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- Mr Putin was accused of avoiding phone calls from world leaders including Mr Cameron;
- America was last night considering imposing further sanctions as Mr Obama warned that he was prepared to “increase the costs” to Russia;
- Footage emerged of a Buk anti-aircraft missile launcher being driven into rebel-held Torez in eastern Ukraine just two hours before the crash.
- Video and audio emerged purporting to contain footage of Russian-backed, rebels saying they had mistakenly shot down the jet.
- Mr Putin categorically denied any link to the attack and suggested that Ukraine was partly responsible. “This tragedy would not have happened if there was peace in the country,” he said.
- Britain sent air accident investigators to Ukraine along with specialist police to retrieve and repatriate corpses.
At the White House, Mr Obama suggested that the missile launcher used to shoot down the plane was from Russia, and that those who fired it may have been trained in Russia.
He said: “Nearly 300 innocent lives were taken, men, women, children, infants who had nothing to do with the crisis in Ukraine. Their deaths are an outrage of unspeakable proportions.
“A group of separatists can’t shoot down military transport planes without sophisticated equipment and sophisticated training, and that is coming from Russia.”
Challenging Mr Putin to stop supplying the arms to the separatists, he said: “The violence that is taking place there is facilitated in large part because of Russian support and they have the ability to move those separatists in a different direction. If Mr Putin makes a decision that we are not going to allow heavy armaments and the flow of fighters into Ukraine across the Ukrainian-Russian border then it will stop.”
Mr Cameron said: “It is an absolutely appalling, shocking, horrific incident that has taken place. We have got to get to the bottom of what happened, and how this happened. If as seems possible this was brought down then those responsible must be held to account. We must lose no time in doing that.”
Sir Kim Darroch, the Prime Minister’s national security adviser, chaired an emergency meeting with officials from across Whitehall, including police and representatives from the intelligence agencies, to assess the situation.
A No 10 spokesman said: “While it is too early to be categoric about the cause of the disaster, the growing weight of evidence suggests that MH17 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile and that this was fired from near Torez, in territory controlled by the separatists.”
According to reports, a unit of heavily armed rebels has cordoned off a large section of the crash site and is denying access to international investigators.
A Downing Street spokesman said: “This investigation must be swift, transparent and credible. Six investigators from the UK Air Accident Investigation Branch will arrive in Kiev tomorrow to provide assistance.”
Mark Lyall Grant, Britain’s ambassador to the UN, said: “We urge Russia to reflect on the situation it has created, of destabilising a neighbouring country. Let us hear today a clear and unequivocal condemnation from Russia of these armed groups.” | Both David Cameron and Barack Obama call for Mr Putin to allow the crash site to be 'properly investigated' amid reports separatists were denying investigators access |
truly goes all out for birthdays.
The "Dark Horse" singer and an entourage of close friends partied in Vegas Monday night at XS nightclub to celebrate a pal's birthday.
spinning at the deejay booth, Perry, 29, went incognito in a black handkerchief mask, sipping cocktails and dancing with her pals.
"Even though she was on stage, most people didn't know she was there," says a source. "She was twerking really hard ⦠and Diplo played 'Dark Horse.' "
Earlier in the evening, the pop star – in a blue and purple-colored cocktail dress – sipped on Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label with Diplo and 14 friends at Andrea's at Encore.
Kicking off the night's festivities, the group shared Wagyu beef and sushi and finished their meal with an ice cream flight and a flaming Mt. Fuji dessert. | The "Birthday" singer and the DJ celebrated a friend's special day on Monday night |
If you had to choose one word to describe America’s economic expansion, now in its fifth year, you should go with “halting.”
Economic growth and job gains impress one day and then disappoint the next. The upshot: growth that might be considered acceptable during normal times has instead appeared painfully slow for a recovery from the deepest recession in generations.
The mixed messages in the data has prevented analysts, market participants, and the rest of us from getting a handle on what is going on with the economy. Consider the whipsawing of GDP data in recent quarters. The second half of 2013 yielded the strongest six-month growth since the recession, and then the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that the economy shrank by nearly 3% in the first quarter of 2014.
That kind of drop in output in the middle of an economic expansion is nothing short of unprecedented. It only occurred one other time in history, and that took place during the very same weak expansion—back in 2011.
At the same time, job growth has continued to accelerate, averaging 207,000 new jobs over the past 12 months—the largest 12-month average at any point since the recovery began.
Simply put, you can’t have job growth without commensurate economic growth, and vice versa. Well, this week the other shoe finally dropped, with a slew of data showing that the U.S. economy is settling into cruise control rather than heading towards a ditch.
First, we had Case-Shiller data released Tuesday, which showed that home price increases are slowing but strong, just as one would expect as the housing market normalizes. That was followed by a release in consumer confidence index data from the Conference Board, which showed an increase from 86.4 in June to 90.9 in July. By comparison, the average reading in 2013 was 73.2, and it was at 67.1 in 2012.
Then, on Wednesday, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the economy expanded at an annual rate of 4% in the second quarter, and that it shrank in the fourth quarter by 2.1% rather than the previously reported 2.9%. So, we have had above-trend economic growth in three of the past four quarters, making the continued growth in employment seem much more understandable and giving some credence to the explanation that poor weather led to the first-quarter economic contraction.
The Federal Reserve followed all of this data with an announcement that it would cut its monthly purchases of mortgage and U.S. government debt by $10 billion per month. The Fed is now buying just $25 billion per month in bonds and preparing to end its quantitative easing stimulus program in October of this year. The Fed’s statement gave a nod to the improvement in economic data, acknowledging that “inflation has moved somewhat closer to the Committee’s longer-run objective” of 2%, but stressing that the labor market was still a long way from its full-employment goal of 5.2% to 5.6%.
In other words, the Fed is still on course to end QE, but it sees no reason to raise short-term interest rates in the near future. Inflation is low, below the Fed’s target even, while unemployment is falling and the economy is in position to achieve consistent growth in the next couple of quarters. While no one can predict the future, the data is hinting at the coming of rosier days, more so than at any point in the past five years. | We might be not be in the fast lane, but at least we know where we're going. |
When Matt Lauer sat down with General Motors’ GM CEO Mary Barra in late June, he asked the automaker’s first female leader:
You said in an interview not long ago that your kids said they’re going to hold you accountable for one job, and that is being a mom. Given the pressure at General Motors, can you do both well?
Barra graciously answered the question, telling Lauer that she has a great team, a wonderful family and a supportive husband. Notably, she didn’t turn that question back on Lauer to ask how he handles his demanding work schedule at NBC and still manages to be a good father.
Male executives almost never hear that question. MongoDB’s now-former CEO Max Schireson can attest to that.
The head of the database company decided to step down Tuesday after asking himself how he can balance the dual demands of fatherhood and running a company.
“As a male CEO, I have been asked what kind of car I drive and what type of music I like, but never how I balance the demands of being both a dad and a CEO,” wrote Schireson in a blog post explaining why he decided to step down as the chief executive for MongoDB.
Women are still the focus of the “having it all” debate and questions of whether or not they can be wildly successful at both a high-powered job and day-to-day parenting. Now their male counterparts are asking the same question of themselves.
Schireson, who helped grow the database company into a billion-dollar business, is on pace to fly 300,000 miles this year between the normal CEO travel duties and commuting from his home in Palo Alto, Calif. to the company’s New York City office.
All that time on the road adds up to many hours and days away from his family, including three kids.
“During that travel, I have missed a lot of family fun, perhaps, more importantly, I was not with my kids when our puppy was hit by a car, or when my son had (minor and successful, and of course unexpected) emergency surgery.”
He credits his wife for helping to pick up the slack when he was away. Not an easy task considering her high-pressure role as a doctor and Stanford professor.
“Friends and colleagues often ask my wife how she balances her job and motherhood,” Schireson wrote. “Somehow, the same people don’t ask me.”
Questions like these have gnawed at women, who openly debate the value of work and family. Sheryl Sandberg has encouraged women to “lean in.” Cover articles in national magazines have delved into the minutiae of making the right choice as a mom and a professional, not to mention the countless blog posts in response to both.
While it’s enviable that Schireson can step down as CEO to simply work “normal full time” as vice chairman, the fact that a male CEO is asking the same questions that a female CEO might ask is an important step towards leveling the playing field for top executives, regardless of their gender.
It’s time for the “having it all” debate to move beyond gender. The math is the same, as Schireson concludes, whether you’re male or female:
Will that cost me tens of millions of dollars someday? Maybe. Life is about choices. Right now, I choose to spend more time with my family and am confident that I can continue to have an meaningful and rewarding work life while doing so. | MongoDB's Max Schireson knew he couldn't have it all, and so he resigned from his CEO position. |
FORTUNE — The coming year will likely be another difficult one for Sony Corp SNE .
According to an earnings release, the Japanese electronics company is expecting it will lose ¥50 billion ($489 million), defying analysts initial projections that the company would turn a profit of ¥59 billion.
The Japanese technology giant also said it will step up its restructuring plan this year and will leave some unprofitable segments.
Sony announced it had lost $1.25 billion for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2014. Next year’s losses will mean the firm has posted losses in five out of six years. For the fiscal year ending in 2013 Sony posted earnings of ¥41.5 ($406 million).
MORE: Car buyers are still waiting for the no-haggle revolution
The company’s stock price was down nearly 5% before the market opened.
The downturn in Sony’s fortunes can be attributed partially to the downturn in sales of its consumer products, such as televisions. Strong sales of smartphones and the Playstation 4 gaming console helped, buts were not nearly enough to make up for other losses.
The devaluation of the yen has also helped Sony’s results over the past two years, the Journal noted. Other Japanese multinational corporations have also benefited from the weaker yen, but with the currency now stabilizing, that strength will no longer be available. | Slower consumer sales create problems for the Japanese electronics behemoth. |
Jake Drage arrives at Indonesian court.
A West Australian man was speeding when his motorbike collided with another in Indonesia, killing a local mother, a court has heard.
Jake Drage, 23, has appeared in court for the first time since the June 30 crash and says he has converted to Islam while in custody.
The former personal trainer is charged with "reckless" driving causing the death of a West Java woman who was riding pillion on a motorcycle with her teenage daughter.
A smiling Drage arrived at court on Tuesday, clean shaven and wearing black pants and a white shirt.
He told reporters he felt fine, and thanked them for paying attention to his case.
Asked to state his religion by the judge, Drage answered in Indonesian: "Learning Islam."
Prosecutor Eka Aryanta is pressing charges that could see the Australian spend up to six years in jail if he's found guilty.
He told the court Drage was heading for a surf when his speeding bike collided with the other motorcycle.
"Because of the high speed, the accident was unavoidable," the prosecutor said.
"The victim was thrown and hit the asphalt, and there was blood everywhere.
"Jake screamed, `Oh my God!' while the victim was helped by bystanders."
Drage's family has said he will plead not guilty.
His mother, Tiena Drage, who rushed to her son's side soon after the crash, was in court on Tuesday.
Drage's lawyer, Michael Hartono, told reporters his client had converted to Islam during his long detention in the police cell and attended weekly Koran recitals.
"His family, in this case his mother, hasn't made a big deal of Jake becoming a Muslim," he said.
"What matters most is that he's healthy, he's fine and he's on the right path.
"Regarding the case, Jake tells me that he just wants this to be over soon."
The trial continues next week with the prosecution calling its witnesses.
A spokesman for the Drage family, Chris Gabelish, says Jake is doing well despite the long ordeal.
The family is happy that the matter is now before the court, given the time it has taken to get to this stage," he said in a statement.
"We look forward to Jake having the opportunity to present his case.
"Jake sends his thanks to the many people who have sent him love and support."
Do you have any news photos or videos? | West Australian man Jake Drage is finally having his day in court after his arrest in June over a fatal motorbike crash in Indonesia. |
FORTUNE — Chairman Ben Bernanke’s testimony to Congress on Wednesday was a masterful attempt to make distinctions that economists rightly value but markets repeatedly blur. Expect him to continue to press them as he tries to prepare the economy for an eventual reduction in exceptional support from the Federal Reserve. Yet one of the most important distinctions of all remains unanswered.
Bernanke went to great pains again on Wednesday to remind us all that Fed tapering does not mean Fed tightening — a distinction that he highlighted a few weeks ago by contrasting an easing off a car’s accelerator with a tap of the brakes.
He also stressed that the tweaking of Fed policy tools (including experimental market purchases of securities, very low policy rates, and aggressive forward policy guidance) are subject to different timetables. Moreover, there was nothing “preset” about the Fed’s policy intentions. Indeed, the institution “would be prepared to employ all of its tools, including an increase [my emphasis] in the pace of purchases for a time.”
MORE: Why the threat of a ‘currency war’ is dead
Adding to his message of responsive policy accommodation, Bernanke highlighted the difference between the operational notion of policy “triggers” and the less severe notion of “thresholds.” The former would imply an immediate and automatic tightening of monetary policy. That is not what the Fed is pursuing. Instead, it is focused on thresholds which would “lead the [Fed’s policymaking] Committee to consider whether the [economic] outlook … justified such an increase.”
Finally, Bernanke distinguished between stronger data (such as the decline in the unemployment rate since September and the related average monthly job gains of 200,000 this year) and the overall assessment of the health of the economy. On the latter, he rightly noted that “the jobs situation is far from satisfactory.” Also, when it comes to the other part of the Fed’s dual mandate, the challenge could well be “very low inflation” rather than high inflation.
These distinctions are aimed at reducing the inclination of investors to prematurely push market interest rates to their normalized “terminal values” — and understandably so.
As illustrated by the dislocations that followed the more hawkish Bernanke comments of May 22nd and June 19th, a premature tightening of financial conditions would do more than expose the underlying fragility of capital markets and financial intermediation; it would also undermine what remains a fragile process of economic healing and recovery in the United States and beyond.
MORE: Interest rates 101: Why the party is over
Have no doubts, Bernanke is signaling that the Fed is both willing and able to remain accommodative for a long time. Indeed, unlike some prior statements from Fed officials, Wednesday’s testimony essentially bypassed what Bernanke had repeatedly referred to earlier as the “costs and risks” of the unconventional monetary policy. In the process, he left open the most important distinction of all.
One of the most difficult questions facing the U.S. (and the global) economy relates not to policy willingness/ability but, rather, policy effectiveness. In essence, it remains to be seen whether the expected benefits of all these unconventional monetary measures will materialize, and will do so before the risk of collateral damage becomes too large.
Unfortunately, policy effectiveness is not an outcome that central banks are able to secure on their own. Given the triple challenges facing western economies — namely, insufficient aggregate demand, lagging structural reforms, and residual pockets of excessive leverage and debt overhangs — what central banks are doing could well be necessary but certainly is not sufficient.
To succeed, central banks need the support of politicians and other policy-making entities. Here, unfortunately, most western economies are still nowhere near meeting the required duo of willingness and ability, let alone get to effectiveness.
Mohamed A. El-Erian is the CEO and co-chief investment officer of PIMCO. | Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke tells Congress he's willing to continue loose monetary policy if necessary. But what about policy effectiveness? |
A house that pokes its horned and scaly head out of its shingly shell deep in a forest as if foraging for food sounds like the stuff of dingly dell dreams or Hobbity nightmares: a home that might be a den for elves or some child-eating witch. It is quite a sight, this unexpected log cabin emerging from beside a stream in the lakeland depths of southern Sweden's Glaskogen nature reserve. It almost seems to be alive: if you stop and listen hard, you can almost hear it breathing. But, no, it's only the winter wind whispering through the silver birches.
The cabin is, in fact, a summer escape for Maartje Lammers and Boris Zeisser, principals of the Rotterdam-based practice 24H Architecture, and their eight-year-old daughter. They bought an 18th-century fisherman's cottage in the Arjangs Commun, Varmland, four years ago, and set about transforming it.
There was, though, one small problem: local bylaws meant they could only extend the cabin by 30 square metres, to prevent over-development in a sensitive area invaded by Dutch and German families in the summer. Not that you see many Dutch, Germans or anyone else in the forest at this time of the year. Nature keeps its own season here, leaving the Lammers-Zeisser cabin to fend for itself.
To gain the extra space needed to make the cabin a decent size, and to take full advantage of the view over the adjacent stream, Lammers and Zeisser hit on the idea of an extending house. The original cabin is now the bedroom, while the turtle-like 30 sq-metre extension can be expanded using pulleys and a retracting steel frame mounted on roller-bearings. In this way, the living room can be projected over the stream without breaking building laws because this part of the house has no foundations and stands clear of the ground.
The family can open the windows of the cabin's head wide and sit above the meandering stream. When they return south in the winter, they pull the head back in, and the cabin is, once again, no bigger than is allowed.
The architects call their unusual summer home the Dragspelhuset, or "accordion house", and, although this is the place they go to escape the rest of the world, the cabin has caught the eye of the international architectural media. The clever thing about this house is that it is a game played by knowing architects. It bubbles with references to the work of organicists such as Bruce Goff, Antoni Gaudí, Frank Lloyd Wright and Imre Makovecz, as well as to the joyous pranks of Frank Gehry. And yet it feels as if it could belong nowhere else in the world but beside this stream in the vastness of a Swedish nature reserve.
Its environmental footprint is small: cooking is by propane gas; heating by a wood-fuelled stove, whose chimney sticks out of the house's retracting head; and the lavatory is a hut, without so much as a septic tank, reached via a path through the trees. The stream feeds a hot-tub and is used for bathing. If the Lammers-Zeissers are serious about spending more time here in winter, they will surely need to build a wooden sauna.
The red cedar shingles that form the lizard-like skin of the cabin have been imported from Canada. This might sound odd in a land where trees stretch out as far as the eye can see, but the local timber is soft and needs to be repainted pretty much every year to keep it in good condition. Understandably, Lammers and Zeisser, did not want to spend their summers bogged down by DIY. Whether lashed by rain or covered in snow, the cedar skin of the cabin will emerge resplendent each summer.
If the exterior is eye-catching, the interior is a delight, its sinuous walls lined with silver birch laths, and draped, like a Sami tent, with reindeer skins. The furniture is lightweight and modern, the lighting powered by solar panels, and the sense of space far greater than you might imagine.
It is delightful to see what urbane architects can do with a primitive cabin in a rural setting and without recourse to sophisticated technology. But, then, between them, Lammers and Zeisser have worked for one of Holland's top architectural practices, Erick van Egeraat, for the inventive firm Mecanoo, and the endlessly self-reinventing Dutch globalist, Rem Koolhaas.
Here, in Sweden, they are showing how architecture is both a serious exercise and a happy game to play. Children of all ages will fall in love with a house like this: it is a magical place. Houses normally only come alive, or appear to express emotions, in fairytales or stories by Edgar Allan Poe, yet this one does both, while the fact that it tucks its head in when the temperature drops and hibernates under the snow in winter makes it all the more enchanting.
There is, too, an honourable tradition of architects building escapist cabins for themselves. The most famous, perhaps, is Le Corbusier's tiny cabin at Roquebrune on the Côte d'Azur. It might be modest, yet it expresses many of the fundamentals of this epoch-making architect's work.
While they were making the "accordion house", Lammers and Zeisser began thinking of how they might apply the same technique elsewhere. Could larger, commercial buildings transform themselves overnight from one function to another? These are early days, but the principle is intriguing, and especially so in Holland where space, unlike Sweden, is at a premium. Imagine if city houses and apartment blocks could expand and contract when necessary to allow a guest room, or if they could sprout balconies in summer that could be retracted in winter, or if we could rearrange the plan of our homes when we got fed up with them.
There are so many possibilities for a Swedish "accordion house" style of building: Lammers and Zeisser have only just begun to scratch the surface. | It grows in summer and retreats into its shell in winter. Jonathan Glancey visits Sweden's 'accordion' cabin. |
If ever a city was shaped by one man it is Bristol. Britain's greatest engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel left an indelible mark on the place, with the Great Western Railway, the SS Great Britain, the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and the 'Floating Harbour'.
Everyone recognises Brunel's achievement but less thought has been given to the source of his genius. Could it in part be attributable to the fact that he was a child of mixed heritage with an English mother and a father who came to Britain a refugee from revolutionary France?
He later returned to the land of his father to train in the superb French system of engineering schools, but found in Britain the economic dynamism and the spirit of openness which allowed him to bring his brilliant but risky projects to fruition.
Brunel is a classic example of what we would call "intercultural innovation", the notion that when you bring strange or different elements together you have the ingredients for a divergent way of thinking, the prerequisite of inventiveness.
Great cities throughout history have held an attraction for outsiders drawn by both the urges to make something of their lives and the freedom to lose themselves in the crowd, and it is from these restless, marginal groups that many of the social, economic and cultural breakthroughs that shape our life have emerged.
But how much do cities themselves know and understand of this phenomenon? Too little, we would say, which is why Comedia, with the backing of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, has launched a major piece of international research - The Intercultural City: Making the Most of Diversity. Over the coming year, we will be trying to get under the skin of a selection of British and international cities including Bristol, Newcastle, Oslo, Auckland and Melbourne to try and find out the extent to which their growing cultural diversity is, or might become, a source of creativity, innovation and ultimately competitive advantage.
It is an issue we feel is not getting the attention it deserves, particularly from the people with the responsibility for the future of Britain's cities. The current debate around cultural diversity seems to be dominated by those concerned with its costs whilst many of the arguments in support of its benefits seem a little tired and dated. The questioning of the prevailing creed of "multiculturalism" by Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, has opened up a valuable space for fresh thinking and it is into this that we have launched The Intercultural City. From multiculturalism, which, however unintentionally, seems to have institutionalised separation based at best on benign indifference, we argue for a system which recognises an emerging reality of people with mixed cultures and heritage, and which incentivises cultural interchange.
For our cities, this is not simply a pious call for more understanding, but a driving economic imperative. Based on his experience of many blue chip companies who are now rapidly diversifying their workforce because it raises their performance and keeps them ahead, our US collaborator Gregg Zachary has said the choice for the future will be "mongrelise or die".
Companies are recognising the "diversity advantage" but what of our cities? Being open and cosmopolitan surely has to mean more than a few festivals and an exotic collection of restaurants. If, as US academic Richard Florida says, cities are now locked into a competition to attract the world's talent and hold on to their own, how prepared are British cities? How open are they to new people and ideas? What are the key networks and "intercultural change-agents" who bring people together and make things happen?
Which brings us back to Bristol, a historic port city which knows the value of trade in goods, ideas and, sadly, also people. In 2007 the city will make a powerful statement by commemorating the 200th anniversary of the end of the slave trade. It will lay to rest a grizzly chapter in its past and embrace a future with diversity and intercultural exchange set at the heart of its mission as a city. Bristol will be the first of a series of case studies through which Comedia will seek answers to exactly what it means to be an intercultural city. Andrew Kelly, head of the city's cultural development partnership believes Bristol's future lies in the marriage of science, art, technology and cultural diversity. He hopes the project will help find the new Brunels and advise the city on how to give the intercultural innovators of the future the right conditions to thrive.
And intercultural innovation can be found in many places. It could be amongst the software engineers or film and animation industries that have made Bristol their home but also amongst unsung social entrepreneurs and community activists. Over coming months, Comedia will profile 30 intercultural innovators from Bristol's past, 30 from the present and 30 who may shape its future.
The omens are good. A decade ago, "the Bristol Sound" shot to critical acclaim. Comprising a collection of bands including Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky and Roni Size, their music grew out of a remarkable network of multi-ethnic musicians. They turned their diverse experiences into something very new and influential.
· Phil Wood is a partner in Comedia, a think tank on intercultural cities | Our cities can profit from the creativity that cultural diversity brings, says Phil Wood. |
In 1966, just as the Sixties started swinging, Helmut Newton shot a series of photographs for the now defunct high-fashion magazine, Queen. As the images were being laid out for publication, Jocelyn Stevens, the owner of Queen, paid a surprise visit to the office. In his lively memoir, Autobiography, Newton takes up the story.
'Jocelyn sees the layouts ... picks them up, throws them on the floor, and screams: "What are these masturbating women doing in my magazine, lying on the floor, while phallic symbols are exploding outside the windows?"'
So incensed was Stevens that he tore a telephone out of the wall and hurled it through the window. 'One never knows the reaction pictures will provoke among the higher echelons at magazines,' writes Newton dryly, his Germanic poise as unruffled then as it was in the decades that followed, when his consistently sexual provocations constantly made him the photographer that feminists loved to hate.
Looking now at the cream of Newton's fashion photography, collected in a new book by his widow, June, and called, with typical Newtonian candour, A Gun for Hire, it is difficult to see what all the fuss was about. Until, that is, you realise how far ahead of his time the cavalier snapper was in his depiction of style as an expression of ritualised sexuality, and fashion as a fetishistic pursuit.
Way back before the likes of Terry Richardson blurred the lines between fashion and hardcore pornography, making explicit the link between the two, Helmut Newton was doing a similar kind of thing for soft porn, albeit in a more stage-managed and highly symbolic way. For nigh-on 40 years after he outraged his employer at Queen, Newton remained the undisputed king of kinkiness. Right up until his sudden death last year, aged 82 - his car slamming into a wall on Sunset Boulevard after he suffered a heart attack while leaving the Chateau Marmont Hotel - he specialised in a kind of obsessively stylised sexual voyeurism that he constantly refined, but never diluted.
Newton was a photographer who never saw the point of not overstating the obvious: in one infamous shoot, he placed a horse's saddle on a beauty posing in riding jodhpurs on a bed on all fours; in another the women sported medical corsets and braces as Cronenbergian sexual accessories. 'I hate good taste,' he once famously remarked. 'It's the worst thing that can happen to a creative person.'
And yet, for all his provocation, his photographs were seldom vulgar. Sometimes, though, there is something oddly old-fashioned about Newton's fashion-fantasy world, something a bit James Bond, and, sometimes, even a bit Milk Tray. It seems no accident that he ended up living in Monte Carlo, that semi-mythical haunt of playboys and gamblers.
'Like all truly great photographers, he sometimes took bad pictures,' attests David Bailey, who knew and admired Newton. 'Many fashion photographers today are just illustrators, who illustrate someone else's ideas. It's photography by committee. I call it perfected mediocrity. The great fashion photographers would never work like that; they need to take risks, to push the boundaries, and Helmut was always pushing the boundaries.'
Newton, however, never made any great claimson behalf of his work. 'Some people's photography is an art,' he once said. 'But mine is not... I'm a gun for hire.' Later, he told an interviewer: 'Art is a dirty word in photography. All this fine-art crap is killing it already.' And yet, the strictly formalised nature of his best images meant he was more often compared to Surrealist painters than to other photographers.
Over five decades, Newton created a recognisable world of the imagination, a kind of Newtonian universe people by Amazonian women engaged in odd, often seemingly meaningless pursuits against backgrounds that belonged in a Bond movie. Invariably, the women wore little or no clothing, tended towards the Teutonic in stature, and fetishistic in demeanour. Perhaps because of his relentless objectification - and worship - of the female form, feminist critics viewed his work with contempt, while art critics avoided it all together.
Revealingly, certain like-minded obsessives saw in it a dark, perverse imagination unbound by either good taste or aesthetic elitism. His photographs were best described by the dystopian novelist JG Ballard, as 'stills from an elegant and erotic movie, perhaps entitled 'Midnight at the Villa d'Este' or 'Afternoons in Super-Cannes', a virtual film that has never played at any theatre, but has screened itself inside our heads for the last 40 years'.
I ask David Bailey where he would place the late photographer in the grand scheme of things. 'He was really important because he redefined the nude. He was the first person to do that since, I suppose, Edward Weston, who did the nudes in the sand.'
What, though, of the purely commercial work, the fashion photography which he seemed to approach with the same seriousness of application as his personal projects? In her introduction to A Gun for Hire, June Newton, a renowned photographer herself, working under the name Alice Springs, insists that: 'The same creative process and energy have imbued all aspects of his work. He welcomed and respected the restrictions and requirements of his clients.'
The model and erstwhile Mrs Bailey, Marie Helvin, who was once tied to the mast of a sailingship by Newton, also attests to the crossover between his commercial and personal work.
'A lot of the shoots he did progressed from a fashion shoot to a nude shoot,' she laughs. 'He would finish taking the fashion shots then make the model strip and do a nude shoot in the very same set of poses. You can look at several of his nude photographs side by side with his magazine work and all that is different is the absence of clothing. The poses are exactly the same. He worked an idea for all he could get out of it, and they were such great ideas to begin with that he always got away with it.'
Though he genuinely seemed to hate the very notion of art photography, Newton was indeed a master of the high-concept idea. In the Eighties, his commercial work came into its own, a shoot for Thierry Mugler nodding to the Surrealists, film noir, German expressionist cinema and the ever-present iconography of S&M. 'He was so knowledgeable and such a storyteller,' continues Helvin, 'and he possessed an old-fashioned charm which immediately put you at ease. He had none of the aggression that often goes hand in hand with the job, but he was a master of the highly stylised shoot, where you had to hold a pose for ages, keep your fingers in exactly the same place. It is easy for that sort of photographer to forget that the person they are shooting is not simply an object, but he was never unpleasant or hectoring. A little gruff, maybe, but that's all.'
June Newton, though, who Helvin insists was the real agent for provocation in their romantic and professional double act, remembers 'the absolute torture' some of the girls had to go through for his art: 'There was one model who had to stand in stiletto heels with one foot on a car for ages. She was in agony, and, all the while, Helmut is shouting: "Don't dare move!" The models were the raw material he worked with, the bodies he moulded into the images he saw in his head. That's why he seldom worked with well-known models. He needed his own raw material in order to transform it into something unique.'
One wonders, of course, what unconscious forces were at work in all this manipulation and provocation. Newton's very first photograph, taken on a cheap box camera bought in Woolworths in 1932, when he was just 12, was of a local Berlin radio mast, toweringly phallic. His highly entertaining and beautifully written Autobiography, published in 2003, is a veritable cornucopia of sexual adventures - at least until he meets June.
As a youth, he was a keen swimmer and an even more keen masturbator, and writes with relish of the 'great roundness' and 'great beauty' of the taut swimmer's body. Likewise in his pre-pubescent fetishising of the girls' 'regulation black swimsuits', which he describes as 'not revealing at all, but that didn't stop them from being seductive. The suits were made of thin wool, which clung to the girls' bodies and dried very slowly. Because the suits stayed wet for a long time - particularly across the chest where there was an extra thickness of wool - the girls' nipples would stay erect.'
Even a cursory leaf through A Gun for Hire reveals a man in thrall to his formative desires. Here is an oiled Amazonian model in a shiny PVC swimsuit and what looks like a mourning veil. She is shot, like many of his subjects, from below, her bare thighs as taut and toned as any Olympianswimmer. Here is a blond, pigtailed Heidi in shiny black stilettos, sheer stockings and fitted black minidress, towering above the tower blocks in the middle distance. The models are implausibly fresh-faced, but Amazonian in their dimensions and Aryan in their hauteur. Even at their most innocent, they are strikingly sexualised. Was he, I ask June Newton, as diplomatically as possible, a sexual obsessive, a voyeur with a camera?
'Oh no, he wasn't nearly as dark as his photographs suggest,' she laughs. 'But he did have a dark side. We all do. But he was also quite thoughtful about his work. When he did the medical portraits, the models in surgical corsets, he thought that maybe he had gone too far. I was the one who said: "No, you must finish it."'
Sometimes, though, there is something altogether spookier in the scenarios these implausibly beautiful mannequins act out - a kind of deadness. The French philosopher Roland Barthes saw the photograph as a little death, a still life that freezes the present moment into an eternal past, and prefigures the stillness of the corpse. Even in Newton's most sexual images, you can catch glimpses of this lifelessness. Here is another towering beauty, her eyes glazed as if sleepwalking, her face and breasts veiled in diaphanous white silk, her curves constricted and exaggerated by a tight white corset. A doomed bride? A sacrificial virgin? A drugged plaything?
Interestingly, Ballard places Newton firmly in the Surrealist tradition of Delvaux or Magritterather than August Sander or Cartier-Bresson, and certainly his models constantly seem lost, surprised, or entranced, his exotic backdrops oddly incongruous, as if we are suddenly being afforded a glimpse of a bigger narrative whose contours we can only guess at. That narrative, as Ballard points out, takes place first of all inside Newton's head, and is then passed over to the viewer, who transposes their own version on to it, the process of association as mysterious as the unconscious itself.
'Helmut always had these often complex ideas long before he found his people,' elaborates June, 'and he would carry the ideas around as if letting them gestate in his head. I remember him discussing the Arthur Schnitzler novel Dream Story, on which Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut is based, and saying, "Don't forget, everything that happens is in the head." That, I think, was the key to how he worked.'
I ask June if she has a favourite Helmut Newton photograph. 'I suppose it has to be Self-Portrait With Wife and Model,' she says, though I was hoping she would choose my own personal favourite, which is an effortlessly erotic portrait of her, baring her breasts and exhaling a cloud of smoke. His erotic photographs of his wife often possess a tenderness that is absent in the more Teutonic nudes. Was she ever jealous of his models or his extravagant sexual fantasies that they enacted? 'No. Not at all. He always said: "You can fuck the models, or you can work with them, but not both at the same time."'
Would it be fair to say he was in awe of the oppositesex, and that is why they invariably appeared as Amazons, as larger-than-life creations?
'No, I'd say they were in awe of him on the whole. The only woman he was in awe of was Margaret Thatcher. There are always exceptions,' she laughs.
He was, attests Helvin, a very funny guy, though disarmingly vague at times, as if his thoughts were constantly elsewhere. 'Once he was dining at Mr Chow's in LA, where all the hip people hung out, and I walked in with Warren Beatty. He shook hands with Warren, and said: "I can't place you, but know your face from somewhere." I mean, of all people...'
Bailey, too, attests to the humour. 'He never bloody paid for anything. It was a standing joke, like that awful little white scarf he wore. It became part of his act. He reminded me of Billy Wilder, the great director, in that he was great fun to be around but you always learnt so much, and heard such great stories.'
The funniest series in A Gun for Hire is a shoot for US Vogue, where he couples a towering and statuesque blonde with a diminutive, nerdy-looking guy, perhaps poking fun at himself. 'He was intrigued by what he called "the upset of scale",' says June, 'and he loved stuff like the Doctor Cyclops film, where an evil scientist shrinks people. His sense of humour was always there in the photographs, though the critics never seemed to pick up on it. At one point,' she laughs, 'he wanted to call the Domestic Nudes series "Housewives in Bondage". That was pure Helmut.'
It sounds, I say, like they had a lot of fun together. 'Oh, yes, we had fun,' she laughs, 'and we truly enjoyed being together, just as we enjoyed our solitude. I'm not enjoying it any more, though,' she adds, and you can sense the absence that this larger-than-life man left behind. 'The thing is,' she says, getting close to the essence of Helmut Newton, and his self-styled role as photographic provocateur, 'he never stopped to consider what he was other than a photographer, and as a photographer, he was free to do whatever he wanted to do.'
· Helmut Newton:A Gun for Hire is published by Taschen at £19.99. To order a copy for £18.99 with free p&p, call the Observer Books service on 0870 836 0885 or go to observer.co.uk/bookshop | Feminists hated him. Critics called him a genius, whose use of Amazonian models and fetishistic imagery embraced sex and Surrealism. Now, with her new book celebrating Helmut Newton's 70-year career, his widow Alice Springs tells Sean O'Hagan how her husband redefined fashion photography. |
In 1955 an ambitious exhibition of photographs from all around the world titled The Family of Man was mounted at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Visitors would find Robert Doisneau's chic young Parisian lovers displayed next to photographs of tribal people rubbing noses in New Guinea, or a woman and her baby in the Congo jungle hung alongside Irving Penn's photo of a socialite mother taken for Vogue. The aim of the show was to act as "a mirror of the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world".
The essential oneness of mankind was not very much in evidence in the US States at the time: that same year, Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger led to the birth of the modern civil rights movement. It was even less evident in 19th-century Europe when photographers first set off for distant lands with their recently invented cameras, and an intriguing exhibition at the Shapero Gallery in London provides examples of the west's early fascination with ethnic difference.
For over a year the curator, Roland Belgrave, has been haunting auctions and fairs seeking out photographic portraits taken in remote regions between 1850 and 1900. The resulting exhibition of 460 images has been given the nicely resonant title Face to Face. Early photographers tried to bring Europeans face to face with other races and cultures, but the encounter between those wielding the camera and their chosen subjects was rarely as balanced as this term suggests. Photography developed in tandem not only with tourism (Thomas Cook first organised trips abroad in the early 1860s), but also with anthropology and imperialism.
Anthropologists soon recognised that photography could be a very useful tool in their attempts to catalogue the different peoples of the world. Artists previously employed to provide illustrations tended to pay more attention to clothes than to facial features, with the result, one anthropologist complained, that "native races from different parts of the world ordinarily resemble Europeans accoutred in queer costume, and besmeared with yellow, brown, black". The camera would provide a more accurate record. Subjects were sometimes set against improvised rulers, the easier to take measurements, but Belgrave has avoided such images because his interest is aesthetic rather than anthropological.
