with the middle management first to try to uncover the source of the problem and address it head-on.


11. Build a corporate comfort zone.


Employees must feel free and encouraged to openly express themselves without rigid confines so they can do better work and make good, impactful decisions.

"This may sound like a truism," begins Branson, "But it has to be said: It takes an engaged, motivated and committed workforce to deliver a first-class product or service and build a successful, sustainable enterprise."


12. Not everyone is suited to be CEO.

A manager needs to be someone who “brings out the best in people,” someone who communicates well with others and helps an employee learn from a mistake instead of criticizing them for it.



13. Seek a second opinion. Seek a third.

Branson says you must learn to be a good listener in order to succeed, and that means bouncing “every idea you have off numerous people before finally saying, ‘We’ll give this one a miss,’ or ‘Let’s do it.’”

That means being thorough and deliberate before executing any decisions. In business, seeking a variety of opinions "can save you a lot of time and money," says Branson. "Don't tell people about others' suggestions until you've heard what they have to say. In the end you may decide that the best advice is to walk away—and later find out it was the very best solution."

14. Cut ties without burning bridges.

Business ventures with another person, be it a friend or a partner, don’t always work out. If this is the case, successful entrepreneurs know when to part ways.

But just because you decide to go in another direction doesn’t mean things have to end badly, especially with a friend, says Branson. Handle any problems quickly and head-on, and end the relationship as amicably as possible.

15. Pick up the phone.

great to be tech-savvy, but don’t text or email when you should be calling. "The quality of business communications has become poorer in recent years as people avoid phone calls and face-to-face meetings, I can only assume, in some misguided quest for efficiency," Branson says.

Problems are more difficult to solve by text or email, and “there is nothing efficient about allowing a small problem to escalate,” says Branson, when it could have been easily addressed with a phone call.

16. Change shouldn't be feared, but it should be managed.

“Companies aren’t future-proof,” says Branson, and nothing lasts forever. An entrepreneur should be prepared to adapt, and avoid being nostalgic about the company itself.

"Sometimes you have to take your company in a new direction because circumstances and opportunities have changed." If this is the case, Branson advises that you should "find ways to inspire all employees to think like entrepreneurs ... so the more responsibility you give people the better they will perform."

17. When it comes to making mistakes, bounce back, don’t fall down.

Your decision will not always be the best decision. Everyone makes mistakes, but the best thing you can do in the face of a mistake is own up to it.

Honesty isn’t just the best policy, it’s the only policy, notes Branson. When a mistake is made, don’t let it consume you. Uncover the problem and get to work fixing it.


18. Be a leader, not a boss.

Branson sees the classic image of “the boss” as an anachronism. Being bossy is not a desirable trait in a manager, he says. A boss orders while a leader organizes.

"Perhaps, therefore, it is odd that if there is any one phrase that is guaranteed to set me off it's when someone says to me, 'Okay, fine. You're the boss!'" says Branson. "What irks me is that in 90 percent of such instances what that person is really saying is 'Okay, then, I don't agree with you but I'll roll over and do it because you're telling me to. But if it doesn't work out I'll be the first to remind everyone that it wasn't my idea.'"

A good corporate leader is someone who doesn't just execute his or her own ideas, but also inspires others to come forth with their own.








18 Tips For Success From Richard Branson - Business Insider

Source: "Like a Virgin: Secrets They Won’t Teach You at Business School."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/18-tips-for-success-from-richard-branson-2012-9?op=1#ixzz26rh8ZEcB





18 Tips For Success From Richard Branson - Business Insider

CHART OF THE DAY: Adam Parker 2012 Year End Outlook - Business Insider

 In case you didn't know, the S&P stands at 1457.

In a massive presentation on his year-end predictions, Parker explains why:

• Earnings growth is very poor.
• Earnings are volatile, and that's also ominous.
• Historically, extreme rates (both high and low) are bearish. Our current sub-zero interest rates are bad.
• Historic price-to-earnings ratios at this time of year suggest a downturn. "Investors are overpaying for cyclical earnings!" he exclaims, adding, "most industry groups appear to be over-earning right now."

