The Walking Debt - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - 11/08/11 - Video Clip | Comedy Central

The Walking Debt - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - 11/08/11 - Video Clip | Comedy Central

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'Tis better to give than to receive?

'Tis better to give than to receive?:

" The researchers also found another interesting pattern of neural activity in the septal area. In addition to being a pleasure center, this region plays a role in threat- or stress-reduction by inhibiting other regions of the brain that process threats, such as the amygdala. Researchers found that the women who showed greater activity in the septal area also showed less activity in the amygdala.

"This finding suggests that support-giving may have stress-reducing effects for the person who provides the support," said Eisenberger, who directs UCLA's Social and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory. "Activity in the septal area during support-giving was negatively correlated with activity in the amygdala, which is a region known to play a role in fear and stress responses. If there is something about support-giving that leads to reductions in amygdala activity, this suggests that support-giving itself may have stress-reducing properties."

"Giving to others has benefits," said Inagaki, the lead author of the study....

read more here.

Cross posted on BonaResponds.org

Related articles

• New Research Suggests: Find Happiness by Giving (letubeu.com)
• John Tropea: Deepak Chopra: Stress and the Brain (huffingtonpost.com)
• The Anatomy Of Anxiety (time.com)

Penn State football scandal will cost school millions - Yahoo! Finance

Penn State football scandal will cost school millions - Yahoo! Finance:

"Their brand has been irrevocably tarnished," said Marc Ganis, head of SportsCorp Ltd., a sports marketing firm. "In a matter of days, they have plummeted from being perceived as the cleanest, most ethical brand in college sports to the lowest of the lows. Moral breaches of this magnitude are not easily forgotten or dismissed in our country."

Ganis said perhaps the most significant near-term dollar risk for Penn State is the damage the scandal -- which cost Hall of Fame coach Joe Paterno his job -- could do to fundraising, which is not included in the reported athletic department revenue.

"They used Paterno like crazy," he said. "This iconic figure was a magnet for fundraising. Now he's radioactive."

Several years ago I helped co-author a paper on what happened when athletes "fell from grace", not surprisingly the stock price of the firms whose goods the athlete sponsored also fell. But in these cases at least some probability of such a fall was built in, I do not think anyone saw this one coming. Universities do not have "stock prices" per se, but this one is going to hurt in all areas. From admissions to athletics and fundraising.

Unemployment by Major – Some Degrees Pay and Some Leave You Paying

Unemployment by Major – Some Degrees Pay and Some Leave You Paying:

"...the common theme has been for years – and probably will continue to be the following: The majors that are HARD, have a focus on MATH and PROBLEM SOLVING will continue to be the ones in high demand and at least have pretty good pay. ... So, longer term, Finance/Accounting has continued to be where it’s at on the East Coast"

HT to EverydayFinance

Wall St. Pay Expected to Fall 20% to 30% - NYTimes.com

Wall St. Pay Expected to Fall 20% to 30% - NYTimes.com:

A large part of me wants to say that this has been a long time coming and unlikely to be the end.

Wall Street bonuses are set to fall by an average of 20 to 30 percent this year from a year ago, according to a closely watched compensation survey. It would be the weakest bonus season since the financial crisis and a reflection of the leaner times confronting the industry

Gender and Prejudice in the Mutual Fund Industry by Stefan Ruenzi, Alexandra Niessen-Ruenzi :: SSRN

Sex Matters: Gender and Prejudice in the Mutual Fund Industry by Stefan Ruenzi, Alexandra Niessen-Ruenzi :: SSRN:

I dislike this. Short version: because of a stereotype that females are not as good of investors (even with quite a bit of empirical evidence which suggests they are AT LEAST as good as males and often better), investors penalize female money managers.

From the paper:

"Our starting point is the conjecture that investors might be prejudiced against female fund managers.1 Their prefer- ence for male managed funds leads to lower inflows into female managed funds and might eventually induce firms to hire less females, because mutual fund companies generate their profit from fees charged on assets under management.
Our empirical investigation of all single managed U.S. equity mutual funds from 1992 to 2009 shows that female managed funds indeed experience significantly lower inflows than male managed funds. The growth rates due to inflows of female managed funds are about one third lower than those of male managed funds. This result is obtained after controlling for the impact of past performance and other fund characteristics."

Which is clearly a behavioral bias that is quite disturbing and unfortunately will likely be used in any gender based lawsuits for glass ceilings etc.

Cite:
Ruenzi, Stefan and Niessen-Ruenzi, Alexandra, Sex Matters: Gender and Prejudice in the Mutual Fund Industry (October 13, 2011). Paris December 2011 Finance Meeting EUROFIDAI - AFFI. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1943576

New Dogs New Tricks: CEO Turnover, CEO-Related Factors, and Innovation Performance by Frederick Bereskin, Po-Hsuan Hsu :: SSRN

New Dogs New Tricks: CEO Turnover, CEO-Related Factors, and Innovation Performance by Frederick Bereskin, Po-Hsuan Hsu :: SSRN:

"We find that CEO turnover is associated with significantly greater quantity and quality of future innovation, measured with the number of patents, citations, patents per research and development dollar, and citations per patent in the subsequent three year and five-year periods. New internal CEOs are associated with more and better innovation than new external CEOs. We also find that innovation quantity and quality are positively associated with CEO overconfidence, option compensation, and information asymmetries. These empirical results remain robust to controlling for potential endogeneity issues and confirm the critical role of CEOs in innovation performance."

a few look-ins:

"Although firm performance around the time of CEO turnover has received attention from previous studies (Murphy and Zimmerman, 1993), the effect of CEO turnover on innovation performance has not been previously studied."

and

"...we find that CEO turnover leads to significantly more patents and citations in the following five and three years. The occurrence of CEO turnover increases the number of patents over the following five-year and three- year periods by 106% and 99%, respectively, and increases five- and three-year patent citations by 273% and 258%, respectively. Forced turnover has a generally insignificant effect on innovation performance, though.
Moreover, new CEOs from inside the firm are associated with higher levels of innovation performance than new CEOs from outside the firm."