Photography was also used to provide a record of empire. The Bombay Photographic Society was founded (by and for Europeans) as early as 1854, and one of its members, a civil servant called William Johnson, published a photographic record of The Oriental Races and Tribes, Residents and Visitors of Bombay in 1863. The camera was used less for strictly anthropological reasons than to catalogue possessions, namely the various peoples acquired by the British Crown from the East India Company in 1858. The Indian Office subsequently published an eight-volume gazetteer of The People of India (1868-75), sheets from which are included in the exhibition. Although the book was undertaken at the request of Lord Canning, who wanted a souvenir of his time in India as governor-general, the text accompanying the photographs suggests a more practical motive. There are some distinctly unscientific observations about the character and habits of different races - their loyalty and biddability, for example - while others are recommended for their services to the Raj. The Mochis, for example, are described as "the very lowest caste of Hindoos", but are nevertheless "very useful members of the community" since they supply sahibs with "excellent shooting gaiters".
India is strongly represented in the exhibition, but it also includes ethnological photographs and formal portraits from China, Tibet, Japan, Africa, the Middle and Far East, the Americas, Oceania, and even Europe. Identifying these subjects is not always easy. A cloaked tribal chief staring out fiercely from beneath Beardsleyesque facial tattoos is clearly a Maori, but what about the row of small black boys in suits and top hats, identified merely as "Premieres Communicants"? And would you be able to place the spectacularly robed woman whose head-dress appears to incorporate a maypole? "Femme Druse" is written on the mount, possibly by one of the Bonfils family who set up a photographic company in Beirut in 1867 and eventually had branches all over the Middle East.
We rarely know the names of the sitters, but those who took the photographs are also sometimes difficult to identify with any degree of certainty, partly because many of them were amateurs and they tended not to sign their work. Major names are, however, well represented. The earliest photographs on display were taken in Madagascar by the Reverend William Ellis (1794-1872) of the London Missionary Society.
Something of a polymath, Ellis set up the first printing press in Tahiti, collected specimens for the Royal Botanical Gardens, and crossed swords with Byron in the Quarterly Review on the subject of missionary work in Hawaii, where he had baptised the Hawaiian king's mother. Ellis set off with his camera and Bible, returning with a large number of albumen prints to use as the basis for the woodblock illustrations for his Three Visits to Madagascar (1858). Unlike other 19th-century photographers, who tended to home in on the decorative otherness of their subjects, Ellis wanted to showcase the achievements of missionary work. Unregenerate savages were of little interest to him as a photographer, however exotic or picturesque they might be, and his preferred subjects were those Malagasy who had benefited from the civilising influence of Christianity, attired in western dress and ideally doing needlework or attending Bible-reading classes.
Many of the Malagasy seem happy enough to pose in their European finery, and few of them look as despondent as some of the Australian Aboriginals taken by the German photographer JW Lindt (1845-1926). Born in Frankfurt, Lindt ran away to sea at the age of 17 and ended up in Australia, where after a brief career tuning pianos in the outback he apprenticed himself to a photographer. His photographs were awarded a gold medal at the Philadelphia International Exhibition in 1876 and rarely come on the market. The one in Face to Face depicts a group of three Aboriginal men artfully arranged against a painted studio backdrop of lakes and mountains. One holds a spear in a most unwarrior-like attitude; another, sitting on the floor, drapes a hand protectively over the torso of a third, who lies beside a clump of grass and stares balefully at the photographer.
This is a faintly disturbing picture to look at in the 21st century, and a similar sense of unease may be felt while contemplating some of the images of African women, who stand awkwardly with their arms folded over their naked breasts. It is as if they are aware they have become exhibits and this has made them self-conscious in a way they would not be while going about their daily business. Compare this, however, with the elegant Chinese opium smoker who regards the photographer with a glazed indifference; or the large group of Maoris, where the formal posture adopted by the adults (even the one who has moved) is in marked contrast to the casual poses of the small boys who loll nonchalantly against a hut and look as if they will scamper happily back into their lives as soon as the long exposure has been made.
Early photographic equipment could be both cumbersome and fragile, and chemicals, plates and paper could be disastrously affected by extremes of temperature and humidity. While photographing India in the 1860s, Samuel Bourne (1834-1912) needed 30 or more bearers in his train and sometimes had to work in a developing tent at temperatures of 54C. Bourne himself was not greatly interested in photographing people, whom he tended to introduce into his compositions merely to provide scale, but the company he formed with the established photographer John Shepherd in 1863 became famous for its portraits. Bourne and Shepherd started in Simla, then acquired premises in Calcutta, and they were soon recognised as the leading studio in India. Customers could order up prints from stock and have souvenir albums of local scenes and "Native Characters" assembled to take back to England. Bourne and Shepherd also became official photographers for the durbars, producing lavish commemorative volumes filled with portraits of maharajahs, nizams and nabobs.
Tourist photos were also popular in Japan, where perhaps the best known practitioner was the Italian-born Felice Beato (1825-1903). Having honed his craft in the Crimean war, Beato sailed to China with the British expeditionary force in the second opium war. Later, he set up a studio in Yokohama in 1863 to produce exquisite photographs of Japanese "types": geishas, musicians, peddlers, armour-clad warriors, and so on. Indigenous photographers soon set up shop alongside the western pioneers, notably Kusakabe Kimbei (1841-1934), whose work is of similar quality. Unlike photographs from other countries at this period, the Japanese ones were often beautifully hand-coloured, usually by local painters who had worried that photography would make them redundant.
Many of the finest portraits come from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where Charles Scowen & Co and WL Skeen & Co provided a service similar to that of Bourne and Shepherd in India. While Skeen's photograph of a beautiful young "Kandian Woman" may be generic, however, it seems also to be portraying an individual, perhaps because of the skilful way she has been posed and lit. Unlike some of the more straightforwardly ethnographic portraits, this is a picture that captures a personality rather than a mere type.
We undoubtedly look at these photographs in a way that those who took them could not imagine. Prints of the Singhalese woman were sold to tourists who had no interest in who the sitter was or what sort of life she led. Accustomed now to travel, and to meeting foreigners on more equal terms than our Victorian forebears did, we recognise the exoticism, but we also acknowledge a kinship. We like to imagine that our relationship with the sitters, even at the remove of well over a century, is more involved than that of the original photographer.
· Face to Face: 19th-century Portrait Photographs 1850-1900 is at the Shapero Gallery, London W1, until March 18. Details: 020-7493 0876. | Victorian photographers thought they were capturing exotic cultures on film - but their pictures tell us more about their own attitudes. Peter Parker reports. |
A tall, middle-aged man is propped against a wall inside a building on the gritty northern edge of Paris. He’s deep in discussion with a young woman sporting bright-green hair tied in pigtails; she’s sucking on a neon-blue lollipop and driving home a point to him with her hands.
The man listening intently to the artsy-looking twentysomething isn’t a talent agent or even a college professor — though he’s keenly interested in education. He is Xavier Niel, one of the richest people in France (estimated net worth: $7.8 billion), who achieved his wealth by disrupting his country’s telecommunications industry. Now Niel, 46, wants to upend another French institution: its notoriously rigid education system.
In September he opened a programming school called 42, a name derived from the 1970s classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which the answer to life’s mysteries is always 42. The school, in northern Paris (where Fortune found Niel chatting with students), breaks almost every rule of French matriculation: Tuition is zero. So, too, are prerequisites. Of the 70,000 young French who took 42’s application test, about 40% were high school dropouts. To underscore the school’s edgy feel, Niel (pronounced “nee-el”) had a pirate flag hoisted outside the building.
Niel says he was inspired to start his school not only because French companies report a chronic shortage of high-tech talent to hire, but also because some 200,000 youths drop out of school each year. Many, including Niel, believe that is because French education focuses on formalized, nationally controlled testing that favors workhorses over creative geeks and maverick innovators. The country that once churned out geniuses such as painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and composer Claude Debussy has struggled to create a Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs.
Niel sees technology skills as a way to even the playing field in France, not just for disadvantaged kids but also for middle-class and elite students who want to explore different career paths. “There’s a lack of social mobility,” he says. “If you are the son of a doctor, you will be a doctor.” By contrast, his new school is “a little subversive,” he says with a delighted grin.
Niel knows all about being subversive. He was raised in the modest suburb of Créteil, a far cry from Paris’s majestic avenues. And while the great majority of French CEOs come out of the grandes écoles, the equivalent of the Ivy League, Niel skipped college altogether and holed up at home with his computer, coding. “I started literally in a garage, alone,” he explains. “I had some luck.”
Niel developed sex-chat software (he was 18, after all) and other communication tools, which he sold to tech companies that provided content for France Telecom’s groundbreaking Minitel online service. At 26, he created France’s first ISP, WorldNet, and sold it for about $55 million in 2000. In 1991 he launched Iliad, the first French company to offer a “triple play” TV-phone-Internet service, naming it (in English, no less) Free. Last year Niel won the bid for France’s fourth mobile service and launched Free Mobile, offering a floor-smashing €20 (about $28) monthly plan for unlimited calls, far cheaper than other French services.
His competitors cried foul, but Niel couldn’t have cared less. Iliad’s market cap has ballooned 11-fold over the decade, to €9.8 billion ($13.5 billion), making Niel, who owns 55.3% of Iliad, immensely rich. Yet despite that (and even though he now owns a sizable chunk of France’s ultimate establishment newspaper, Le Monde), Niel retains his outsider image among French execs, having smashed his way into the elite. Niel is smart enough to know that image works to his advantage, as he throws his energies into new projects; his other company, Kima Ventures, invests in 100 startups a year.
“He is very un-French, but maybe that is why he has succeeded,” says Christophe Roquilly, a professor at EDHEC Business School in Lille. “He doesn’t accept the establishment’s state of mind.”
An antiestablishment culture pervades Niel’s school. During a recent boot camp for about 3,000 programmers, the floor was littered with inflatable mattresses and soda cans from students who’d hopped trains to Paris from the hinterlands and bunked there for weeks. About 1,000 will make the cut for a three-year programming course that begins in mid-November. Even then there will be few teachers or classes. Students sit in warehouse-size rooms at Apple computers, creating whatever program they dream up, in a kind of giant hackathon.
Not everyone is sold on the idea. Government rules dictate that since 42’s students need no high school diploma, the three-year courses will not have degree status. Wannabe students seem unconcerned. “I’ve been earning the SMIC [minimum wage] in different jobs for years,” says Clément Aupetit, 26, who did not finish high school. “This might open doors.” Conservative French corporations could be wary of recruiting Niel’s new army of coders. “Opening themselves to different profiles will be a big leap for them,” wrote one blogger on the French site Rude Baguette. Niel has not exactly ingratiated himself with France’s elites. He was once an investor in a chain of sex-toy shops; he spent a month in jail in 2004 on charges that he brokered prostitutes from his stores. The charges were later dropped.
But Niel is optimistic. If just a few students make it, he says, his investment — about €70 million ($96 million) so far — will be worth it.
And besides, Niel is already at work creating his next project, 1000Startups, which he claims will be the world’s biggest incubator and will open in 2016. “We don’t think we can change everything in France,” he says. “But we’ll have some impact.” There seems no better person to make that happen.
On students: “When these students ask, ‘Can you help me?’ we say, ‘No, you have to find the information yourself. You have it all here.’ ”
On France: “We [in France] had the competitive edge in digital education, but each year France’s digital ranking drops.”
On his school and investments: “You have to set up an ecosystem. We try to help all which is Internet related.”
This story is from the November 18, 2013 issue of Fortune. | Telecom entrepreneur Xavier Niel wants to shake up his home country's education system. |
Toynbee Studios, Aldgate, London E1
There used to be a hotel in Milan next door to La Scala. In the lucky bedrooms, you could enjoy rehearsals through the walls. You can now get a similar effect in Commercial Street, London E1. I enjoyed a little basso buffo, or perhaps it was a tragic B flat lament, from Die Entfuhrung, only muffled by new Crittall W20 hot-dipped galvanised transom windows with low E coating and inert Argon gas in the double-glazing cavity.
I was in the newly refurbished Toynbee Studios, latest evolution of the charmingly muddled, architecturally undistinguished but culturally fascinating Toynbee Settlement. This remote colony of High Victorian virtue was established in the Jewish and Irish ghettos of Whitechapel, east London in 1884. A 'university settlement', the idea was that pioneers from the educated middle classes should penetrate the badlands and, by example, provide inspiration for exotic Ashkenazim and bibulous Paddies.
Founders Samuel and Henrietta Barnett, do-gooders of Homeric aspect and ambition, named their project after historian and philanthropist Arnold Toynbee who gave the world the expression 'industrial revolution'. It was this revolution's social fallout that the Barnetts aimed to improve through arts-based sympathetic magic. Their Toynbee Hall was designed by the obscure Elijah Hoole in vicarage-gothic style. Here, craftsman Charles Robert Ashbee, son of erotomaniac Henry Spencer Ashbee, soon created his Guild of Handicraft which, more or less directly, led to the founding of the neighbouring Whitechapel Art Gallery.
Other Toynbee Settlers included RH Tawney, Clement Attlee, Giuglielmo Marconi, Lenin and William Beveridge. The WEA was founded here in 1903. The Citizens' Advice Bureau and Child Poverty Action Group emerged from Toynbee inspirations in 1949 and 1965, respectively. It is a Valhalla of Labour aristocracy, but all goes to show that resonantly mediocre architecture need be no impediment to social progress.
The new studios have been quietly inserted by Levitt Bernstein into a 1938 building designed by Ramsay MacDonald's son, Alister, who made a living out of cinemas (then, let us not forget, cutting-edge new media). To Nikolaus Pevsner, they were 'resolutely modernist', but this did not prevent crypto-fascist architect Reginald Blomfield, author of the scurrilous Modernismus (1934), from being a Toynbee supporter at the time.
The original idea of a collective with mixed resources has been maintained by Artsadmin, the clients for this £6m refurbishment, although 1938's 'darkrooms' have matured into 'digital media units' and the rooftop sports area has now become a generously glazed dance studio. A 280-seat theatre has been lightly titivated. On the first floor remains a decommissioned juvenile court, London's first, its cruise-liner panelling mocking, now as then, the troubled state of proletarian youth. There is a new staircase, subterranean creative hutches, a reworked foyer, obligatory caff and those handsome new windows.
If you think art is about defiance, theft and rebellion, not matched funding or local authority initiatives, there is a temptation to see Toynbee Studios as a template, designed not for real needs, but to tick administrative boxes. But, no. It is more subtle. Considerably more subtle than the Bilbao Guggenheim, for example. Almost nothing is visible from the street. Marvellously, the furniture has been bought off eBay: chapel chairs at a fiver each. Artsadmin bravely told me it wanted as little design as possible.
Are the Toynbee Studios a revival or a survival? What would Henrietta Barnett think? Soon after she built Toynbee Hall, she planned Hampstead Garden Suburb in its meeting room. The flash money of the City has still not reached gritty Commercial Street. At least Toynbee Studios stay true to old principles of urban improvisation... while the Barnetts' ghosts are in the suburbs.
· Artsadmin opens on Friday with 'Guerilla Girls on Tour' | Architecture: Founded by social reformer Henrietta Barnett, the latest take on Toynbee Hall mixes high ideals and pragmatism, says Stephen Bayley |
If you had to guess, what percentage of ideas for groundbreaking new products or services would you say are marketplace flops, or just never see the light of day? 50%? 80%? According to Mark Payne, it’s closer to 90%—and he’s had a ringside seat for many of them, since his firm, Fahrenheit 212, often gets called in to figure out why someone’s brilliant plan just isn’t working.
Payne and his team are behind a string of winning innovations at companies like Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Samsung, Procter & Gamble, General Electric, Citibank, Mattel, and American Express. In How to Kill a Unicorn, Payne sets out to explain in detail, with colorful case studies, why some new ideas take off like rockets while others fizzle.
First off, he’s no fan of the group brainstorming that most companies use to jump-start creativity. “Anyone who has bought into the happy-go-lucky myths about what a great creative process feels like would be puzzled by the way we come at it, if not downright mortified,” Payne writes. “Joyful romps where every idea is celebrated tend to fill rooms with Post-It notes rather than real value, so you won’t find them here.”
Instead, at Fahrenheit 212, each member of a team goes off on his or her own to think separately about the task at hand, and then meets with others to defend the results against everyone else’s skepticism.
It can get rough, and for a down-to-earth reason. “Ideas are treated not as precious pearls to be polished, but as sparks born of friction”—because “exposing fledgling innovation ideas to the tough love of tough questions … ensures those ideas can survive in the real world of real companies placing real bets with real money.”
By Payne’s lights, most innovations fail because their creators didn’t ask tough questions at the outset. He calls the problem “putting the ‘wow’ before the ‘how.'” “The number of innovation projects that achieve a ‘wow’ but get fatally lanced on the ‘how’ is pretty staggering,” he writes. Especially with unusually complex ideas, Payne recommends figuring out the most difficult practical details first, “even if it means teeing up the issues that will kill a project now, rather than discovering them later.”
Even legendary innovators can get dazzled by an idea only to find out the hard way that it just isn’t workable. Take, for example, Google GOOG and what Payne calls its “rare and expensive misfire,” Google Wallet. Intended as both a new convenience for consumers and a way to harvest more customer data to drive targeted advertising, the product was designed to replace your old leather billfold with an all-digital phone-based app.
Google Wallet had plenty of “wow” but the “how” has been its downfall. For one thing, it involves digitizing credit cards, and the card companies demanded such big fees for participating that Google reportedly lost money on every transaction. Phone companies, seeing Google Wallet as a competitor in the potentially lucrative mobile-payments business, blocked the service. Meanwhile, most phone manufacturers and retail merchants have dragged their feet in installing the near-field communication (NFC) technology Google needed to make Wallet work. It all meant that “you would still need your old wallet to make it through the day,” Payne observes.
The debacle has so far cost Google at least $300 million, and the executives who led the team have left the company. “Google Wallet is perhaps an idea ahead of its time, though some of the structural factors impeding its success will be hard to ever overcome,” Payne writes. “But for now, it’s a great case study in what can go wrong” with any company’s world-beating idea when too many tough questions go unanswered—or unasked—at the start. | Companies usually come up with new ideas for products backward, dealing with the tough issues last. |
‘I’d always avoided art fairs like the plague,” Eric Fischl is telling me in his studio on Long Island, New York, surrounded on all sides by his own larger-than-life paintings of art fairs. “Now I have been I still think they are the plague,” he says. “It’s like every single reason for art to exist does not exist in those places.”
Fischl, perhaps the best narrative painter of his American generation, is 66. He remembers how the plague spread. It was subtle at first. One biennial led to another. There was a sudden rash of Expos. It was one of those things that friends thought would be a fad, he suggests, but after the millennium dotcom crash and the collapse of the art market, the pandemic spread as the art world panicked and desperately tried to resuscitate itself as an asset class.
There are now 50 or more international shows, from Dubai to Shanghai to São Paulo, one for every week of the year, following the money, flogging product. Fischl steered clear of all of them for a long while, but finally went to the shiniest of the lot, Art Basel Miami Beach, a couple of years ago, at the request of New Yorker magazine, for an interview. He became grimly fascinated by the spectacle, took a camera with him there and subsequently to Frieze New York, and to the fair in Southampton up the road from his home in Sag Harbor, Great Gatsby country.
Fischl then made Photoshop collages of his hundreds of photos, creating scenes that might have happened. He gestures to the fabulous painting behind me. “The big sneakers here are from a show of Claes Oldenburg’s. The guy with his back to us was a guard at that show. She on the left was from an art fair at Southampton. That guy was from Miami. I mix and match. Same crowd, different clothes. But always the same experience.”
An exhibition of Fischl’s art-show paintings (priced between £200,000 and £400,000) will open at the Victoria Miro Gallery, in London, this week, to coincide with the Frieze art fair. He hopes that people can go to Frieze and then come to his show and see what they looked like at Frieze.
If you have never been to Frieze, his paintings capture much of its dead-eyed atmosphere, its comic and dispiriting juxtapositions. In Fischl’s Art Fair: Booth #4 The Price, a distracted crowd of buyers cluster around an amorphous Ken Price sculpture, not looking. Behind them, an enormous intimate self-portrait by Joan Semmel goes unremarked. “The big collectors do this kind of speed-dating thing,” Fischl says. “They try to get in and out before anyone buys what they are after and certainly before the hoi polloi gets to look. And then you’ve got people who are just there for the social scene. So you have people texting or not paying any attention at all. It is as if the art is not there, or that they think it has no effect on them. But when you stop the moment you can see this weird world that is taking place. They are being regarded and judged by the work itself in some ways.”
In my experience, I suggest, Frieze provides exactly the enervating experience of a Saturday afternoon at Brent Cross shopping mall, except some of the stuff on sale is priced in the millions. Wealth becomes the spectacle, not art.
“If you start with the premise,” Fischl says, “and I know it is a romantic and naive premise, but I none the less think it is true, that artists are looking for love, and they are expressing love in their commitment to what they have made. An art fair is designed so they never get any in return.” He speaks languidly and laughs broadly. “Love is complicated, obviously. But the reason artists do what they do on some level is to say: ‘Don’t look at me, look at this thing I made and you will know the true me.’”
Fischl himself developed that particular faith as a young painter in the 1970s when he started to try to express himself on canvas, first at CalArts, the Disney-funded art college outside Los Angeles, and later in Nova Scotia, where he took a teaching job and met his wife, the celebrated landscape artist April Gornik, and finally in New York. In a world of abstract expressionism and conceptualism he became part of that endangered species, a figurative painter, a storyteller. Despite this self-imposed handicap, by 1985 Andy Warhol was describing Fischl in his diary as “the hot new top artist”; he was the subject of a long Vanity Fair profile entitled “Bad Boy of Brilliance” which compared him favourably to celebrity artist peers such as Julian Schnabel and Jean-Michel Basquiat; and his paintings were suddenly selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
To understand how Fischl found himself at the centre of that world, a version of which he now satirises 30 years on, you have to understand where he came from. The paintings that made Fischl’s name were drawn from an adolescence spent up the road from where he now lives, in a town called Port Washington. His father went into New York City every day selling promotional films to corporations in the days before video. His mother, spirited and beautiful, was also an out-of-control alcoholic, the “unspeakable” open secret that Fischl, his brother and two sisters did all they could to contain in their suburban idyll.
Fischl’s early paintings exhibited a disturbing kind of voyeurism, in scenes that might have been written by John Cheever or John Updike. The two defining paintings of that period — Bad Boy, which depicts a young boy standing before a woman, perhaps his mother, sprawled naked on a bed, while he feels for her handbag; and Sleepwalker, in which a teenager masturbates in a paddling pool, bathed in Edward Hopper light – were representative of the uncertain boundaries, the disquieting taboos, that became his constant theme.
Fischl depicted the fallout of early 1960s America at war with inhibition, and deeply troubled by that fact. In his recent memoir, also entitled Bad Boy, he recalls a youth in which his parents talked openly about their sex life and “lounged around their bedroom – where we’d visit after dinner to watch TV – completely naked”. When his mother was drinking, which was often, “her whole face seemed pinched and pulled back. Her artificial expression, a Kabuki-like mask, reminded me of a terrifying drag queen. It was impossible to predict what she might do… ”
Impossible, that was, until the day, not long after he had started art school, when Fischl was called to say his mother was critically ill in hospital after driving her car into a tree, an act of suicide. Fischl got back home just before she died and was overwhelmed by the fact he had “not been strong enough, smart enough” to save her from herself. He subsequently became a painter of what had been “unspeakable” because, he wrote, on “some level I wanted to make her life good”. What did he mean by that?
“It was a thing my therapist spent many years trying to get me past,” he says. “The tragedy of her life was that she was creative and intelligent and stimulating, and if she had channelled that in a different way she could have been amazing. She tried art but she lacked the stubbornness to do it. She couldn’t get past the self-critical thing we all have and she would destroy it or fuck it up or not finish it. When she killed herself, I felt I was making art for her. I thought I could make her pain less by succeeding at this thing where she had failed. Which of course makes it pretty hard to own your own success… ”
It took him many years of messing about with abstraction, and other strategies, to realise he had to confront those experiences head on.
“I actually found it harder to paint a specific chair in a scene than to paint the woman passed out on the floor. Somehow the woman passed out on the floor could have been any woman. The chair became something closer to my particular experience. The first brave step was doing that.”
“It was empowering ultimately,” he says. “I suppose if I had gotten crushed by the critical reception the way I feared when I started to make these paintings I wouldn’t have continued. When the pictures were embraced, however, I went further and further into it.” The breakthrough was Sleepwalker. “I started to try to paint in a representational manner,” Fischl says, “and it was a stretch because I had never been trained that way. My drawing skills were iffy. Trying to render flesh. I was learning in this painting and people tried to persuade me off it. I was being told: ‘You have to find a way of making it look more contemporary.’ I went through a thousand possible ways to do that but it was always everybody else’s idea. In the end I was left with myself. That is something that all artists ultimately have to find: the thing that they can do that doesn’t look like art.”
It seems strange to be talking to a contemporary artist about emotional authenticity, about representation, and about the influence of Degas and Manet rather than Warhol and Joseph Beuys. “There are two kinds of painter, if you like,” Fischl says at one point. “One is somebody like Hopper who creates an image that burns on your retina and you never forget it. You can see it, walk away and still see it. [With] the other kind you are caught up in the authenticity of the energy. The believable moment. Jackson Pollock, you are right there with him. I am essentially the Hopper artist trying to create a frozen moment. The truth about how it actually was.”
Despite that commitment, or because of it, Fischl found himself co-opted into the wild and whirling art world of 1980s New York – his first experience of the milieu he has lately been documenting. Warhol visited his studio, and offered his blessing. “He sought out youth, he was always curious about what was going on,” Fischl recalls. “Most of the artists we admired wanted to be outside society looking in. Warhol wanted to be right at the centre of high society and still be radical. It was as if he wanted to infect it from the inside out.”
Looking back on what quickly became a frenzy of parties and gallery openings and cocaine and booze and money – which had little to do with his original change-the-world ambitions for his art – Fischl admits it was nevertheless “all incredibly exciting. It was like a spinning world, it had real centrifugal force. Traditional art magazines couldn’t keep up so the dailies took their place. Artist’s photographs were appearing in the arts and entertainment pages next to those of rock stars and film stars. It was like a wave had picked us up.”
Fischl was beached not long after just as surely. After one bender too many, after the opening of a solo New York show, and a near car crash, he knew he had to remove himself from the centrifugal world he found himself in. He has a sense that he inherited his mother’s addictive gene, and that he had welcomed the self-destructive aspect of it in some way “in order to survive it, to prove it could be done”. With premonitions of an art world about to finally sell its soul he packed up his studio in New York, moved with April Gornik the two hours out here – following an artists’ path trodden by Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko and others — and swapped his previous narcotic highs for more life-affirming ones.
Fischl counts Steve Martin and John McEnroe among his closest friends. After McEnroe opened a gallery in New York on his retirement, Fischl tutored him in art history in return for tennis lessons. He plays most days, sometimes with McEnroe himself, and likes to make connections between his game and his work (“both are performed in a rectangle, and are about gesture and reach and executing an intention, resistance”). He and Gornik bought some land and built their beautiful, brutal 10,000 sq ft minimalist home on the edge of a salt marsh, complete with matching studios. They moved in on millennium eve and Fischl entered what he calls, with a laugh, “his long mid-career period”.
From this vantage, Fischl believes himself to be an outsider to the kind of world he describes in his art-show paintings. His work has continued to sell – his record for a single picture was the $1.9m paid for his painting Daddy’s Girl in 2006 – and he has moved on from adolescent angst to document and interpret the worlds he now inhabits. He has cast, for example, his unnerving eye over the plutocrats at play in St Tropez as well as the Hamptons.
He is surprised at the way his career has gone. “I had this idea that I was making work that would be shown in museums but that nobody would really want to live with,” he says. “I mean who the fuck wants to wake up and have breakfast with somebody jerking off in a pool? I overestimated museums, though. They were the ones that wanted to put up warning signs in front of the work, whereas the private sector bought it. I would have liked it to be more a public art.”
That particular frustration has crystallised recently around two projects, which were the real cause of his decision to turn his painter’s eye to the art world itself. Both projects were made in response to what he saw as the fracture in US culture after 9/11, and the inability of the art world to address it.
In 2002 Fischl, who has been working more and more in sculpture since he moved to Long Island, made a public statue, Tumbling Woman, which was to be a permanent fixture at the Rockefeller centre in New York. The life-size bronze sculpture – he has a smaller version outside his studio – shows a human figure apparently in free fall, just above the ground, as if in suspended animation.
“9/11 was so profoundly shocking – that we could be that vulnerable, that powerless,” Fischl says. “And it was combined with something really freaky: 3,000 people died and there were no bodies. How do you process the mourning? It was like a surreal disappearance. The only way we knew how horrific it had been was in the images of the people who jumped out the windows, that they would choose to die that way. Right away though, the media self-censored and got rid of those images. I thought that was wrong.”
When Fischl’s simple human sculpture was unveiled, there was an outcry. A New York Post columnist suggested it was a cruel and self-serving image and accused him of “riding on the backs of those who had suffered grief and loss in an effort to revive a moribund career”. After that he became public enemy number one.
“Nobody. My dealer tried to protect me a bit from the hysteria. Friends in the press said I should let it drop. The guy who owned Rockefeller Centre, a big art patron in the city, removed the sculpture. He told me he was getting bomb threats and he couldn’t take the risk.” Fischl laughs bleakly. “I told him: ‘No one is going to bomb you over a statue.’ But that is the world we live in.”
Nearly a decade later, in another effort to use art to help communities come together around an idea of America, he laid plans for a touring art show, a basis for a national conversation called “Now and Here”. The idea was to have the nation’s leading artists and poets and musicians make a travelling event that would offer an alternative to the tribal and polarised nature of political debate. “We have been screaming and yelling at each other for years. Still are. I believed art could provide images as a starting point for dialogue. I thought the hard part would be getting the artists with these huge international reputations to get together and think about the same thing at the same moment for once,” Fischl says. “But of course it turned out to be the opposite. The artists were easily persuaded but the money – we tried for funding from corporations and billionaires – never was.”
Fischl was told again that his idea was just a careerist strategy, as if that was the only reason any artist might do anything. “Instead of any grown-up conversation, what we have instead, what America apparently wants, is artists who are doing very expensive toys,” he says. “Jeff Koons is a good example. What kind of culture expresses itself only in childlike behaviour? Shit jokes and childish humour – and is greeted with huge popularity.”
Fischl’s art-show paintings, for all their cool comic appeal, were made to portray the emptiness of that compact. “That world has just become a celebration of money-making,” Fischl says. “I went to a fair a few weeks ago and in the middle of this thing was a De Kooning painting. I thought ‘Wow!’ It turned out it was in a booth for a real estate company. They had this De Kooning for sale as well as the $40m homes. You could buy the house and get the painting for an extra $5m or whatever. The barriers have collapsed between the commercial and the art world. It is not irony – it is just cynicism. The work is not intended to have you look and think twice, which is what irony does. It’s cynical in that they couldn’t give a shit whether you get it or you don’t get it.”
Some of the people in his paintings are clearly recognisable, though he is not interested in putting names to faces. Has he had any response?
“I did have one experience where a girl in one of the paintings saw it at the New York Frieze show and called me the next day to say she believed she was in my painting. She was really thrilled of course. The thing is we don’t see ourselves as characters – so I think people will look and not always see themselves. And anyway, 10 years from now no one will know any people in it.”
Does he believe that all those who recognise themselves as faces in the art crowd see it as a form of flattery?
“I don’t really care, to be honest,” he says. “For me it is more like an admission that this is my world and this is what it looks like.”
Eric Fischl: Art Fair Paintings is at Victoria Miro, London, from Tuesday until 19 December at the Victoria Miro gallery, 16 Wharf Road, London N1 | The American painter famed for disturbingly voyeuristic scenes of suburban life has turned his gaze to the cynical world of the international art fair. Tim Adams met him |
Tailors love the 16th-century Italian artist Giovanni Battista Moroni, as the Royal Academy – situated halfway between the bespoke shirt and made-to-measure pinstripe superhighways of Jermyn Street and Savile Row – has discovered.
The academy is about to launch the first major exhibition in the UK of the painter whose best known work shows a tailor in action, gathering together rare loans including his late religious paintings and altarpieces that have never left Italy before, and one portrait only identified as his work last year by the curators of this show.
The tailor, who has been in the Natonal Gallery collection since the 19th century, is the earliest known portrait of a craftsman engaged in manual labour, pausing to look enigmatically at the viewer, shears in hand and about to tackle a length of costly black fabric already marked up in chalk before him.
It’s not surprising that tailors love it: it shows a confident and immensly dignified man doing a skilled and well-paid job, rather than one who has done well enough to pay an artist to immortalise him as an aspirant aristocrat. Moroni’s tailor obviously has done very well, wearing a gentleman’s sword belt, a gold ring, and quietly costly clothing including frills of lace at his wrists and throat.
This was unique, curator Arturo Galansino said: “It had never been done before. The tailor is one of the most revolutionary portraits in all of art history.”
The painting was already well known by the 17th century in Venice, the luxury capital of Europe. Moroni was acclaimed, somewhat grudgingly, for the striking realism of his portraits.
One anecdote has a Venetian official based in Bergamo coming to Venice to try and commission a portrait from the most famous painter of the day, Titian. The master tells him to go back to Bergamo, where there is the best portrait painter famous for his naturalism.
This, Galansino says, was a double-edged compliment: naturalistic portraiture – although Moroni’s work is believed to have heavily influenced the young genius Caravaggio – was the least regarded rung on the artistic ladder, far inferior to bombastic history paintings or symbolism overloaded allegories.
However, Galansino points out that many of his other portraits are fashion and textile-history treasures, showing the quality of fabrics and the details of the construction of garments in pristine detail, as well as recording fashions which changed so fast that the gowns of two magnificently dressed young women changed completely inside five years. Isotta Brembati, coming on loan from a museum in Bergamo, where Moroni lived and worked for many years, was painted in about 1555. She is wearing a green and gold velvet gown, with the low-cut neckline grazing her nipples. Five years later another portrait shows an equally expensively dressed woman in pink silk brocade buttoned up to the throat, with a high lace-edged ruff.
Many of Moroni’s subjects, though magnificently and fashionably dressed – particularly men in the sobre blacks that were actually the most expensive colours because they took so much costly dye – have rough outdoor complexions, far from the waxy smoothness of many Venetian portraits.
“There is no doubt that Moroni is the greatest at showing you the person he is standing in front of, and not just the outer appearance but the inner man,” Galansino said. “But people would not have thought this was his most important work, and he would not have thought so himself.”
Relatively little is known about the artist, despite the curators’ attempts to draw together every scrap of recorded information. He was born in Albino in the province of Bergamo, found local civil and religious patrons, and is not recorded as travelling outside Lombardy though he is assumed to have gone to Venice. He died relatively young, in his 50s, and is said to have worked himself to death, completing all his commissions alone without studio assistants or pupils.
It was Moroni’s bad luck (and this, curators believe, explains why he isn’t a household name today) that his contemporary Giorgio Vasari never came to Bergamo and so didn’t know his work. Vasari’s pioneering work, Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, which combined descriptions and criticisms of artwork with gossipy anecdotes about their makers, misses out Moroni completely.
He stands or falls by his work: Galansino thinks the exhibition will be revelatory.
• Giovanni Battista Moroni is at the Royal Academy, London, 25 October to 25 January 2015 | First UK exhibition devoted to ‘revolutionary’ Italian painter Giovanni Battista Moroni will include portraits never before seen outside Italy, reports Maev Kennedy |
The wealth of Americans reached a nominal record high during the summer, the Federal Reserve reported Monday. Driven largely by surging stock prices and rising home values, net worth in the U.S. rose 2.6% to $77.3 trillion from July through September. That represents the highest level since such records started to be kept in 1945.
This is positive news, but likely only for the richest Americans. The improvement masks the fact that wealth is unevenly distributed among the affluent, who tend to own stocks. For most less-affluent Americans, their biggest asset is their home. And while property prices have been recovering, many homeowners were disproportionately hurt by the 2007 crash of the housing market; it may be a while before they feel any wealthier.
Just take a look at the market for rentals: It used to be that those who couldn’t afford to buy would rent. Now, however, more Americans are finding that renting isn’t a more affordable alternative, according to a study released Monday by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.
MORE: Lululemon picks its new CEO
A shortage of apartments, especially cheap ones, has been an ongoing problem for years. The recession made it worse, as record foreclosures led to an increased demand for rentals of an already limited pool of properties, driving prices even higher. Demand also came from many who couldn’t get approved for a mortgage, as banks tightened lending standards.