 Probable Weighted Target is 1167 0r down ~20 %

chart-of-the-day-adam-parker-2012-year-end-outlook-2012-9#ixzz26rPzEtqF

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-adam-parker-2012-year-end-outlook-2012-9#ixzz26rPzEtqF

 

The 2012 Investment Guide - Forbes

 

The 2012 Investment Guide

Uncertainty and volatility rule global markets and according to the American Association Of Individual Investors, "distrust" sums up the mood among investors. FORBES editors have created a Survive & Thrive manual for three groups facing financial stress: twentysomething Millennials, Gen-Xers in their 30s and 40s, and the baby boomer generation. It's all tied together with our 20 New Rules of Money and a host of features on topics ranging from taxes and pawnshop stocks to retirement-income options and investing in racehorses.




 Read More: http://www.forbes.com/special-report/2011/2012-investment-guide.html
The 2012 Investment Guide - Forbes

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Spot the opportunity” Illusion Poster

By Vurdlak on September 14, 2012

Have you seen this #Escher_inspired poster released by Etrade Australia recently?

Titled Spot the opportunity, this poster was done by use of a tessellation technique.

Tessellation is a process of creating a two-dimensional plane using the repetition of a geometric shape with no overlaps and no gaps. As we noted before, tessellations frequently appeared in the art of M. C. Escher, who was inspired by studying the Moorish use of symmetry in the Alhambra tiles during a visit in 1922.

Here’s an assignment for you today: can you think of one natural tessellated structure?

Perhaps bees and honey may serve as a quality hint ;D




“Spot The Opportunity” Illusion Poster | Mighty Optical Illusions

Other Examples of tessellation:

 

 

 

 

 

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3658/3608677506_3dd8469ccb_o.jpg

Why Wall Street Loves Quantitative Easing - Rick Newman (usnews.com)

 

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in Jackson Hole, Wyo.

The Federal Reserve's "quantitative easing" strategy is controversial, and even unpopular—except on Wall Street.



At a recent panel discussion of top Wall Street economists sponsored by New York University's Stern School of Business, there was general agreement that more Fed action—which has now arrived in the form of a fresh, open-ended plan to buy about $40 billion worth of mortgage-backed bonds every month--is required to boost the lackluster economy.

"The weak labor market warrants further action," said Peter Hooper, chief economist for Deutsche Bank Securities. "The Fed certainly has some potency with quantitative easing."

More easing by the Fed runs the risk of causing higher inflation in the future, since the Fed is effectively printing money when it buys bonds or other securities on the open market. The Fed's intervention also raises questions about whether improvements in the economy are sustainable, or merely the result of artificial government support that has to end at some point.

The Fed's critics include many Republicans who view the Fed as a kind of star chamber operating way beyond its mandate to keep inflation and unemployment in check. GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney opposes more easing by the Fed. "I think [easing] and other Fed stimulus is not going to help this economy," he said in August. Romney has also said he wouldn't reappoint Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke when his term expires in 2014.


But Romney's former colleagues in the financial industry are bigger fans of Bernanke, since his policies have been a boon for Wall Street firms. One of the primary purposes of quantitative easing is to drive down interest rates and lure investors out of safe investments like treasury securities, and into riskier investments such as stocks. The basic purpose is to help rebuild individual investment portfolios, make big companies more confident about spending and making deals, and generate more overall optimism about the economy.

One of the first beneficiaries is Wall Street, since rising stock prices draw more buyers off the sidelines, boost sales commissions at brokerages, and generate more investment banking activity. And the Fed's plan has generally worked, with an unmistakable correlation between its QE programs and a stock-market rally that's now in its fourth year.

