Daily Show audits America | TPM2012

At campaign stops across the country, Mitt Romney tells voters that he has the private-sector experience to turn the nation’s economy around.

So, The Daily Show wondered on Friday, what would America look like if it were run more like a business? The Best F#@king News Team Ever hit the Republican National Convention floor to find out.

“These are not easy conversations to have, but if it’s not working, you gotta end it. It’s gotta go,” one convention attendee told The Daily Show’s Jason Jones.

It turns out a lot of states are underperforming. So the team had to let states like Mississippi, Wyoming and Minnesota go.

Watch The Daily Show audit America:

(Source: lockerz.com)

Those who live by arcane financial instruments, ah, never mind, you get it.

Greg Smith, who resigned from Goldman Sachs, was responsible for the the U.S./Americas equity derivatives business in Europe. This image is from his bio page with the company.

March 15 (Bloomberg) — Goldman Sachs Group Inc. saw $2.15 billion of its market value wiped out after an employee assailed Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein’s management and the firm’s treatment of clients, sparking debate across Wall Street.

The shares dropped 3.4 percent in New York trading yesterday, the third-biggest decline in the 81-company Standard & Poor’s 500 Financials Index, after London-based Greg Smith made the accusations in a New York Times op-ed piece.

Smith, who also wrote that he was quitting after 12 years at the company, blamed Blankfein, 57, and President Gary D. Cohn, 51, for a “decline in the firm’s moral fiber.” They responded in a memo to current and former employees, saying that Smith’s assertions don’t reflect the firm’s values, culture or “how the vast majority of people at Goldman Sachs think about the firm and the work it does on behalf of our clients.”

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, 84, whose “Volcker rule” would limit banks like New York-based Goldman Sachs from making bets with their own money, called Smith’s article “a radical, strong” piece. “I’m afraid it’s a business that leads to a lot of conflicts of interest,” Volcker said at a conference in Washington sponsored by the Atlantic.

Goldman Sachs slid $4.17 to $120.37 yesterday. The shares are still up 33 percent this year.

David Wells, a spokesman for Goldman Sachs in New York, declined to comment beyond the contents of the memo and an earlier e-mailed statement in which the firm said it disagrees with the views expressed in the op-ed.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/03/14/bloomberg_articlesM0WH081A1I4H01-M0WMZ.DTL#ixzz1pCvcnhrp

So the natural question for me is, if these folks are supposedly “job creators,” why haven’t we seen a proportional drop in the unemployment rate? Moreover, if compensation is supposedly connected to performance, why hasn’t their pay dropped further? Looks like some party’s economic “theories” just don’t wash.

While the incomes of so many Americans remain the same size or get smaller, corporate chiefs can’t say they’re suffering in quite the same way.

American CEOs saw pay increases of between 27 and 40 percent last year, according to a GovernanceMetrics International survey cited by theGuardian. In addition, the median value of CEOs profits on stock options jumped to $1.3 million from $950,400.

This, even after Congress passed financial reform regulations that included provisions aimed at making CEO pay more transparent by allowing shareholders to weigh in.

The survey’s findings may resonate with Occupy movement activists, who have been railing against income inequality since the protests first started. Indeed, CEO pay by itself exceeded the amount that his or her corporation paid in income taxes in at least 25 cases last year. And in the year before America’s highest-highest-paid corporate chief netted more than $145 million, U.S. median incomefell to below $27,000, meaning half of all earners made less than that.

But John Hammergren, CEO of healthcare provider McKesson, isn’t the only boss taking home the big bucks. JPMorgan Chase Chief Jamie Dimon got a $19 million raise in 2010 and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein netted an extra $3.6 million in bonuses last year.

(via U.S. CEO Pay Jumps Minimum Of 27 Percent Last Year, Survey Finds)

A public school teacher, a tea party activist, and a CEO are sitting at a table with a plate of a dozen cookies in the middle of it. The CEO takes 11 of the cookies, turns to the tea partier and says, “Watch out for that union guy. He wants a piece of your cookie.”

(via a FB friend)

Zucky, the Boy Wonder, mostly shrugs.

About 6 hours ago Pete Cashmore 

In his first comment since the privacy controversy of recent weeks, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that the company “made a bunch of mistakes” and wants to “get this stuff right this time”.

Zuckerberg has been criticized from some corners for a lack of communication on Facebook users’ privacy concerns, and a public comment from the CEO hasn’t been forthcoming. Today’s concession isn’t a public apology as such: Rather, Zuckerberg replied to a private email from tech enthusiast Robert Scoble, who then requested permission to reprint his response on his blog.

Zuckerberg’s reply has some merit to it: Facebook wants to respond to the dustup with a product fix. Rather than simply telling users what he intends to change, he’d rather go ahead and make that change.

read more

speakingoffaith:

Jacqueline Novogratz’s Favorite Teachers
Nancy Rosenbaum, associate producer

In response to Krista’s interview with Mike Rose, many people shared stories of teachers who noticed a talent or interest and encouraged their students to develop it in ways that opened up doors of possibility. Likewise, Jacqueline Novogratz, an upcoming guest on SOF, tells stories about three of her most influential teachers on My Teacher My Hero.

Novogratz runs the Acumen Fund — a philanthropic venture capital fund that invests in scalable entrepreneurial businesses in developing countries. Krista’s interview with Novogratz will serve as the next installment in our evolving “Ethics of Aid” series. We had our pre-edit listen yesterday and are planning to put the show on the air in late January, so stay tuned.