True, the housing crash created a glut of empty homes ripe for renting. Remarkably, however, “soaring demand was more than enough to absorb the 2.7 million single-family homes that flooded into the rental market after 2007,” the study found.
Add to that more than a decade’s worth of stagnant incomes, and it’s easy to see why New York City political activist Jimmy McMillan proclaimed during the state’s 2010 governor’s race (over and over, mind you), “The rent is too damn high.”
In 1960, about one in four renters nationwide spent more than 30% of their income on housing, the traditional measure of affordability. Today, one in two are cost-burdened.
The squeeze has been felt most by renters who make less than $15,000 a year. But middle-income Americans make up the biggest increase among renters feeling the pinch. The share of cost-burdened renters with incomes between $30,000 and $44,999 was 44 % in 2011, up 11 percentage points from 2001. And the share with incomes of $45,000 to 74,999 was 19%, up 9 percentage points during the same period.
“Incomes just aren’t keeping up,” says Eric Belsky, director of Harvard’s joint center for housing studies. He adds the trend will get worse in the coming years before it gets better.
MORE: Don’t cut up your credit card (yet)
Throughout the economic recovery, housing experts thought higher prices for rentals was a positive sign. The hope was that renting would eventually become too expensive and it would make more financial sense to buy. While that might be true, and new home sales have been rising, it’s hard to see how many more renters can sock up enough savings for a down payment to buy when more are spending a bigger share of their income on rent.
Renters are missing out on one of the cheapest times to buy. And as more are finding it harder to pay rent, they’re missing out on years of building equity for themselves and their families. | As rent rates rise and incomes remain stagnant, Americans are feeling the squeeze. |
10/23/2014 AT 11:15 AM EDT
may be a well-adjusted woman now, but growing up, she had some unusual fixations.
For starters, she wanted to be Wednesday Addams.
Wednesday night that she idolized Charles Addams's Goth forerunner growing up, to the point that she'd introduce herself as the character and sleep in the classic arms-folded "vampire" pose.
But Dennings said her parents "didn't care."
"I was their fifth child!" the
actress exclaimed, commiserating with host
(one of six children) about the apathy facing children in large families.
She also shared a picture of herself in her best all-black outfit, which featured her wearing an appropriately serious facial expression.
premieres Monday at 8 p.m. ET on CBS. Check out the full clip from her interview with O'Brien below. | The 2 Broke Girls actress even introduced herself as the character as a child |
I drove my iPhone 6 to Walgreens last week to buy a tube of toothpaste.
I usually buy that kind of stuff at CVS, which is closer and open 24 hours a day. But Walgreens had Apple Pay, and I was eager to give Cupertino’s new swipe-and-pay system a whirl.
Turns out I could have gone to CVS that day. They weren’t part of Apple’s rollout, but according to team Re/code, Apple Pay worked like a charm on CVS’ checkout scanners too.
Or it did until CVS, Rite Aid and a host of other retailers turned their scanners off.
They are part of a Walmart-led consortium called MCX (Merchant Customer Exchange) that’s backed a different technology: Not the NFC (near-field communications) system Apple adopted, but those square QR (quick response) codes that look like the fingerprints a robot might leave.
Think about what they’re doing.” wrote Daring Fireball’s John Gruber on Saturday. “They’re turning off NFC payment systems — the whole thing — only because people were actually using them with Apple Pay. Apple Pay works so well that it even works with non-partner systems. These things have been installed for years and so few people used them, apparently, that these retailers would rather block everyone than allow Apple Pay to continue working.”
What makes the Apple Pay boycott seem destined to fail is that the technology MCX has backed — those funky QR codes — are relatively easy to hack. Alipay, a subsidiary of e-commerce giant Alibaba, pioneered the use of QR code payments for smartphones in China until hackers started inserting malicious Trojan horses into the codes. The Chinese central bank stepped in last March and ordered Alipay to stop using the technology.
“I don’t know that CVS and Rite Aid disabling Apple Pay out of spite is going to drive customers to switch pharmacies” writes Gruber. “But I do know that CurrentC is unlikely to ever gain any traction whatsoever.”
Josh Constine gave CurrentC a close look in Techcrunch yesterday and came to the same conclusion. It’s not a system designed not to make consumers’ lives easier, but to do an end run around the credit card companies. The killer quote, attributed to former Walmart CEO Lee Scott:
I don’t know that MCX will succeed and I don’t care. As long as Visa suffers.”
Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter at @philiped. Read his Apple AAPL coverage at fortune.com/ped or subscribe via his RSS feed. | They're locked -- for now -- into a Walmart-backed system based on QR codes. |
11/03/2014 AT 04:15 PM EST
has come a long way – from selling T-shirts for fraternity brother
to being nominated for a CMA Award.
But he hasn't forgotten the lessons he learned while manning Bryan's merch table. "I went from selling merch to having my own merch, and to see all that change over the past seven years, I'm just thankful," says the singer, 31, who went on to open for Bryan on his recent tour. "Hopefully one day I'll be able to be where Luke is and be able to help a new guy."
Swindell's own musical taste is a blend of classic country like Randy Travis and pop hits (
gets plenty of airtime on his iPod) – perhaps not surprising for a guy who co-wrote songs like
's "This is How We Roll." Here, the "Chillin' It" singer fills us in on the artists and songs that have made a mark on him:
. I don't remember how old I was but I know I was young enough to be driving my mama crazy by putting 'Chattahoochee' on repeat. I didn't even know what half of it meant but it sounded cool and Alan Jackson was one of my favorites. He's a Georgia boy like I am and with that crazy guitar riff, everything about that song sounded cool."
"The first time I ever saw
in Atlanta when I was in college. I bought some tickets on eBay for a lot of money. I had three tickets and I had a buddy going with me and was trying to find a girl to go with me but didn't so I gave the extra ticket to Luke, cause he was in town playing a show. But seeing Chesney live and seeing him work that stage, it was like, 'This is the best entertainer I've ever seen.' It was a big part of me wanting to move to Nashville and be on that big stage."
"I didn't grow up singing, but I did do karaoke when I was 17 or 18 in Panama City, Florida ⦠I did
and people were like 'You're pretty good,' so that kind of started it. I played the bars in college in Georgia and our first gig was me and a buddy of mine, just acoustic and I was so nervous I could barely breathe or sing. The first song I ever sang was 'Don't Happen Twice,' by Kenny Chesney."
. When I first heard that album, it made me realize I want to write my own songs because it was the best stuff I heard at the time. It will always be one of my favorites."
"I just bought the new
. I've always been a huge fan and it's exciting to get to hear his new music. And the great thing is that he just announced I'm going to be on tour with him next year."
"Any new country stuff, like Jason's new album or the
. We like to listen to what our buddies are putting out and also we'll play anything on the top 100 playlist. I like to know what the top songs are to see what everybody is doing in different genres."
lately – that "Maps" song and the "Animals" song. I'm digging some Maroon 5. It just fires you up. It's totally different from the music we make but it's just cool to hear. Anything with a good beat gets us pumped up."
. I like to jam that one out. The beat is just different from anything I do and it's just a cool song."
, 'My Last Name.' It's talking about how important his last name is to him and it's kind of all he's got and there's a twist at the end when he's asking the girl to marry him. It's a cool song and I'm proud of my name so I can relate."
air live on Wednesday, Nov. 5, on ABC. | The Georgia singer's musical taste mixes traditional twang (Alan Jackson and Randy Travis) with pure pop (Katy Perry and Maroon 5) |
11/06/2014 AT 02:45 PM EST
They both have crazy-busy work schedules, but newlyweds
are still making time for romance.
enjoyed a date at London's Savoy hotel Wednesday afternoon, leaving fellow diners starstruck at their surprise arrival.
"I think I was in a parallel universe!" says an onlooker, who was dining with her 80-year-old father at the time. "They just walked through the lobby and disappeared into another bar."
Another diner at the 125-year-old London landmark added on Twitter: "Tea at the Savoy, first a
actor walks in, then Stephen Fry topped off by George Clooney & new wife ..."
But Amal Clooney, 36, has
besides tea and cakes. The
has taken on the case of Egyptian-Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy, who has been incarcerated in Egypt since December for what Amal describes as "simply reporting the news."
In a statement released through her law firm Doughty Street Chambers in London, Clooney claims the Al Jazeera reporter's trial was "fundamentally unfair" and that his imprisonment is "a travesty of justice."
Worse, she says his 7-year prison sentence has become "a great danger to his health" – partly because Fahmy suffers from the liver disease hepatitis C and cannot obtain the specialist treatment he requires from behind bars.
"He has also suffered a permanent disability in his right shoulder due to an injury exacerbated during his detention," Clooney adds. "He will require a series of complicated correctional bone surgeries that also require extensive recovery and support not readily available in prison."
Clooney and her colleague Mark Wassouf are waiting to hear if Fahmy will be released on compassionate grounds so that he can receive the treatment he needs. His appeal is scheduled for Jan. 1.
Meanwhile, George Clooney, 53, is prepping for two upcoming movies –
, about a financial guru held hostage, and
, the Coen brothers' next comedy (plus he's producing
) – so it'll be a very busy holiday season for the couple. | The human-rights lawyer is defending a journalist imprisoned in Egypt |
Photo: Jonathan Bachman / Associated Press
New Orleans Saints center Jonathan Goodwin (55) watches as players converge on a Drew Brees fumble, which was recovered by the San Francisco 49ers, in overtime of an NFL football game in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014. The 49ers won 27-24. (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman)
New Orleans Saints center Jonathan Goodwin (55) watches as players...
San Francisco 49ers kicker Phil Dawson (9) is congratulated by tackle Joe Staley (74) after kicking the game winning field goal in overtime of an NFL football game against the New Orleans Saints in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014. The San Francisco 49ers won 27-24. (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman)
San Francisco 49ers kicker Phil Dawson (9) is congratulated by...
Niners outside linebacker Ahmad Brooks knocks the ball loose as he sacks Saints quarterback Drew Brees in overtime.
Niners outside linebacker Ahmad Brooks knocks the ball loose as he...
Coach Jim Harbaugh saw his 49ers open up a 14-0 lead in the first quarter, but the team needed overtime to beat the Saints.
Coach Jim Harbaugh saw his 49ers open up a 14-0 lead in the first...
New Orleans Saints center Jonathan Goodwin (55) and San Francisco 49ers defensive end Justin Smith dive for a Drew Brees fumble, recovered by the 49ers, in overtime.
New Orleans Saints center Jonathan Goodwin (55) and San Francisco...
Phil Dawson congratulates teammates following a game winning field goal in overtime against the New Orleans Saints at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on November 9.
Phil Dawson congratulates teammates following a game winning field...
San Francisco 49ers kicker Phil Dawson (9) is congratulated by tackle Joe Staley (74) after kicking the game-winning field goal in overtime.
San Francisco 49ers kicker Phil Dawson (9) is congratulated by...
San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Anquan Boldin celebrates his touchdown reception in the first half.
San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Anquan Boldin celebrates his...
Chris Culliver defends a pass intended for Benjamin Watson of the New Orleans Saints during the fourth quarter.
Chris Culliver defends a pass intended for Benjamin Watson of the...
Eric Reid is congratulated by Chris Culliver following a defensive stop during the fourth quarter.
Eric Reid is congratulated by Chris Culliver following a defensive...
Jimmy Graham catches a pass as time expires. The play was negated due to an offensive pass interference call on Jimmy Graham.
Jimmy Graham catches a pass as time expires. The play was negated...
San Francisco 49ers cornerback Perrish Cox (20) lies on the turf at the end of regulation, after New Orleans Saints tight end Jimmy Graham was called for pass interference, negating a touchdown reception.
San Francisco 49ers cornerback Perrish Cox (20) lies on the turf at...
San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Michael Crabtree pulls in a 51 yard reception in front of New Orleans Saints cornerback Corey White (24) to set up an eventual field goal to tie the game late in the second half.
San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Michael Crabtree pulls in a 51...
Jimmy Graham is defended by Chris Culliver of the San Francisco 49ers during the third quarter.
Jimmy Graham is defended by Chris Culliver of the San Francisco...
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Marques Colston (12) pulls in a pass as San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver (29) and free safety Eric Reid (35) try to tackle him in the second half of an NFL football game in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014. (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman)
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Marques Colston (12) pulls in a...
Carlos Hyde breaks a tackle by Rafael Bush #25 of the New Orleans Saints for a touchdown during the first quarter.
Carlos Hyde breaks a tackle by Rafael Bush #25 of the New Orleans...
San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver (29) shoves the face of New Orleans Saints tight end Jimmy Graham (80) after Graham scored on a touchdown reception in the second half.
San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver (29) shoves the face...
New Orleans Saints tight end Jimmy Graham pulls in a touchdown reception as San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver (29) covers in the second half of an NFL football game in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)
New Orleans Saints tight end Jimmy Graham pulls in a touchdown...
Jimmy Graham of the New Orleans Saints is brought down by Chris Borland during the third quarter.
Jimmy Graham of the New Orleans Saints is brought down by Chris...
New Orleans Saints tight end Jimmy Graham (80) catches a touchdown pass in front of San Francisco 49ers cornerback Perrish Cox.
New Orleans Saints tight end Jimmy Graham (80) catches a touchdown...
Anquan Boldin catches a touchdown pass in front of Keenan Lewis during the second quarter.
Anquan Boldin catches a touchdown pass in front of Keenan Lewis...
Anquan Boldin is brought down by Corey White #24 and Kenny Vaccaro #32 of the New Orleans Saints during the second quarter.
Anquan Boldin is brought down by Corey White #24 and Kenny Vaccaro...
Frank Gore is pursued by Rafael Bush #25 of the New Orleans Saints during the second quarter.
Frank Gore is pursued by Rafael Bush #25 of the New Orleans Saints...
San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore (21) is congratulated by quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) after scoring on a touchdown carry in the first half.
San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore (21) is congratulated...
San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore (21) scores on a touchdown carry past New Orleans Saints cornerback Corey White (24) in the first half.
San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore (21) scores on a...
San Francisco 49ers strong safety Antoine Bethea (41) intercepts a pass intended for New Orleans Saints wide receiver Marques Colston (12) in the first half.
San Francisco 49ers strong safety Antoine Bethea (41) intercepts a...
New Orleans Saints running back Mark Ingram (22) is tackled by San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver (29) and strong safety Antoine Bethea (41) in the first half.
New Orleans Saints running back Mark Ingram (22) is tackled by San...
Anquan Boldin #81 of the San Francisco 49ers catches a touchdown pass in front of Keenan Lewis.
Anquan Boldin #81 of the San Francisco 49ers catches a touchdown...
New Orleans Saints tight end Jimmy Graham (80) celebrates his touchdown reception in the second half of an NFL football game against the San Francisco 49ers in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)
New Orleans Saints tight end Jimmy Graham (80) celebrates his...
NEW ORLEANS, LA - NOVEMBER 09: Colin Kaepernick #7 of the San Francisco 49ers runs during the fourth quarter of a game against the New Orleans Saints at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on November 9, 2014 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo by Wesley Hitt/Getty Images)
NEW ORLEANS, LA - NOVEMBER 09: Colin Kaepernick #7 of the San...
San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Anquan Boldin (81) pulls in a touchdown reception in front of New Orleans Saints cornerback Keenan Lewis.
San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Anquan Boldin (81) pulls in a...
San Francisco 49ers running back Carlos Hyde (28) celebrates his touchdown with Bruce Ellington in the first half of an NFL football game against the New Orleans Saints in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014. (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman)
San Francisco 49ers running back Carlos Hyde (28) celebrates his...
Anquan Boldin celebrates a touchdown with Vance McDonald during the second quarter.
Anquan Boldin celebrates a touchdown with Vance McDonald during the...
Keenan Lewis #28 of the New Orleans Saints is injured on a play during the second quarter.
Keenan Lewis #28 of the New Orleans Saints is injured on a play...
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Marques Colston (12) pulls in a pass reception in front of San Francisco 49ers cornerback Perrish Cox.
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Marques Colston (12) pulls in a...
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Marques Colston (12) pulls in a pass reception in front of San Francisco 49ers cornerback Perrish Cox (20) in the first half.
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Marques Colston (12) pulls in a...
Colin Kaepernick #7 of the San Francisco 49ers looks to pass against the New Orleans Saints during the first quarter.
Colin Kaepernick #7 of the San Francisco 49ers looks to pass...
San Francisco 49ers running back Carlos Hyde (28) carries for a touchdown in the first half.
San Francisco 49ers running back Carlos Hyde (28) carries for a...
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) carries past New Orleans Saints strong safety Kenny Vaccaro.
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick (7) carries past...
Brandin Cooks catches a pass in front of Tramaine Brock during the second quarter.
Brandin Cooks catches a pass in front of Tramaine Brock during the...
Head coach Jim Harbaugh of the San Francisco 49ers congratulates his team following a touchdown during the first quarter.
Head coach Jim Harbaugh of the San Francisco 49ers congratulates...
San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore (21) is congratulated by teammates after scoring on a touchdown carry.
San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore (21) is congratulated...
Colin Kaepernick takes the field for a game against the New Orleans Saints at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
Colin Kaepernick takes the field for a game against the New Orleans...
Drew Brees drops back to pass against the San Francisco 49ers during the first quarter.
Drew Brees drops back to pass against the San Francisco 49ers...
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick passes in the first half.
San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick passes in the...
New Orleans Saints fans celebrate in the first half.
New Orleans Saints fans celebrate in the first half.
San Francisco 49ers tight end Vernon Davis (85) is tackled by New Orleans Saints cornerback Corey White (24) and nose tackle John Jenkins (92) in the first half of an NFL football game in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)
San Francisco 49ers tight end Vernon Davis (85) is tackled by New...
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Brandin Cooks, right, celebrates his touchdown reception with tight end Jimmy Graham in the first half.
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Brandin Cooks, right, celebrates...
San Francisco 49ers running back Carlos Hyde carries for a touchdown in the first half.
San Francisco 49ers running back Carlos Hyde carries for a...
Carlos Hyde celebrates a touchdown during the first quarter.
Carlos Hyde celebrates a touchdown during the first quarter.
Colin Kaepernick drops back to pass against the New Orleans Saints during the first quarter.
Colin Kaepernick drops back to pass against the New Orleans Saints...
Head coach Jim Harbaugh of the San Francisco 49ers watches action during the first quarter.
Head coach Jim Harbaugh of the San Francisco 49ers watches action...
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Brandin Cooks (10) pulls in a pass reception over San Francisco 49ers cornerback Tramaine Brock.
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Brandin Cooks (10) pulls in a pass...
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Marques Colston (12) drops a pass as San Francisco 49ers free safety Eric Reid (35) pursues in the first half of an NFL football game in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014. (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman)
New Orleans Saints wide receiver Marques Colston (12) drops a pass...
San Francisco 49ers nose tackle Ian Williams (93) is carted off the field in the first half of an NFL football game against the New Orleans Saints in New Orleans, Sunday, Nov. 9, 2014. (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman)
San Francisco 49ers nose tackle Ian Williams (93) is carted off the... | NEW ORLEANS â" In 2010, Ahmad Brooksâ father, former NFL defensive lineman Perry Brooks, died and was buried near his hometown of Bogalusa, La., which is about 70 miles from New Orleans. In 2013, the 49ersâ outside linebacker returned and appeared to make a game-winning play, but his sack of quarterback Drew Brees was wiped out by a disputed personal-foul penalty in a loss. On the next play, Phil Dawson made a 35-yard field goal with 5:14 left in overtime to give the previously reeling 49ers a heartstopping, darn-near-must-have 27-24 win over New Orleans. Since Brooksâ sack counted this time, defensive coordinator Vic Fangio termed it âpoetic justiceâ and Brooks said another teammate told him it was âkarma.â The 49ers (5-4) were feeling good â" and relieved â" after Brooksâ big play prevented the first three-game losing streak of the Jim Harbaugh era and ended the Saintsâ home winning streak at 11 games. [...] the Saints took their only lead of the game, 24-21, on Breesâ 2-yard touchdown pass to tight end Jimmy Graham with 1:52 left. [...] though, the defense did it, getting its only two sacks of the game on the Saintsâ final possession. The difference between four or five wins might seem inconsequential, but the 49ersâ history shows a monumental difference. Since joining the NFL in 1950, the 49ers have won four of their first nine games 13 times and made the playoffs only once in that scenario (1972, when they began 4-4-1 but finished 8-5-1 and won the NFC West). Subbing again for Patrick Willis, the third-round pick had 17 tackles (he has 35 in his past two games) and recovered Drew Breesâ fumble, one play before Phil Dawsonâs game-winning field goal. |
FORTUNE — So it’s the obvious joke.
The one thing that Intrade.com, the company that up until Sunday night allowed its traders to bet on everything from Saddam Hussein’s capture to the next American Idol or Pope or U.S. president, did a very poor job of predicting, it seems, was its own demise.
Although it kind of did, or at least its founder did. John Delaney, who Fortune profiled along with Intrade back in 2005, regularly complained that U.S. regulators had it out for his company, which was based in Ireland, because either Americans are generally prudes when it comes to gambling, or regulators didn’t like people betting on U.S. elections or a combination of the two. The official explanation from the CFTC, which effectively banned U.S. citizens from using the site in November, was that Intrade’s contracts kind of looked like futures contracts and we have decided that in the U.S. things that kind of look like futures contracts should be regulated (except, of course, the type of bespoke credit derivatives that blew up in the financial crisis, which Wall Street continues to argue are too special to be regulated).
So if it’s a witch hunt that finally did in Intrade then perhaps it’s for the best that Delaney didn’t get to see it. The founder of Intrade died climbing Mount Everest, reportedly within 50 yards of the summit, nearly two years ago.
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Those who believe in rational markets and the so-called Wisdom of Crowds, which is what Intrade and prediction markets in general are based on, have taken a beating in the last few years. First there was the financial crisis, which neither the robust market for subprime mortgage bonds or the stock market in general saw coming. Then there was the rise and quick demise of the so-called Twitter hedge fund, which had planned to beat the market by analyzing millions of tweets and deciding whether people were feeling good or bad about the world. It lasted less than a year. Now comes the end of Intrade.
But the rise of Nate Silver and his FiveThirtyEight blog was perhaps the biggest blow to Intrade. In 2009, a study found that Silver, who uses statistical models, rather than markets, to predict elections, did a better job forecasting the outcome of the 2008 U.S. presidential race than Intrade. During the last election, the predicted chance of Mitt Romney winning on Intrade skyrocketed after President Obama’s poor performance in the first debate. Silver’s statistical model barely budged. One guy proved to be a whole lot smarter than the crowd.
But Intrade allowed traders to bet on many more things that just elections. And other events, like the naming of a Pope, which Intrade got right the last time around, might be much harder to build statistical models around.
Joe Weisenthal over at Business Insider essentially lets Intrade off the hook for its miscalls. He says that Intrade, like all markets, reflects conventional wisdom, and gives you the ability to bet for or against it. But that misses the point. The theory behind prediction markets is that they would do a better job than conventional wisdom. As more people placed their bets the market would move toward what the actual outcome would be.
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But that’s often not how it worked out, though it’s not clear why. Intrade’s biggest failure was perhaps predicting that Obamacare had an 80% chance of being struck down by the Supreme Court, up until the moment it was announced that it was upheld. It’s worth noting that failure happened a little over a year after Delaney died.
While he was alive, Delaney was able to make a cogent argument why Intrade was good for the world and not a den of thieves. (Intrade, on Sunday, said that the site had to close because of “financial irregularities,” so Delaney and Intrade may end up being remembered as the latter.) Delaney reasoned that what people were doing on Intrade should not be considered gambling. That seemed to keep U.S. regulators at bay, for a while. But nonetheless, Intrade’s legality was always in question, which kept some users away and made it a less successful market than it could have been.
So the real reason Intrade failed may not be because prediction markets don’t work. But because, based on our current laws, it’s still more profitable and unquestionably legal for people like Nate Silver to use their statistical models to launch blogs than to spend their time and efforts on Intrade. Until that changes, we are all probably better off without it. | Intrade failed not because markets aren't rational, but because the rational people chose not to participate. |
A strong showing in the health care sector and positive economic news from overseas spurred the U.S. stock market to record heights once again on Tuesday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 40 points, or 0.2%, to hit yet another record close of 17,688. UnitedHealth Group UNH was among the biggest gainers in the Dow Jones, rising 1.8%. Last week, the Dow Jones established three new record closes in just five days.
The S&P 500 also closed at a record high — the index’s fourth straight — rising 0.5% to 2,052 points. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq composite recovered the moderate losses the index suffered on Monday, gaining 0.7% to finish at 4,702 points. The Nasdaq remains at its highest levels since 2000.
In addition to UnitedHealth, other members of the health care sector to boost the market on Tuesday included Medtronic MDT , which gained 4.7%. Actavis ACT , which said yesterday that it plans to buy Botox-maker Allergan for $66 billion, got an 8.7% bump to its share price on Tuesday. Allergan AGN , meanwhile, jumped 2.2% in the wake of the deal, which comes after months of the company fighting off the dual takeover attempt by Valeant Pharmaceuticals and activist investor Bill Ackman.
The market also received a shot in the arm from positive news out of Japan, where that country’s prime minister announced plans to delay a tax hike by 18 months as part of efforts to pull the country out of a recession.
The U.S. market is coming off four straight weeks of weekly gains, which was the market’s best four-week stretch since 2011. | Dow Jones and S&P 500 both hit new record closing highs. |
Ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are gathering in Vienna for what is being billed as their most important meeting in decades.
The cartel that produces a third of the world’s oil has to decide whether to let prices continue to fall, under pressure from surging output in North America, or to cut output to bring it back into line with global demand. If they choose the latter, then they will also have to thrash out the highly tricky question of who will bear the brunt of the output cuts.
The meeting will have ramifications far beyond the 12 countries that make up the cartel.
Crude prices have fallen 28% since the summer to their lowest level in over four years, shaking oil companies and producer countries out of the cozy thought that prices would stay at or above $100 a barrel forever, according to analysts at Barclays.
If OPEC can agree on how to share the pain, it can squeeze price back up to $100 a barrel, but if not, then producers and companies will have to get used to a new reality, and cut their cloth accordingly. For Russia, that could mean abandoning grandiose new plans for rebuilding its armed forces. For Big Oil, it could mean lower dividends and investment.
The current oversupply has pushed gasoline prices in the U.S. below $3 a gallon. In the U.S., and across much of the world, that slump is acting as a de facto tax cut, creating additional disposable income out of nothing, says Graham Martin, managing director of Optima Fund Management, which has $4.4 billion in assets under management.
From China to Europe, that’s an important prop to economies that are all either slowing down or flirting with recession.
By the same token, countries such as Mexico, Brazil and Russia, which are big producers of oil, but which aren’t members of the cartel, will be hoping that OPEC will take the strain rather than allow a free-for-all that would eat into their budgets and current accounts.
It’s precisely that kind of free-riding that OPEC’s de facto leader, Saudi Arabia, has taken offense at in recent months, slashing its prices for Asian customers in an effort to defend its market share.
Oil Minister Ali Naimi struck a nonchalant tone on arrival in Vienna, saying only that “it’s not the first time the market is oversupplied,” according to Reuters.
Naimi met later with officials from Venezuela, Russia and Mexico, but there was no sign of any agreement of a coordinated cut in production. As a result, crude futures fell to within a whisker of a new four-year low at $74.31/bbl.
Low prices are less of a problem for Saudi Arabia and other low-cost producers such as Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates than they are for Iran, Venezuela and Nigeria (and Russia and Brazil), all of whom have to spread their export revenues across larger populations.
Reuters quoted diplomatic sources as saying that the kingdom, with its large currency reserves, was prepared to withstand oil prices as low as $70-$80 a barrel for up to a year. By contrast, says Craig Botham, chief emerging economist at Schroders in London with $464 billion under management, Russia needs an average oil price of $114/bbl this year to balance its budget, and can’t access western debt markets to fill any deficit that arises.
Over and above the budget arithmetic, Botham noted that Russia needs a high price to maximize its geopolitical leverage, a key concern as it tries to stake its claim to influence in neighboring Ukraine, while Mexico could use a high price to improve the bid levels when it auctions new exploration blocks in the near future.
For Big Oil, the situation is less acute. Barclays analysts reckon that most majors can live with $70/bbl for two years and $80/bbl for three, without compromising their dividends and still have enough money to invest in new production. The big unknown is how quickly U.S. shale oil production (believed by many to be the ultimate target of Saudi Arabia’s price war) will slow down at those price levels.
Barclays reckons OPEC needs to cut output by 1.5 million barrels a day from its current level of just under 31 million b/d to balance the market. But news agency reports from the preliminary meetings in Vienna suggested that nothing on that scale was going to be agreed.
Instead, the cartel may agree just do what it has done many times in the past–promise to do a better job in respecting the current output quota (they currently pump almost 1 million barrels a day more than agreed, according to Bloomberg) and call that a cut.
The market has generally seen through that kind of wordplay in the past and it seems likely to do so again. | Crude oil futures fall on reports that any "cut" in supply will fall well short of what's needed to stop prices falling. |
They were both outrageous, controversial, brilliant figures: one a self-made multimillionaire and supreme un-ashamed hedonist, the other an artist whose private sex life was as morally disgraceful as it’s possible to get.
The two men are Felix Dennis, the larger than life magazine publisher who died earlier this year, and Eric Gill, one of the most significant British artists of his generation, who died in 1940.
Next month auctioneer Sotheby’s is to sell Dennis’s enormous collection of Gill’s work, an archive containing thousands of prints, sculptures, books and artefacts that covers all aspects of the artist’s wide practice.
It is a significant sale. “This is the finest Gill collection in private hands that we know of,” said Philip Errington, a director of books and manuscripts at the auction house. “It has been amassed by a collector with a real eye for this material and a dedication to this material.
“It includes all facets of Gill’s career, and of course the interesting thing is that Gill has many parts. There’s the typography, the engraving, the prints, the books. Anyone who starts to collect Gill might be daunted by the number of fields in which he worked, but it doesn’t seem to have daunted Felix Dennis at all. He embraced it.”
Gill was one of the greatest artist-craftsmen of the last century, but his personal reputation suffered a big blow when Fiona MacCarthy published a 1989 biography that laid bare his voracious and criminal sexual appetite. He slept with a dizzying number of women: wives of friends, maids, his sisters and his two daughters. Even the family dog did not escape his clutches.
Dennis was aware of that as he obsessively collected Gill. He wrote: “I have been lucky enough, over the years, to amass one of the largest collections of his work still in private hands. He may have led a reprehensible private life (in truth, there is no ‘may’ about it, he most certainly did!), but as a sculptor, wood engraver, illustrator and typographer, he stands very high in the recent history of the creative arts in Britain.”
Dennis, like many others, adored Gill because of his artistic brilliance. “He was drawn for the same reason as a lot of art collectors are,” said Simon Hucker, a modern British art specialist at Sotheby’s. “Wit, imagination, quality, fineness. People come back to the art because it is still fine art, regardless of his private life. It is the work that you see, it is the work that you respond to and it is unique. Gill is like nobody else.”
The two men also shared a publishing connection. Dennis made his fortune from a stable of magazines that included Maxim, Viz, PC World and The Week. Gill, meanwhile, was one of the most important typographers of the last century, responsible for Perpetua and Gill Sans which is still seen everywhere today, including in the BBC logo.
In his day, Gill was one of Britain’s most famous and sought-after artists. His work can be seen in many places – his sculptures outside Broadcasting House in central London, his Stations of the Cross in Westminster Cathedral, his sculptures and reliefs at the Midland hotel in Morecambe, and his Creation of Man bas-relief in the lobby of the Palais des Nations in Geneva.
Gill was an outrageous, colourful figure – adjectives that could also be applied to Dennis. He first came to prominence as a publisher of the counter-culture magazine Oz, and was jailed for nine months in 1971 for “corrupting the morals of children” after the longest obscenity trial in British legal history. After his release Dennis went on to build his magazine empire and his fortune and was unembarrassed by stories of his excess – hundreds of thousands of pounds spent on crack cocaine and drink and, he boasted, “14 naked hookers catering to my every whim”. In his later years he became a popular poet and indulged his passion for trees by conceiving and paying for what is now the Heart of England Forest.
The 9 December sale has only 99 lots but they include thousands of items. The highest values are on works such as the 1924 Brighton Plaque, which was a commission to design a plaque to mark the homes of distinguished residents of the Sussex seaside resort. It has an estimate of £25,000-£35,000. Other works include small boxwood carved figures, numerous designs for bookplates, nude self-portraits, wood engravings and books.
Errington said it was the variety and scale of the collection that was remarkable. “If this had just been a collection of Gill prints it would have probably been the finest collection in private hands, but it’s not, it’s books as well, it’s sculpture, it is everything. It is all-encompassing and in that respect it is outstanding.”
A lot of the works were on walls, but Dennis also created a Gill archive with a paid archivist.
Hucker said he was sure that Dennis would still be collecting Gill today if he were alive. “I’m sure there is more Gill material, but how much further could Felix have got?” he wondered. | Multi-millionaire publisher Felix Dennis was an obsessive collector of the great artist-craftsman, who also became infamous for his voracious sexual appetite. Now his archive is up for auction at Sotheby’s |
According to Senator Chuck Schumer, you’re paying too much for your airplane ticket home this holiday season.
The New York Democrat put out a statement this morning saying prices should reflect the lower fuel costs airlines have been paying due to the drop in oil prices.
“At a time when the cost of fuel is plummeting and profits are rising, it is curious and confounding that ticket prices are sky-high and defying economic gravity,” he said in the release. “So I’m urging the feds to step in and do a price investigation on behalf of consumers who must buy holiday travel tickets that can break the bank. The industry often raises prices in a flash when oil prices spike, yet they appear not to be adjusting for the historic decline in the cost of fuel; ticket prices should not shoot up like a rocket and come down like a feather.”
Oil prices are currently sitting at around $60 per barrel, the lowest they’ve been in years. Schumer notes that fuel costs can account for up to half of an airlines costs, meaning that the drop in fuel prices could be having huge impacts on their bottom lines.
Airlines for America, a trade organization representing major US carriers, said that falling fuel costs meant that airlines could reinvest in the business, and that lower fuel costs didn’t mean as much as Schumer made them out to:
“While fuel prices have abated from their historic highs, fuel is just one cost, and it’s important to note that for the first nine months for the nine publicly traded U.S. passenger carriers, operating expenses rose 3.1 percent in 2014,” the statement reads. “This is a capital-intensive business, and airlines are making significant investments, including taking delivery of 317 new planes this year alone.”
Requests for comment from American Airlines AAL and Southwest Airlines LUV were not immediately returned. United Continental UAL referred Fortune to the statement from Airlines for America.
Bob McAdoo, an airlines analyst with Imperial Capital LLC, doesn’t think anything legislative will come from Schumer’s challenge, noting that the government hasn’t controlled the airline business beyond safety regulations since the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978.
“From time to time the government has talked about re-regulating pricing,” he says. “Every time its come up its been fairly sounded rejected in Congress.” | Senator Chuck Schumer wonders in wake of falling fuel costs, should ticker prices be going down? |
FORTUNE — Facebook has significantly increased the size of its initial public offering, just two days before it is expected to begin trading on the NASDAQ.
According to an amended registration document, Facebook FB will now offer over 421 million shares to investors. That is around 83.8 million shares more than originally offered, which would work out to another $3.19 billion in proceeds if Facebook prices at the top of its $35-$38 per share offering range.
The entire offering now would raise over $16 billion at the $38 per share price, which would make it the largest-ever technology IPO. The current leader is AT&T Wireless, which raised over $10 billion in 2010. It also would become the third-largest IPO ever on a U.S. exchange, following Visa’s V $19.65 billion offering in March 2008 and General Motors GM raising $18.145 billion in November 2010.
Facebook also increased its “green-shoe” — or the number of extra shares underwriters can sell if the deal is oversubscribed — from 50.61 million to 63.19 million. Expectations are that there is enough demand that underwriters will use most, if not all, of their over-allotment.
It is worth noting that the share increase would not affect Facebook’s valuation, as the extra shares are simply being reallocated out of the company’s existing share count. More specifically, certain insiders are selling more. Venture capital firm Accel Partners, for example, has increased its number of shares being sold in the IPO from 38.19 million to 49 million. DST group from 26.25 million to 45.66 million, while its Mail.ru affiliate has bumped its number from 11.27 million to 19.6 million.
T. Rowe Price remains Facebook’s largest institutional holder to not sell any shares via the IPO.
Facebook’s amended filing does not mention yesterday’s news that General Motors plans to stop advertising on Facebook, after determining that paid ads on the site were not influencing customer behavior. GM spent around $10 million last year on Facebook ads.