The Fed quietly began quantitative easing in late 2008, then announced a much more aggressive program in the spring of 2009. Two lesser easing programs followed. Since the Fed doubled down on QE in 2009, the S&P 500 stock index has risen by more than 150 percent. "Anyone who has owned stocks in the past few years has fed at the trough of Bernanke," the financial website YCharts declared recently.

 
Prior to the latest round of easing—dubbed QE3—many analysts felt further Fed action would have a limited impact on stocks, since the shock value has worn off and investors have already barreled into stocks over the past few weeks, in anticipation of another bump courtesy of the Fed. But the Fed surprised the markets with a new commitment to buying bonds indefinitely, until unemployment improves. "This program is more aggressive than market expectations," Moody's Analytics explained to clients. Stocks leapt on the news.

Wall Street honchos, like people nearly everywhere, have also become cynical about Congress or any other part of the government doing anything soon to resolve Washington's huge debt problem, improve the business environment, or otherwise aid the economy. "Policymarkers are not going to get serious about solving these problems until the economy and the public feels some pain," said David Greenlaw, chief U.S. fixed income economist for Morgan Stanley, at the Stern event.

So even if the Fed's power is diminished, it's still the only entity that seems willing and able to do anything to boost the economy. Wall Street will worry later about the repercussions.


Rick Newman is the author of Rebounders: How Winners Pivot From Setback To Success. 

Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman.

Tags:

Wall Street,

Federal Reserve,

stock market

Why Wall Street Loves Quantitative Easing - Rick Newman (usnews.com)

 Link:  http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/rick-newman/2012/09/12/why-wall-street-loves-quantitative-easing

Whistle-Blower Awarded $104 Million by I.R.S.

 This character is lavischiously rewarded for turning in clients who partook in his schemes.  Does this seem right?
 

Whistle-Blower Awarded $104 Million by I.R.S.

By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI 

 

Bradley Birkenfeld, who got out of jail last month after serving time for helping Americans dodge taxes, received a lavish bonus for his role in exposing tax schemes at UBS.

Today's Headlines: Israeli Sharpens Call for United States to Set Iran Trigger - buddhha4@gmail.com - Gmail

Pablo Picasso in the 1950's with Lost Painting

Hagley Museum and Library


Picasso, second from left, in the 1950s. A glimpse of "Seated Woman With Red Hat" is visible at the bottom of the photo.









Arts - Image - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/arts/design/forgotten-picasso-is-windfall-for-evansville-museum.html?_r=1

Long-Forgotten Picasso Is a Museum’s Windfall

Evansville Museum of Arts, History & Science

Long-Forgotten Picasso Is a Museum’s Windfall

Picasso’s “Seated Woman With Red Hat” was found at an Indiana museum.

By PATRICIA COHEN


When Arlan Ettinger, the president of Guernsey’s auction house in New York, first called the Evansville Museum of Arts, History and Science back in February to ask about a layered glass mosaic by Picasso that he had traced to the museum, officials there said, in effect, “Sorry, wrong number.” They had never heard of it.

A day or two later the museum called back, Mr. Ettinger said. Spurred by his query officials discovered that this rare work was there in Indiana after all, mislabeled and stashed in an old shipping crate for more than 40 years.

“You could sort of hear corks popping at their end of the line,” Mr. Ettinger said.

Rather than display their newfound Picasso treasure, however, officials have decided to sell it, using Mr. Ettinger’s company.

It is nearly impossible to put a price tag on the piece, “Seated Woman With Red Hat,” since this kind of work has not been on the market for nearly half a century, experts say. But Mr. Ettinger said he hoped to sell it for $30 million to $40 million, more than five times the museum’s entire $6 million endowment.

The potential windfall has raised a grab bag of questions for museums large and small beyond, “Have you checked the basement lately?”

What responsibility, for example, do institutions have to hold on to donated works and display them? And how should valuable art be handled when it threatens to tax an institution’s resources and confuse its mission?

Some residents of Evansville, for instance, have complained that this rare artwork is being sold off without their even getting a chance to see it.

