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Stocks end lower on concerns over Europe

admin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:13:56 +0000

By msnbc.com news services

U.S. stocks closed Wednesday lower, with the S&P 500 stalled near a 10-month-old high after weak data on European business activity raised concerns about a recession in the euro zone.

Bank shares were the biggest decliners due to U.S. banks’ exposure to Europe. Oil services companies rose, nearly offsetting the decline from banks.

In addition, the chief executive of Nabors, owner of the world’s largest land-drilling fleet, said he would realign the company to improve its returns.

The S&P 500 index has failed hold above 1,360, a high hit last May and a key resistance point that could spark further gains, if broken. The benchmark index is up about 8 percent for the year and gained more than 20 percent from its October lows.

Fears that the euro zone may tip into recession followed data showing weakness in the services and manufacturing sectors, which tempered optimism after a deal was reached to bail out Greece.

The slowing business activity was echoed in China where data showed export orders fell in their worst performance in eight months.

“We had some modestly weak data from Europe and China, but today is mostly just another day of churning as we sit close to that key level of 1,360 on the S&P,” said Jack DeGan, chief investment officer at Harbor Advisory Corp in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

“There is definitely a technical effect on the market and today’s selling is related to that. If we punch through the level and stay above, the market could definitely move higher.”

Dell Inc and was one of the biggest drags on the S&P. The world’s No. 3 personal computer maker forecast revenue below expectations late Tuesday.

According to Thomson Reuters data through Wednesday morning, of the 424 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings, 64 percent have topped analysts’ expectations, which is below the average for the past four quarters.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Consumer watchdog to look into overdraft fees

admin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 21:13:55 +0000

By CHRISTINA REXRODE, DANIEL WAGNER

updated 2 minutes ago 2012-02-22T21:11:37

NEW YORK — Of all the bank fees that customers love to hate, overdraft charges on checking accounts have to be near the top. The government’s new consumer protection agency appears to agree.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Wednesday that it will investigate overdraft fees, including how they are marketed and explained to customers. The agency said the probe could result in additional rules, perhaps even lawsuits.

Overdraft fees are charged by banks when customers try to spend more money than they have in an account. Banks will allow the transaction, then charge the customer a penalty of as much as $35.

“We’ve heard many stories about the $40 cup of coffee,” the agency’s director, Richard Cordray, told reporters and representatives from banks and consumer groups.

Cordray and representatives from four consumer advocacy groups said that the overdraft fees hurt the people who can least afford them because poorer customers are more likely to drain their checking accounts to close to zero.

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the government has clamped down on bank practices that it considers unfair, such as marketing credit cards to teenagers. Banks have complained some of the government’s moves have been too intrusive.

In 2010, the Federal Reserve barred banks from automatically enrolling customers in so-called overdraft protection programs for debit card or ATM transactions. Without overdraft protection, a transaction is declined if the customer can’t cover it.

The rule did not apply to checks, online bill payments or recurring debits, such as having the monthly cable bill automatically sent to your debit card. It also did not limit how much banks can charge for the service.

Banks have responded by marketing overdraft protection aggressively. Some told customers that opting out of overdraft protection could prevent them from making everyday transactions, including “medical or health emergencies,” according to research published last year by the Center for Responsible Lending, a consumer group that opposes overdraft fees.

Banks collected $29.5 billion in revenue from overdraft fees in 2011, according to research firm Moebs Services. That was down from $33.1 billion in 2010 but a significant increase from $18 billion in 1999, when the fees were less common.

Cordray said the problem is not just the fees but that banks often don’t explain them clearly. One bank, which he did not name, required customers to visit three different websites and scroll through 50 pages of dense text just to get an explanation, he said.

Cordray praised banks for finding ways to help customers avoid the fees, such as not charging overdrafts for purchases of less than $5 or giving customers 24 hours to add more money to an account.

Representatives of consumer groups who appeared with Cordray said customers would rather have their cards declined than be charged the fee. A representative of Citigroup, one of the country’s largest banks, said customers prefer to avoid the embarrassment.