Sign up for Dan’s daily email newsletter on deals and deal-makers: GetTermSheet.com | Facebook adds 25% more shares. |
12/10/2014 AT 06:25 PM EST
will use any opportunity to drop a mention of
The former president was on hand Tuesday night at
to honor Little League champ Mo'ne Davis, baseball MVP Madison Bumgarner, L.A. Laker legend Magic Johnson, and Pete Frates, the former baseball player who started this summer's viral fundraiser, the
But Clinton managed to get in a few mentions of daughter Chelsea's daughter, Charlotte, who was
When talking about Sportsman of the Year, San Francisco Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner, he envisioned taking Charlotte to Cooperstown to learn about the game when she's "old enough to go."
Madison Bumgarner on the cover of Sports Illustrated
And during his introduction of SportsKid of the Year Mo'ne Davis, the first girl to earn a win and to pitch a shutout in Little League World Series history, he hinted at a future in sports for his first grandchild.
"I saw Mo'ne Davis pitch several times and it was awesome – and now that I have a granddaughter, who so far is in the 95th percentile in size for her age," noted the President, before returning to the honoree and adding, "She is a remarkable young woman."
As for Davis, who is just 13, now that baseball is done for the year, she's gearing up for basketball and indoor soccer season. "I hope to be in the WNBA some day, so hopefully that will come true," the young star told PEOPLE.
Clinton's granddaughter isn't the only woman in his life whom he's envisioned on the field. "I got in a lot of potentially bad habits when Hillary had that traveling job and I was home alone all the time. I watched all that guy stuff, you know, sporting events and movies," he joked, referring to his wife's former position as U.S. Secretary of State.
"Hillary was actually impressed that I was watching a teenage girl throw a baseball. And I said, 'You'd be impressed too. If you could have done that at her age, you'd be in a different line of work!'" | He offered kind words for athletes Madison Bumgarner and Mo'Ne Davis – and for 2-month-old Charlotte Mezvinsky |
Chris Rock and Malaak Compton-Rock
12/28/2014 AT 03:05 PM EST
and his wife are divorcing after nearly 20 years together.
"After much contemplation and 19 years of marriage, Chris and I have decided to go our separate ways," Malaak Compton-Rock, a philanthropist and founder of the nonprofit styleWorks, said in a statement Sunday. "Being fortunate enough to lead a life of service by working with those most vulnerable makes me well aware of life's blessings, even when faced with difficulties.
"While recognizing that this is a significant change, my children remain at the center of my life and their well-being is my top priority. It is in this spirit that I sincerely ask that their privacy and the privacy of our family be respected during this transition in our lives."
Rock's attorney, Robert S. Cohen, confirmed the couple has split.
"Chris Rock has filed for divorce from his wife, Malaak," Cohen said in a statement. "This is a personal matter and Chris requests privacy as he and Malaak work through this process and focus on their family.â
star, 49, wed Compton-Rock, 45, in 1996. They live in Alpine, New Jersey, with their two daughters together, Lola Simone, 12, and Zahra Savannah, 10.
that Rock had fathered another child out of wedlock. Three years earlier, the stars defended their "happy" relationship and "beautiful family" amid
"The best part is just having a partner," Rock
of being married. "There is no real worst part. I'm not going to say there's a worst part. I mean, I'm a comedian – comedians like to work alone. So maybe I'm not the ideal guy to be married to, in that sense." | The comedian and philantropist have been married for 19 years |
■ Best show “Goya: Order and Disorder,” Museum of Fine Arts
■ Best contemporary Mika Rottenberg, “Bowls, Balls, Souls, Holes,” Rose Art Museum, Waltham
■ Best 20th-Century show Franz West from the Hall Art Foundation, Mass MoCA and Williams College Museum of Art, North Adams and Williamstown
■ Best 19th-Century show “An American in London: Whistler & the Thames,” Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover
■ Best Old Master show “Donatello, Michelangelo, and Cellini: Sculptors Drawings From Renaissance Italy,” Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
A critic’s-eye view toward new openings and advances, controversial practices, lamentable departures, and promising developments.
■ Best single work TIE: Ragnar Kjartansson, “The Visitors,” Institute of Contemporary Art and William Kentridge, “The Refusal of Time,” Institute of Contemporary Art
■ Best group show TIE: “Fiber: Sculpture 1960-present,” Institute of Contemporary Art and “Sight Specific: A Selection of American Perceptual Paintings,” Concord Art Association, Concord
■ Best local show of local artist “Jon Imber: Carry On,” Danforth Art, Framingham
■ Best out-of-state show of local artist “Nicholas Nixon: Forty Years of the Brown Sisters,” Museum of Modern Art, New York
■ Best design show “California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way,” Peabody Essex Museum, Salem (organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
■ Best American “Calder and Abstraction: Avant-Garde to Iconic” Peabody Essex Museum, Salem (organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
■ Best historical “Tell It With Pride: the 54th Massachusetts Regiment and Augustus Saint-Gaudens’ Shaw Memorial,” Massachusetts Historical Society (organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
■ Best collective effort Bernard Langlais Art Trail in Maine, coordinated by Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine
■ Three most disappointing shows “Jim Hodges: Give More Than You Take,” Institute of Contemporary Art; “Jamie Wyeth,” Museum of Fine Arts; Romare Bearden, Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, N.H.
■ Best pairing “Matisse Drawings: Curated by Ellsworth Kelly from the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation Collection,” Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley.
■ Best new permanent collection installations TIE. Three new ancient Greek galleries, Museum of Fine Arts and Kunstkammer gallery, Museum of Fine Arts | Sebastian Smee’s picks for the year’s best (and most disappointing) shows, across a broad variety of categories and styles. |
When social news site Reddit raised $50 million in venture capital funding last fall, it said that it wanted to allocate around 10% of its overall equity to active users. Then, in December, it announced that the equity would take the form of something called “Reddit notes.” From a blog post:
To celebrate all of you and your contributions, we plan to give away reddit notes in a random lottery. As of this point, it looks like we’re going to have approximately 950,000 reddit notes to divide among active user accounts. There aren’t as many reddit notes as there are accounts, so if you get one, lucky you! Eligible recipients of reddit notes will be determined based on activities before 9/30/14, and we plan to give them away in the fall of 2015.
No additional details yet, except that Reddit has repeatedly suggested that it is planning to leverage some sort of crypto-currency — with notes being transferable between users. But, from my perspective, successful execution could have repercussions far beyond the Reddit community.
In an era where companies are staying private longer, and in which consumer loyalty to one tech platform over another can be paramount, the concept of sharing equity with users is likely to be replicated by other startups. Basically the privately-held version of Virgin America VA letting top frequent fliers participate in its IPO — but even more exclusive since there is no generally-available security 24 hours later.
If I were a VC-backed entrepreneur right now, I’d be paying very close attention to how Reddit structures its “notes” — with an eye toward copying and improving on it.
Sign up for Term Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on deals and deal-makers. | Reddit may be blazing a new financial path for consumer-facing startups. |
FORTUNE — Nearly five years after the fall of Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley has earned some bragging rights. It’s the only major bank that hasn’t paid a federal fine related to the financial crisis.
Morgan Stanley MS hasn’t even been accused of breaking the law. Neither have any of its bankers.
On its website, the Securities and Exchange Commission has a list of firms that have paid fines for financial crisis-related crimes. Wells Fargo WFC is on the list, as is Goldman Sachs MS . Bank of America BAC , Citigroup C , and JPMorgan Chase JPM are all on the list twice. There are also a number of foreign banks, including Credit Suisse CS , RBC and UBS UBS , and some smaller firms, like Jefferies, all of which played a minor role in selling mortgage bonds and the financial crisis in general. In all, the SEC has charged 161 firms or individuals, generating $2.7 billion in fines. Morgan Stanley is not on the list.
MORE: Big banks legal tab: $66 billion and growing
Deutsche Bank DB is the only firm that comes close to Morgan Stanley’s clean record. It, too, isn’t on the SEC’s list. But Deutsche has been sued by the Justice Department. Last year, the German bank agreed to pay a $202 million fine to settle charges that it deceived the FHA into insuring faulty mortgages.
Morgan Stanley was one of the largest underwriters of mortgage bonds in the run-up to the financial crisis, including some that were backed by loans made by such subprime lenders as New Century, which itself employed three executives who were charged with fraud.
Morgan Stanley also underwrote $37 billion in collateralized debt obligations, the type of deals that lead to a $550 million fine for Goldman. Citigroup and JPMorgan have both also paid fines related to CDOs.
In 2010, Morgan Stanley did agree to pay $102 million to the state of Massachusetts to end a probe relating to Morgan Stanley’s relationship to New Century. No official charges were ever filed. And earlier this year, Morgan Stanley paid $227 million to the Fed. But that was related to foreclosure abuses that took place after the housing bust.
MORE: Morgan Stanley strategist: More trouble for emerging markets ahead
A case against Morgan Stanley could still materialize. Regulators seem to have recently stepped up their efforts to prosecute financial-crisis-related crimes. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder says the Justice Department is on the verge of bringing more cases.
But there’s no sign the Justice Department is targeting Morgan Stanley. JPMorgan recently added a disclosure to the legal section of its financial filings saying its mortgage operations are under investigation by the Justice Department. Morgan Stanley says it too has been involved in reviews or investigations by the government. But the wording of those disclosures haven’t changed in three years.
And here’s some more evidence that Morgan Stanley may be in the clear: All banks estimate how much money they could owe in legal fees and fines. JPMorgan says it could owe $6.8 billion. Goldman’s estimate is $3.5 billion. At Bank of America, the number is $2 billion. Morgan Stanley’s estimate: zero, or close to it.
The Justice Department declined to comment. An SEC spokesperson said that it does not comment on cases it hasn’t brought. Morgan Stanley declined to comment as well.
One possible explanation is that Morgan Stanley didn’t do anything wrong in the run up to the financial crisis.
Investors in dozens of deals who have sued the bank seem to disagree. “I have seen no evidence that Morgan Stanley is less culpable than other firms,” says a lawyer who has worked on several cases on behalf of investors who lost money in Morgan Stanley deals. “Having spent the last four-and-a-half years litigating these deals, that’s not what I have found.”
MORE: What does Nasdaq meltdown mean for future IPOs?
E-mails and other documents uncovered in a case brought by Washington state’s King County, which lost money on a structured investment that Morgan Stanley helped put together, showed bankers at the firm knew the deal was riskier than they were telling investors. According to one e-mail, a Morgan Stanley banker wrote he was seeing more loans being made to individuals who had bought numerous homes and run up a lot of debt. Other loans looked to have been made on the basis of stated incomes that were not reasonable given the borrowers’ credit scores. “Bottom line,” wrote the banker in an e-mail to colleagues at the bank, “there is not a lot of ‘common sense’ being used when approving these loans.”
Nonetheless, most of those loans, according to King County’s suit, made it into the deal. According to documents filed in the case, one of the loans Morgan Stanley included in the final deal was for $143,000 to buy a vacant lot. An independent broker valued the property at $11,000, according to court documents. Yet Morgan Stanley said the land was worth $183,000.
In April, Morgan Stanley settled the case with King County for an undisclosed amount. It’s a settlement the government might want to take a second look at. | Despite a slew of private suits, the government apparently can't find anything wrong with Morgan Stanley. |
How small they are: each of these worlds could fit into the palm of your hand. There are two on each sheet of paper, one above the other, lining the walls of the Ikon gallery in Birmingham in their dozens. From a distance, they look like little grey smudges or blotted clouds. I get up close, squinting. A gallery assistant brings a magnifying glass, and the scene suddenly looms in all its detail. Farms and villages, rocks and rivers, the walled estates of the rich, the hovels of the poor.
Populated by a cast of fools and drunks, fishers and hunters, Thomas Bewick's late 18th-century/early 19th-century Tale-pieces are full of disconcerting, captivating incident. An infant pulls the tail of a gigantic horse, while mother screams from too far away; a man precariously fords a river on stilts. A beggar at the gate of a splendid mansion gnaws a bone while his dog looks hungrily on; the peacock nearby would make a better meal, but it's a rich man's pet. A glutton vomits at his table, and a drunk spews from every orifice while a barrel spurts him with beer. Each scene is a small and often comic revelation. Sometimes you smirk and laugh - then the next image has you mesmerised.
Printed on yellowing paper, these modest black and white woodblock images take my breath away - and with it everything around me: the gallery, the people, the backache I'm getting from stooping. By the late 18th century, the woodblock was the poor relation to steel or copper engravings. Bewick brought the medium back to life, at the end of each long day's work printing money for the Bank of Northumberland. He also found time to produce an enormously popular General History of Quadrupeds, as well as a two-volume History of British Birds, in which these Tale-pieces originally appeared (their name is a play on the fact that they are tail-pieces, decorative squibs designed to fill up space at the end of a text).
There is enormous pleasure in these tiny images, sketched on paper then transferred to a bit of Turkish box-wood, which Bewick then engraved, using little tools he mostly made himself. He imagined image after image, right up until the day he died in 1828. It is surprising he kept his sight. Sometimes he even drew on his thumbnail, licking the images off with his tongue when he wanted to draw another. He would have made a wonderful animator.
The harder you look at these prints, the less there seems to be on the paper. One might almost suspect a trick. Even the rough ovoid shape seems to coalesce out of blankness and drift into nothingness at its edges. The imagination fills in the gaps, the colours and the textures. I smell the green water and the pigs in the midden, hear the geese overhead and the wretched squeals of a dog, hanged by a child in imitation of the dead man swinging on a gibbet in the distance. Another man watches the torment, curious about the plight of the dog, and savouring the cruelty of the boy. It is an image of horrible vicariousness; we look, too, finding ourselves in this vile company.
Then there are the anglers, studying the water or casting the fly. A ragged-looking bloke cowering in the freezing rain could be me. Born in 1753 in Northumberland, Bewick was William Blake's exact contemporary. He died the same year as Goya. An uneducated country boy luckily apprenticed to an engraver, Bewick worked all his life in Newcastle (save for a short, miserable few months in London) and died in Gateshead. Famous for his prints of animals and birds, he was as inventive as he was observant, as funny and bleak as he was exacting and faithful to the things he saw around him.
The Tale-pieces are like ballads or snatches of folk song; but at their best they offer much more. In one, an entire scene is obliterated by Bewick's inky thumbprint, carefully drawn and engraved between a cottage and an approaching rider. A visual equivalent to the sorts of authorial gags Laurence Sterne played in Tristram Shandy, it is a marvellous, timeless, magical joke ·
• Thomas Bewick: Tale-pieces is at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, until 25 May. Details: 0121-248 0708/ikon-gallery.co.uk | Thomas Bewick's woodcuts of louts, fools and rascals from 18th-century rural life are miniature masterpieces. Adrian Searle is captivated by their cruel humour |
FORTUNE — The biggest drama on the first full day of Apple v. Samsung — the high-stakes patent infringement case being played out in a packed San Jose federal courthouse — was the release to the press of information Samsung’s lead attorney had literally begged the judge to allow into evidence. (“What’s the point of having a trial?” he said in open court when his umpteenth motion was denied.)
The leak infuriated judge Lucy Koh — to the delight of the reporters in the courtroom and, presumably, Apple’s AAPL legal team.
The story Samsung was trying to tell the jury was that before it unveiled the first iPhone, Apple was pursuing a design inspired by Sony’s SE aesthetic — a line of reasoning that has been transformed in hot fires of the blogosphere into proof that Apple “copied” Sony’s design.
The evidence was barred on a variety procedural grounds. But as John Gruber deftly showed in a Daring Fireball post Tuesday, it should have been barred because it’s totally bogus.
Here’s the iPhone creation story Samsung wanted to tell (taken from an unredacted Samsung legal brief):
Right after this article was circulated internally, Apple industrial designer Shin Nishibori was directed to prepare a “Sony-like” design for an Apple phone and then had CAD drawings and a three-dimensional model prepared. Confirming the origin of the design, these internal Apple CAD drawings prepared at Mr. Nishibori‘s direction even had the “Sony” name prominently emblazoned on the phone design, as the below images from Apple‘s internal documents show: Soon afterward, on March 8, 2006, Apple designer Richard Howarth reported that, in contrast to another internal design that was then under consideration, Mr. Nishibori‘s “Sony-style” design enabled “a much smaller-looking product with a much nicer shape to have next to your ear and in your pocket” and had greater “size and shape/comfort benefits.” As Mr. Nishibori has confirmed in deposition testimony, this “Sony-style” design he prepared changed the course of the project that yielded the final iPhone design.
There are a lot of problems with that story, starting with the fact Noshibori’s design (pictured above) didn’t change the course of the iPhone project, and he never said it did. Apple has released sketches of a near-final iPhone design (see left) that pre-date his CAD drawings by almost a year.
But let’s go back to the first sentence of the excerpt. The article that was circulated internally at Apple, Gruber helpfully points out, was a 2006 Businessweek interview with the designers of the product shown at the top of this piece. It was not a phone at all, but a Walkman — the NW-A1200 — that according to Businessweek represented for Sony a new, cleaner, less cluttered design aesthetic.
And what inspired that new aesthetic? Of all things, according to the Sony designers, an Apple iPod.
Apple wasn’t copying Sony, dear bloggers. Sony was copying Apple. | Judge for yourself: Does this look like something Jony Ive might have copied? |
Truth is the precious but ponderous cargo aboard the diminutive Jeep Renegade.
“It is most important that it be true to the brand,” says Jeep’s US marketing director Jim Morrison of the new compact SUV.
“Truth” is really just a proxy for “authenticity”, and both are enormously important to Jeep – a nameplate with roots in World War II and an uncanny ability to evoke self-sufficiency and backwoods know-how. Can a tiny, car-like SUV possibly bear such a cumbersome, shifty payload?
Worldwide regulatory demands for reduced fuel consumption and commensurate reductions in carbon dioxide production gives the fuel-efficient Renegade a bit of urgency, but Jeep says it has planned a compact but rugged crossover for years. Surely being born of desire, rather than government regulation, is the narrative that Jeep prefers to tell.
Wrestled over curvy mountain switchbacks in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California, the little Renegade displays an agility befitting its car-derived roots and it sprightly size. Do not be fooled by its bluff, upright grille and windshield; those familiar off-road cues cloak a thoroughly capable on-road vehicle.
MacPherson strut suspension at all four corners provides the limberness to both tame paved turns and obstacles strewn on the trail. The electrically assisted rack-and-pinion steering suffers a bit of characteristic artificiality at low, on-road speeds, but comes into its own as the Renegade gathers pace. Off-road, the light touch feels just right, conveying the needed feel as the front tires search for the path of least resistance. Thanks to 8.7 inches of ground clearance and 19in water-fording capability, all-wheel-drive Renegades can engage in the standard – if not the more spectacular – off-road stunts expected of a Jeep.
It accomplishes its off-road capability the same way the mechanically similar – but far more expensive – Land Rover Evoque does: electronic wizardry. A computer controls the flow of engine power to the wheels, the motion of each wheel, the gears in the nine-speed automatic transmission and how wide the throttle should open, given the conditions.
All these allow the range-topping Trailhawk edition to go pretty much everywhere the larger Wrangler, Cherokee and Grand Cherokee can. Lesser Renegades possess commensurately less capability, all the way down to sub-$20,000 front-wheel-drive poseurs that save owners money at purchase and at the pump. Front-drive versions will top 30mpg on the highway, Jeep claims, but official numbers have yet to be released.
The optional all-wheel drive system skews front-drive most of the time, coming back on line in less than a second if the all-knowing computer determines that the rear wheels are starved for power. In practice, the interplay is utterly imperceptible.
Motive force for North American models comes from either a 2.4-litre four-cylinder engine driving through a nine-speed automatic transmission or a turbocharged 1.4-litre four-cylinder with a six-speed manual. Befitting Jeep’s relatively new Fiat corporate parentage, an array of less powerful (and less thirsty) engines, including diesels, are available outside North America. The 2.4-litre moves the Renegade with authority, while the 1.4-litre is adequate in unhurried driving, but is unmasked when the gas pedal meets the floor and its cupboard is revealed to be rather bare.
One of the Jeep Wrangler’s most beloved traits is its ability to lose its top. The hardtop-only Renegade delivers a decent facsimile of that freedom with the optional My Sky, consisting of a pair of retractable-removable sunroof panels that allows rays and air to reach the front and rear seats. When removed, the panels stow away unobtrusively below the rear cargo floor.
Inside, all the Renegade's surfaces, materials and controls are unimpeachable, thanks to Chrysler's resolve to curb its pre-Fiat-merger tendency to cheapen cabins. The official company line is that the splash of colour on the tachometer’s face at redline reflects an authentic Jeep mud splatter. In truth, however, it was inspired by a paint splotch left on vice president of interior design Klaus Busse’s goggles after a staff paintball battle.
“It isn’t the PC explanation,” Busse says while showing a photo of the goggles, “but that’s where it really came from.” Despite his direct connection to this detail, the designer says his favourite cabin appointment is the dash-mounted grab handle on the passenger’s side – a thick and stout attachment that, according to Busse, conveys true Jeep character. Says Busse: “I pulled on it and it moved the whole vehicle!”
One miss: the well-regarded Uconnect touchscreen infotainment system comes in a 6.5in size rather than the 8.4in display found in other Fiat Chrysler vehicles. Given Jeep is looking to court a new buyer with the Renegade, one who might expect the comforts and amenities of a softer crossover or sedan, it seems a miscalculation.
Authenticity-obsessive brands like Jeep, however, may get a pass. It’s rare for such a brand to bend its truth without breaking it, and compared to prior attempts – the ponderous Liberty and homely (if popular) Compass come to mind – the Renegade broadcasts a truth as appealing as the cheeky bleat from its dual-note horn: Jeeps are a lot of fun.
If you would like to comment on this or anything else you have seen on BBC Autos, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter. | Built to broaden the appeal of the off-roading brand, the compact SUV carves out a niche all its own, writes Dan Carney. |
02/21/2015 AT 01:00 PM EST
You know what they say about all work and no play? Luke Bryan sure does. So the singer made time to hit up Walt Disney World with his family for a day of fun between his Orlando concerts.
While at the Magic Kingdom on Feb. 20, Bryan stopped for a meet-and-greet with cowboy Goofy (because even Goofy goes country in the presence of Luke!) before riding Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
It was the perfect kind of day for Bryan, 38, who last year told PEOPLE that the best of both worlds is having his family out on tour with him.
"I'm at my happiest when I'm out on the road and my sons Bo [6] and Tate [3] and my wife, Caroline, are with me, because I'm doing what I love and I'm not having to be away from my family. When we're all out there together, we play with them all day and then I get to go onstage."
Bryan also shared a photo from the outing on Instagram: | The singer and his family make a pit stop at the happiest place on Earth |
Lynda Adjei never expected that her many years of experience in human resources would make it more difficult to find a job, rather than easier. But when she applied to numerous positions after her company restructured, she got the same message time and time again: “You are overqualified”.
After several months of applying to international companies similar to the one where she had previously worked, Adjei broadened her search to include start-ups and managerial positions. Eventually, she was successful and landed a job.
For many highly skilled job candidates like Adjei, being perceived as overqualified can be hard to overcome.
There are three categories hiring managers use to group overqualified applicants, according to New York-based Jonathan Mazzocchi, a managing director and partner with Massachusetts-based executive recruiting firm WinterWyman. First: the candidate has too many years of experience so therefore the role is too junior. Second: the applicant has too many skills and they’ll be bored. Third: he or she has already accomplished too much so they’ll look to leave the new job too quickly.
As a candidate, you must “change perception,” said Mazzocchi in an email. “If you can sell yourself effectively while remaining honest and factual, odds are you can land the right job — even if it is beneath you a bit.”
Think of your CV as a marketing tool. “It’s easy enough to manipulate things in order to create a better impression,” said Mazzocchi. Just keep the facts accurate. For example, remove the first 10 years of experience, along with education dates. “If you have more degrees than a thermometer, then it may be wise to remove ones that aren’t as relevant,” Mazzochhi said.
If you are applying for a director of finance role and you have a handful of degrees, such as a BS, an MBA, an MSF, a CFA and a JD, “you may not need all of that horsepower,” Mazzochhi said. By taking off everything but the BS and the MBA, you “may not scare your prospective employer away as much.”
An excess of education is quite common, according to a 2013 study by the global Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Almost one in three workers in the UK and Japan said they had more education than was necessary to qualify for their current jobs, and in the US, one in five said the same.
Use your interview to explain any of the omitted information and give your pitch on why you would be a perfect match for the role, said Mazzocchi.
Don’t forget to edit your profile on online networking sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Xing when applying. It should match what you leave on your CV. “In today’s market, expect employers and recruiters to verify everything,” said Mazzocchi.
Bypassing the human resources department is one of the best steps an overqualified candidate can take, according to Dallas-based Tony Beshara, president of recruiting firm Babich & Associates. Instead, applicants should target “the individual hiring authorities” within the organisation, he said. These people have final say on new hires and might be willing to consider you even if you don’t fit the specifications — or if you have too many credentials. Accountants should call the accounting manager or the controller, Beshara suggested. Salespeople could reach out call the sales manager or vice president of sales. Engineers? Call the engineering manager. The idea is to call the person who has the most immediate need, Beshara said.
If you must go through human resources, Beshara recommends editing your CV to fit the position. “Dumb it down. Get that executive vice president [title] off of there,” he said. “Otherwise, they’re not going to interview you.”
A major concern for employers is whether boredom will set in for someone with a lot of experience. “It’s important to give the impression that the position you’re interviewing for is a stretch position and you’re not going to walk in and do this role in your sleep,” said Mazzocchi.
If necessary, spell it out. “You need to have a story to tell why this is a job that suits your life conditions and career ambitions right now and the benefits to the employer with having you onboard,” said Stockholm-based author and executive career coach Charlotte Hagard in an email. “The employer will not be able to connect the dots otherwise.”
Mazzocchi said he often instructs more seasoned candidates to search for roles in different industries or sectors. “They (the employer) may be persuaded to consider a more experienced candidate who will need to pick up some of the nuances of their industry and at the same time be qualified enough to drive it,” he said.
Once you get to the interview, you can show enthusiasm for the new industry and say you know you will need to take a half step back in order to gain sector expertise. Let the interviewer know that you are fully prepared to do so and that you welcome this type of opportunity.
“You need to show energy, interest and enthusiasm for the job,” said Hagard. “Try to learn something about your competition and then find the advantages and disadvantages with your background compared to others.” Emphasise the advantages you have as someone with a lot of experience: for example, a broad network, extensive knowledge and the ability to take on lots of responsibility in a short time.
Career Coach is a twice-monthly column on BBC Capital in which we consider the career turning points and questions many professionals face. We welcome questions from readers at careercoach@bbc.com.
To comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Capital, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.
Career Coach is a twice-monthly column on BBC Capital in which we consider the career turning points and questions many professionals face. We welcome questions from readers at careercoach@bbc.com. | If youâre having trouble landing a position because you have too much experience, hereâs what to do. |
It’s strong, it’s musky and almost animalistic in its sensuality. Some people love it while others find it offensive and gross. We’re not talking about durian, the beloved but smelly southeast Asian fruit but oud – one of the most expensive raw scent ingredients in the world.
Known as oud (or oudh), it comes from the wood of the Southeast Asian agar (aquilaria) tree. When the wood becomes infected with a particular type of mold, the tree reacts by producing a dark, scented resin, which is often called “liquid gold.” “Oud” is used to refer to both the resin-saturated wood (the agarwood) as well as the oil distilled from it. One reason oud is so expensive is its rarity; by some estimates, fewer than 2% of wild agar trees produce it. Experts claim that the very best oud comes from the oldest trees, which are even more scarce.
It can sell for $5,000 a pound – or more. According to the International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences, oud oil can cost as much as £20,000 per kilogram (more than $30,000) depending on its purity.
“Oud is astonishingly rare,” says Chandler Burr, the former New York Times perfume critic and author of The Emperor of Scent . “It has a very particular scent and there is nothing like it on the market. It’s dark, rich and opaque.”
The scent is an ancient one that has been used for thousands of years in the Middle East and Asia both at home and in religious ceremonies. The International Journal of Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences states that agarwood, also known as the “Wood of the Gods,” is mentioned as early as the third century AD in ancient China.
In the Middle East, where oud is most common, it is considered a cultural touchstone and highly prestigious. “Oud is so ubiquitous in the Middle East,” says Burr. “Anyone there can recognize its scent immediately.”
Oud is used in wooden incense chips, body oils and fragrance, and is now becoming more popular in the West. According to the NPD Group, sales of oud perfumes are going strong within the prestige fragrance market, which is valued at $3 billion. A 2013 report stated that total oud sales were up by 68%.
In the last few years, both boutique and larger companies have launched fragrances with oud, including Maison Francis Kurkdjian whose Oud Velvet Mood contains cinnamon from Ceylon and oud from Laos and retails for €275 (approximately $298). There’s also Kilian’s Rose Oud ($395) and Christian Dior’s Oud Ispahan ($300), which contains labdanum absolute (also known as Rose of Sharon) and Leather Oud, which contains gaiac wood, cedar and sandalwood. Many of these scents are unisex and are not for the shy and understated. Krigler’s Oud for Highness 75 was created in 1975 for King Hussein of Jordan ($565). Indeed, oud is closely associated with royalty. The British press reported that Prince William was gifted a bespoke scent on his wedding day that contained oud. NPD Group reports that 66% of oud scents are artisanal.
Burr says that Tom Ford’s Oud Wood is his favorite on the market. “It’s absolutely beautiful,” he says. “It takes the oud concept and makes it as literal as possible while still accessible to the west.”
Here’s a look at other oud fragrances and beauty products scented with oud. | The musky, expensive scent is popping up all over the place (for a price). |
03/24/2015 AT 11:55 PM EDT
reporter who was sexually assaulted while covering Egypt's Arab Spring protests in 2011, has returned to the hospital.
reported on Monday that Logan, 43, had been admitted to a Washington D.C. hospital as a result of complications from the
she suffered after being separated from her bodyguard in Tahrir Squre in Cairo.
"We were sorry to learn that Lara was readmitted to the hospital," a
spokesperson told PEOPLE. "We wish her a speedy recovery."
for diverticulitis, an intestinal disease, and internal bleeding last month, and Ed Butowsky, a friend of Logan's family, told Breitbart News that the mother of two had been hospitalized at least four times this year.
"Very few people know how stoic and incredibly tough this lady is," Butowsky said. "In spite of everything she's had to face in the last two years, people have no idea the physical suffering she has been enduring due to the brutal sexual assault she encountered."
The 2011 attack occurred just after Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was removed from power. A statement by CBS explained that Logan "suffered a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating before being saved by a group of women and an estimated 20 Egyptian soldiers." Logan would go on to | The CBS journalist returned to the hospital for the second time in a month due to injuries sustained during a brutal attack in Egypt |
This post is in partnership with Money. The article below was originally published at Money.com.
When Burger King brought back chicken fries to its menu last summer, the company explained that the decision was made due to a widespread campaign of fast food fanatics clamoring for their return via online petitions and social media. “Guest outcries reached a point where they could no longer be ignored,” reads a BK statement in August, which also noted that chicken fries, which hadn’t been available since 2012, would be back on menus nationally only for a limited time.
Apparently, while the “limited time” window seems to suffice for the Shamrock Shakes, McRibs, and Pumpkin Spice Lattes of the fast food world, a merely temporary return for chicken fries just didn’t cut it. This week, BK announced that the breaded and fried chicken strips were becoming a permanent part of the menu, to the delight of the fanatical tweeting masses.
Not everyone is happy about the return of chicken fries. Among the disappointed are those who are passionate about bringing back some other food or drink item they’ve craved desperately since it disappeared. For instance, the Beefy Crunchy Movement Facebook page, which has over 16,000 likes, voiced disgust that BK listened to its fans by making chicken fries permanent, yet Taco Bell has ignored the passionate calls for the return of the burrito featuring Flamin’ Hot Fritos inside. The Beefy Crunch Burrito was brought back by popular demand in 2013, but it disappeared quickly and hasn’t been seen in nearly two years.
Other Taco Bell fans have demanded the return of the extra-spicy
, while still other fast food customers have focused their passion on bringing back items ranging from
to KFC Chicken Little sandwiches. Yes, KFC currently has
on the menu, but the supposedly “new and improved” version is quite different from the one sold decades ago, and
have bashed the new item as little more than a “misappropriation of the Chicken Little’s good name.”
What’s interesting—and quite revelatory about human nature and our most passionate cravings—is that there’s quite a long history of failed healthy fast food items, yet there doesn’t seem to be much of a movement to bring any of them back to menus. Instead, campaigns to bring back beloved food and drink from the dead overwhelmingly lean toward those heavy in salt, sugar, grease, calories, and caffeine. Here’s a list of cult favorites that disappeared for a while and recently resurfaced after the people have spoken. | Don't give up hope if some heartless corporate type decides to kill off your favorite soda, cereal, or fast food indulgence. It'll surely make a return to the marketplace if popular demand, well, demands it. |
Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton
03/29/2015 AT 03:10 PM EDT
After nearly four years of marriage, country couple
are not shying away from PDA.
On Sunday, the 31-year-old Lambert posted an Instagram photo of the two locking lips – and Shelton, 38, looks pretty happy about the kiss!
The pair are both wearing "Girl Crush" caps from
in the photo, which is also captioned "We love @littlebigtown." LBT's new single
for the mistaken assumption that it is about a lesbian relationship. A few local DJs even refused to play the song.
Lambert and Shelton were married in May 2011. She told
was "the happiest person on the planet."
"I'm not sunshine and roses," she said. "Blake's the happiest person on the planet. He pulls me out of my darkness ⦠Literally, everything is the best about being married."Â
Lambert is in the middle of her nearly 30-city "Certified Platinum" tour, and performed in New York City on Saturday night. Shelton, meanwhile, will next host the Academy of Country Music Awards on April 19 with
Even better for Lambert: Shelton
, "Sangria," which he calls "one of the sexiest songs I've ever cut." | The pair showed their love for each other – and Little Big Town |
03/30/2015 AT 09:05 PM EDT
among his recent successes, and now Kevin Hart is being called a comedic genius.
On April 12, the 2015 MTV Movie Awards will give Hart the second-ever Comedic Genius Award in recognition of his long list of comedy films and also small-screen projects such as
, which airs 10 p.m. tonight.
A statement from MTV said the award celebrates Hart for a "bold and irreverent comedic style that has captivated audiences from his movies and sitcoms, to stand-up specials, award show performances and in front of packed arenas of fans."
The inaugural Comedic Genius Award went to Will Ferrell, Hart's costar in
, which opened this weekend. Jimmy Kimmel will present the award.
The 2015 MTV Movie Awards will be hosted by Amy Schumer and air live at 8 p.m. ET on April 24. | The actor will receive MTV's Comedic Genius Award at the April 12 show |
04/08/2015 AT 11:10 PM EDT
How do you take on someone who has
under her belt? With the right pair of Janis Joplin sunglasses, of course.
In this preview of the epic showdown between
, Blunt, 32, pulls out all the stops. The video shows the
star going into faux-diva mode as she searches for the right sunglasses to complete her Janis Joplin look for her big number.
Also a part of Blunt's strategy? Improving mouth mobility by saying
's name repeatedly in her dressing room – and plenty of snarky asides about her competition.
"I've been screaming at everybody pretty much all day, because I don't want a voice," she jokes in the video. "And I guarantee that Anne Hathaway is in full voice right now. You can't use that here. Thanks, anyway.
Blunt also scoffs about her former
costar's overly secretive creative process. "Finally she called me and said 'Okay, listen, I'm doing Beethoven's 5th,' " Blunt says. "And I went, 'There aren't any words in that.' And she just hung up."
She even resorts to outright threats. "I'm going to pick up your feet and mop you," she tells Hathaway, 32, backstage.
Blunt will have to try especially hard to top Hathaway's take on
"Wrecking Ball," a preview of which
But all this build-up is worth it to see Blunt in full Joplin drag taking the stage in the final moments of the video.
airs Thursdays (10 p.m. ET) on Spike. | Blunt goes faux-diva when working to channel Janis Joplin for her big Lip Sync Battle number |
12/05/2014 AT 07:00 PM EST
, people in his native South Africa and across the world are paying tribute to him.
The politician, who was the first black president in South Africa, died on Dec. 5, 2013. He was 95.
Friends and public figures took to social media Friday to commemorate the civil rights trailblazer.
"On the first anniversary of the death of #NelsonMandela, we remember that he chose reconciliation over retaliation,"
And around the world, communities are unveiling monuments in the social activist's memory. In Cape Town, the
– a 30-foot pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarers – has been met with
, the giant sunglasses face Robben Island, where Mandela was jailed for almost 30 years.
According to the artist, Michael Elion, the work "links us to the mind of a man whose incredible capacity to transcend enduring physical hardship, with unwavering mental fortitude and dignity, transformed the consciousness of an entire country."