But R. Steven Krohn, president of the museum’s board, said in a statement that keeping “Seated Woman With Red Hat” just did not make sense: “Now that we have a full understanding of the requirements and additional expenses to display, secure, preserve and insure the piece, it is clear those additional costs would place a prohibitive financial burden on the museum.”

Although the museum owns some works from banner names like Georgia O’Keeffe and Renoir, its entire art collection is valued at only $10 million. Its recent expansion was devoted to building up its interactive science exhibitions, including a theater.

The museum declined to specify what changes would be needed and how much they would cost, but caring for an extremely valuable work can be burdensome. Advancements in technology have made protection more affordable, said Robert Marentette, the security chief at the Art Gallery of Hamilton in Ontario, but the added that costs of securing such works can “suck revenue out of tight operating budgets.” Insurance premiums can also be extremely expensive, he added.

“The bottom line is and will always be the level of risk one decides to operate under,” he said. “In this case it seems the risk and associated costs are high and not acceptable to the board and members.”

The work, a three-foot-high portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picasso’s French mistress, is one of about 50 glass paintings known as gemmaux that Picasso created in the mid-1950s at the Malherbe Studio in France. The unfamiliar word is a reason that this portrait lay in the museum’s storage for nearly half a century. It was incorrectly labeled in documents as having been created by the nonexistent artist “Gemmaux,” not Picasso, the museum said. (“Gemmail” is the singular, and the name of the technique.)

Gemmaux are made of multicolored pieces of glass, layered and then fused together with liquid enamel, a technique first developed by the French artist Jean Crotti. “Seated Woman With Red Hat” is encased in a wooden shadow box so that it can be illuminated from the back.

“It’s just a wonderful thing to see,” said Mr. Ettinger, who visited Evansville. “Unlike flat canvas, it really sparkles; 2-D pictures don’t do it justice.”

He conceded that his multimillion-dollar estimate is partly guesswork and instinct, since Picasso’s gemmaux are relatively unknown and are rarely sold. The artist gave half of them to his collaborators, the Malherbe family. He sold the rest, with some going to private collectors like Nelson Rockefeller, Emperor Hirohito of Japan and Prince Rainier of Monaco.

The pioneering industrial designer Raymond Loewy, who owned “Seated Woman With Red Hat,” promised to donate it to the Evansville museum in 1963. According to The Indianapolis Star, it was appraised for tax purposes at the time for $20,000.

The museum has chosen to skip a public auction. Mr. Ettinger said that sellers sometimes think private sales can be faster and simpler, but he acknowledged, “At the end of the day, like any work of art, it’s worth what somebody will pay for it.”

The Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York has three gemmaux by Picasso, none of which are on display. As it turns out, the Corning museum had been researching them recently to assess whether to exhibit them once its planned expansion is completed in 2014.

“We really don’t have a clue of what the current market value is of our own pieces,” said Karol Wight, Corning’s executive director. “It seems like after they made their debut in the ’50s they just sort of became out of fashion, and no one’s really paid attention to them.”

With the worldwide attention the Evansville find has received, that has certainly changed.







Forgotten Picasso Is Windfall for Evansville Museum - NYTimes.com

 Link:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/arts/design/forgotten-picasso-is-windfall-for-evansville-museum.html?_r=1


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Architecture

Risky Business Pays Off For Wall Street: Financial Crisis Penalties Pale Compared To Profits

 
 What is wrong with America?  Where is the outcry?


To listen to bankers tell it, President Barack Obama has been their worst nightmare. But considering how easy banks have actually had it since the financial crisis, Obama seems to be a banker's dream come true.

The banks can count the Dodd-Frank financial reform act, some $2 billion in penalties, and occasional criticism from the president and other Democrats among the horrors they have had to endure since the crisis.

Relative to the profits they made before and after, these don't even rise to the level of minor inconveniences. And that makes it more likely we'll see more bank misdeeds in the future.

