30 Nov, 2009
Edited by Leslie Pratch; written by Pamela Mearsheimer The world continues to change, and not always in the same direction. Just as we are moving to an environment of more regulation in the wake of the crises of the last two year, someone is trying to yank the wheel of the regulatory machine and pull [...]
29 Nov, 2009
Edited by Leslie Pratch; written by Pamela Mearsheimer Sarbanes–Oxley is a piece of compliance legislation that was enacted in 2002 after the accounting scandals at Enron, WorldCom, Adelphia, Tyco and Peregrine Systems. The act is intended to increase regulation of boards and management of publicly-owned companies, and the accounting firms that audit those companies. The [...]
27 Nov, 2009
Edited by Leslie Pratch; written by Pamela Mearsheimer This week Business Week’s Michelle Conlin reports on Target, and how it changed strategy to survive the recession. I’m sure we’ve all heard Target’s tag line, “Expect More, Pay Less.” In the past ten years, I’ve enjoyed looking at the innovative pop-art advertising with “fabulous people, wearing [...]
25 Nov, 2009
Edited by Leslie Pratch; written by Pamela Mearsheimer This week BW reports on deals done between investment banks and local municipalities which, like so many other factors in this economy, have gone bad, leaving the little guy in the lurch. What happened? Cities, states and local municipalities have an ongoing need to raise capital to [...]
20 Nov, 2009
Edited by Leslie Pratch; written by Pamela Mearsheimer Fortune’s cover story this week is Steve Jobs: how he defied the downturn, cheated death and changed our world. There is so much to say, Fortune has nine articles about him. Everything else in the issue is minor. Where do I start? Fortune points out for many [...]
16 Nov, 2009
By Leslie Pratch and Pamela Mearsheimer Leslie: Welcome, Pamela! Could we take a few minutes to talk about what is going on with the health care debate? I’ve been following your blog on business and public policy and just finished reading your synopsis of the November 2009 Business Week story on health care policy. I [...]
16 Nov, 2009
Edited by Leslie Pratch; written by Pamela Mearsheimer This week Catherine Arnst at Business Week reports on “10 Ways to Cut Health-Care Costs Now.” Her point is that the health-care bill which is in Congress now is really all about covering the uninsured, not about reducing costs for health-care. A few years ago Massachusetts opted [...]
09 Nov, 2009
Edited by Leslie Pratch; written by Pamela Mearsheimer Business Week’s cover story this week is “Why the Commercial Real Estate Bust Looks So Scary.” Goldman Sachs has been receiving a lot of attention recently for its big profits and mammoth bonuses – don’t you wish you were on the receiving end of one? Some of [...]
08 Nov, 2009
Edited by Leslie Pratch; written by Pamela Mearsheimer Thanks to one of my readers for alerting me to the New York Times cover article: “Virtual Goods Start Bringing Real Paydays”. This is my third post on this topic, so for a background, see the previous posts. Claire Cain Miller and Brad Stone point out how [...]
06 Nov, 2009
Edited by Leslie Pratch; written by Pamela Mearsheimer I’m sure when most of us think of wind power, we envision a lot of windmills in a giant flat plain, with the wind howling away. All those plains are in the West, however, not the lumpy, bumpy eastern third of the United States where I grew [...]