Meanwhile, in Pretoria, South Africa, prison inmates at the Zonderwater have been crocheting blankets for a charity, 67 Blankets for Nelson Mandela Day, in the former leader's memory. (The organization refers to Mandela's 67 years of service.)
"A lot of them want to make a difference. They want to do something for Nelson Mandela," the charity's founder, Carolyn Steyn,
And on this side of the Atlantic, in Montreal, Nelson Mandela Pavilion was just inaugurated and will offer services as a community center.
"With the Negro Community Centre being torn down, I think the community has been looking for a place to call their home for their programming and services," the neighborhood executive director, Tiffany Callendar,
. "This is a demonstration of the city of Monteal's commitment to working with us, but we are still striving to be independent and own our own buildings in due time."
On the first anniversary of the death of #NelsonMandela, we remember that he chose reconciliation over retaliation. pic.twitter.com/tU6agf1iTl | The world pays tribute to the anti-apartheid politician |
04/14/2015 AT 06:50 PM EDT
And no, PEOPLE isn't leaving off the last word. That's the title, ellipsis and all – though you'd might guess what word is being implied.
, the film is being described as "
Lopez, 45, will produce the film with her production company, Nuyorican Productions, which also produced
. That movie, which made $48 million, also starred Lopez and concerned her character's relationship with a younger man. It remains to be seen if
will have Lopez exploring the comedic side of similar subject matter.
, a raunchy sex comedy titled | Universal Pictures announced that Jennifer Lopez is starring in a movie with a provocative title |
Marco Rubio, the latest entrant into an increasingly crowded presidential field, couldn’t have spelled out his pitch more clearly if he’d stamped “The Future” on his forehead. The freshman Republican senator from Florida, taking the stage Monday evening in Miami to announce his 2016 candidacy, missed no opportunity to hammer home the generational contrast he hopes will lift him above the contest’s two outsize early heavies — first, his mentor, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (age 62), and then former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (67), who made her own long-anticipated entry official with an announcement-by-video yesterday.
“Too many of our leaders and their ideas are stuck in the twentieth century,” Rubio told a the crowd gathered at the Freedom Tower, a sort of Ellis Island for Cuban exiles like his parents. “They are busy looking backwards, so they do not see how jobs and prosperity today depend on our ability to compete in a global economy. So our leaders put us at a disadvantage by taxing, and borrowing, and regulating like it was 1999.”
At 43, Rubio stands as the youngest contender in what could reasonably be considered the contest’s first tier. Judging by the speech, he won’t let his elders soon forget it. “They look for solutions in yesterday,” he went on. “Now the time has come for our generation … It is a generational choice … Yesterday is over and we are never going back … Our country has always been about the future … We can’t do that by going back to the leaders and ideas of the past.”
Amid jabs at The Olds, Rubio weaved in stirring references to his own story as the son of Cubans who fled to America seeking a better life for their children. That narrative of humble beginnings — his dad was a bartender, his mom a cashier and a maid — carries its own weight. But it also underscores the departure Rubio aims to represent from the dynastic hold that the Bush and Clinton clans claim on our politics.
The newly-minted White House hopeful also offered up some boilerplate about unleashing prosperity at home while projecting strength overseas. But this speech was all about atmospherics. As our recent history demonstrates, youth and change can make for a potent electoral combination. A key for Rubio, now apparently running only third in his home state, will be satisfying a threshold question in the minds of voters about his readiness for the job. His highest-profile foray into policymaking during his four years in Washington — as a leader of the bipartisan immigration reform effort in 2013 — passed the Senate but died in the House in the face of right-wing rage. With his support among conservatives cratering, Rubio abandoned the comprehensive approach he’d coauthored in favor of a border security-first hardline. The accommodation regained him no love from the base while sacrificing the good faith he’d earned from Hispanics. In other words, it proved a lose-lose.
Yet the former state House speaker has outrun expectations his entire career in public life: He won his senate seat, for example, in the face of near-total opposition from Florida’s Republican establishment, which aligned in the primary behind the moderate former Gov. Charlie Crist. No surprise, then, that Rubio has hustled since the immigration debacle to try to make up the ground he lost.
From his perch on the Foreign Relations Committee, he’s voiced a hawkish line on international affairs while other ascendant personalities in the party, most notably 2016 rival Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), have advocated for American retrenchment abroad. And on the home front, he has pressed forward with an economic vision, linking with fellow freshman Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) to propose a wholesale overhaul of the tax code. The framework they crafted earned them praise from some reform conservative brains — and also some friendly fire. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat argued the plan — which combines some family-friendly provisions, like an expansion of the Child Tax Credit on the individual side of the code, with red meat like a top corporate rate slashed to 25% — could cost the Treasury up to $4 trillion over a decade and is therefore “simply not reasonable given America’s current fiscal situation.” (Rubio, for his part, argues that accounting doesn’t credit the proposal with the economic growth it would unleash, though whether that would make more than a slight dent in the overall price tag is dubious.)
The policy debates will be joined later. As Rubio all but spelled out in caps lock Monday night, he’s going to do what he can in the meantime to make his front-running competition feel their age.
For more on the presidential campaign, watch this Fortune video about Hillary Clinton: | Announcing his White House bid on Monday evening, the Florida senator made clear he'll emphasize generational change. |
FORTUNE – How much trouble is GameStop GME in?
On Monday, the Grapevine, Texas-based video game retailer trimmed its previously light earnings forecast for the latest quarter — a period that includes the last holiday season — after witnessing an unexpected decline in software sales for older home consoles like Microsoft’s MSFT Xbox 360 and Sony’s SNE PlayStation 3. (GameStop also reduced its earnings for the year.) Although the company reports that revenues climbed 9.3% to $3.15 billion and same-store sales increased 10.2%, shares tumbled 20% that day, their biggest drop in 11 years, and have yet to fully recover.
“I don’t think they anticipated how dramatic the decline would be,” admits Michael Pachter, an analyst for Wedbush Securities. Looking ahead, Sean McGowan, an analyst for Needham & Company puts it simply: “I doubt 10 years from now GameStop is going to have 4,000 or 5,000 stores.”
On the surface, the news could be taken as a bad omen. Could GameStop suffer the same fate as retailers like Blockbuster and Circuit City before it? After all, more consumers are playing inexpensive games on their smartphones and tablets. With last fall’s launch of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, gamers can now bypass a trip to their local store entirely and download an entire 40-plus gigabyte game in an hour or less. And efforts like PlayStation Now, which will allow millions of gamers to stream and play select software to their devices by the end of the year, augur an era where even “downloads” may soon become passé.
More: San Francisco cab drivers are Uber’s latest pickup
But GameStop is hardly doomed, argue analysts. Indeed, McGowan foresees more store closures but also sees GameStop evolving and following in the footsteps of Netflix NFLX , which grew from being a purely distribution service to generating original content. GameStop could grow similarly, taking a more hands-on role with the execution of game content and capitalizing off those efforts. For instance, when PlayStation Now rolls out later this year, stores could actively sell service subscriptions and receive a cut of the sales transaction.
As for those lackluster software holiday sales, expect them to rebound somewhat later this year as more games arrive for the newest consoles. And over the next decade, Pachter argues digital downloads will never supersede sales of physical media and instead max out at 50% of GameStop’s overall software revenues. Unlike music or movies, far too many gamers enjoy trading back their games for in-store credits that go toward future purchases. (Indeed, Pachter says 30% of all games purchased are traded later on.) So digital or not, a substantial contingent of gamers will continue to buy physical media because they know they can trade it in for the next new thing.
Translation: Physical media for videogames might just have a few extra lives left. | With more people playing mobile gaming and a lowered earnings outlook for the year, is the retailer bound for the same fate as Blockbuster or Circuit City? |
Walt Disney Co. DIS , the world’s largest entertainment company, reported second-quarter profit that exceeded analysts’ expectations, driven by increased spending by theme park visitors.
Earnings for the quarter totaled $1.23 a share, the company revealed Tuesday. That’s up 14% year-over-year, beating the consensus estimate of $1.09 a share, according to Bloomberg data. Revenues rose to $12.46 billion from $11.65 billion a year earlier.
Disney posted the expectation-beating results in a period that lacked a major blockbuster like “Frozen,” signaling the underlying strength of its theme park and merchandising segments. Ticket price increases at its Orlando, Fla. and Anaheim, Calif. parks helped boost profits and offset lower sales at its film unit, which was selling “Frozen” DVDs at a rapid clip a year ago.
The performance “demonstrates the incredible ability of our strong brands and quality content to drive results,” Bob Iger, Disney’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement.
In the most recent quarter, operating income at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts increased 24% to $566 million. Meanwhile, Walt Disney Studios faced a 9% decline in operating income at its cable networks and a 10% decline in movie profit, a product of both the “Frozen” comedown and higher programming costs at ESPN.
Higher ad sales and affiliate fees within its media networks also helped. The broadcasting division profits were up 90%, thanks in large part to its recent sale of “Daredevil” to Netflix.
The Burbank, Calif.-based company moved its quarterly earnings release to Tuesday morning in order to let its executives attend the funeral of SurveyMonkey CEO David Goldberg, who is the wife of Disney board member and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Goldberg, who was 47 years old, died suddenly over the weekend while on vacation with his family.
READ MORE: Disney CEO Bob Iger’s empire of tech. | Disney beats earnings expectations with 10% quarterly profit increase even as it faces a "Frozen" comedown. |
Michael Reed and Dennis Fay
05/19/2015 AT 01:25 PM EDT
As an adopted only child, Michael Reed had a happy childhood in Chicago, but he always wondered about his birth father. Was his dad tall and lanky? Did he have brown eyes like his? On May 15, at age 60, a nervous but excited Reed finally found the answers to his lifelong questions.
In an emotional reunion at the Salt Lake City International Airport, Reed, a banker who lives in Chicago, threw his arms around the father he'd never known and wept.
"Hi, dad," Reed told Dennis Fay, 80, kissing him on the cheek.
"This is probably the most important day of my life – to meet him," Fay, of Murray, Utah,
as the men embraced. "I'm proud of him. There's not many people that would go through what he went through to find me."
Fay, a Korean War veteran, says he "ran around a lot" in his younger years and didn't realize that a woman he had a brief relationship with in the mid-1950s became pregnant and gave up their infant son for adoption.
"She happened to be one of the carhops," Fay said. "If you dated a carhop back in those days, you were pretty macho because they had their pick of men, and I dated her."
According to Fay, the woman left her job and moved away. He married soon after and raised nine children (seven boys and two girls) with his wife, Patsy, who died in 2011.
Reed, meanwhile, found out at age 10 that he was adopted, but wasn't given any information from his parents until he was 30.
After raising two children with his wife, Susan, he says he took a DNA test to learn about his Irish heritage and found Dennis Fay's cousin through genome sharing. She then put him in touch with his biological father.
With his adopted parents now deceased, "I prayed about it – I didn't want to hurt his feelings or really do any harm at all to the Fay family," Reed said.
He needn't have worried. At the airport, the only child who always longed to share his life with siblings was greeted by a crowd of new family members holding blue balloons and a yellow banner proclaiming, "It's a boy!"
"We were a little skeptical at first," Mike Fay (there are now two Michaels in the family) told reporters. But when the DNA test came back, "we knew he was our brother."
"I always wanted a brother or a sister," responded Reed, wiping tears from his eyes. Sixty years later, his dream a reality, "now I have nine." | A Utah dad meets the Chicago son he didn't know he had |
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar on the cover of PEOPLE
05/27/2015 AT 08:00 AM EDT
is on shaky ground following the revelation that a felony investigation was opened in 2006 after
of molesting five underage girls.
In statements to PEOPLE, the Duggar family indirectly addressed the closed investigation by referring to the multiple incidents listed in the report unearthed by
are "devastated" over the leak, a source close to the family tells PEOPLE. "They know that they did the best they could, but it doesn't mean they're not filled with regret."
, the network has yet to make any official decision about the future of
However, as the source tells PEOPLE, Michelle and Jim Bob are not currently focused on the very real possibility that they'll lose the TV show on which they've built a veritable empire: "Right now they're just focused on their faith – and each other."
, Michelle, 48, and Jim Bob, 49, said that Josh's "very bad mistakes" drew the family closer to each other and to God: "We pray that as people watch our lives they see that we are not a perfect family." | In the wake of their son's alleged molestation of five underage girls becoming public knowledge, reality TV is the least of their concerns |
Jamie Dimon has had enough of the “lazy” shareholders who are critical of JPMorgan Chase’s leadership—at least that’s what he let slip at an investor meeting this week.
Shareholder advisory firms, which Dimon was specifically attacking, recommended voting against his pay package when it went up for a vote at this month’s annual shareholder meeting. The two major proxy firms—ISS and Glass Lewis—believed the CEO’s compensation plan was not fully aligned with his performance.
Dimon had some choice words for them when he spoke Wednesday at a New York conference hosted by Bernstein, Reuters reports.
“If you do that, you are just irresponsible, I’m sorry,” Dimon said. “And you probably aren’t a good investor either.”
About one-third of JPMorgan JPM shareholder’s took the proxy firms’ advice and voted against Dimon’s dual role as CEO and Chairman of the Board, as well as his pay package. | This is some serious smack talk |
Like a hydra, when one massive broadband merger is killed another springs up in its place. A month after Comcast walked away from buying Time Warner Cable for $45 billion, Charter announced its intent to buy Time Warner Cable and wrap it into an already-announced Brighthouse acquisition in a deal valued at $78.7 billion inclusive of debt.
The proposed Charter and Time Warner deal would change the landscape of the U.S. broadband market by combining the second and third-largest cable-based broadband providers, and creating a new company with a total of 19.4 million broadband subscribers once the Brighthouse customers are added in. When you factor in all of the customers the combined companies would have a total of 23.9 million. This leaves the combined entity behind Comcast’s 22.4 million subscribers, but shoves the newly combined company ahead of AT&T for the No. 2 slot in total customers.
For broadband customers this deal has a lot of good things going for it, if Charter’s policies hold sway after the deals go through. The company has several progressive policies that may not generate headlines like other ISPs’ gigabit network announcements do, but overall help advance broadband adoption rates and lead to a more competitive market. They are:
Charter also has a consumer-friendly stance on network neutrality. It promises that regardless of what happens with any lawsuits over the Federal Communications Commission’s new network neutrality laws, it will not block, throttle or engage in paid prioritization of any traffic on its network. Add to this, Charter’s promises to expand its network to serve business customers and the cable company’s plans to become the second largest broadband provider in the country look like a good deal.
Justin Venech, VP of communications at Charter, says that while Charter currently has two service tiers of 60 Mbps and 100 Mbps, it will not downgrade Time Warner Cable markets that have the TWC Maxx offerings of 300 Mbps. TWC launched that offering in Austin, Texas, Kansas City, and a few other markets to compete with the launch of gigabit fiber-to-the-home services.
The challenge for the company, explains Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst of Leichtman Research Group, is that Charter splits most markets it is in with another cable company, which means its policies are often overshadowed by larger rivals with bigger marketing budgets. This deal, by consolidating Charter’s hold in many markets should help it gain more prominence. And maybe that means other firms will follow it and offer no-contract broadband without charging consumers for the privilege. | Charter has several consumer-friendly policies when it comes to its internet services, that make this deal much better than the Comcast takeover attempt. |
Do you like the idea of an internet without advertising? You can join the soaring ranks of people who install ad blocking software to scrub out banners, pop-ups, and more. But not everyone will be happy about that.
A report this week by media analyst Frederic Filloux warned that web publishers face a crisis as ad block rates shoot up, and consequently block an important means of revenue for online publishers. Between 15 to 17% of the U.S. population reportedly use ad blockers, and the number is double that for millennials. The numbers are even higher in Europe, and up to 80-90% in the case of specialty tech and gaming sites.
The popularity of ad blockers is understandable: For consumers they make web pages look nicer, and they can improve browser speed and screen for malware too.
Publishers, however, see the issue in a different light: No ads, no money. For them, ad blockers are vandals who threaten to plunder their income. Media groups in Europe sued a company that makes ad blockers—but the effort fell short this week after a court said selling such software is not illegal.
Meanwhile, the tools are causing tensions within the digital publishing industry as ad buyers and agencies start to ask how many of their paid ads disappear behind blockers.
“Native advertising” such as BuzzFeed sponsored stories, which don’t look like ads, could be a way around the problem. In theory, such ads could escape getting zapped; however, the latest ad blockers can reportedly detect phrases like “sponsored by,” which are required by the Federal Trade Commission, and delete the stories attached to them.
Filloux and others suggest that publishers may have to consider shutting out readers unless they disable their ad-blockers. This would effectively create a system where readers would have to agree to seeing ads as the price of admission to the content.
The German media companies’ attempt to stop the ad blockers in court fell short, and the outcome would also certainly be the same in the United States. Still, it’s hard not to feel that something should be done to address how the ad blockers operate.
The biggest issue, for critics, is that they find the ad blocker’s business model to be sleazy. In the case of Eyeo Gmbh, which operates the popular Adblock Plus tool, the company uses a pay-to-play “whitelist” that lets a select few advertisers circumvent the blocking process.
This isn’t how the company explains it, of course. Its website describes the pay-to-play system as an “Acceptable Ads” program that it reluctantly carries in service of improving ad quality. In reality, the program means that a handful of deep-pocketed outfits—specifically, Google GOOG , Amazon AMZN and Microsoft MSFT —can pay the toll to get their ads through, while others are blocked.
This feels like an especially patronizing and obnoxious form of gate-keeping, and one that could eventually draw the attention of the FTC. That day, though, is likely a long way off. (The agency declined Fortune‘s request for comment on ad blocking issues).
So for now, the reality is that a select few big advertisers will pay to jump over the ad blockers, while publishers contemplate various carrots and sticks to get readers to turn the blockers off:
Some really good #ux on @guardian‘s website when using an ad blocker. Subtle and pinned to the bottom of the window. pic.twitter.com/B0FHrMTIN9
— Craig Dennis (@craigmdennis) May 27, 2015
Such approaches, like the one used by the Guardian in the tweet above, are probably best. Legal attempts to ban software rarely fare well and, as history shows, once a technology goes mainstream, it’s almost impossible to convince people to stop using it.
As for the question of how the digital publishing industry should tally the growing number of unseen ads, the best guess is that the process will involve a lot of back room bickering.
“Nothing will happen with agencies or clients suing publishers or buying platforms,” said an executive with a big publisher, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The exec predicted that publishers will just keep offering bonus ad space to make up for the shortfall. | Ad blockers have been around for a long time, but now their soaring popularity is set to take a bite out of publishers' revenue. Their business model looks unsavory, but it may be here to stay. |
Governor Charlie Baker said ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft could continue operating as they usually do until the Legislature decides how to regulate them.
Following up on regulations forged in the final days of Deval Patrick’s administration, Baker said drivers for the ride-hailing companies could continue ferrying passengers in their personal vehicles for six months while his administration worked on legislation.
Mayor Martin J. Walsh of Boston and Mayor Joe Curatone of Somerville will be involved in the discussions, Baker’s office said. Cambridge officials have also taken part in the discussions.
After two years of rapid growth, Governor Patrick proposed rules in December that would allow companies like Uber and Lyft -- termed “transportation network companies” by lawmakers -- to continue operating as normal. Taxi and car service companies strongly opposed the regulations. In January, a group of taxi owners sued the City of Boston for allowing the services to continue operating. | Governor Charlie Baker said he’d continue to follow the steps laid out by his predecessor. |
State senators in South Carolina have voted 37-3 to remove the Confederate flag - a symbol increasingly viewed with repugnance following last month's shooting massacre at a black church - from the grounds of the state parliament.
After passing easily in the state Senate, the bill now is set to go before South Carolina's House of Representatives, amid growing public demands that the red, white and blue banner no longer be permitted to fly outside State House in the capital city Columbia.
"It's the right thing to do," said Democratic state senator Vincent Sheheen as he and his colleagues in the Republican-dominated parliament took up the hot-button issue.
The Confederate battle flag has become a flashpoint for controversy since the murder of nine black worshippers by a young white supremacist at a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Many see the Civil War banner - which has been adopted by extremist groups - as a symbol of hate and racism rather than regional heritage.
It has come down outside the Alabama state parliament and several major retailers have said they will no longer sell it.
For 15 years, the flag has flown alongside a Confederate memorial on the manicured lawn of State House in the southern state where the Civil War erupted in 1861.
But calls for it to go were rekindled by the June 17 mass murder of nine blacks - including a state senator - at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church.
Dylann Roof, 21, a suspected white supremacist charged with the killings, has been seen in online photographs flaunting the Confederate flag.
Governor Nikki Haley, a Republican with Tea Party support, spoke out in favour of taking down the flag following the Charleston shooting.
But by law, the final decision rests with both houses of the Republican-dominated South Carolina parliament, which could resolve the issue before going on its summer break this week.
Meanwhile, members of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan - infamous for their face-concealing white hoods and for waging a campaign of hate and terror dating back more than a century against African Americans and other minorities - are planning a protest next week in support of the Confederate flag outside the South Carolina parliament.
News media said the Klan has obtained a permit for a rally of 100 to 200 people on the State House grounds in Columbia on July 18.
Do you have any news photos or videos? | South Carolina politicians are debating whether a Confederate flag should be taken down from the State House following a church shooting in Charleston. |
Polar Beverages Inc., the independent beverage company headquartered in Worcester, has struck a deal with Nestle Waters that could boost its revenue 10 percent by 2020.
On Wednesday, the companies said they had formed a “strategic alliance” to can sparkling Poland Spring beverages and Nestea iced tea at Polar factories that would supply about 20 Eastern states.
Ralph Crowley Jr., Polar’s chief executive, said the deal could increase his company’s annual sales by $10 million to start and by $30 million to $50 million in 2020.
“Our whole plan is a lot bigger than that,” said Crowley, who said his company has between $400 million and $500 million in annual sales. “We view this as a permanent relationship.”
Although the companies created a new legal entity called Polar Strategic Ventures, they are not staffing an entirely new company, said Jeff Weston, the Nestle Waters executive who will run the operation from Worcester and the Nestle division’s offices in Stamford, Conn. The arrangement is simply a business deal to help Nestle tap the lucrative markets for canned teas and sparkling drinks, he said.
“We have these great trademarks. They have this great supply chain,” he said.
Customers want healthier alternatives to soda without the artificial ingredients of diet drinks, he said, “and the sparkling water category is really on fire.” The market for canned sparkling drinks grew 35 percent in the past year alone, he said, citing Nielsen data.
Privately held Polar Beverages has been in the Crowley family for four generations, according to the company. Crowley said it employs about 1,600 people at its Worcester headquarters and its canning and bottling operations in New York and Georgia.
The alliance will also result in the companies teaming up on distribution and sales of the drinks. | The Worcester soda company said Wednesday it struck a deal with Stamford, Conn.-based Nestle Waters to manufacture, distribute, and sell certain Nestle beverages. |
A connected car tile is seen during the press day of the 84th International Motor Show which will showcase novelties of the car industry on March 5, 2014 in Geneva, Switzerland.
Another 37 percent of the respondents said they are "moderately concerned" about the same issues, and nearly a quarter are "slightly concerned." The online survey polled 1,600 motorists in the U.S., Australia and the U.K.
The results echo many of the comments by Daimler shareholders during the company's annual meeting in Berlin earlier this week. Dieter Zetsche, chairman of the company's board of management and head of the Mercedes-Benz car group, told shareholders that Daimler was acutely aware of the problems related to data theft—but he insisted the company is taking every step it can to protect the privacy of its customers everywhere in the world.
Read MoreTesla Model S owners read lots of news
Daimler's answer to the threat included a heavy investment in a security system and protection, he said.
Other automakers, such Ford Motor, have also said they are actively working on protecting the privacy of any motorist using its vehicles. Ford came under intense scrutiny several months back, after its global marketing chief, Jim Farley, said during a speech at the annual Consumer Electronics Show that Ford's technology can collect and store a broad array of data about its customers.
Independent studies conducted by the U.S. Department of Transportation have also indicated that automobiles are susceptible to hacking. The problem could grow more serious as manufacturers add more capabilities to their cars—including the ability to reprogram engine control systems to correct software problems.
More from The Detroit Bureau: Toyota recalls 6.4M vehicles worldwide Honda named best overall brand Fuel prices expected to fall, just barely, for summer
Meanwhile, a growing number of makers, including General Motors and Hyundai, now offer remote start and remote door unlocking features, which could become the target of hackers. | A large number of Americans are nervous about whether new technology in connected automobiles could be hacked and the data stolen. |
Opportunistic "reverse trolls" extort legitimate companies by threatening to file patent challenges against products that make up the lion's share of their profits. Rather than risk that the costly IPR process could invalidate the companies' truly meaningful patents, the companies pay the ransom to the reverse troll. This has become rampant in biopharmaceuticals where product lifecycles are very long and the risk of development failure very high.
Hedge funds also take advantage of IPR by filing patent challenges, with great fanfare and publicity, and then shorting the stock of the companies that they target. Perhaps the most well-known practitioner of this particular IPR strategy is Hayman Capital Management, a Dallas-based hedge fund that has targeted Acorda Therapeutics' Ampyra (a drug to treat multiple sclerosis). Acorda's $1.5 billion valuation in February 2015 was supported almost entirely from the sales of Ampyra; the stock dropped 10 percent on the news of the IPR filing. It dropped another 4.8 percent on the news of a second IPR.
Read MoreCerner hits health-care IT's sweet spot: Trader
Hayman's hedge-fund manager, Kyle Bass, has filed 15 such IPRs so far and plans on targeting 14 more drugs. Bass has also targeted Celgene's methods for safely administering Revlimid, Pomalyst, and Thalomid. Critical to the stock shorting strategy is the fact that the drugs targeted by Hayman represent large percentages of the total sales of the companies. While Bass is the most well-known practitioner of the opportunistic IPR strategy, he's not the only one. Recently, Ferrum Ferro Capital, LLC filed a petition for IPR against a single claim of a patent owned by Allergan.
Despite hedge funds' attempt to position these efforts as being in the public's interest to reduce prices of drugs, this has the tone of stock manipulation, and the pharmaceutical industry has taken notice, calling for stricter standing requirements for IPR petitioners.
The patent board has yet to make a ruling on these opportunistic IPR challenges, as the first is due in August. If the initial challenges are successful, however, a tidal wave of additional IPR challenges by even more hedge funds is certain. Clearly, something has to be done, and fast.
Read MoreNovartis earnings fall, CEO focuses on heart drug's future
How can the IPR procedure be amended to address these clearly unintended consequences? One proposal is before the House Judiciary Committee and requires any party seeking an IPR of an existing patent to certify that it does not have any financial interest in a drop in the patent owner's securities. It's important to note that Acorda, Shire (NPS), and Celgene are fighting back, asking the patent office to consider the identities and financial stakes of the entities filing IPRs, and making the case that the IPR process is being used as a tool to manipulate markets, and filing a motion for sanctions over abuse of IPR for private financial gain. Another way to address the issue is to amend the America Invents Act to bar any entities from filing IPRs unless they have legitimate cause. A third way is to exempt biopharma products from IPR eligibility since the generic drug law and other mechanisms have long provided effective methods of patent challenge.
One thing is for sure: Something needs to be done about the unintended consequences of IPR. Developing new products is a difficult, time consuming, expensive and uncertain enough process. Laws that inadvertently permit practices that dissuade companies from developing new products stifle innovation and are not good for our country.
Commentary by Joseph Gulfo, the Executive Director of The Rothman Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Fairleigh Dickinson University and author of "Innovation Breakdown: How the FDA and Wall Street Cripple Medical Advances" (Post Hill Press). He has more than 25 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical and medical-device industries and is former CEO of Mela Sciences. Follow him on Twitter @josephgulfo.
Read More Obamacare ruling shows US balance of power is off | Hedge funds and and a new type of patent troll are using loopholes in patent law for gains, stifling innovation, says author Joseph Gulfo. |
Odessa is more than 425 miles (about 700 kilometers) from Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian forces have commandeered whole cities and this weekend held ad hoc referendums on independence.
It's Ukraine's biggest Black Sea port, even larger than Sevastopol in Crimea, which Russia annexed in March. Odessa lies in a region that forms Ukraine's maritime coastline and is of utmost importance to it economically.
"Ukraine without Odessa is effectively a landlocked country," said Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute.
Read MoreMeet the beneficiaries of the crisis in Ukraine
Alexander Kliment, director of Russia and Emerging Market research at Eurasia Group, said unrest into those southern regions of the country would substantially weaken the Ukrainian government's legitimacy and security, though he thinks things are not yet at that point.
"If anything, the Odessa events showed that pro-Russian forces might have a significantly harder time gaining grassroots support there than they did in the eastern regions, which are closer, geographically, economically and culturally, to the Russian orbit," Kliment said. | While much of the turmoil in Ukraine has taken place in the east, the jewel of Ukraine may be the proverbial line in the sand with Russia. |
On the desktop, Google is the most popular front door to the Internet. It's how people quickly find what they're looking for, and it's a cash cow for Google. Big companies spend hundreds of millions—sometimes billions—of dollars on sponsored links that run alongside search results to make sure they're getting Web traffic.
The mobile world is very different. Smartphone users tend not to go to Google.com to search for hotels, clothes or gifts. They go to particular apps, meaning there is no central front door to the mobile Web. While Google remains at the middle of mobile computing with Android and popular apps like Maps, YouTube and Gmail, it doesn't control the discovery experience.
Travelers looking for a place to stay can go to apps from HotelTonight, Airbnb, Priceline or any number of hotel-specific apps (Google recently licensed software from mobile hotel search provider Room 77 as a nod to the importance of accommodations). For shopping, Amazon.com, eBay, Walmart and Groupon all have popular mobile apps, and for entertainment there's Netflix and Hulu, among others.
Whatever the category, if consumers are beginning their search outside of Google, then Google isn't getting paid for helping them find what they're looking for. And more and more activity is happening off desktops and moving to phones and tablets.
Google is plenty aware. This comes directly from the risks section of its annual report: "search queries are increasingly being undertaken via 'apps' tailored to particular devices or social media platforms, which could affect our share of the search market over time."
Google has improved its voice-activated search technology to let people on the go search for anything, whether it's a friend's contact information or the best app for finding a weather report. And the company is the market leader in mobile advertising, thanks in large part to its purchase of ad network AdMob in 2009.
Read MoreThe rise of Airbnb
There's no question that Google is positioned for a long-term run in smartphones and mobile apps, but can it transfer its dominant market share in desktop search to the far more disparate mobile economy?
Google's $390 billion stock market value is built on dominance, not just relevance.
Remember NFC? Google does, though it would rather not. Short for near-field communication, the technology was central to Google's costly effort at getting new payment terminals into retailers' hands, so that consumers could pay with a chip attached to their phone.
It was one of many failed attempts that Google has made in the payments market, where PayPal, Apple and Amazon have had far more success getting customers to buy stuff with a couple clicks.
It's not just the $1.5 trillion e-commerce market that Google is trying to play in. It's all the extraordinarily valuable data that comes from knowing what, when and how people make purchases. Just ask Amazon or Netflix about the power and effectiveness of their recommendation engines.
Again, there's no sitting still in Mountain View. Google Wallet, its payments product, remains a priority, and the company has made it far easier of late for Android users to make purchases—food delivery, music, games, etc.—with their Google credentials.
That just means it's meeting minimum expectations. Google has to do more to be at the center of how we spend throughout the day, everyday. With the IPO of Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba on the horizon, competition is only poised to increase. | With triumphs inevitably comes scrutiny, and Google is the recipient of plenty. Here are five risks the company faces over the next 10 years. |
Sayyaf was also involved in ISIS's military activities, Meehan added. No U.S. personnel were killed or injured during this operation.
Sayyaf's wife is currently in U.S. military detention in Iraq, the launching pad for the military operation.
On social media, ISIS sympathizers vowed retaliation for Sayyaf's death, with one supporter taking to social media to declare the terror outfit would "take" U.S. President Barack Obama in retribution.
The operation also led to the freeing of a young Yezidi woman who appears to have been held as a slave by the couple, according to the White House.
"We intend to reunite her with her family as soon as feasible," said Meehan.
The operation comes as ISIS has gained ground in Iraq, having seized control of the government compound in Ramadi, and the latest in a series of offensives that have roiled the country since last year. Government officials and analysts have long asserted that ISIS has been able to exploit Iraq and Syria's porous borders, in order to foment conflict in both countries.
The situation in Iraq has deteriorated so badly that the U.S. government vowed to expedite weapons shipments and other supplies there. Some fear that ISIS's campaign will result in a virtual partitioning of the country, already sharply divided by sectarian conflict. | An ISIL senior leader known as Abu Sayyaf was killed in a U.S. military operation in Syria last night. |
FORTUNE — In separate reports on the state of the worldwide personal computer market issued Wednesday, Gartner and IDC agreed about one thing: The quarter that ended in June was a miserable one for traditional PC vendors.
Gartner called the market “flat.” IDC’s term was “stalled.” Both reported a decline in global shipments of 0.1%. Both attributed it to a variety of factors: The sluggish economy, buyers waiting for Microsoft’s MSFT Windows 8, the fact that Intel’s INTC Ultrabooks haven’t yet taken off, a general lack of interest in PCs. As Gartner’s Mikako Kitagawa put it:
“Consumers are less interested in spending on PCs as there are other technology product and services, such as the latest smartphones and media tablets that they are purchasing.”
It’s when you drill down into the details that discrepancies arise.
In the U.S. market, for example, IDC singled out Lenovo as the only top tier leader that managed to maintain positive momentum, growing shipments 6.1% year over year to put itself in fourth place after Hewlett-Packard HPQ , Dell DELL and Apple AAPL .
In Gartner’s report on the same market, however, Lenovo doesn’t even make the list of the top five vendors and Apple, rather than seeing its Mac sales drop 1.1% in the quarter (as IDC had it) actually grew them 4.3%.
One used to be able to explain the discrepancies between Gartner and IDC by the fact that Gartner reported shipments to end users and IDC reported shipments into channel (i.e. distributors). But IDC now describes its numbers as representing “shipments to distribution channels or end users” (emphasis ours) and Gartner doesn’t specify what its numbers mean.
Gartner does note, however, that its data include “desk-based PCs and mobile PCs, including mini-notebooks but not media tablets such as the iPad.”
The two firms agree about that. In their world, netbooks and Ultrabooks are PCs, but tablets are not. If they were, Apple would be the world’s largest vendor — by far — not HP.
Below the fold: IDC’s and Gartner’s worldwide numbers. | Why can't the two leading PC market tracking firms get their acts together? |
08/03/2015 AT 10:30 AM EDT
If you're a regular watcher of any
shows, chances are you and your friends have already made up your own drinking games – but we've got a new one for you to try out.
In this exclusive behind-the scenes look at
introduces some of the show's
and his very own idea for a
"It's hot, it's beautiful, it's sexy," says Harrison of
. "That's only going to lead to one thing – hopefully love, but sex, romance, all of that."
that are attracted to each other, and they're all looking for the same thing," he adds.
Harrison introduces us to quirky contestant Ashley S. (notorious for her
) and four of the guys, who all happen to be castaways from
Jared "went the furthest in the show out of all the guys that are here and probably had the deepest connection with Kaitlyn," Harrison says. "I'm not so sure he's a hundred percent over her."
While you watch the season unfold, grab a glass and try this Chris Harrison-approved drinking game.
"One of the things that's become famous about
is people kind of create these drinking games," Harrison says. "I've heard anytime we say "amazing" or "dramatic" or "journey," these are all key words, so I think to change it up for paradise, instead of words, how about [drinking anytime] anything is digitized, blurred out or there's a black box across it?"
"Anytime we don't want you to see anything – well, we actually wanted you to see it but ABC won't let you see it on prime time – so anytime anything is blurred out in paradise, drink," he adds.
A word of advice from Harrison before playing?
"Be careful, don't be driving, 'cause it's going to get ugly," he says.
Tune in to part two of the season premiere of
Monday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC, followed by
, a live one-hour after-show at 9 p.m. ET. | The host of the reality dating show also introduces us to some of this season's "young, single, beautiful" contestants |
E-mail; love it or loathe it, it’s not going away — especially in the workplace. Business email traffic accounted for 55% of all emails sent worldwide per day in 2014 — that’s an average of 121 emails sent and received per day by each one of us.
With all those electronic messages flying around, it’s no wonder we get it wrong so often. From mystifying subject lines to inappropriate use of emoji, most workers have a long way to go before they perfect the art of the professional email.
Harvard Business Review has taken the email frustration we all feel and created a guide to making emails better for you — and everyone else.
Subject lines should be concise and descriptive, highlighting the action needed, HBR says. If subject lines are important in capturing your reader’s attention, then font is essential in keeping it. Use clean, easy-to-read fonts such as Arial, Helvetica and Verdana in a dark colour — HBR suggests using no more than three types of font in one message.