Andrew Rowe, a senior vice president from Bank of America, said the bank has started giving customers “clarity statements” to explain fees and sending them text messages when their accounts drop below $25. Last month, Bank of America sent 20 million such texts to 8 million customers, Rowe said.

Bank of America was a leader in trimming overdraft fees beginning in 2009, when Brian Moynihan, now the CEO, was running the bank’s consumer banking unit. At the time, the bank owed $45 billion in government bailout loans. It has since paid the money back.

Banks have also drawn criticism for a practice known as “re-ordering” — when a bank takes all the purchases a customer makes in a single day and subtracts the biggest ones from the customer’s account first. Banks say it helps customers pay their most important bills first, like mortgages and student loans. Consumer groups say it’s a way to rake in fees.

The practice has been challenged in class-action lawsuits around the country. Bank of America settled one case for $410 million last July. JPMorgan Chase agreed this month to pay $110 million to settle similar claims.

The CFPB, born out of outrage over the financial crisis and the banking practices that led to it, said it would focus on four areas: re-ordering, missing or confusing information, misleading marketing and disproportionate impact on low-income and young customers.

According to a 2008 study by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., 9 percent of checking accounts incur 84 percent of overdraft fees. The study found that nearly half of younger cardholders paid the fees.

The CFPB also is requesting public input on the idea of a “penalty fee box” — a disclosure on checking account statements that would highlight overdrafts and related fees.

The agency said it plans to issue a report by the end of the year.

Housing perks up, but prices are still falling

admin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:24:24 +0000

By John W. Schoen, Senior Producer

Though the pace of home sales picked up last month as the economy and job market improved, home prices have yet to show any meaningful turnaround.

The National Association of Realtors said Wednesday that sales of existing homes – which account for most of the housing market – rose 4.3 percent in January. That pace of sales, about 4.5 million a year, is still much less than the 6 million rate that’s considered “healthy.” And it’s far below the peak of 7 million homes sold in 2005.

Home prices are still going nowhere – they fell 2.2 percent in January, according to the NAR. That’s because there is still no end in sight to home foreclosures: so-called “distressed” home sales accounted for 35 percent of sales in January, up from 32 percent in December. As those homes are sold, they push prices lower for all houses on the market.

When foreclosures began rising in 2007, banks that were seizing homes moved them fairly quickly onto the market. But as the demand for housing shrank and prices dropped, bankers had more properties than they could sell without big price cuts. More recently, banks have been managing their foreclosure pipeline to avoid having too many houses on the market at once.

That process delayed foreclosures, as bankers wait to sell one home before scheduling the next foreclosure sale. As home sales improve, more of that “shadow inventory” of houses in the pipeline will eventually come to market.

“We think the foreclosure process will accelerate, which will speed up the flow of distressed inventory,” said Michelle Meyer, an economist at BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research in a note to clients Wednesday

Home prices have pulled back fastest in parts of the country that saw the biggest run-up during the housing boom. But the latest figures show prices falling in every region of the country. In the Midwest, which was largely spared the worst of the housing collapse, prices fell by 5.5 percent on average in January. In the West, where prices have been hardest hit, the drop was a modest 0.7 percent. Prices fell 2.2 percent in the Northeast and 1.4 percent in the South, according to the NAR.

Once prices stabilize, they have a long way to go before recovering their 2005 peak; some estimates expect that to take until 2020. For historical reference, the last time home prices fell 33 percent was in the 1930s when the full cycle from peak to trough to peak took 19 years.

Record low interest rates have made houses more affordable, but it’s not likely they’ll fall much further. The Federal Reserve recently made an unusual public promise to keep rates low for the next three years. But as the economy continues to improve, the odds are that rates will move higher not lower from here.

Home buyers who take the plunge, meanwhile, are summoning up plenty of patience when it comes time to apply for a mortgage. Lenders are being extremely choosy about who they approve – even for borrowers with a steady job and good credit.

As the housing market has been suffering from an excess of supply of foreclosed homes, demand for houses has been falling for a variety of reasons. Many of those foreclosed families face a long wait to rebuild their credit and household finances before diving back into homeownership. The drop in home prices has left roughly 12 million homeowners “underwater,” owing more than their house is worth. Many of those are potential “move-up” buyers who are now unable to sell their current home without taking a big loss.