"This doesn't just reward past crime; 
it incentivizes future crime," Dennis Kelleher, CEO of the nonprofit group Better Markets, said of the penalties the banks have paid since the crisis. "It's less than the cost of doing business."

There have not been, and likely never will be, any federal criminal convictions for crisis-era bank misdeeds.

Obama's Justice Department doesn't even bother keeping statistics on convictions related to the financial crisis, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year. 

High-profile cases against executives at Goldman Sachs, American International Group, Lehman Brothers and Countrywide Financial, institutions at the center of the crisis, have been dropped.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has done most of the heavy lifting in exacting some measure of justice from banks and bankers for crisis-era misdeeds, but not so heavy that the SEC might actually develop muscles or anything.

Unlike the Justice Department, the SEC does keep stats on its efforts, such as they are: It has charged 112 people and banks in the wake of the crisis, including 55 top executives. It has extracted $2.19 billion in penalties and other cash from the banks and bankers.

But $2 billion is a rounding error in comparison to the profits the banks raked in before and after the crisis, and the damage they did to the economy during the crisis. 

Kelleher of Better Markets estimates that Wall Street paid out $200 billion in bonuses between 2003 and 2011.

And in the year before its London Whale trading debacle, JPMorgan Chase alone was making nearly $5 billion per quarter, on average, in net income after taxes, meaning it could pay the entire industry's crisis-era fines twice over with just three months of work. 

Give JPMorgan a few years, and it could cover the entire industry's $2 billion in fines 20 times over: In the three years leading up to the crisis year of 2008, the bank made $38 billion in after-tax profit. 

In the three years that followed, JPMorgan made $48 billion. In 2008, its profits tumbled all the way down to $5.6 billion, or nearly three times the total fines paid by banks as a result of the crisis.

And that is just one bank, albeit the largest bank in America by assets.

Even a far smaller bank, Goldman Sachs, could bear the brunt of the entire industry's regulatory fines very easily if it had to.

Goldman has paid the largest single fine by far as a result of the crisis, $550 million to settle charges that it misled investors! about bundles of bad mortgages that were hand-picked by other investors betting against them. 



The bank made $8.4 billion in profit in 2010, the year it agreed to the fine. 

It has made more than $26 billion in the past three years and nearly $27 billion in the three years before the crisis. 

In the crisis year of 2008, Goldman turned a total after-tax profit of $2.3 billion -- enough to pay the entire industry's crisis tab.

Meanwhile, the big banks benefited for years after the crisis from an armada of government-subsidized lending programs.

One initiative alone, the Term Liquidity Guarantee Program, likely saved banks an estimated $24 billion in borrowing costs.


Of course, this has not stopped the banks from lobbying furiously against financial regulatory reform to prevent another crisis.
 The securities industry has spent more than $250 million in lobbying since 2010, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.


That money was focused most intensely on periods in the past few years when the Dodd-Frank reform act was being passed or shaped, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The banks have also had plenty of cash to throw at political campaigns. 

Wall Street has spent $164 million on the current election, the Center for Responsive Politics reported on Wednesday, putting the financial industry on pace to trump the record $170 million it spent on the 2008 campaign.

Some of that cash has gone to Obama and other Democrats, but most of it is going to Mitt Romney and his fellow Republicans, who have pledged to repeal Dodd-Frank.

In fact, the American Bankers Association is expected to vote Thursday on whether to form a super PAC to donate money to Senate candidates who want to roll back financial reform, Bloomberg reports.

As Bloomberg's Phil Mattingly wrote recently in a separate story, a full Dodd-Frank repeal probably wouldn't happen even during a Romney administration and with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress.

Instead, the banks would prefer to get some of the toothier aspects of the law repealed, leaving "a patina of protection for investors and consumers," as Mattingly wrote.

That doesn't sound all that far from the situation today, with Dodd-Frank implementation already hopelessly muddled by bank lobbying.

If there is a silver lining to this story (or a dark cloud for the banks), it is the appropriately harsh punishment the stock market has rendered.