Emoji are acceptable in a professional email only when the person you’re emailing also uses them. And typos are not always the end of the world. HBR writes that for high-level managers a strategic typo may be a smart idea, to convey authenticity and not make it seem like you are always meticulously drafting messages. However, the line between being emotionally authentic and being unprofessional is thin — so think twice before making an intentional typo.
When you’re sending out email number 27 of the morning, it’s easy to skip over punctuation or not capitalise ‘I’s. Don’t do it. Take a bit of time to polish even the little things. It means less work for the person reading and you won’t have to spend additional time clarifying what you meant to say.
To avoid those sighs of exasperation, keep your email short and neat. Some experts suggest staying within a single screen of reading. Even in a short email, do not send big blocks of text. Highlight the key takeaways and use paragraph breaks liberally. Most importantly, be clear and direct to save everyone’s time.
Before clicking ‘send’, check again to make sure anyone you plan to send the email to really needs to receive it. Copy others in when you need to, but don’t blind copy unless you know for sure that it is necessary, or “it could get you a bad reputation as being indiscreet,” wrote HBR.
While email is often the go-to means of communication, remember that sometimes speaking in person or picking up the phone for a quick call is best. If there is conflict or bad news, written messages can be interpreted differently than intended, depending on the reader’s emotional state. In these cases, meeting in person or speaking on the phone or over Skype often helps to dissipate the tension.
After all, people tend to be more civil and empathetic when dealing directly with another human being rather than pixelated letters on a computer screen.
To comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Capital, please head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter. | Fine-tune your writing to get what you want â and need âat work |
FORTUNE — When Fortune managing editor Andy Serwer suggested we build some kind of online, interactive game around this year’s Executive Dream Team feature, a sports theme seemed obvious. Because the list would be revealed in late July, and the game would start in late spring, tying it to baseball was a no-brainer.
Originally, we wanted to make the game as much like real fantasy sports as possible, aiming for a rotisserie-style league with different criteria that change and update as companies continue to operate and thrive or fall. But it quickly became apparent that apart from stock performance, pretty much all other factors would be too subjective, and simply wouldn’t work for an automatic algorithm. (Would we reward you when your CEO’s company made a successful purchase? Well, who’s to decide so early if it was successful? Could we dock teams if one of their players committed a public gaffe? How many points?) Moreover, if we had gone with stock performance as the sole criterion for scoring, we would have only been able to include executives from public companies.
So we decided to use crowdsourced scoring: once you drafted your squad, your rank in the game would fluctuate constantly based on which players everyone else chose. Indeed, it’s akin to a popularity contest, but we added the element of predicting Fortune’s team, and predicting which execs our 41 hand-picked experts would choose, which became crucial to your success. The Fortune team and expert pool each counted for twice as much as the user pool.
Now, two months and more than 1,700 teams later, Fortune’s official Dream Team is out, team creation is over, and we do have a winner. Before we give credit where it’s due, here’s an inside look at some of the tightest races, which we at Fortune watched, in the back end of the game site, with great anticipation.
MORE: Our Executive Dream Team
For CEO, Warren Buffett sprinted out to an early lead among users. It’s no surprise — a wide range of our readers worship the Oracle of Omaha and admire his investing prowess. But Buffett didn’t do as well with experts, perhaps because our panel of experts were looking for managerial standouts in addition to savvy financial minds. The experts were picking Jeff Bezos and, close behind him, Howard Schultz. As the game continued, readers picked up on the seriousness of Bezos, likely from reading our expert posts, and his stock rose. It was a two-way race, but then Apple’s AAPL Tim Cook surged, perhaps due to our cover story on his strong leadership in the wake of Steve Jobs’s death. In the final five days of the game, Cook cooled off and Bezos and Buffett kept swapping the top spot. In the end, Bezos took the win and also the expert pool, which placed Howard Schultz at second. Bezos grabbed our Fortune slot as well. Tim Cook won third with users.
The race for CFO wasn’t quite as exciting, though we’re unsure why. Patrick Pichette of Google goog began gobbling up user votes right away, and never looked back. There was one hiccup: midway through the game, Pat Ward of Cummins cmi suddenly surged and overtook Pichette for a short time. Many new teams, all created in a two-day period, selected Ward. We suspect it may have been his loyal employees and colleagues, which is certainly fine by us. But the effort wasn’t enough: Pichette finished first with users with Ward coming in second, and Pichette got the expert vote too. After Ward, David Viniar of Goldman Sachs gs came in third with users, followed by Fortune’s pick, Mark Loughridge. The second-place pick for experts was a surprise: young Dan Ammann of GM gm .
At chief strategist, an intriguing dichotomy emerged by the end: users overwhelmingly chose Oracle’s orcl Larry Ellison. Perhaps they had already known of his background and many wins, or perhaps they had just finished the Steve Jobs biography, which describes Ellison as something of a close confidante to Jobs. Second, but way back, was Under Armour’s ua Kevin Plank, a young sports apparel exec who makes a bit more sense as a popular choice among readers. Experts, meanwhile, liked Ellison too, but ultimately went with Baidu’s bidu Jennifer Li. In the end, Li edged out Ellison to win the expert pool. Kevin Plank was third among experts, and Paul Otellini was third among readers.
The CIO spot was relatively close for the entire game, though IBM’s ibm Jeanette Horan and FedEx’s fdx Rob Carter were up at the top from day one. Carter ultimately took the cake on the user vote and Horan won with experts. Third among experts was Zynga’s znga Cadir Lee, though, interestingly, he was not even in the top five for readers: Todd Pierce of Salesforce crm took the bronze medal.
The race for CMO featured one of three blowout wins in the game, this one by Nike’s NKE Trevor Edwards. Users, we imagine, saw Edwards and reasoned, “Hey, I know Nike’s marketing, and I like it.” Coca-Cola’s ko Joe Tripodi and Starbucks’s sbux Annie Young Scrivner tied in the user pool. The experts liked Edwards too, but not as much as Ron Johnson, he of the Apple stores and J.C. Penney jcp ; Johnson got 13 expert votes to Edwards’s 10.
COO was another not-at-all-close race among readers: Sheryl Sandberg, who may be the most famous COO ever, crushed Fortune’s choice, Don Thompson of McDonald’s mcd . The experts chose Sandberg too.
The designer/engineer slot resulted in our biggest blowout. Perhaps we should have handicapped it by not including Apple design whiz Jony Ive, who earned the biggest share of the user vote of any player in any slot. Ive won over experts, too, trouncing Jack Dorsey’s second-place showing. Urs Holzle of Google was the readers’ distant second choice, and Fortune’s pick, the versatile Elon Musk, got third place with readers.
Proving that the outfield positions were the wild cards — and most exciting races — the utility player and non-exec chairman slots were neck and neck throughout. At utility player, Christine Day of Lululemon lulu and Reid Hoffman, tech investor, battled for expert votes. Readers liked Hoffman too, but didn’t much care for Day, and favored a third party more than either of them: FedEx founder Fred Smith. Though Smith won the user vote, the top five finishers in this category were all very close: Smith came in first, Hoffman second, and Bill George and Hank Paulson tied for third. Carlos Brito of AB-InBev, Fortune’s choice last year, was fourth. Experts gave Hoffman the win over Day.
MORE: Fantasy Executive League: Fan faves
Finally, non-executive chairman was our tightest race, with Jim Skinner, Jim Sinegal, and Sam Palmisano in a battle for first the entire time. Surprisingly, none of them was the expert favorite: that win went to “Coach” Bill Campbell, followed by Palmisano. We kept checking the three-way struggle for user favorite and on the final day it was still anyone’s game. At the buzzer, Skinner had edged ahead, with Palmisano and Sinegal finishing dead even.
The winning team: As we had hoped, entering the Fortune team shook up the standings. The first-place finisher (who will win a Kindle Fire, $300 Amazon gift card, and subscription to Fortune) was in a tie for 5th place before the Fortune team posted. Once we revealed our squad, “Adaptive Team” got pushed up to first, no tiebreaker necessary. This user finished with 77 points out of a possible 84 for the user pool, 164 expert points out of a possible 174, and 102 Fortune points out of 174. He or she only missed our team by four players.
And the first-place reader squad has… Jeff Bezos, Mark Loughridge, Larry Ellison, Jeannette Horan, Trevor Edwards, Don Thompson, Jony Ive, Reid Hoffman and Bill Campbell. Good choices for a wonderful dream team. | Our first-ever interactive fantasy game has wrapped; we’re ready to share some inside stats about the standings and crown the winning roster. |
Is his apparently growing popularity a sign that the Labour Party is returning to its left-wing roots? If the swell in support translates into a win, it would be part of a resurgence in more socialist values in Europe, after years where left-wing parties moved to the center ground. If the electoral success of Syriza in Greece is joined by growing support for Podemos in Spain in elections later this year, it suggests a new appetite for socialism in the European electorate.
Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, said during a speech in London this week: "I am not surprised at all that there is a demand for a strong anti-austerity movement around increased concern about inequality. The promises of New Labour in the UK and of the Clintonites in the US have been a disappointment."
Corbyn's success may be part of an identity crisis within Labour, which according to polls had been in with a chance of leading a coalition government in May. The party was "smashed to smithereens" by the election results, which saw the Conservatives able to govern by themselves for the first time in nearly two decades, according to Mike Smithson, who runs the Political Betting website.
"The shock of the loss, when many, including me, believed that they were in with a real chance of returning to power, was worse than if the party had been predicted to lose," he told CNBC. | An outsider from the Labour Party’s far left-wing is storming ahead in polls, sparking talk that the UK could be seeing a resurgence on the left. |
NEW YORK — As a kid, Cyndi Lauper loved to commandeer her mother’s record player, when her older sister was off at school and her mom was at work. She’d one day find the Beatles and the Supremes more mesmerizing, but the stars Lauper listened to then weren’t of the pop variety — they inhabited the stages of Broadway.
“When I was little, they were the pop music — they were on the charts,” Lauper says. “I would just listen to everything very intently and play all the different characters, changing my voice around. If I was Eliza Doolittle, you can bet your ass Rex Harrison was sitting on my mother’s bed looking back at me while I was singing!” Sitting in a quiet room above Sardi’s (one of the unofficial dining rooms of the New York theater world), Lauper laughs, remembering those records that she “destroyed a little.”
Though she’d go on to a long pop career, Lauper admits that, back then, listening to the likes of “Carousel” and “West Side Story” was “how I learned to sing.” Clearly, she learned more than that: In 2013, Lauper, who had never written for Broadway before, won a Tony Award for her soulful, rollicking score for “Kinky Boots,” a musical adaptation of the 2005 film about an unlikely friendship between Lola, a drag queen, and Charlie, the reluctant heir to a down-on-its-luck British shoe factory. The show also won best musical (for a total of six Tonys); over two years after opening, it’s still drawing crowds on Broadway.
A touring production of “Kinky Boots,” presented by Broadway in Boston, comes to the Boston Opera House Tuesday for a three-week run.
“When you produce something on Broadway, you just have a sense of whether the people on the road will want to see the story you’re telling,” says Hal Luftig, one of the show’s producers. “Even in our Chicago tryout, we were inundated with local presenters saying, ‘When is this coming to our market?’ We said, ‘Huh! We’re gonna have a road show!’”
Even though “Kinky Boots” struck a chord with audiences early on, the show’s success was far from predetermined. Book writer Harvey Fierstein, for one, loved the film, but wasn’t immediately convinced when director Jerry Mitchell brought him the project. “I’m not one of these people who says, ‘Ooh, I loved that movie — let’s make it a musical!’ That seems stupid to me,” Fierstein says.
To be sure, the story the film tells doesn’t scream “musical!” Bound for London with his superficial fiancee, Charlie is held back in his working-class town by the struggling factory his deceased dad left behind. A chance encounter with Lola gives him the idea to start manufacturing boots strong enough to support a man but that any woman would love.
The touring case of “Kinky Boots,” featuring Kyle Taylor Parker as Lola (in blue).
But rewatching the movie made Fierstein think twice. “I saw not the story the movie tells, about a factory saved by making drag queen boots, but this other story, about this real universal thing: the damage our parents do to us, whether they mean to or not, because we never outgrow their approval.” Charlie labors under the assumption his dad would have wanted him to keep the factory running; Lola (nee Simon) thinks her father had wished his son had grown up to be a professional boxer. Fierstein connected with that, and he signed on.
Lauper was an easier sell. “I just wanted to work with Harvey,” she says today. “When he said, ‘Do you want to do this?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah.’ He’s like, ‘Well, don’t you want to look at it first, Tina?’” (Fierstein called her “Christina” or “Tina” for most of their time working together, which Lauper still finds “cuckoo.”)
Lauper was attracted to the challenge of writing a unique voice for each character. “I got to sing all these different ways,” she says. “I kept asking Harvey, ‘What are the rules?’ He said, ‘There are no rules.’ ”
The final result seems genuinely true to both Fierstein’s and Lauper’s voices — his blunt humor juxtaposed with tenderness, her punky yet uber-melodic pop with the aching core. “I didn’t want to be one who [Mitchell and Fierstein] were like, ‘Yeah, we did this and then we took her on,’ ” Lauper says with a mock groan. “I wanted to be right for them, and I wanted the music to have integrity.”
Like the great Broadway songwriters she admired growing up, she tried to create “songs that would move the show forward, but could also live on their own.” That didn’t mean imitating Rodgers & Hammerstein. “I thought they wanted pop songs,” she says with a shrug. “Like, why would they come to you if they didn’t want pop songs? That’s what I write, and that’s the best I can do.”
Fierstein points to “Not My Father’s Son,” a beautifully spare duet Lauper wrote for Charlie and Lola toward the end of the first act, as emblematic of the message he hopes audiences will take away from “Kinky Boots.” He and Luftig are both fond of looking out for the tough guys in the audience — perhaps those not so crazy about seeing a musical filled with dancing drag queens — and noticing how they react to the song.
“They have this cathartic moment,” Fierstein says. “We think we disappoint our fathers, but our fathers know who we are and they’ve accepted us; We just don’t accept ourselves.”
He adds, “I sort of laugh when people say the show’s message is ‘be yourself.’ Yeah, that’s cute, and it’s in there. But people come out of this show on a high unlike anything I’ve ever seen. It’s a different kind of happiness — a happiness with tears in their eyes.”
For Kyle Taylor Parker, the touring company’s Lola, that message hit especially close to home. Parker started out in the Broadway cast as one of Lola’s “Angels” and stood in for Tony-winner Billy Porter earlier this year. Playing Lola “is challenging me to be more courageous,” Parker says. He lost his own father toward the start of the show’s Broadway run.
“It was an incomplete relationship, not perfect by any means,” Parker says. “After he passed away, Harvey said to me, ‘You have two lives: your life with your father, and your life without him, where you become accountable for the decisions you make.’ I think Lola finds that as well.”
Jennifer S. Altman for The Boston Globe
The role, he says, is a lesson in character evolution. “If you can get bored with Lola, you should retire!” he says with a laugh. “Each night, I try to surrender to the part. You’re always working, becoming a better singer, actor, dancer — there’s so much in there.” Fierstein, for his part, says Parker has grown into “a brilliant Broadway star.”
Of course, “Kinky Boots” isn’t all deeply fraught parent-child misunderstanding — there’s quite a bit of dazzling dancing, anthemic singing, and cheeky humor to keep the show not just afloat, but grooving along on its sequined, extra-wide stilettos. “It’s a very empowering story, and I think our audiences key into that,” says producer Daryl Roth. “Who wouldn’t love the glitter and the glam? But when you leave the theater, what you take with you in your heart is how it affected you.”
Lauper is especially excited to see the show come to Boston; this is, after all, one of the first cities where her now-classic “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” took off in 1983, thanks to KISS 108 DJ Sunny Joe White. “Boston is a great town, and it has subcultures, too,” Lauper says slyly.
Over 20 years later, she’s clearly proud to bring another, quite different, hit to the city. “A lot of the time, you work really hard on something, but how many times does it take off like this?” Lauper says, still looking astounded. “I have to credit the people around me and all of us never giving up and saying, ‘It’s done.’ ”
Music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper
Directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell
At: Boston Opera House, 539 Washington St., Aug. 11-30 | Pop artist and composer Cyndi Lauper was inspired by the records she listened to as a kid. |
Raise your hand if you are actually frightened of Joe. ⦠Right, that's all of us then.
, we witnessed what was hands down one of the most insane scenes to ever unfold on reality television when Joe threatened to beat up not one but two other male contestants in an unsettlingly quiet, clench-mouthed rant.
when he basically lied to
's face about actually liking her – but he took things to a whole new level in this follow-up episode.
After Juelia announced to everyone at the rose ceremony that she would be giving Joe her rose,
each took her aside to tell her that they think Joe is only using her for her rose. Granted, this could come across as a desperate below-the-belt move to snag her rose for themselves, coming from two guys who are both on the chopping block this week, but seeing as Joe is absolutely using Juelia just to get her rose, it was particularly hard to watch what happened next.
Juelia confronted Joe about Jonathan and Mikey's comments, and he denied the entire thing to her face, kissed her aggressively and assured her that he likes her back – only to be shown a few seconds later in an interview saying: "I give zero f---s right now. I'm just like, 'Gimme that rose.'"
All Joe wanted was to stick around for another week in the hopes that
, would show up in Mexico.
Mikey later approached Joe about the same issue, and Joe yet again confirmed (read: lied) that he does like Juelia and isn't "screwing around" just to get a rose. Once Mikey walked away, Joe was shown speaking to an off-camera producer on a secluded patio.
"I'm pissed. Jonathan, I would break his f---ing jaw and beat the f---ing pulp out of his f---ing brains, I swear to God. I won't stop until his brains are coming out of his ears, I swear to you," he snarled. "Mikey T, if we were in Kentucky right now, I would get a pair of brass knuckles, I'd put my brass knuckles on my right hand, I'd walk up to him and just knock him out."
Was that real life? Did he really just say all of those things? Who
Joe then proceeded to confront Jonathan, reduced him to quivering tears and forced him to tell Juelia that he didn't mean what he had said earlier. Poor Jonathan was so unbelievably distraught with himself that he retreated to sob in the bathroom (seriously, pull yourself together, Jonathan).
"My mind is completely at ease with Joe," said Juelia after Jonathan's apology. No, no, no, I can't watch. Someone save this girl.
"I made Mikey T. my bitch, then Jonathan came to me like I was his pimp," gloated Joe. "You know, I mean, I do what I do."
Yet another male contestant was introduced to the mix when
Michael joined the line of suitors vying for
"Notre Dame-educated, corporate lawyer," said JJ of Michael. "He's a legit threat to everybody."
Michael, who came on the show in the hopes that Tenley would be there, immediately asked her out on a date and the two enjoyed dinner, kissed and were serenaded by a throng of singers (seriously, there must have been more than 100 of them), in between Michael showering her with compliments throughout the evening.
"I'm in trouble with this rose ceremony tomorrow," said Tenley, who explained she feels a different connection with each of the three guys. (Sorry, Tenley. I don't think anyone really feels that bad for you here.)
on his date, which involved bungee jumping off a cliff in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Clare was scared, she cried, Jared comforted her, he kissed her, and Clare was on cloud nine.
"How much does Jared look like Superman? Like, he's gorgeous," she said. (
he, though? Beauty's in the eye of the beholder, it would seem.)
The moment when they jumped off the cliff was actually hilarious (great editing, ABC). Clare won't be able to live down all that ridiculous shrieking and moaning.
But Clare was quickly brought back down to reality later in the episode when she and Jared had an extremely awkward conversation recapping the date:
"It rocked my world," said Clare.
"You're eight years older than me. That's obviously ⦠you know what I mean?" responded Jared. (Side note: Jared is really, really good at talking a lot but never actually saying anything straight out.)
And just like that, Jared moved on from Clare – much to
"Right now, I'm just trying to find out where my emotions are, where my connections are, and we get along so well and we do have a connection, like the date we had was awesome," Jared said to Ashley I. during the cocktail party at the rose ceremony. "You know, I went on a date with Clare, and it was a really good date, too. It's just different, that's all. But I want to be here, I want to get to know you better and be in the moment and do what feels right right now." It was another prime example of Jared and his ability to say a whole lot but not really anything, really.
He did follow up with a kiss, though, and Ashley I. was over the moon: "It was worth the wait."
Before the rose ceremony took place, Clare – who was obviously upset that she hasn't made a solid connection with any of the guys yet – went on a very long-winded and bizarre rant to the rest of the group, basically accusing them of not really being there for love.
As for the rest of the contestants, no one was all too concerned with Clare's whining: "Clare is being a big baby because it's not going how she wants it go," said Tanner. "She's putting up a front because she needs an excuse as to why no guys are pining after her."
The rose ceremony got off to a smooth start as the girls started handing out their roses:
and Tenley made her pick, offering her rose to Joshua.
Then it was Clare's turn. Clare proceeded to storm out of the room before handing out her rose, and she was shown crying to host
"This is amazing," said a gleeful Ashley I. "Clare is losing her mind, it's like, could anything work out more perfectly?"
We'll have to wait for next week's episode to find out what Hurricane Clare's next move is – but something tells me it will be nothing short of dramatic.
airs Sundays and Mondays (8 p.m. ET) on ABC. | Among other horrifically violent statements, Joe speculated that he'd use brass knuckles on Mikey, who joined Jonathan in telling Juelia that Joe's intentions might not be entirely pure |
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Last week, Freddie Mac reported the average 30-year, fixed-rate mortgagefell to 3.91 percent, down from 3.98 percent the week before. New numbers will be released Thursday.
Startup Institute Boston’s TalentExpo is taking place on Thursday. Selected students will present a 60-second pitch to Boston-based organizations. Thursday, 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Paramount Theatre, 559 Washington St., Boston. Free.
The Boston Redevelopment Authority and Economic Development Industrial Corp. are hosting a public meeting. Thursday, 5:30 to 8 p.m., One City Hall Square, ninth floor, room 900, Boston. Free.
Tech in Motion Boston, a group for technology enthusiasts, is hosting a panel to discuss the wearable technology industry. Speakers include founders or vice presidents of FitBit, Bloom, Withings, Pavlok, and Thync. Thursday, 6 to 9 p.m., Microsoft NERD Center, 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge. Free.
Swapfest, a monthly computer, electronics, and ham radio flea market, will be held on Sunday. It is organized by the MIT Radio Society, MIT Electronics Research Society, Harvard Wireless Club, and MIT UHF Repeater Association. Sunday, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., MIT, Albany Street Garage and Lots, Cambridge. $4 with MIT or Harvard student ID, $6. | Mortgage rates, wearable technology, and more notable events and things to know. |
"In the second quarter, our spring seasonal business rebounded, and we saw strong performance in the core of the store and across all of our geographies," said Frank Blake, chairman and CEO, said in a statement.
Read MoreRetail chains that disappeared
The specialty retailer's shares hit an all-time high Monday after Credit Suisse said investors should buy the stock following a strong spring home retail season.
During the past year, the company's stock has gained about 11 percent, but underperformed the S&P 500 index, which rose about 19 percent over the same period.
Rival Lowe's is scheduled to report earnings on Wednesday.
—By CNBC. Reuters contributed to this report. | Home Depot reported a 5.7 percent rise in quarterly sales as customers spent more on home repairs after a severe North American winter. |
Almost two-thirds of caregivers work full- or part-time jobs in addition to caring for a loved one, which generates additional strain, according to the study. A little more than half say they're overwhelmed by the amount of care provided, and 38 percent report some level of financial strain.
Read MoreHow much do you need in emergency savings?
Early planning conversations are one of the best ways for families to prepare, although not the easiest, said Carolyn McClanahan, a certified financial planner in Jacksonville, Florida. "The problem is people refuse to talk about what their aging years are going to look like," she said. Or they may insist they never want to go into a nursing home.
Read MoreStart a business? Retire well? Not with student debt
Have frank discussions about what preparations, if any, your parent or loved one has made for care, including insurance, savings and other resources, said McClanahan. Discuss any advance health-care directives. If family caregiving is an option, set out a contract detailing which sibling or other member can help with what, including hands-on care and financial support, she said.
It's also important for potential caregivers to consider technology and resources that could lighten the load. Apps can help remote caregivers monitor their loved one's medication usage and health records, said Dr. Davis Liu, a family physician and the author of "The Thrifty Patient." You can also investigate whether your workplace offers family leave options, flexible hours, telecommuting or unpaid leave.
"Now is the time to prepare for this," said Reinhard. | Family caregivers are taking on more complicated medical tasks, providing $470 billion in unpaid care each year. |
Why? Many midmarket leaders believe it is a problem only for large, high-profile corporations or those that conduct mainly financial transactions. Or those executives are naïve; they think a serious breach never will happen to their system. When in fact, these things are happening all the time. No one talks about it, because they would rather keep it quiet.
Unfortunately, cybersecurity isn't just for banks and behemoths. It's for all businesses, all sizes.
Read MoreWatch this chimp take down a drone
In fact, small and middle-market companies may be more vulnerable to attack because criminals know these businesses do not take substantial preventative measures.
Companies with 250 or fewer employees accounted for 31 percent of cyber-attacks last year.
Midmarket businesses moving to the cloud may be susceptible to cyber-threats, too. Their data used to be contained on their premises, with links to that data from on-site, wired computers. Today, all of the information is "out there" someplace accessible from the Internet by potentially anyone. While many cloud services providers have the ability to provide better security than the average mid-sized business, the problem comes when those businesses skip the due diligence, such as reviewing SOC reports and other independent third-party security certifications.
Read MoreJCPenney executive accidentally discloses company sales
Ubiquitous mobile systems and wi-fi also place companies at unusually high risk.
One increasingly common threat is ransom-ware, which can shut down a company's entire computer system and block access unless a ransom is paid.
More ominous, hackers probably have infiltrated many many middle-market companies already, and the malware rests undetected in a network and incrementally collects data that shows how to access other systems or steal proprietary product information.
Part of the problem, especially with smaller midmarket companies, is that a controller likely set up the IT department, and no data security specialist has been appointed. Or that specialist wears too many hats and can't keep up with the latest malicious code and software patches.
Executives also may be strictly reactive; they believe cyber-criminals can't be stopped, so the focus of their security systems is on damage control instead of prevention.
Read MoreChess master gets boot for iPhone hidden in toilet
System entry points in the middle market – generally companies with revenue of $40 million to $400 million – often come from the same places as in larger and smaller companies: passwords that are easy to guess, lost laptops, vendor access, uninstalled security updates and patches, as well as employees accessing social networking sites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, on company computers.
Some of the more esoteric breach points: videoconferencing, networked printers, even thermostats; One leading retailer's attacker gained access to the company through its heating and cooling system vendor. Hackers even once invaded an oil company via an online menu at a nearby Chinese restaurant.
Cyber-crooks nowadays are also more successful with bogus e-mail attachments. It's not just the foreign prince asking for your assistance in the e-mail's subject field anymore. Sometimes, the infected e-mail can come from a trusted contact, a vendor or supplier.
The potential ramifications at middle-market companies are the same as at larger ones: the possibility of fines or lawsuits, the expense of notifying victimized individuals, the specter of further damage, the time spent on credit monitoring and reputational repair.
Moreover, when cyber-criminals obtain data from one company, it often leads to easier access into other corporations, as well as individuals' records.
Read MoreSpaceX reusable rocket makes unsuccessful landing
The average cost of a data breach was $5.9 million for all U.S. companies, according to a 2014 study. The most common causes were malicious or criminal attacks (44 percent), followed by employee negligence (31 percent) and system glitches (25 percent).
The intent of the breach is usually information theft leading to financial gain, rather than so-called hacktivism, which appears to be the case in the attack on Sony's network.
What can midmarket companies do? Consider partnering with a trusted firm to provide relevant advice related to your cybersecurity infrastructure, including technical testing; think twice before obtaining cyber-insurance — it often doesn't cover much; realize cybersecurity is a business issue, which should be considered as part of the your firm's overall strategy; monitor networks for unusually high traffic volume; work with your financial institution to implement multi-factor authentication and dual controls for financial transactions; strengthen administrative passwords and, generally, don't rely on system users — customers or employees — for protection.
The public may not hear much about hacking into midmarket because these businesses in the sector get less attention from the media. The companies may also be shy about publicizing security breaches unless circumstances force them to go public.
Keep in mind, however, that middle-market companies are the fastest growing sector of the U.S. economy and, along with small business, the leading job creator.
True middle-market story: A company, which shall not be named, not long ago asked its 280 employees to try to hack into senior management's e-mail to test their security. After a month, 240 were successful. Therein lies a sad lesson about the state of cybersecurity today.
Jim Proppe is a group managing partner with Plante Moran, an accounting and advisory firm based in Southfield, MI. | Many small and midsize companies aren't ready for a hack attack. And yet, they account for more than 30% of attacks. |
Unfortunately, travelling won't be quite baggage free just yet. Customers still have to check in their own baggage.
But fresh off the back of a £3.3 million funding round led by London fund manager Hargreave Hale, Darby has ambitions to take luggage out of the travelling equation. AirPortr launched a service from London City airport for British Airways customers where someone will pick your bag of the carousel and take it through customs and drop it off to where you are staying.
As well as expanding into different airports, AirPortr is looking to expand its services with the ambition of one day taking the whole check in and deliver process of baggage out of the hands of customers. Darby was tight-lipped on the plans but said the company was looking at "pain points" for customers.
"We are of course looking at the pain points of the passenger journey on the arrival and departure side and working with partners like British Airways to remove those," Darby told CNBC. | One start-up is looking to handle your luggage from your door to the airport without you having to lift a finger. |
Chanos, the founder of Kynikos Associates, earlier Friday stated his concerns with SolarCity's residential model, which he believes acts more like a subprime financing company than an energy provider.
"Solar is a transformational industry, and it's going to be a great thing and part of it is because cost for everything keep coming down," Chanos said. "That's a problem if you are SolarCity, and your customers are paying you this above market prices and you hope to sell more systems."
Read MoreThe sleeping giant of the solar industry: Florida
SolarCity, founded in part by Tesla's CEO Elon Musk, was down more than 10 percent in trading on Friday and reported an earnings miss last month. However, the company beat revenue expectations with $103 million in the second quarter.
"SolarCity is burning an awful lot of cash, hundreds of millions of dollars every quarter, has a lot of debt and has negative EBITDA," Chanos added. "And in this kind of environment that is a very scary proposition. I mean, they are going to have to raise a lot of money in a model that I think has been passed over in terms of the more institutionalized and distributed model of solar."
Chanos also expressed pessimism in regards to Shell and Chevron, who he says are not economic because they are building capacity in an area in which demand has fallen flat. | SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive fired back against claims and bets made by Jim Chanos, one of the world's largest short sellers. |
"The dollar, as a standalone, is unlikely to feature materially in the Fed's decision. But the Fed will consider the extent to which international weakness and geo-political issues counter better economic conditions," said Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz.
Morgan Stanley moved its Fed liftoff forecast to March 2016 from January, and lowered its 2015 core PCE growth forecast—a key Fed inflationary measure—to 1.2 percent from 1.9 percent.
U.S. economic data meanwhile has been mixed and futures contracts show investors betting on a greater chance of the Fed moving up rates in September or later, rather than June.
Read MoreWhat ECB QE means for US policy, stocks: Strategist
But in the Fed's December statement, its addition of the word "patient" in reference to rate guidance showed the central bank was still inching closer to lift off. Yellen went further at the December press conference to say the Fed was unlikely to begin the process for at least the "next couple of meetings."
That statement all but ruled out a move in January and March, with investors now watching for when 'patient' is dropped, which will likely signal the Fed is ready to move at the next meeting. While Yellen has said a rate decision depends on the data, the June meeting and its scheduled press conference appears to be the central bank's target.
"The Fed is operating under the base case of a June liftoff, and June is still several months away," said Cornerstone Macro economist Robert Perli, who added he expects, at most, minor changes to the Fed's December statement. "The Fed can afford to buy itself some more time, and that's exactly what we expect it to do." | The Fed is expected to show confidence that low inflation and rising risks from abroad have yet to derail the U.S. economic recovery. |
"When you look at the auto ads in the Super Bowl, a number of them will be for new models launching this spring," said Jon Swallen with Kantar Media, a research firm which tracks advertising. "The timing this year doesn't work for the product launches from several automakers."
Read MoreOops! Top five Super Bowl ad blunders
Ford, for example, launched its new F-Series in the fall, and advertised heavily during football games at that time. All three brands, which have previously advertised during the Super Bowl, said they expect to return eventually when the timing is more favorable.
Still, that's not to say the event will be entirely without car ads.
Kia is one automaker using the Super Bowl to give its new model a very prominent push, by featuring the newest Sorento in a spot with Pierce Brosnan.
"We're looking for people to become aware of our products to go online and shop and ultimately go to the showroom and our return on investment shows that we accomplish that," said Tim Chaney, director of marketing at Kia Motors America.
Read MoreWhat players get paid for winning the Super Bowl
This is the sixth-straight year that Kia has advertised during the Super Bowl. Since it started in 2009, Kia's sales in the U.S. have more than doubled; it attributes this growth to greater brand recognition from events such as the Super Bowl.
"We measure all the metrics before, during and after the Super Bowl," Chaney said. "We get many times over our investment so we're very confident." | General Motors, Ford and Audi are among the list of automakers that have decided not to spend $4.5 million to run 30-second commercials. |
"No one who steps into his shoes will have Mr Buffett's authority or credibility," says Larry Cunningham, the law professor and author, who has published an annotated anthology of the letters. "To the extent that he can provide texts, rules, principles, it will all be very helpful. It will fortify the successor."
Such fortification may be necessary in an age where hedge fund activists are gaining traction with their demands that companies spin off divisions, halt investment, add debt to the balance sheet and return cash to share-holders — actions which are anathema to Mr Buffett. Close followers of the company say talk of breaking up Berkshire will remain just that: talk. In fact, several are betting it will be able to keep bulking up, both under the present management and over the long run under Mr Buffett's successors.
Read MoreBuffett's bad bets = a big year
Under its present structure, Berkshire can invest the cash from its operating businesses and the premiums raised by its insurance companies, giving it a financing advantage over others who must arrange more expensive borrowing to do deals. Mr Gelb estimates Berkshire currently has $25bn in excess cash to spend on acquisitions. Its 2013 deal to buy Heinz in partnership with Brazilian private equity group 3G Capital — which brought in management expertise — will be a template for even bigger purchases, he says.
"He is trying to put all the pieces on the board so that the next CEO does not need make any overly challenging decisions," Mr Gelb said. "The Buffett estate will still own a substantial proportion of the company, so it is not as if an activist can immediately come in and demand changes. That allows the next CEO some room to manoeuvre without having to worry about what the investor base or analysts like me say."
Bob Steel, the former Goldman Sachs banker who is now chief executive of boutique investment bank Perella Weinberg, says the rise of hedge fund activism may be a boon for Berkshire, rather than the threat it is sometimes thought of. It may find acquisition targets more receptive to selling out.
"Mr Buffett has built a brand that is seen as a Good Housekeeping seal. He is quite comfortable to let management run businesses and to be supportive, so the brand makes him an attractive person for companies to work with," says Mr Steel.
"Activism will make the world a different place for lots of companies. If more companies feel uncomfortable making investments, such as spending on research and development, maybe some of those companies will dial 1-800-WARREN and find that to be an interesting alternative."
Read MoreBuffett tops most generous philanthropist ranking
If the future of Berkshire is not to be broken up but is in fact to get even bigger and more diverse, then the question switches to whether its current, minimal head office will be able to cope.
Mr Buffett has said the company will split his job between at least three people when he is gone. There will be a chairman, which Mr Buffett hopes will be his son Howard, a chief executive officer and one or more chief investment officers. Academics who have studied Berkshire and other companies think something more radical may be needed.
"A key question is how to impose management change on an underperforming division, when management change becomes necessary," says Bruce Greenwald, professor of finance at the Heilbrunn Center for Graham and Dodd Investing at Columbia Business School. "People trust Warren Buffett to be an expert in every industry, but they are not going to trust any other single person in that role. His successor would not have the bandwidth or the credibility."
In his recent book Berkshire Beyond Buffett, which was based on interviews with many of the chief executives of Berkshire's subsidiary companies, Mr Cunningham floated the idea that the company would need to group the subsidiaries and appoint up to 10 divisional presidents to act as a new layer of management.
This is what happened at Marmon, a mini-conglomerate of manufacturing and services businesses assembled by Jay and Bob Pritzker, which Berkshire acquired in 2007, says Mr Cunningham.
"Both companies were built through acquisitions over decades by iconic figures who knew every bit of history and all of the strengths and weaknesses, and when they left there was no person on the planet who could have that knowledge," he says. "Mr Buffett's successor might think 'I cannot have 80 people reporting to me, but I can divide that by 10'. It seems an inevitable step that someone will have to take."