There has also been a sizable drop in the number of new household formations, which have fallen to the lowest level in decades. Before 2007, new households in the U.S. were formed at the rate of about 1 million to 1.3 million a year. That pace has fallen to between 600,000 and 700,000, according to a recent analyst by Goldman Sachs economists.

There are a variety of reasons for the slowdown, according to the report. The biggest single factor is the larger share of 18 to 34-year-olds who are choosing to live with their parents. Falling marriage rates have also put a damper on new household formations, along with high unemployment rates that force people to “double up” with friends or family.

Economists expect the household formation rate to recover to historical norms, rising to 800,000 this year and level off at 1.1 million in 2013.

What do you think about the state of the housing market? Tell us your views on Facebook.

Facebook profiles predict job success

admin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 20:24:23 +0000

By Eve Tahmincioglu

If you think just keeping your Facebook page free of drunken photos will help you land a job, think again.

Facebook facts that make you look worldly and popular may say more about you to a hiring manager than anything else. Photos of you’re trip to Bali; status updates on how much you enjoyed reading “War and Peace”; and thousands of Facebook friends apparently translate into a job candidate who will do better on the job.

At least those are the findings of a new study by a trio of universities that looked at how Facebook profiles predict job success.

“We came up with a Facebook personality score and that correlates with job performance,” said Donald Kluemper, a management professor at Northern Illinois University, who, along with researchers at Auburn University and the University of Evansville, conducted the study that appeared in the recent issue of the Journal of Applied Social Psychology.

The researchers looked at five personality traits among Facebook users, including conscientiousness, emotional stability, agreeableness, extraversion and openness. The traits are known as the “Big Five” in psychological lingo and are often used in organizational studies, Kluemper said.

The Facebook users, 56 total, were given a personality score by independent evaluators and six months later those ratings were compared to evaluations completed by the supervisors who the users worked for. And guess what? The higher the Facebook personality score the higher the job performance rating by supervisors.

So what gets you a high personality rating exactly?

Here’s how Kluemper broke it down:

Consciousness: This is someone who appears to be well organized and hard working, and that’s reflected in the way they set up their Facebook page. Maybe there are a lot of detailed posts and profile, or photos of the person working hard at something.

Emotional stability: You seem to be someone who looks at the glass as half full, and seem able to handle stress. That means your page is lacking lots of negative and down in the dumps type posts; and you’re not overly emotional in images or in what you write.

Agreeableness: This is all about someone who’s able to get along and doesn’t engage in Facebook conflicts, especially heated debates with friends.

Extraversion: Here’s where lots of Facebook friends come in handy because lots of friends is a predictor of extraversion. Also, photos of you in social situations with lots of people are a good thing, compared to pictures of you alone on your couch.

Openness: Travel and intellect play into this category. If you appear open to different experiences and viewpoints, then you’re viewed as open. If you’re posting stuff about classic literature you’ll probably score higher than if you’re dishing about the latest trashy novel. And photos of international travel are also a big plus.

Based on this research, scoring high in all these categories means you’re more likely to be an ideal employee. That kind of predictor would probably make any hiring manager salivate, especially in today’s tough job market where they have to weed through thousands of applicants.

Kluemper is not advocating that HR use his groundbreaking social-media research just yet. “This is one study and the sample size is not that large,” he explained. “A lot more studies need to be done.”

But, he admitted some ill-advised HR folks may try and hang their hats on this one study, and that worries him because using such personality tests could be on sketchy legal grounds.

Indeed, personality tests and a host of other pre-employment screenings, including everything from criminal to credit background checks, have come under fire when used in the hiring process because of privacy issues and also because some impact certain groups adversely. Social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn have even made the problem biggerbecause so much information is now available online that the job seekers themselves put out there.

“We’re not advocating employers use this technique,” Kluemper said about the Facebook ratings.

Unfortunately, it may be hard to put the Facebook personality cat back in the hiring bag.