I also like their discussion of how over confident CEOs invest more in R&D and hence get more results...this builds on similar findings in recent papers.

Market Volatility Aplenty, and a Change May Be Afoot - NYTimes.com

Market Volatility Aplenty, and a Change May Be Afoot - NYTimes.com

interesting article...

"S.& P. 500 over a 13-week period to the total of daily moves.

The index closed at 1,260.34 on Aug. 3 and was at 1,237.90 on Wednesday of this week, for a net decline of 22.44 points, or 1.8 percent. But during that period, the total move of the index was more than 1,392 points, as it rose more than 684 points on good days and fell more than 707 points on bad days. That meant that the index traveled nearly 1,370 points more than it had to and that the excess volatility figure was 109 percent, the highest figure since 2009.

There were several violent swings of excess volatility during the Great Depression, but from 1940 through 1987 the figure never got as high as 100 percent."

The chart is particularly interesting.

RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us - YouTube

RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us - YouTube: This lively RSAnimate, adapted from Dan Pink's talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace.

Wall Street Isn't Winning It's Cheating | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

Wall Street Isn't Winning It's Cheating | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone

I am not a huge Matt Taibbi fan usually, but he has one of the better takes I have seen on the Occupy Movement in which he points out that while envy may play a role, it is not the only thing going on here. More importantly many Americans are fed up with what they see as a slanted playing field.

a few look-ins:

"Success is the national religion, and almost everyone is a believer. Americans love winners. But that's just the problem. These guys on Wall Street are not winning – they're cheating. And as much as we love the self-made success story, we hate the cheater that much more.
In this country, we cheer for people who hit their own home runs – not shortcut-chasing juicers like Bonds and McGwire, Blankfein and Dimon."

My personal favorite (which alas is pretty close to dead-on)

"Ordinary people have to borrow their money at market rates. Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon get billions of dollars for free, from the Federal Reserve. They borrow at zero and lend the same money back to the government at two or three percent, a valuable public service otherwise known as "standing in the middle and taking a gigantic cut when the government decides to lend money to itself."

and another

"Time after time, when big banks screw up and make irresponsible bets that blow up in their faces, they've scored bailouts. It doesn't matter whether it was the Mexican currency bailout of 1994 ..., or the IMF/World Bank bailout of Russia in 1998... or the Long-Term Capital Management Bailout of the same year, Wall Street has long grown accustomed to getting bailed out for its mistakes.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/owss-beef-wall-street-isnt-winning-its-cheating-20111025#ixzz1cYwiM1Bk

Paul Zak: Trust, morality -- and oxytocin | Video on TED.com

Paul Zak: Trust, morality -- and oxytocin | Video on TED.com

Maybe we should forget "shovel ready projects" and just up everyone's Oxytocin.

More oxytocin =more trust = better economy? Maybe.

MF Global Acknowledged Diverting Customer Funds - WSJ.com

MF Global Acknowledged Diverting Customer Funds - WSJ.com

Yikes...this keeps getting worse:


From the Wall Street Journal:

"BY VICTORIA MCGRANE AND JAMILA TRINDLE

MF Global Holdings Ltd. admitted to federal regulators that money had been diverted out of customer accounts, according to a federal official who said the move violated the law....Regulators still don't know where the customer funds went, who directed the move or how widespread the practice was, the official said"

Say What? In 30-Year Race, Bonds Beat Stocks - Bloomberg

Say What? In 30-Year Race, Bonds Beat Stocks - Bloomberg:

" Long-term government bonds have gained 11.5 percent a year on average over the past three decades, beating the 10.8 percent increase in the S&P 500, said Jim Bianco, president of Bianco Research in Chicago. ....Stocks had risen more than bonds over every 30-year period from 1861, according to Jeremy Siegel, a finance professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in Philadelphia, until the period ending in Sept 30."

MF Exposes Risk Volcker Wants to Curb - Bloomberg

MF Exposes Risk Volcker Wants to Curb - Bloomberg:

"Nineteen months after former New Jersey Governor Corzine became chairman and chief executive officer, MF Global Holdings Ltd. (MF) yesterday filed for bankruptcy. Corzine’s decision to boost risk-taking, including a $6.3 billion wager with the firm’s own money on European government debt, triggered the collapse."

It seems like another case of high risk "traders" eventually having their luck run out.

"“In the wake of 2008, when we all should have learned a lesson, Jon Corzine told me himself that it was a relatively staid, not risk-oriented firm and he needed to ratchet up the risk,” William Cohan, author of “Money and Power: How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World,” said on Bloomberg Television. “Well, he does that and it blows up in his face and for the first time he can’t unwind the trade. "

as an FYI MF Global would not be affected by Volcker rule as it is too small to have to qualify.