Berkshire has already begun grouping results from its subsidiaries under five headings: insurance; railroad; utilities and energy; manufacturing; service and retailing, and finance and financial products.
Meanwhile, Berkshire shares entered the golden anniversary year close to record highs. They jumped by more than 25 per cent in 2014, in part because the company is more heavily oriented to the improving US economy than others of its size, which tend to be multinationals.
With Mr Buffett apparently in fine health, the transition to new management may not be an immediate issue but it tops analysts' lists of risk factors — and even the world's largest investors are fascinated by how events will play out.
"I ask myself all the time, when he is not there will Berkshire stock go up or go down," says David Rubenstein, founder of Carlyle Group, the private equity firm. "And I don't know. It could go up on the theory that if you broke it up there is more value to it, but it could go down because people think there is nobody who could possibly do what he has done."
Howard Marks, founder of Oaktree Capital Management, whose own regular investment letters have a wide following, is also watching closely. "They will divvy up the job and, by definition, the person or people managing the money won't be the greatest investor in history, so it will regress toward the mean," he predicts. "But hopefully not all the way."
As Messrs Buffett and Munger put the finishing touches to this year's letters, they are doing so with eyes as firmly on the future as on the past, with the aim of guiding their successors in managing and investing for the long term.
After Mr Buffett is gone, the letters will remain. And if the message of the letters endures, so too may Berkshire Hathaway. | As Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger age, debate intensifies about what Berkshire will look like when they are gone. |
Adami saw uncertainty in big oil names. ExxonMobil shares moved about 2.5 percent higher, just below $90 per share, after a mixed earnings report on Monday.
Read MoreExxonMobil earnings beats, but revenues trail
The stock should continue to hit "lower lows and lower highs" and top out around its current level, Adami said. Trader Steve Grasso stressed that oil inventories should see a "huge glut," keeping prices low and affecting refiners including ExxonMobil and Valero, which jumped nearly 3 percent on Monday.
While she said that she had "definitely not picked the bottom," trader Karen Finerman looked at April calls in offshore driller Seadrill, which jumped more than 10 percent on Monday.
Read MoreLooks like a bottom in oil: Strategist
Trader Tim Seymour noted than airlines had been struggling before oil, a key operating cost, started to rise. Delta Airlines went "back near the bottom of a range" where it looks appealing, he said.
Karen Finerman is long BABA, BAC, C, CVS, FINL, FL, FRO, GOOG, GOOGL, JPM, KORS, M, MTW and NAP. She is short DIA. Her firm is long AAPL, BAC, PLCE, C, CMLS, CVS, DIS, DRI, FBT, FINL, FL, GOOG, GOOGL, GPS, IBB, JPM, KORS, M, MTW, NNA, NAP, SUNE, URI and XBI. Her firm is long calls BAC, C, DIS, JPM and SUNE. Her firm is short SPY, USO and IWM. Karen Finerman is on the board of GrafTech International.
Steve Grasso is long AAPL, BA, CLVS, EVGN, FB, GDX, GOOGL, IMMR, KBH, KDUS, MHY, MJNA, NVIV, PFE, POT, SO, T, TMUS, TWTR and YHOO. His firm is long USO, FCX, NE, NEM, OXY, RIG and VALE. His kids are long EFG, EFA, EWJ, IJR, SPY.
Tim Seymour is long AAPL, BAC, BX, C, DIS, EEM, F, GE, GM, GOOGL, INTC and SUNE. Tim's firm is long BABA, BIDU, CCU, DSKY, KNDI, MCD, NKE, NOK, SINA, SBUX, TSL and VIP.
Guy Adami is long CELG, EXAS and INTC. Guy Adami's wife, Linda Snow, works at Merck. | As investors try to determine where oil will bottom, CNBC's "Fast Money" traders looked at how to trade its mini-rally. |
Unfortunately, though, many companies still live in the dark when it comes to being proactive about their personae online and find themselves in dire straits when trying to catch up.
"Most companies sit in what I call reputation oblivion," Caver said. "They have their head in the sand and they have no idea. And then all of a sudden they get into firefighter mode when someone says, 'You had a horrible review on Yelp.' "
To begin to address this, businesses must first determine if the bad reviews are just a one-off incident or stem from a larger issue.
"The first thing I ask my clients is: Do you have an online reputation problem or do you have a problem?" Caver said. "Because it could be you have an online reputational issue because someone was upset about something that has happened, but it's not actually the way you do business and it's not what most people are saying about your company."
If larger issues can be ruled out, Caver said the company needs to regain control of the conversation by creating strong online content about the company, as well as encouraging transparency. This should include not only allowing reviews, but embracing and responding to them, she said.
"Know your channels and what people are talking about. Know all the touch points into your brand and have some view into them and how you monitor them," Caver said.
Increasingly, more businesses are hiring reputation management firms to help them with these tasks.
Reputation.com, for example, has seen an uptick in business coming from companies looking to better manage their online reputation.
While the company is widely known for its services aimed at helping individuals improve their online presence by pushing negative content further down in search results, it now sells much more than search remediation to businesses.
Among other things, it will monitor what customers are saying in online reviews, help manage social media and track company listings. However, depending on the size of business and the tier of services, selected prices can range from hundreds of dollars a month to more than $1,000 per month. | What people say about you online matters more than ever. |
It's that time again! The Lightning Round bell has rung, and Jim Cramer gives his take on a few favorite audience stocks:
MasterCard: "With Mastercard we [Cramer's charitable trust] did a little trimming today. Why? Because we were a little concerned about that European lawsuit."
Boeing: "We are going to wait for the quarter, because sometimes it acts squishy in the quarter and then after it does that we will probably pull the trigger."
Dillard's: "A couple of downgrades and the stock is now down 40 straight points. I agree with you, I think it is overdone on the down side."
Progressive Waste Solutions: "Interesting, but if Waste Management is going down I'm not going to get into Progressive Waste."
Novavax: "I don't know, it's got everything priced in for perfection so you better get perfection."
----------------------------------------------------------Read more from Mad Money with Jim CramerCramer Remix: How China's fall impacts youCramer: Buy, buy, buy! A rare opportunityCramer: Apple is China's biggest victim----------------------------------------------------------
Timken Co: "The problem with Timken is that it's a steel company, and China has just not let up."
Rio Tinto: "No. Take a trip to Rio. Fly down to Rio. Do anything with Rio, but buy the stock of Rio. It's commodities and that is China." | Jim Cramer provides his opinion for caller favorite stocks at lightning speed. |
Consider drafting one once you turn 18 and are self-sufficient, said certified financial planner Catherine Seeber, principal for Wescott Financial Advisory Group in Philadelphia. It's worth having a will even if you don't have a complex financial situation or much to bequeath. Without one, state intestacy laws determine who gets your assets, which may not be whom you'd prefer. Basic wills can often be done very easily using software, said Sandy. Ask your lawyer about including a digital asset provision to grant your executor online access to bank accounts, email and other accounts, said Seeber. Some entities may balk at allowing that, otherwise.
Typically, this document goes along with your will, providing details like your preferred funeral arrangements. But planners suggest including more details, particularly log-in information for your online accounts and locations for important physical documents like insurance policies and deeds for a home. "In the old days, you used to be able to go through somebody's office drawer and piece these things together," said Seeber. "You can't do that anymore because everybody is doing it electronically."
Such a list ensures that online-only accounts, like PayPal, don't go unnoticed. It also ensures your heirs can manage accounts in the way you might wish, said Paré. Some companies won't allow access otherwise, and policies can vary widely. For example, terms for Yahoo accounts say they are nontransferrable: "Upon receipt of a copy of a death certificate, your account may be terminated and all contents therein permanently deleted."
Read MoreWhy your digital library will die right along with you
"People typically focus on having wills in place, but if your assets are beneficiary-type assets, it's not as important," said certified financial planner Becky Krieger, senior director for wealth management teams at Accredited Investors in Edina, Minnesota. Those include life insurance policies, many kinds of retirement plans and annuity contracts, among others. Listing a beneficiary allows the assets to transfer automatically to that person when you die. (Otherwise, the default beneficiary is your estate, sending the assets through probate, which can be a lengthy and expensive process.) Make sure to keep designations up to date, she said. They trump even your will, meaning those life insurance proceeds will still go to your ex-spouse so long as he or she is listed, even if you'd prefer otherwise.
Having a policy in place becomes important once your passing would cause financial harm to others. "Typically, we think about that for people when they get married and buy a house," said Krieger. Think of it this way: If you died, you wouldn't want your spouse to struggle to pay a jointly obtained mortgage that was suddenly less affordable without your income. Having kids adds to the need for insurance. Single parents and stay-at-home parents should have insurance. How much you need varies; financial advisors often recommend having enough to zero out debts and replace your missing income for your heirs.
Planners don't usually recommend that young, single people have life insurance. But it can make sense in select situations, said Sandy. Parents might consider taking out a small policy on an adult child for whom they have co-signed student loans. "You do leave that debt behind," she said. "Life insurance closes your obligations."
Read MoreHow much life insurance you really need | Do you have a will, a budget or life insurance? For most Americans, the answer is "no." What planning documents you need, when. |
Kyle, a former ranch had turned SEAL credited with the most confirmed kills of any U.S. military sniper, has been lionized in his home state of Texas. He became entrenched in U.S. popular culture in large part due to his best-selling book and the Academy Award nominated movie directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Bradley Cooper.
After leaving military service, Kyle, who battled his own mental demons, helped counsel troubled veterans with trips for shooting and talks. He had driven Routh to the range with Kyle's neighbor, Littlefield.
"You took the lives of two heroes, men that tried to be a friend to you. You became an American disgrace," Littlefield's brother-in-law, Jerry Richardson, said of Routh at a county court in the rural Texas city of Stephenville after the sentence was handed down.
The jury deliberated for a little more than two hours before reaching a verdict. Prosecutors chose not to go for the death penalty and had been seeking a life sentence without parole.
Defense lawyers argued that Routh was a paranoid schizophrenic and should be declared innocent by reason of insanity.
Even though Kyle's autobiography has been criticized for language seen as demeaning Iraqis and has been on the losing end of a defamation suit brought by former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, Kyle is revered in Stephenville, near where he grew up and went to college.
At the Texas State Cemetery in Austin, where Kyle is buried along with other major figures in the state's history, his grave has been the most visited after his body was brought to the site in a flag-waving procession that spanned about 200 miles of Texas highway in 2013.
In closing arguments, prosecutor Jane Starnes said Routh acted coldly and deliberately when he gunned down the two and then plotted his escape.
"That is not insanity. That is just cold, calculated capital murder," Starnes said. | Eddie Ray Routh was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday after a Texas jury found him guilty of murdering Chris Kyle, the former U.S. Navy SEAL. |
Boris Nemtsov, Putin foe, is shot dead in shadow of KremlinAfter Boris Nemtsov's assassination, 'there are no longer any limits'Russian opposition leaders get jail terms
The statement, the fullest official response so far to Mr. Nemtsov's killing, said the police were pursing half a dozen leads in the case, the highest-profile assassination in Russia during the tenure of Mr. Putin.
The committee also cited the possibility that Islamic extremists had killed Mr. Nemtsov over his position on the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris, saying that security forces had been aware of threats against him from Islamist militants. The committee also said that "radical personalities" on one or another side of the Ukrainian conflict might may have been responsible. The statement said the police were also considering possible business or personal disputes as motives.
"The investigation is considering several versions," the statements said. The first it listed was: "a murder as a provocation to destabilize the political situation in the country, where the figure of Nemtsov could have become a sort of sacrificial victim for those who stop at nothing to achieve their political goals."
This explanation echoed and elaborated on a statement posted overnight on the Kremlin website, which also characterized the murder as a "provocation."
"The president noted that this cruel murder has all the signs of a contract killing and carries an exclusively provocative character," the Kremlin statement said. "Vladimir Putin expressed his deep condolences to the relatives and loved ones of Boris Nemtsov, who died tragically."
Mr. Putin, in a message to Mr. Nemtsov's mother released by the Kremlin, said, "Everything will be done so that the organizers and perpetrators of a vile and cynical murder get the punishment they deserve."
Initially, Russian news media reported Mr. Nemtsov had been shot from a passing car. On Saturday, however, a television channel, TVTs, broadcast a surveillance video purporting to show the murder, though from a distance. Mr. Nemtsov had left a restaurant in the GUM shopping center on Red Square and was walking with his girlfriend, Anna Duritskaya, a Ukrainian model.
A snowplow blocked the scene. But the video, which has not been independently verified, appears to show the shooter was hiding on a stairway on Moskvoretsky Bridge waiting for Mr. Nemtsov and Ms. Duritskaya to pass. Later, the figure of the supposed shooter runs to a getaway car that pulls up on the bridge.
After laying flowers on a floral mound already chest high and kneeling in respect before the blooms festooning the sidewalk on a rainy, glum midafternoon, Anatoly Chubais, a co-founder with Mr. Nemtsov of the Union of Right Forces political party, scorned the investigators' claim.
"Today, we had a statement that the liberal opposition organized the killing," he said. "Before this, they wrote that the liberals created the economic crisis. In this country, we have created demand for anger and hate."
Ilya Yashin, a political ally of Mr. Nemtsov's, drew attention again to the pamphlet Mr. Nemtsov was preparing on Russian military aid to pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine. Speaking on the Echo of Moscow radio station, he said Mr. Nemtsov had "some materials that directly proved" the participation of the Russian army in the Donbas war in Ukraine.
Mr. Yashin said he knew no details, or what had become of those materials.
Ms. Albats, who had discussed with Mr. Nemtsov his unfinished exposé, said of this state of affairs in domestic Russian politics, "We are at war now."
"Those who are believers in democracy, those who for some reason, back in the late 1980s, got on board this train, and had all these hopes and aspirations," she said, "they are at war today."
Follow us on Twitter: @CNBCWorld | Russians fear the murder of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov could mark a revival of lethal violence among Moscow's leadership elite, the NYT reports. |
Gold fell on Wednesday, heading for a third day of losses, as the dollar extended gains versus the euro after U.S. economic data.
Data on Wednesday showed private employers added 212,000 jobs in February, while January's private payrolls were revised upwards to 250,000.
Spot gold , higher initially, fell 0.1 percent to $1,201.30 an ounce by 1538 GMT. The metal had fallen to a one-week low of $1,194.90 on Tuesday, dented by an 11-year high of the dollar and expectations of a U.S. interest rate hike.
U.S. gold for April delivery dropped $3.90 to $1,200.40 an ounce.
"It feels like gold is going to test the $1,200 psychological level," Bernard Sin, senior vice president at MKS Finance.
"It is struggling to find the real direction and in the meantime it is reacting to the dollar and the U.S. data, which will continue to drive the market for now." | Gold rose on Wednesday, helped by lower European shares but a stronger dollar ahead of major U.S. economic data weighed. |
It's been another roller coaster week for the markets. Low oil prices and a stronger dollar have been dominating the headlines. As investors get ready for a new week, the fed meeting will be in focus.
Jordan Posner, Managing Director and Senior Portfolio Manager with Matrix Asset Advisors, told CNBC's "Power Lunch" on Friday, it is inevitable that the fed will hike rates. But he says investors are way too hung up on the timing of when that will happen.
Read MoreOil plunges on bloated US supply
Posner believes in the weeks ahead he'll be closely looking at GDP related data to see whether the slowdown will continue as well as inflation data. "Watch the balance between general economic activity and employment and the way they evolve," Posner said.
Gene Peroni, Portfolio Manager and Senior Vice President with Advisors Asset Management said he doesn't think next week's Fed meeting will be huge for the markets. He thinks the biggest challenge to the market is sliding oil prices. "Low oil prices will open up the debate about global economic expansion," Peroni said. In the weeks ahead he'll be watching transportation stocks and the biotechs. | What to look for next week in the markets |
Federated expects weakness in first-quarter corporate earnings numbers and U.S. GDP. Many major companies start reporting first-quarter results in early April, while GDP results are expected near the end of the month.
Those factors—combined with confusion of when the Fed will move to normalize interest rates—could push stocks and U.S. Treasury yields lower as investors seek safe haven plays, he said.
Read MoreSurprise! Why US stocks may start beating Europe
Orlando maintains a long-term bullish outlook for U.S. stocks, though, as he has set a year-end S&P 500 target of 2,350, nearly 300 points higher than where it traded Tuesday.
Mike Holland, chairman of Holland and Co., agreed that stocks could broadly fall before rallying again.
"I think we're going to lose a little money before we make a little money," Holland told "Power Lunch" on Tuesday.
He noted that the Fed has put the U.S. "firmly in a bull market," adding that "the easy part is over." | Potentially weak first-quarter GDP and earnings could send U.S. stocks 5-to-10 percent lower in the coming months, an expert said. |
To be sure, there are some signs that wages are thawing. Unit labor costs are up 2.1 percent over the past year, providing some encouragement that inflation—the good kind—is on the rise.
However, the anemic production numbers triggered worry that the economy is no closer to 3 percent-plus gross domestic product growth than it's been throughout the recovery period. As has been pointed out many times, this is the worst recovery since the Great Depression, with GDP unable to crack 2.5 percent for any calendar year since the crisis.
Read More Fed's trillions haven't helped worker paychecks
Some economists already are retreating from their growth hopes, with Ashworth now wondering whether "the economy's potential growth rate appears to have fallen well below 2 percent."
"This has massive implications for the economy," said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities. "As people are finally realizing, it means that potential growth is sharply lower than where most economists were assuming up until recently. These data suggest that potential real growth is well short of 2 percent (possibly even below 1 percent), which explains why the labor market has tightened so much over the past five years despite what was considered at the time to be tepid GDP growth."
The weak wage gains and productivity growth won't in themselves dissuade the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee from raising rates, perhaps as soon as September, several economists said.
Read MoreGross: Low rates are the problem, not the solution
"With potential GDP growth possibly only around 1 percent, annualized gains in unit labor costs of around 2 percent should help push core inflation up to a similar rate over the next couple of years," Deutsche Bank economists said in a note. "The current trend in the data strongly suggests the unemployment rate will finish this year below 5 percent, which is well ahead (yet again) of the FOMC's 2016 central tendency of 4.9 percent to 5.1 percent. This will make the Fed increasingly uncomfortable with a zero percent funds rate." | It's been the economy's dirty little secret even as forecasters continue to project breakout growth that never seems to come. |
Stocks struggled for consensus in the days ahead of the jobs report on Good Friday. Only the futures market was open on Friday after the economic report came out at 8:30 a.m.
That leaves an entire day before investors can take action on the jobs report on Monday. Since European markets and most Asian exchanges are closed on Monday, U.S. markets will have little overseas movement to trade off.
"You might have a brief rally that means the Fed is going to hold (off), but probably the market is due for a big correction," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital. "On Monday we'll probably see a negative opening."
Read MoreThe contrarian way to play the Fed's next move
A rough Monday doesn't spell doom for the entire week, however.
Stocks actually traded positive 70 percent of the time with a median gain of more than 0.70 percent, Kensho analysis showed.
Disclosure: CNBC's parent NBCUniversal is a minority investor in Kensho. | U.S. stocks will likely plummet on Monday, in the wake of Friday's disappointing March jobs report. |
As the dollar experiences decreased usage in global trade, China's yuan is slowly climbing the ranks.
The yuan is now among the top ten currencies used in global trade, according to rankings by the Bank of International Settlements and SWIFT. Moreover, trading platform EBS told Reuters earlier this year that the yuan ended 2014 among its top five traded currencies.
Still, the greenback's status as a global reserve currency remains intact, experts say.
"The dollar is declining as a trade currency, but it remains strong as a reserve currency. Right now, it's around 61 percent of global reserves, versus 70 percent over a decade ago," said Rickards.
In the meantime, the euro's share has risen to around 25 percent from 18 percent when the currency was first introduced in 1999, according to the IMF.
Furthermore, major commodities are still priced in dollars; as long as that's in place, even if more countries start ditching the dollar for payments, it won't have a big impact on USD dominance, said Uwe Parpart, managing director and head of research at Reorient Financial Markets. | The greenback's dominance in the developing world may be under threat as more emerging economies reduce their reliance on the global trade currency. |
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Pedestrians walk in front of Wells Fargo headquarters in San Francisco, California.
That's because jobs haven't looked this good in a long time and gross domestic product, which will probably be "lackluster" in the first quarter, is still in the 3 percent range for the year, he explained.
"The traction that we have in the businesses we're involved with, the customer groups that we're engaged with, look actually pretty good."
Read MoreHousing data adds to string of disappointing stats
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve approved Wells Fargo's capital distribution plans last week, along with those of 28 other banks. Wells Fargo responded by announcing it plans to increase its dividend to 37.5 cents per share in the second quarter of 2015, up from the current rate of 35 cents a share.
"We've signaled to investors that we intend to distribute about 50 to 70 percent of our net income with the combination of dividends and share repurchases," Shrewsberry said.
"We're at the head of the pack. We're a big capital generator. We have a lot to distribute and we've been rewarding shareholders nicely."
Read MoreBank sector now regulated by 'hypotheticals': Bove
While the bank has done a nice job of keeping income at a high level despite interest rates, if rates stay here it will have to do more on noninterest income, he said.
"We have to work harder on growing the size of the balance sheet in a prudent way. And we have to be careful about expenses," Shrewsberry added. | Here's why Wells Fargo CFO John Shrewsberry is bullish on the bank's loan business this year. |
The public valuation currently gives Netflix $27 billion market cap, and, since Netflix doesn't trade like a normal stock, the private valuation is basically irrelevant.
Looking back, Netflix pretty much came out of nowhere and is now the dominant way that people consume at-home entertainment. For a small monthly fee, customers have access to a huge library of content. Plus, it has its own programming, which has helped build brand loyalty. The concept that users didn't have to pay for every program that they watch helped Netflix corner the market on binge watching.
However, if Cramer were to value Netflix, he would not do so using the simple boundaries of valuation that are used currently.
"As a private company, Netflix would be thought of as an important form of worldwide entertainment, and if it were up for a new round of financing, I think it could easily be worth double its current public valuation," Cramer said.
Considering the fact that investors are willing to give a company like Uber a $40 billion valuation, or the tens of billions that Airbnb or Dropbox have attracted, maybe it is not that far off.
"Why the heck shouldn't Netflix, which has changed the way we live, be worth much much more than it currently is?" Cramer asked.
Some investors may look into the past and remember when Netflix was worth significantly less and think the value right now is totally ridiculous. But what if management screwed up and the stock was trading at an absurd value back then?
"Netflix is an institution. A worldwide one. It should be valued accordingly. One day it will be. Not this week. Maybe not this year. But one day," Cramer said.
---------------------------------------------------------- Read more from Mad Money with Jim Cramer Cramer Remix: I fear this financial Cramer: Don't dare invest without these Cramer game plan: Getting in on Buffett's top bank ----------------------------------------------------------
That is why Cramer recommended investors be willing to allow a little luxury, even if that means accepting a level of risk you would not normally take.
So, if the stock makes any sort of a decline when it reports earnings later in the week, Cramer thinks this could be a great time to add it to your portfolio. At least consider adding one big dreamer stock! The "Mad Money" host could also make the same argument for Twitter, Receptos and even HomeAway.
Cramer wants investors to feel comfortable dreaming big about one slot in their portfolio. Then let index funds take up the bulk of the stock assets, and pick a few individual stocks so you can truly let your mad money run mad. | Jim Cramer thinks it could be time to have a little fun with your portfolio, including the addition of this stock which could double in value soon. |
Read MoreOil spike may take 'a little longer': Andy Hall
Other hedge funds have been hit by the decline in energy prices.
The average commodity focused hedge fund fell about 1 percent in 2014 and is down roughly the same amount in 2015 through March, according to data compiled by eVestment.
Avenue Capital Group's Avenue International fund, for example, was down 3.87 percent year to date through March 20, largely reflecting declines in the value of the fund's energy-related positions, according to a person familiar with the situation.
The exact securities were unclear, but $13 billion Avenue, led by Marc Lasry, focuses on the bonds and stocks of companies in distress. A spokesman declined to comment.
Another appears to be the Armajaro Commodities Fund, which is down about 6.5 percent in 2015 through the end of March, according to a person with knowledge of the returns. The fund trades across the commodity markets, including energy, metals and food-related commodities. A spokesman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Read MoreBig money looking for hot plays on energy | Kamunting Street Capital is closing in part because of energy-related losses, showing the potential pitfalls of playing the sector. |
Stocks managed to close higher on Wednesday following the release of minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee's March meeting, which showed policymakers were divided over the timing of a rate hike.
Read MoreSummers agrees with Dimon: There's a liquidity problem
"When you dissect the rest of the statement...you've got a split which on balance (puts) us back to when (Fed Chair) Janet Yellen told us on the 27th it's going to be gradual and data dependent," Hogan said.
"To me the Fed minutes provided some useful information. The conclusion coming out of the Fed statements were significant," said Eric Lascelles, chief economist at RBC Global Asset Management. "I feel like some of that dovish interpretation has faded recently. They're still fairly committed to tightening."
The overall trend in employment data indicates that March's disappointing nonfarm payrolls report was a one-time miss, Hogan said. Jobless claims came in at 281,000, slightly above lowered expectations, but an increase from last week. "We've crossed that Rubicon where bad news are good news."
Peter Boockvar, chief market analyst at The Lindsey group, pointed out in a note that the four-week average on initial jobless claims fell to the lowest level since 2000.
"Bottom line, near 15-year lows in both initial claims and continuing claims is a clear sign that employers are holding on to their employees to a great extent and another sign of a tightening labor market," he said.
The U.S. 10-year Treasury note yield rose to 1.96 percent, a two-week high, following a $13 billion auction of 30-year Treasury bonds. "The 30-year bond auction was weak," Boockvar said. "The 30-year is somewhat of a different animal relative to other parts of the curve in terms of gauging market sentiment because pension funds and insurance companies are big players."
Wholesale trade data came in slightly higher than expected, up 0.3 percent. However, weak sales provide less incentive for wholesalers to build their inventories.
Costco reported a 2-percent drop in March comparable store sales, a slightly larger decrease than the consensus forecast of a 1.2-percent decline.
Intel has stopped its talks with Altera about a potential acquisition, according to sources familiar with the situation. Kim Forrest, senior equity analyst at Fort Pitt Capital, said that even though she was disappointed the talks fell through, it was "refreshing to see the markets react to specific company news."
Shares of General Electric jumped on news that the company may sell most, if not all, of its real estate holdings, which are worth about $30 billion total.
European equities closed higher on Thursday as investors reacted to fresh economic data and auto stocks posted strong gains.
Read MoreIMF's Lagarde: Greece, creditors should 'get on with the work'
Concern about Greece abated with the country raising enough funds to meet a payment to the International Monetary Fund due Thursday.
The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX), widely considered the best gauge of fear in the market, traded near 13.
Decliners closed the session a touch ahead of advancers on the New York Stock Exchange, with an exchange volume of 725.20 million and a composite volume of 3.15 billion.
Gold futures settled $8.80 lower at $1,194.30 an ounce.
—CNBC's Peter Schacknow contributed to this report. | U.S. stocks closed higher as investors digested a rebound in oil prices and looked for more signals on the timing of an interest rate hike. |
Below is an unedited transcript:
PATTIE SELLERS: Welcome to Lessons in Leadership. I’m Pattie Sellers. I am a Senior Editor-at-Large at Fortune, and I have a broader timing job that is all about live media. So I really feel like this is live media. And I’m really thrilled to be here.
I actually oversee our most powerful women franchise, a lot of us, Stephanie Mehta and a couple of my other colleagues, Nina Easton, and Leigh Gallagher. And it’s actually nice being up here on stage with two kind of real guys. It’s a little bit of a change for me. (Laughter.) It is, and we decided to mix it up. Adam Lashinsky was going to do this, and I was going to do the other one. And we decided to get a little creative.
So thanks all for coming. It’s really great to see a full room. We’re going to get to your questions and comments early because we want to make this as much of a conversation as possible. Keep on eating, and we don’t mind the noise. And feel free to go outside for dessert if you’d like.
So I think probably most of you know General Stanley McChrystal. If you haven’t read his book last year, you should. I have read it. It’s terrific. And he is a tired four-star general. Today commander of the McChrystal Group, which he started last fall, and we’re going to hear all about that. He’s also, you don’t think of him as a corporate guy, but he is also on the board of Navistar International and JetBlue, and a technology unit of Siemens. He is the former commander of U.S. and International Security Assistance Forces, and he was commanding U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and you kind of grew up in commanding special forces. And was the developer and the leader of the insurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
Todd Bradley is one of the commanders of Hewlett-Packard. He just got a new job. He is now EVP of Strategic Growth Initiatives including HP’s efforts in China, no less, and very focused on China, but staying here in California. He ran the ‑‑ what was it, is it like $65 billion printing and personal systems division of HP, and has been at HP for how many years, Todd?
PATTIE SELLERS: Eight years, and before that has a really impressive resume having run and revived, turned around Palm, and spent some time at FEDEX and GE. So real business.
I want to start out with Stan because I think to get this conversation going it’s important to understand your perspective on how you even make a transition from military leadership to advising business leaders, and how the two worlds relate.
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Thanks. I grew up in the military, my father was a soldier, my father’s father was a soldier, my wife’s father was a soldier, all my brothers, and what-not. So we were always on the federal dole. But also I had no business experience at all. And, to be honest, if this was a room of just military officers, at some point in the meeting somebody would rap the table and say, “Damn it, business would never do this. Business is squared away, they would not be as inefficient as we are, and they’d make decisions more rapidly.”
And I grew up with just this idea that they were very different, business was full of god-less bastards who were after money, and that the military was altruistic and idealistic, but not very efficient. Since I’ve gotten out and I work with businesses, I’ve found there were huge values in business. But in every business meeting somebody raps the table, and they look at me and they say, “You’d never be this stupid in the military, would you?”
I usually go, “No, we wouldn’t.” But what I found is, every time you start to talk about a different line of business, whether it’s government, whether it’s foundation, at the end of the day you’re dealing with people, and you’re trying to get people aligned on a set of values and a set of objectives. You’re trying to get them to work together.
So what we’ve found is that our ability to relate is much easier than we thought. We have to learn the nomenclature in each business we work with, and some specifics, but we find ourselves very comfortably dealing with people, because we develop relationships very quickly, but then we also find that their problems are ones in many cases that we’ve experienced.
PATTIE SELLERS: So what does the McChrystal Group do, and why is Todd up here with us?
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Well, Todd and I are friends.
TODD BRADLEY: Do you want me to answer that?
PATTIE SELLERS: You can jump in, Todd.
TODD BRADLEY: The same answer.
PATTIE SELLERS: Why don’t you say, Todd, what the McChrystal Group does.
TODD BRADLEY: I think, to add to Stan’s comments, we’ve worked together with the McChrystal Group for about a year. And what you really see are the commonalities. First off, if you think about this conference, it’s focused on technology, it’s focused on lots of entrepreneurs, but really at its root it’s all about leading, about leading new businesses, new innovations; about driving both business innovation as well as product innovation.
And like many large companies, as you get large, large organizations maybe even better said than large companies, the ability to keep that middle moving aggressively, making decisions, kind of moving out of the traditional decision-making hierarchy is important, it’s enabling. It enables you to drive and grow, and move exceptionally fast in markets that we’re all in that are all evolving quickly. Some like the PC business, frankly, changing at its foundation.
So when a couple of colleagues introduced me to Stan and some of his team, the natural discussion is what happened in whatever place in the world Stan and his guys were. But the true value came from the way they deployed tools, tools available broadly, to increase the speed of execution, increase the efficiency of execution. All key verbs in things we all need to do no matter what size our company is.
So they brought a set of experiences, a set of tools that were completely analogous to many of the challenges we had in what’s been a huge technology business that’s now changing exceptionally rapidly, almost weekly. And so that was the benefit. That was the desire, how do we change this outcome? You take the proverbial how do you change the tires while the car is moving?
PATTIE SELLERS: So let’s hone in on one example here. You had a need for more speed. You had a familiarity with helping to transform the military into a more agile, flexible, organization focused on a very different enemy from the past. How did that apply? What did your conversations go like? And how did you help HP think about this?
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Sure. A little background on how I came to believe that, first off, all of us have been parts of small teams before, whether they’re sports teams, or families, or startup companies. And there’s a magic about a small team. They know what each other thinks. You can finish each other’s sentences. Things flow. And you stay aligned because it’s very easy to.
Big organizations, whether it’s an army, or a government, or a company, have traditionally had trouble because you have to develop layers for control. You start to have processes ‑‑ read bureaucracy ‑‑ you start to have all the things that make it more difficult to be agile.
Now for most of history that was always the reality, but it didn’t matter because mass still triumphed. Even at this very small organization, be it military or business, they still at the end of the day, they couldn’t overtake the behemoth. That’s all changed. Technology changed in two phases. It changed in the 19th Century in warfare with railroads, telegraph, repeating rifles, and things like that. That was the first change. And it changed the relationship between size a little bit. The West, for example, most of the West dominated most of the rest of the world, even though they didn’t have population advantage. But it changed dramatically about 15 years ago.
And what happened suddenly is what I call the power of one. Suddenly technology allowed a single individual, if they carry a backpack weapon, or they’re sitting at a computer, they could not only create disproportionate effect, but they could get disproportionate value from that effect by propagating it.
Think of the two Boston marathon bombers. Two knuckleheads with pressure cookers, now they did a hateful crime, but they petrified America, they caused us to focus on us for days. And think about that, that’s just two people doing that. So the power in this case is two ones. And so what happened is suddenly big organizations were vulnerable. In Iraq what we found is Al Qaeda operated as a very small focused, fast organization and suddenly, although we were good in small teams by counter-terrorist forces, we were a big organization in reality. So they were faster and more focused.
So you say what do you do? Now you’ve got a tip, the small organization has this vastly increased capacity. Fortunately, at the same time technology enables big organizations to change. Instead of trying to get big, you know in business how we say if you don’t grow you die, what I’d tell you, what we’re trying to do now is shrink organizations virtually. What I mean by shrinking is, shrinking the distance between people. Shrinking the different perspectives, getting people aligned, we can use technology. And what we did in the joint special operations command is every day every soldier in the command was on a 90-minute video teleconference and we talked through the whole fight. Where are we, what are we doing, we were in 27 countries. And so for 90 minutes we’re all getting aligned. It was the most incredibly efficient use of time we have.
PATTIE SELLERS: How many people was that?
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: By 2006 it was thousands, probably 8,000 or 10,000. I should notice I’ve got with me a guy who worked with me for many years there and Chris Fussell who left the service not long ago, 15 years as a Seal, the last 10 in Seal Team Six.
PATTIE SELLERS: And did you lead those 90-minute video ‑‑ like a videoconference?
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Pattie, I orchestrated them. I wouldn’t say that I led them, because what I wanted was this conversation across the command. I wanted the combined wisdom of the organization. I didn’t want it to come to me, the old wise one, to make a decision, because I wasn’t that wise. But, together we were pretty wise. And as we pass information the right answer tends to come out.
PATTIE SELLERS: And Todd, how does this relate?
TODD BRADLEY: I was just going to go there. I was just going to say, and I think those challenges ‑‑ the military may have a different enemy. All of us have different competitors every day. For me we move from Dell and IBM to the Chinese, to the Japanese. Some nimbler, some working under less and less constrained regulatory environments, different channels, different routes to market, a continual evolution of the competitive landscape and the ability to use ‑‑ not really to use, the ability to increase the speed of execution. The ability to accelerate the tactics to win competitively is what was so, so critical when you get to a mature market, a market where you have to take share in order to grow, a very, very different dynamic than when you’re just riding the ‑‑ when you have the tailwind of establishing a market.
PATTIE SELLERS: So what, Todd, is there anything that you can cite specifically that you have thought differently about in the last year, or actually done to address that need for speed and a lot of this need for speed seems like it has to do with shortening lines of communication.
TODD BRADLEY: You know, I don’t think about it in terms of shortening lines of communication. It’s more about, I’ll use a word empowering, but it’s in essence creating the culture where the mid-tier of an organization has the courage to execute, has the courage to go out and win every day. Frankly, wakes up every morning, the sales rep in Pittsburgh, realizing there’s some guy in China trying to take lunch off his table.
PATTIE SELLERS: So what’s the evidence that the mid-tier person in Pittsburgh has more courage to execute than ‑‑
TODD BRADLEY: Look, I think it’s an evolution, right. It’s a continual evolution.
PATTIE SELLERS: But, I mean what did you do to give that mid-tier person in Pittsburgh the courage to execute?
TODD BRADLEY: I think it’s a whole series of things. First you have to create the ability to fail without punitive results. You have to take the risks of what does it take to win. And frankly, you have to create ‑‑ you have to move out of what Stan referred to of this decision making tree of up to the wise person and down. And say look make the decision today. And that’s what we’ve done and you’ve seen it, frankly, you’ve seen it in some of the share gains we’ve had and the ability to continue to drive.