Combined, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and AIG have lost a whopping $594 billion in stock-market value since the end of 2006, just before the dawn of the crisis, according to FactSet data.

Many shareholders are suing the banks over their crisis-era behavior.

Citigroup recently settled one such suit for $590 million.

The banks have also suffered lasting damage to their reputations, leaving them vulnerable to more regulation and higher capital requirements around the world, which could crimp their profitability in the years ahead. But that also means the banks could eventually seek other, more creative ways to make money. 

Given the lack of severe consequences following the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, it is hard to imagine bankers seeing much downside in gambling with the global economy once again.



HuffPost Live will be taking a comprehensive look at the corrupting influence of money on our politics on Sept. 6 from 12-4 p.m. EDT and 6-10 p.m. EDT. Click here to check it out -- and join the conversation.


Risky Business Pays Off For Wall Street: Financial Crisis Penalties Pale Compared To Profits

Link:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/06/wall-street-financial-crisis-penalties_n_1858738.html

The Madness of Crowds

"I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."
-Sir Isaac Newton, after losing 20,000 pounds in Britain's south sea Bubble of 1720

Research: Body language tells, youre rich or poor

 

 

 

 

Research: Body language tells, you're rich or poor

Karachi, Feb 06, 2009 (Asia Pulse Data Source via COMTEX) --

Other than clothes, house and flashy cars, the socio-economic status ((SES) can be guessed by one's body language, says a new study.

Psychologists Michael W. Kraus and Dacher Keltner of the University of California, Berkeley found that non-verbal cues (that is body language) could indicate our SES.

From the study, the researchers videotaped participants as they got to know one another in one-on-one interview sessions. During these taped sessions, the researchers looked for two types of behaviours: disengagement behaviours (including fidgeting with personal objects and doodling) and engagement behaviours (including head nodding, laughing and eye contact).

 The results indicated that nonverbal cues can give away a persons SES. Volunteers whose parents were from upper SES backgrounds displayed more disengagement-related behaviours compared to participants from lower SES backgrounds.

Besides, when a separate group of observers were shown 60-second clips of the videos, they were able to correctly guess the participants SES background, based on their body language. The researchers note that this is the first study to show a relation between SES and social engagement behaviour. They surmise that people from upper SES backgrounds who are wealthy and have access to prestigious institutions tend to be less dependent on others.


This lack of dependence among upper SES people is displayed in their nonverbal behaviours during social interactions, concluded the psychologists.

Read more: http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2009/02/07/3971124.htm#ixzz25uNpWf9B

 Link:  http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2009/02/07/3971124.htm

Research: Body language tells, youre rich or poor

What is the Difference Between a Fee-Only Financial Advisor and a Fee Based Financial Advisor?

What is a Fee-Only Financial Advisor vs. a Fee Based Financial Advisor?

By Dana Anspach, About.com Guide

 

Definition: Another word for a fee-only financial advisor would be a NO COMMISSION advisor as a fee only advisor can only receive compensation directly from you (like a CPA or attorney) verses being paid by commissions from products they sell.

A fee-only financial advisor cannot receive compensation from a brokerage firm, a mutual fund company, an insurance company, or from any other source than you. This means they represent you and your interests when giving you advice. After all, think about where someone's paycheck comes from, and that will tell you quite a bit about where their loyalty lies.
This fee may be charged as a percentage of the assets they manage for you, and thus debited out of your account each quarter, or it could be a flat annual fee, or hourly rate.  These are three of the six ways that financial advisors charge fees.

To find the right fee only financial advisor, go through the seven steps in 7 Steps to Finding the Best Financial Advisor.

Fee-Based Is NOT The Same As A Fee-Only Financial Advisor

A fee based financial advisor can receive fees paid by you, and commissions paid to them by a brokerage firm, mutual fund company, insurance company, or investment partnership.

Even though both fee-only and fee based financial advisors may have accounts they manage where they charge a percentage of the assets they manage, the investments they place inside these accounts can be very different.