PATTIE SELLERS: Yes and I mean everybody in this room knows that HP is a company that has had a parade of leaders, a parade of leaders at the top, a lot of CEOs who ‑‑
TODD BRADLEY: That was politely said.
PATTIE SELLERS: Hey, I can relate. I work for Time, Inc. We’ve had a parade of leaders, as well. But, I mean, honestly, I know from ‑‑ and I’ve been at Time, Inc., for 29 years. I’ve been at Fortune for 29 years and the fear of change and the sort of paralysis that can come from not knowing who your leader is, and not knowing what the next CEO will want, in terms of strategy, it’s very difficult.
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Can I?
TODD BRADLEY: Let me make a point and I’ll flip to you.
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Yes.
TODD BRADLEY: I think as leaders there’s the seminal point where you decide to take that responsibility, personally, professionally, culturally, of moving into a leadership position. I think every step of the way you’re challenged and tested. When I look back at the past eight years at HP we’ve had a whole host of those tests and challenges. The spin off, don’t spin of the PC business, a complete leadership challenge. And the ability to communicate broadly, effectively, aggressively, and frankly the willingness to do that is what kind of pulls an organization through that knothole. The ability to do it broadly with partners, customers, in that case governments, is as paramount as employees.
So I think there’s a ‑‑ I think it was either Bill or Dave who created the mantra of management by walking around. It’s a longer walk when you have to do it in 174 countries. But, that is a very, very true, real concept. It’s a true, real tactic. I think Stan accomplished it with aggressive use of video conferencing tools, frankly, of social networking tools that we all need to move from just the consumer realm to the business realm. What are the business applications for a direct video link? What are the business applications for a Facebook or a Twitter type of application, and they’re the kind of things that we looked at.
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: I think Todd’s point that it’s leadership at its core needs to be hammered over, and over, because we sometimes talk about centralized or de-centralized. And at one point by 2006 in Iraq, or actually across, we were in 27 countries, I could sit and in a room I could watch every one of our operations, a feed from a predator, in real-time, and through my laptop computer I could listen to the radio communications down to the individual level on any of the operations. So I could watch it, I could listen, and I could talk. I never once talked, because these communications give you the ability to micromanage. And because people have the ability to reach you the first thing they do is they go, wow, I don’t know if the general wants me to make this decision, so the earlier they call you and they check, and they go, sir, do you want to do X. If you make the decision you made the decision forever. And what you’ve got to do is say, I don’t know, what do you want to do? And you have to push that down.
But, at the end of the day the outcome is like the yin and the yang, you’re never going to get a lot of military officers using this for the symbol. It’s not centralized, because technology will allow you to shorten communication lines. You can speed up traditional processes if you want. But, you’re just doing the old thing faster. And yet complete decentralization, if you decentralize most organizations they’re just chaos, because they don’t know. So what you’re trying to do is get a melding where you are, decentralizing decision, but you are centralizing shared consciousness. Everybody gets smart about what the situation is, what you’re trying to do, what the challenges are, that sort of thing. So you’re giving everybody contextual understanding and then you’re saying now you know as much as I do, make the decision.
PATTIE SELLERS: That’s a really interesting concept. So decentralized decision-making, but centralized, shared consciousness?
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Yes, ma’am.
PATTIE SELLERS: And you ‑‑ what did you just say, you know as much as ‑‑
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: The theory is everybody knows everything all the time. Now you never get there. But, what I learned as a leader is I had to change. Instead of being the wise man who sat down this thing, they come up with me for decisions, and I make Solomon-like decisions, instead they would come up with things that I’d say, okay, I called it thinking out loud. Here’s what I heard, here’s what I conclude from what I heard, here’s what I think we’re going to do about it. And it kind of let everybody in the command hear whether I understood the problem right, and they could correct it right there. They could hear the logic and then when the orders went out they go, okay, this is what we’re trying to do. Now, if the orders then don’t make sense and they’ve got to adjust, they know what we’re trying to do and then they can make orders with confidence.
PATTIE SELLERS: So when you were watching and listening to those, what was that again, what’s the terminology that you used when you were in that like command center?
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: We called it a situation awareness room and it was the live, full-motion video. It’s just like what you’re doing. It’s streaming video from a predator, or a different kind of aircraft. You can watch each one of your soldiers maneuver. You see in some cases you have three or four up, watching three or four angles of the same thing. You can listen to them. But, here’s the deal. It gives you the illusion of situational awareness. One of the things I had to understand ‑‑ I had to keep reminding myself is I’m watching, but I’m not on the ground. I don’t feel how cold it is. I don’t feel how tired. I don’t hear the crack of the bullet. I can’t make the commander’s decision for him and I don’t want to. What I want to do is try to appreciate his situation so that then we can start to say, what can we do to help, not tell him what to do, but what can we ‑‑
PATTIE SELLERS: And they knew, all of these soldiers knew, that you could see everything and hear everything.
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Yes.
PATTIE SELLERS: But, you didn’t want to speak, because that would just change their mindset.
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Well, and it would, as soon as a person from higher reached in suddenly you confuse everybody, who is running the show here.
TODD BRADLEY: Look, I think the inability to micromanage a large organization is the broader point here, whether it’s Stan’s responsibilities in his former role, or the 50,000 people that work in the printing and personal systems business. The skill to provide direction, to provide resources, to create, a wise man once said vision without execution is a hallucination. To be able to provide the vision and strategy, as well as enable the ability to execute is a huge, huge challenge and opportunity and people always say, well, what do you get from a McChrystal group, that same perspective on an organizational challenge, an operational challenge is what we saw and what people like HP, and Seagate, and others have engaged with these guys to work on.
PATTIE SELLERS: Who has a question? We have two mike handlers in the room. Please identify yourself. There’s one back here right now. Yes, please stand up.
QUESTION: Hi, it’s Michael Schrage. I’d like to second what you said about General McChrystal’s book. It was an excellent book.
PATTIE SELLERS: My Share of the Task.
QUESTION: And the question I’m going to ask actually is to both of you, but it’s based on a theme that you really didn’t quite develop in your book, which deals with large organizations. What does leadership mean when there is, shall we say, an ambivalent commitment to effectively prosecuting the mission, the strategy, et cetera. I think it’s fair to say that HP’s travails reflect, to be charitable, ambivalence and confusion about commitment, both on the governance level, and the CEO level, once upon a time. Both in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s fair to say that the perceived level of commitment was mixed. How can you be an authentic leader with ambivalent support?
TODD BRADLEY: I’ll start. You’re being charitable apparently. But, look, I think in senior leadership roles in those environments your responsibility is to dilute that ambivalence, to create certainty, to be in front of your people, your customers. Don’t forget, ambivalence is far more ‑‑ has far broader effects than just the X number of people in your organization. Material effects on customers, material effects on suppliers, frankly, material effects on governments who have made commitments to you in my world.
So your ability to in some ways shelter, in some ways provide the wall between the ambivalence of what’s happening above people, which by the way nobody can have an effect on, and focus people on what they can affect. How do we build great products, provide great service, win in the marketplace is the true leadership challenge and what’s enabled us. The team of people at HP, we built the largest, most profitable PC company in the world and kept it there for eight years through enormous amounts of ambivalence. I mean my book, if I ever wrote a book it might be a little different than Stan’s.
PATTIE SELLERS: It wouldn’t be called My Share of the Task?
TODD BRADLEY: Could be, my share of the task was pretty big. But, that title is already taken. But, I think really that clarity of mission, that clarity of responsibility; shareholders expect that degree of return and execution. And that’s what you have to communicate.
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: I could not agree more with Todd. It’s your role to try to give as much clarity to your subordinates as possible and to your partners. Like in Afghanistan the problem was all of our Afghan partners read the same newspapers and so they go, I know, General McChrystal, you’re trying hard, et cetera, but it doesn’t look like you’re going to have the time or support to do what it is you want to do. And you have to deal with that without being disloyal up the chain, or to anybody else. At the same time, you’ve got to try to get the job done. What I try to do in Afghanistan, because that’s really where I faced what you described, I tried to say, okay, I understand the ambivalence, but you have told me to do this. I know you’ve got doubts. I’m going to run as hard as I can to try to get this thing and I’m going to try to convince the team to do it, and I hope the ambivalence will reduce as we make progress. But, it’s not an easy one.
TODD BRADLEY: The last point I’d make about these types of situations is the opportunity that’s created for your competitors to take advantage of that situation astronomic. I mean my good friend David Roman is here in the room somewhere, who works for one of our larger competitors. Their opportunity to take advantage of that is astronomic. I will tell you, we have a competitor now here in the United States who is going through a little bit of their own, what’s a good word, turmoil, uncertainty, challenges. And to have them focused on that versus winning in the marketplace is a huge opportunity.
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Can I throw one more, just because it’s so powerful? My Share of the Task comes from the Ranger Creed, and the Ranger Creed has got a line that says, I’ll never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy. The underpinning of that promise each ranger makes to each other is trust. Every time a ranger, or it really applies to other units, as well, goes on a target, they know their buddies are going to bring them back. They may have been wounded or killed, but they know that. There’s absolute belief in that. When you don’t build that kind of shared trust with each other everything gets just really hard.
QUESTION: Steve Swanson, Mayo Clinic, for General McChrystal. What’s the secret sauce for leadership selection and development in the U.S. military? So if you had to pick one thing for the selection of the right people, and one thing for the development of them, what would they be?
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: That’s a great question. And I’m going to talk about elite units, because they have more refined selection processes. What we did was you start with good candidates from across the force. Part of it is a test of their values, really trying to make that sort of a crude cut, a test of things like IQ and all, and that sort of a crude cut.
At the end of the day what you’re looking for is somebody who won’t give up. You want to give somebody a problem and when they look at the problem, they start with the mindset that says I’m going to solve that problem. Part of our selection processes, the last part, is this long navigation thing, a week, and you’re guaranteed to get lost. The question is, at some point, it’s not a question of whether you’re a great land navigator it’s a question of how you respond, because people want to see what you’re going to do when it gets tough. I think that’s true. We really want that kind of person not just in that organization, but in most, I think it’s true in business, or whatever.
TODD BRADLEY: I was going to say that. I don’t think it’s any ‑‑ the other session taking place right now is exceptionally interesting about the CEO as the chief personnel officer. And it’s a very, very interesting and important concept. I think there’s probably no bigger decision you can make than a hiring decision.
I grew up very early in my career with Fred Smith at Federal Express, before it was a billion dollar business. And Fred always had a very simple philosophy that he, to this day, leads Federal Express with, and that’s people, service, and profit. So if you take care of, hire, train, motivate people, they will take care of providing your customers with phenomenal service, phenomenal products, who in turn will provide your shareholders with exceptional returns. And whether it’s Federal Express or Hewlett-Packard or General Electric, that same theme is consistently true.
PATTIE SELLERS: So I’m not sure if the second part of your question was answered, which is about leadership development. And I’m not sure quite what the question is. Just repeat that part of it.
QUESTION: So once you have selected the character and the values and someone who won’t give up, what is it that you do to nurture that person’s leadership skills so that they can get results at the end?
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: The military actually does this very well, because most of the military’s time is spent in training. You’re only at war episodically. It involves education. You’ve got to have repetitive education at each level because it’s got to be refocused for the level they’re going. But that’s pretty standard.
The other thing is you’ve got to put people in challenging jobs where they feel over their head. You’ve got to take them out of their comfort zone, even though you’ve prepared them for one thing, given them all these skills, you’ve got to put them somewhere and they’ve got to feel like, oh, my god, I’m trying to tread water and I’m going to go down. And if they do go down, you’ve got to ‑‑ unless it’s a values thing, you’ve got to pick them up, shaking them off, and let them move on.
We struggle with that last part of it in the military. We have trouble with that. But putting people in that very disorienting position, we all think back to the job that changed us most, and it was the one where you’d go home to your spouse at night and go, holy smoke, I don’t think I can do this.
PATTIE SELLERS: Todd, do you practice what Stan preaches, put people in jobs where they feel over their heads, disoriented, drowning? (Laughter.)
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: We don’t say that.
TODD BRADLEY: First, I think career development is a mutual obligation. As somebody who has run a very, very large organization, we have an obligation to hire and prepare people for increasing roles of responsibility. We have an obligation to help them be trained, not just academically but in the field.
And at the same time, I think our employees have an obligation to raise their hands and take those tough jobs. I would much rather have someone who has taken a very difficult assignment and done okay as opposed to somebody who has had the wind at their back for two years and done well. Give me the guy who has gone to Western China and opened a sales territory, or build a product, as opposed to somebody who hasn’t take that leap. We live in a truly boundary-less world, and you need people that have had those experiences. Frankly, it’s difficult, right. It’s difficult, and I think you have to accept that it’s not for everybody. And that’s fine. That’s great.
QUESTION: Todd, you mentioned something earlier ‑‑
PATTIE SELLERS: Can you identify yourself?
QUESTION: I’m sorry. I’m Dan Levin from Box. You mentioned something earlier that’s very near and dear to my heart, which I would paraphrase as, you need to convince people that they’re better off doing a lot of stuff and making the occasional mistake than doing a little stuff and being perfect.
So, General McChrystal, my question to you is do you agree?
And, Todd, my question to you is, do you have any wisdom to share for all the leaders in this room about how to create that kind of culture?
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: I completely agree. And you’ve got to understand that most organizations create processes that do the opposite. They allow people to hide behind process over making decisions, and what-not, and you’ve got to ferret that out.
TODD BRADLEY: First, I think there’s a degree of intelligent risk-taking that needs to be pervasive, intelligent, calculated risks that are understood. I think at the same time, the ability to celebrate, not just those wins but celebrate the learning we have from the loss is what’s important. My ability, or anyone’s ability, your ability as a senior leader at Box to stand up and say, look, this was a great decision, and this is why it failed, and this is what we learned. That’s a very enabling communiqué. It’s easy to always pump out the “turn the crank of great things.” You guys have a lot of tailwind, a lot of wins. But what was the loss? Why did we lose? What did we learn?
PATTIE SELLERS: When did you first feel, believe that you became a leader?
TODD BRADLEY: Me, me or Stan?
Look, first, I think that there are a whole host of things through your career that test your leadership. As you step up the different levels of an organization, take on new challenges, I think that moment that Stan talked about when you go home and you say, god, what am I going to do? And then you wake up in the morning and know it.
For me it was when I went to run Palm. I’m a firm believer that nothing is ever as bad or good as it’s presented in the press, despite all your best efforts, Pattie. Palm was actually a situation that was actually worse than worst. Through a phenomenal amount of hiring the right people, getting the right structure, getting the right products, understanding the customer, we were able to turn that business around and grow it very aggressively. And they’re kind of lessons I’ve taken with me for a long time.
You know, I’m a big believer in ‑‑ we’ll talk a lot, and everybody I’ve watched, we talk a lot about we’re inspired by product innovation. We’re inspired by phenomenal products that we see here. I get very inspired by that. But I also get very inspired by business innovations. I think of Uber as a business innovator. I think of Box as a business innovator. They’re changing the way business is done.
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: I’d break it into two parts. I started as a leader, like all my peers, where you are a platoon leader, and a company commander. And you go through a part of your career where, because you’re trained well enough, you’re just about as good as anybody in your unit. You might be the best soldier or you may not. And that’s probably true up to about battalion commander, about five-six hundred guys.
Once you get to the next level, guess what, you’re not anymore. You now have a breadth of capabilities with specialties you don’t understand, and you’re never going to understand. And the higher you get, the more that comes. So people would come in to brief you, and as I got more senior I suddenly realized someone is briefing me on something that technologically I don’t get. I don’t know the people very well, because it’s a big diverse organization. And so I learned that I try to look in their eyes and decide on them, and I would start making a big bet on how confident did they seem, how credible did they seem, and what people say.
And so I think that’s a different level of leadership, and you’re suddenly taking responsibility for things that are on trust, and you can’t be there on the ground to fix it. And you’re motivating people that don’t get to see you very often, and that takes some different skills, because the one time they see you in a year they’re going to call home or write home about it. And if you’re a jerk that’s what they’re going to write home.
And so I suddenly realized that I’m seeing people every day that are only going to ever see me once and, therefore, my leadership had to be slightly different, different than it can be with someone I’m with a lot.
TODD BRADLEY: The other thing I think I would tell you is while there’s always that, I think, seminal moment for everyone, I also think you’re continually tested and continually evolve, because we live and work in such a dynamic world. I thought I was a pretty competent leader right up into the point we announced that we’re going to maybe spin off our PC business. I will tell you that takes a whole different set of leadership skills. One to lead through that, and then to lead through, well, you know what, just fooling around, we’re not.
TODD BRADLEY: So I would tell you those tests are kind of continual and I think you wake up more than once and think about what am I going to do to fix this.
PATTIE SELLERS: Yes, right here, Amy. Identify yourself please.
QUESTION: I’m sorry, Amy Webb, I’m the head of Webb Media Group, we’re a digital strategy agency. So we started out by talking about how much technology has enabled efficiencies and I think it’s pretty safe to say that in the past few years technology has presented some equally big leadership challenges, not just in the military and the government, but also in the private sector. So I’m hoping that you could both look ahead five years, and given what we know about people leaking all kinds of documents, and there being so many ‑‑ the people who are at the sort of top level of command are so far removed from the technology that’s being used on the ground, what do you think needs to happen over the next five years in order to make sure that component of leadership is not falling apart?
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: I’ll start. In 1991 right at the beginning of the Gulf War I was over there and we lost an AC130 gunship with a crew of 13, I think. And it was shot down and all of them were lost. And in those days what they’d do in that situation is they’d shut off all communications in the unit so that nobody could call home until they could do official notification of spouses. And that was to be thoughtful, so somebody didn’t see it on TV, or hear it from someone else.
Well, they didn’t close it well enough and a bunch of people called home. So what happened to some of these surviving spouses is they knew a plane had gone down. They saw it on the news. And then they heard from other wives, I got a call from Harry, he’s okay, I got a call from Jim, he’s okay. They didn’t get a call. And that was a very cruel way to find out. So the first attempt was to tighten communications, take away things like that for good reasons, and to prevent.
By the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, after 9/11, that wasn’t possible anymore. That was first tried, but now every soldier has a cell phone. And they have a computer, no matter where they are and they can communicate. And they do, they call home every day, or many of them do. And so what we had to realize was, you don’t try to stop it. You don’t try to stop cross communicate even official stuff, passing of intelligence between us and CIA. What you do is you say, okay, that’s a reality. What we’re going to do is we’re going to try to make as much value of that reality and, in fact, speed it up.
Now, it brings some challenges. Increased transparency brings increased transparency. And if you’re an idiot people figure that out quicker. And if you’re ‑‑ I was 90 minutes a day on a video teleconference, it doesn’t take them long to figure out whether I am or not. And so what you’re challenged with now is this reality; you shouldn’t be doing things that you don’t want. But there are things that are better not out. The thing I struggle with most is the two factors are the speed at which information moves prevents it from being vetted. It prevents it from being corrected. And so a new story goes out, it creates this, or even a tweet or whatever. People get all a-fluster, and then by the time reality is understood there’s a lot of people who have acted, or over reacted. And we’ve seen that. I’ve lived that.
PATTIE SELLERS: So I mean I think most ‑‑ I don’t mean to interrupt you, but you’re leading to another question I had, which is what do you do when you either screw up or you have a major setback and how do you think about leadership then? I’m just going to interrupt you for a second, but probably most people in this room know that Stan resigned from the Army at the height of his career, because of quotes that were in Rolling Stone Magazine by some of his aids about the Obama administration and talk about communication moving at the speed of light, and not having the ability to do anything about it.
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Pattie gave the guts of it. That was a guy who had been embedded with us on and off, wrote an article, attributed quotes to members of my staff that really made it seem disloyal, or at least not professional. Six months later, after the IG investigation, they determined that much of what was in that story was not substantiated. But, you didn’t read it on the front page. So what do you do? I got woken up at 2:00 in the morning and said, we’ve got this big problem. I read this story. I was completely surprised by the story, starting with the title. And I was floored. But, I’d been around long enough to know the import of this and what was going to happen.
So you make some decisions right then, whether the story had been correct or not there wasn’t going to be time to really sort that out before decisions would be made. And so rather than try and do a big investigation and contest it I made the decision right then that I was going to offer my resignation, and the president could take it or not take it and I was going to say I’d do either way. But, I also made the decision at that point that what I was going to try to do from that moment on, because your life changes, it changes completely, and you think about it, you say, okay, something has come out and suddenly you’re on the news every five minutes with people with versions of it, your father is watching it. Your wife is watching it. Your son is in college watching it. And you think about the impact. And you can’t stop that.
And so what I did was I said, well I decided to myself, that that was an inflection point in my life. And I couldn’t change that now. You can’t change the past. And what I was going to try to do is conduct myself every day for the rest of my life in a way that would cause anybody who saw or dealt with me to say that’s not congruent with the tone of that report. So rather than take on the report directly I decided to take it on indirectly and just try to disprove it by my conduct.
You pay a big price when you do that. Silence hurts. When you keep your mouth shut and you don’t write about it, you don’t talk about it, and every day you want to scream. You want to scream out every day, a little less every day, but every day you do. And so most leaders go through something like that and in the future more and more are going to go through that. And I guess what we’ve got to do is each of us have got to try to get ourselves as mentally ready as you can. You can’t get yourself completely mentally ready. But, get yourself ready to what’s important to you, what’s the core of you, what can’t people take away from you, and realize that you can give away, if you give to other people the opportunity to determine your dignity, or your sense of self-worth, if you outsource that to them, they can leave you in a bad place. So you’ve got to decide. I mean that’s a little too personal, but it’s a fair question.
PATTIE SELLERS: Thank you for that.
QUESTION: Mehdi Maghsoodnia, CEO of Rafter. So I’ve been building teams for 20 years and you mentor people, you nurture them, you make them into leaders, and once in a while they fail. And it’s the hardest thing when someone you have trained to be a leader fails. And you mentally sort of get to a stage where you think they can scale or they can execute, can you speak to how do you handle that situation? First like how do you recognize when that moment comes? And then how do you handle it, especially when the team has a lot of sort of tribal bonding, they’re tight?
TODD BRADLEY: Look, first I think it gets recognized by results. I think it gets recognized by behaviors. And I think broadly teams when you’re talking about the types of small teams, in some ways know that but can’t self-police. And I think recognition by the individual acceptance by the individual and the handling of that situation is what’s most telling about the organization, the humanity of how that’s dealt with, assuming this person has been a contributor and to Stan’s point, hasn’t done something unethical, is what it’s about. And it’s, I think, a combination of honesty and integrity and straightforward communication.
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: I grew up loving baseball and I used to pitch and late in the game the manager comes out to the mound and he asks the pitcher, you know, how do you feel, can you keep pitching? And you’ll always say yes, I think I can, coach, I’m good. I mean that’s the answer I want form the pitcher, whether I’m going to move him out or not, because you want them emotionally. So leaders don’t see it, just like Todd said, they have a difficult time. And I’m separating people who are unethical. You just cut them away and don’t worry about it. But, someone who is trying hard and can’t do it, the one thing I’ve found is I was slow to pull the trigger, and I was because I cared about them, I wanted them to succeed, and the problem was everybody below them saw that long before I did. And they are saying, why doesn’t he move them. So they’re thinking either I don’t know, or I don’t care.
So typically I was late on it, because it’s the hardest decision to make, by far. People say putting people in harm’s way. That’s not a hard decision. You do what you have to do. Removing, firing somebody when you know how much it’s going to hurt is without question to me the most painful thing a leader does.
TODD BRADLEY: I totally agree.
PATTIE SELLERS: Have you gotten better at it over the years, both of you?
TODD BRADLEY: I don’t know if you get ‑‑ well, I guess you always get better at it as you evolve, as your skills as a leader improve and mature and grow. I guess the humanity you bring to those situations improves.
QUESTION: Do you do more early?
PATTIE SELLERS: Earlier than you used to. Do you wait less?
TODD BRADLEY: I don’t know that you can answer that honestly. I think every one of these is an individual assessment. I would like to tell you yes, but I can’t honestly say every time yes.
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: I think about it earlier.
TODD BRADLEY: I agree with that.
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: I hope I pull the trigger earlier.
PATTIE SELLERS: We have time for a couple more questions. Yes, right here.
QUESTION: Mike DeFranco, founder and CEO of Lua. I just want to start by thanking you guys. It’s been a really inspirational panel, especially for a young founder myself. Books like The Art of War and The Five Rings really inspired me to start my company. And growing up with Army Rangers as my grandfather and my uncle, I really liked the parallels you make with picking someone.
As I was telling Patricia here actually, I learned how to ski on these mountains. My first run my grandfather took me up on a double black and said, well, you’re going to get down one way or the other. (Laughter.)
TODD BRADLEY: Gravity at that point.
QUESTION: So I had two questions. My first question was, we’re just starting this company up now, as we started looking to the future you begin to predict that at some point an equal competitor is going to approach you and enter the market. And so as people that have been there before, both in war with evil enemies or with a very similar product entering the market at the same time, what do you tell your team as that moment happens, and if you begin to lose share or battles, how do you inspire people to continue marching forward?
And my second question was just is there a book that you would recommend that inspired you that brought you to where you are today?
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: That’s great. I’ll start on that. I think it’s a terrific question. I think that you’re going to have competition. One of the challenges we faced in the counter terrorist force is the forces; the individuals and the teams were very, very good. Our culture was excellence. And as we started these wars after 9/11, we’d been successful before. It just kept proving out that we were excellent. Every time we went on a target, we did well, that sort of thing, et cetera.
The problem is we weren’t winning. And sometimes you can be excellent and you can be misaligned for the challenge that you’re facing. And so people derive their sense of self-worth, at least in our organization, from their excellence. So what we tried to do, and I tried to do in the force is change that. I tried to say, it doesn’t matter anymore, the only thing that counts for us is winning. We used to joke, if it’s stupid and it works, it ain’t stupid.
So let go of ‑‑ sometimes you’re asking people to let go of the very thing that has given them their sense of status and self-worth and asking them to operate differently. I would put operators like Chris, gifted SEAL leader, kicking down doors, and put him in an Embassy somewhere to deal with the Ambassador for six months, which is like purgatory. And he’s thinking, I need to be out ‑‑
PATTIE SELLERS: You did that?
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Yes. I did it to him. (Laughter.)
PATTIE SELLERS: You stuck with him.
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: But that’s where they were most able. So that was the courage to change what we were doing, and how we were doing it. But, again, the better the organization is the harder it is. If everybody is all screwed up, they’re willing to change because why not. But if people are pretty good, and that’s what the problem is, if you’re successful for a while and then a competitor comes at you, and the first thing you’re going to do is you’re going to try harder, you’re going to pedal faster. And then you’re going to work seven days a week, and you’re just going to say if I pedal faster I get in front of him. Then you realize they’re driving a car, and you’ve got to change.
TODD BRADLEY: I think you have a very, very unique opportunity. And I say that because you have the opportunity to build a competitive culture from day one. You’re operating assumption day one should be, this is such a phenomenal business opportunity people are going to come after me with a vengeance. And I want to build a culture in my company that’s about winning. Winning ethically, morally, within the foundation of what we want to create.
And let’s just assume somebody is going to act competitively, act like somebody wants to take your lunch every day. Do that day one, and when competitors come it’s a rallying cry to do better.
I was going to answer the second part of your question. First I would read Stan’s book.
PATTIE SELLERS: The book, yes.
TODD BRADLEY: I was fortunate enough kind of early to work with some phenomenal leaders that I’ve learned from, people like Fred Smith, and Jack Welch, who have written books, but sometimes the reality of working with those guys is different than the printed word. So very, very strong, if you look at guys like that who have built and led phenomenal companies. I think there’s phenomenal learnings in there.
PATTIE SELLERS: Stan, is there a book that you’ve read that helped you think about leadership?
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: There’s an old novel that many Army officers have read called Once an Eagle. And it’s about two leaders in parallel up through a career. It’s a leadership book. It’s about two different styles of leadership, two different sets of values. And it’s a long slog, a lot of sort of historical novel stuff, but it’s extraordinary in how it reminds you about values. And I’ve re-read it about four times just because it does that.
TODD BRADLEY: To kind of circle back, I think mentors are as if not more important. Mentors who can talk.
PATTIE SELLERS: I’m going to take the last question. What is the one area that prevents you from being the A-plus complete leader that you would like to be? And what has a mentor or advisor to you told you to help you improve in that area?
TODD BRADLEY: So I think the tendency to want to go very, very ‑‑ in large organizations, I have to do this from the context of my world. We ship twelve things a second. And the tendency to want to hear that phone call that says this screw is broken in the center of Taiwan and go fix it is a huge thing to stop. To learn the ability to provide that vision and resources, and frankly protection and enable teams is a ‑‑ I don’t know if I would use the word “challenge” but it’s certainly something that you have to learn and evolve to as you move into larger organizations. We all have, as I was accused of by one of Stan’s compatriots, if you ask the guy where to park the car, he’s going to tell you.
PATTIE SELLERS: And has any CEO who you have worked for or advisor over the years given you a particular piece of advice in terms of helping you?
TODD BRADLEY: There’s a guy named Mike Neal, who is the Vice Chairman of General Electric, and he took a little copier business and turned it into GE Capital, which is a pretty big deal. When I first went to work for Mike, and we met, and he’s like look this is the way I do this. I don’t work with a lot of staff. I kind of have the staff that they tell me I have to have. I don’t do a lot of presentations. I don’t want a lot of presentations. If you have trouble or need anything call me. If there’s anything I can do to help, you call me. Other than that, we hit our numbers.
And there’s an empowering piece of that that’s, I don’t know if the word is refreshing, but it’s just like unleashing. And that’s probably mine.
PATTIE SELLERS: Great, thank you.
TODD BRADLEY: And by the way, I’ll say, I’m going to caveat this before I say this. Our work with the McChrystal Group is based on results. I have enormous respect for Stan and his team, but they continue to work with us, because they continue to drive tangible results. So from a competitive perspective, they’re in a competitive market, we’re in a competitive market. So that being said, Stan has given enormous amounts of advice. You know, when you get into large companies you have lots of people that like to help, lots of people that ‑‑ and Stan has been very, very helpful to me of understanding on not how do you say look, forget Pattie she works in finance, and I’m not going to pay any attention to her, I’m going to do what I want to do, but how to flip that model and make it inclusive, as opposed to alienate, include. And I think of all the work, fine work that they’ve done for us in the past year, for me personally that’s been my biggest learning.
RETIRED GENERAL STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Thanks, Todd. I think what I’d come down to is discipline. Most of us know as leaders what we should do. We may not know the actual answer to a decision, but you know how you should treat people, you know that you should provide good guidance, and yet often I don’t. And I kind of ‑‑ the difference between what I know I should do, or who I should be and who I am, that’s what you go to bed every night, you kick yourself a little bit for the things you didn’t do, or for me every once in a while I’ll speak my mind in a way that I probably shouldn’t. I describe that as giving feedback. And my wife constantly reminds me that I was not put on this earth to give feedback to everyone. But, that’s the thing. It’s really discipline.
A mentor that’s actually helped me, we’ve got a retired sergeant major who is in our firm, who was a Delta Force sergeant major and he joined us. And Todd knows him well. And he pulled me aside several times, but once he pulled me aside recently and he said, listen, sometimes you get in a bad mood, or curt, and I get into the office there and I act that way. And he goes, you don’t understand, that has huge impacts on all the young people. You think you’re causing a little wind to get people motivated and what you’re doing is you’re causing a hurricane. You’re turning their world upside down. And you are disheartening them. And it’s really true. So it’s that kind of mentoring that’s really helpful for me. It’s sort of constant, hey, pick up your game.
TODD BRADLEY: I think at the same time to create the environment to enable that is also a huge leadership challenge, whether it’s at HP, or your company, or Time, Inc, right. To create that kind of environment where people feel safe doing that is critical.
Thank you everyone for coming. (Applause.) | Todd Bradley, Executive Vice President, Strategy, HP and retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal joined Fortune's Pattie Sellers at Brainstorm Tech. |
Global smartphone sales slowed the most in two years, according to technology research firm Gartner.
Smartphone sales fell 4 percent in China, the first year-over-year decline for the massive smartphone market, the firm said Thursday.
In a press release, Gartner research director Anshul Gupta said China has reached saturation and replacement sales are driving the phone market there instead of first-time buyers.
Read MoreShould we be afraid of China's 'value chain'?
Apple iPhone sales grew 68 percent in the region, challenging rivals such as Samsung and Xiaomi. Samsung lost 4.3 percentage points in market share in the second quarter.
Huawei saw the highest sales growth rate of 46.3 percent, Gartner said. | Global smartphone sales are slowing down, according to a new report. Has China reached a saturation point? |
The question is whether the mergers will cut into competition among insurers, with the prospect that regulators will make some acquirers sell off certain books of business before closing the deal, Goldman Sachs analyst Matthew Borsch said in a June 30 report. Aetna and Humana could have to sell off 18 percent of their combined individual policyholders' business, 16 percent of small-group commercial business and 13 percent of their Medicare Advantage business to avoid running afoul of antitrust guidelines, Borsch estimated.
The level of competition in health insurance varies sharply depending on region and on the product being sold, Levitt said. Because Anthem and Cigna have less overlap in their businesses, Goldman estimated that it wouldn't have to sell off any individual-policy business and only 1 percent of their combined Medicare Advantage business.
"There is no magic number of insurers to drive adequate choice and competition, but you generally want three competing insurers in a market to drive competition," Levitt said.
But there already isn't a lot of margin for error in a fairly concentrated market for individual insurance, Funtleyder said.
"Most states are dominated now by a Blue Cross plan (owned by Anthem) and one of two others," he said. "Ultimately, we'll have three or four of everything.''
—By Tim Mullaney, special to CNBC.com | The Aetna and Humana tie-up promises to impact consumers, hospitals and doctors as the companies look for ways to cut costs. |
Economic data always threaten to bear us back, like "boats against the current" in the closing line of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, ceaselessly into the past.
Such was the case this past week, when a surprisingly weak initial gross domestic product report showed that the American economy grew at an annualized rate of just 0.2 percent in the first quarter. Fresh concerns about the economic recovery ensued, sending stocks on a roller-coaster ride and recalibrating expectations about the economy.
But the most important use of backward-looking data is to sketch out what the future may bring. And the outlook for the American recovery may be bright indeed.
Read MoreConsumers just saying no to spending gas savings
Thursday brought two very encouraging signs about the labor market. Initial unemployment claims fell to 262,000 for the week ended April 25th, the lowest reading in 15 years. And in the more backward-looking employment cost index, U.S. wages were shown to have risen by 2.6 percent in the first quarter versus the year prior.
On Friday, investors should get a decent flavor of how the past month shaped up, when the April employment report is released. Many economists are expecting to see positive signs in the report.
"Given the sturdy trends in jobless claims and tax receipts, we expect a meaningful rebound in April employment," wrote Joe LaVorgna, chief US economist at Deutsche Bank, in a Friday note.
More generally, the fact that GDP has tended to disappoint in the first quarter—only to bounce back substantially in the second—is a trend that has been lost on few.
For instance, final GDP in the first quarter of 2014 (which fell considerably from the initial reading) came in at negative 2.1 percent; the Q2 reading that followed showed 4.6 percent annualized growth.
An analysis by CNBC's Steve Liesman found that over the past 30 years, annualized first-quarter GDP growth has come in at 1.87 percent while the economy has grown 2.7 percent. That was statistically significant enough to lead the GDP tabulators at the Bureau of Economic Analysis to remark to CNBC that "BEA is currently examining possible residual seasonality in several series."
Read MoreThe mysterious case of weak 1Q GDP, for 30 years! | After disappointing first-quarter growth, the American economy may be in the throes of a massive bounce-back. |
She noted that it could take "weeks or months before we actually see a good settling within this market."
Read MoreDow plummets at close, ends down over 200 points
Bartels and Scott Minerd, managing partner at Guggenheim Partners, both noted that the volatility does not reflect structural problems in the U.S. Minerd stressed that emerging market issues will continue to weigh on U.S. stocks.
"As long as we have problems in emerging markets, that's going to create headwinds for U.S. stocks," Minerd said Tuesday night, adding that markets are part of the way through a "major correction."
Lightly-traded stock futures for Wednesday implied slightly negative opens for major U.S. averages.
Read MoreMarkets rallied and then tanked at the close
David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds, added that long-term investors should maintain that view and refrain from panicking.
"Obviously there's been a big selloff. There may be more to it. But by our calculations, stocks are cheaper than average in the United States," he said Tuesday night.
Asian markets including Japan's Nikkei were set to open at 8 p.m., giving investors more clues overnight. | Investors looked for answers after a steep negative stock market reversal, the worst since October 2008. |