Fee-only financial advisors have a fiduciary responsibility to choose investments that are in your best interest. They typically use investments that have low internal expenses such as no load mutual funds, stocks and bonds; investments that have no 12b1 fees.



Dana Anspach, CFP^®, RMA^TM, has been the About.com Guide to MoneyOver55 since 2008. She is the founder of Sensible Money, LLC, and a practicing fee-only financial advisor who specializes in developing retirement income plans for people age 55 or older. You can learn more about Dana in her bio.

Also Known As: fee only financial planner or fee only advisor

Searching For Financial Advisors

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What is the Difference Between a Fee-Only Financial Advisor and a Fee Based Financial Advisor?

AIDS Healthcre Foundation critical of Gilead Sciences, CEO for share sales

AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the nation’s largest HIV/AIDS nonprofit medical provider and a vocal critic of runaway drug pricing and AIDS drug profiteering, today criticized John Martin, CEO of Gilead Sciences, the leading HIV/AIDS drug maker, for cashing out at the public’s expense over his recent sale of 145,450 shares of Gilead stock (worth about $8.5 million), which according to the website SeekingAlpha.com, took place on September 4th. 

Martin had over $54.5 million in reported compensation last year at Gilead, an amount that placed him 10th on Forbes’ List of the 100 highest paid CEOs in the United States. 

Martin’s stock sale followed on the heels of news early last week that Gilead chose tosetits Wholesale Acquisition Price (WAC) for Stribild, its latest entry in the AIDS drug market, a four-in-one, once-a-day tablet—at $28,500 per patient, per year—a record price for a first line combination therapy and a price that led to some,

“…disappointment and controversy within the larger HIV community,” according to a separate press release issued by the ADAP Crisis Task Force (ACTF) of the National Alliance of State & Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD). 

 Gilead manufactures the most commonly prescribed HIV/AIDS drugs, as well as some of the highest priced ones. Stribild entered the market priced 37% higher than Atripla, Gilead’s best selling HIV/AIDS combination therapy.

“It’s apparently no longer enough for John Martin, Gilead’s CEO, to be one of the highest paid executives in the nation. Last year, he made tens of millions of dollars by selling lifesaving medications at such high prices that thousands of Americans in desperate need could not access them and were placed on waiting lists,” said Michael Weinstein, AHF’s President.

“Now, on the heels of setting a record wholesale price for Stribild, Martin cashes out over 145,000 shares of his stock, after the stock enjoyed a healthy bump following the pricing announcement for Stribild.

Greed certainly pays! Meanwhile, despite recent price concessions negotiated in secret with the ADAP Crisis Task Force, the price of Stribild will wreak havoc with hard-hit and cash-strapped states and aid programs like Medicaid and Medicare.

People living with HIV/AIDS, their families, friends and communities should be up in arms over this sort of corporate greed in the face of life-or-death need, as it is the taxpayers who foot the bill for government health care programs—like state AIDS Drug Assistance Programs, a significant contributor to Gilead’s—and John Martin’s—profit margin and wealth.”

According to the SeekingAlpha.com website, “John Martin sold 145,450 shares on September 4 and currently holds 1,989,938 shares of the company. Dr. Martin joined Gilead Sciences in 1990 and currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer.”

AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS organization, currently provides medical care and/or services to more than 176,756 individuals in 27 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, the Asia/Pacific Region and Eastern Europe.




To learn more about AHF, please visit our website: www.aidshealth.org, find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/aidshealth and follow us on Twitter: @aidshealthcare.



Business Wire
http://www.businesswire.com/

Last updated on: 08/09/2012 08:00:03

Read more: http://www.pharmiweb.com/pressreleases/pressrel.asp?ROW_ID=63595#ixzz25uL2U8p3

AHF: Greed Pays—Gilead’s John Martin Cashes Out at Public’s Expense - News Press Release | PharmiWeb.com