And speaking about cats, if you want to put those adorable videos of kittens on your Facebook page – a popular pastime for many users – keep in mind what you may be projecting into cyber space.

Research by University of Texas at Austin psychologist Sam Gosling found that “dog people are more extraverted, more agreeable and more conscientious than self-described cat people.”

Housing perks up, but prices still falling

admin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:44:29 +0000

By John W. Schoen, Senior Producer

Though the pace of home sales picked up last month as the economy and job market improved, home prices have yet to show any meaningful turnaround.

Economists expect the household formation rate to recover to historical norms, rising to 800,000 this year and level off at 1.1 million in 2013.

What do you think about the state of the housing market? Tell us your views on Facebook.

Housing market perks up, but prices are still falling

admin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:04:00 +0000

By John W. Schoen, Senior Producer

Though the pace of home sales picked up last month as the economy and job market improved, home prices have yet to show any meaningful turnaround.

Economists expect the household formation rate to recover to historical norms, rising to 800,000 this year and level off at 1.1 million in 2013.

What do you think about the state of the housing market? Tell us your views on Facebook.

Longer lives equal more anxiety for affluent

admin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:32:15 +0000

updated 3 minutes ago 2012-02-22T18:27:35

If you knew you would be around to blow out the candles at your 100th birthday party, would that change how you manage your money today?

The answer was yes for three out of four affluent Americans polled in a Merrill Lynch survey released Wednesday. Many will make it there: if you’re currently 65 and married, there is a 31 percent chance you or your spouse will live past 95, Merrill said, citing research from the Society of Actuaries.

Living to 100 would be a good thing, according to 58 percent of those polled in Merrill’s bi-annual Affluent Insights Survey.

But the prospect of a long life is also causing anxiety. People planning for their later years are thinking about holding off on retiring and are reining in spending today.

“The word ‘retire’ and the number 65 had always been one in the same,” said David Tyrie, head of personal wealth and retirement for Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “That’s just not the case anymore.”

Merrill, which polled 1,000 Americans who had investable assets of $250,000 or more, found that just over half said they would rather retire later than make tradeoffs on their current way of life.

Still, if necessary, most said they would make sacrifices like trimming day-to-day expenses, purchasing fewer luxuries and cutting back on their vacation budgets.

No tiki bar
The age 65 no longer conjures images of walking out of a job for the last time and heading for the Tiki bar in Florida. In the survey, only 14 percent of those over the age of 50 cited “hitting a certain age” as the factor that would most lead them to retire.

To accommodate for a longer life, 39 percent said they would work at least part-time during retirement, while a quarter of the respondents said they would retire closer to 85 than 65.

The rising cost of healthcare was named as the financial issue causing the most anxiety, with some 79 percent saying that was their top financial concern.

Tyrie said the concerns about healthcare should motivate more advisers to learn more about how to help clients plan for healthcare costs. Some 62 percent of the survey respondents over the age of 50 said they have yet to estimate what healthcare will cost them in retirement.

Merrill Lynch is rolling out an iPad app to help advisers spark conversations with clients about healthcare planning, in part by helping clients estimate how much money they need to set aside.

The app is currently being tested by about 100 advisers and will be rolled out to other retirement-focused advisers throughout this year, a company spokesman said.

Tyrie likened an adviser to a primary care physician who can refer out to specialists.

“Don’t try to know the topic inside and out, just know where to get the information,” he said.

Management lessons to learn from ‘Star Wars’

admin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:58:26 +0000

20Th Century Fox

Darth Vader’s impatience with subordinates’ mistakes led to a culture inside the Galactic Empire that hurt team building. Oh, and killed Admiral Ozzel too.

updated 10 minutes ago 2012-02-22T17:47:23

My colleague Dorothy Pomerantz notes that this weekend, the re-issued 3-D version of “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace,” pulled down about $23 million at the box office over the weekend. This got my mind to pondering the mistakes that people make, ranging from making the “Star Wars” prequels to reissuing them in 3-D to actually going to relive the misery that was “The Phantom Menace” all over again.

But mistakes are learning opportunities. And in thinking about “Star Wars,” let’s leave the prequels behind and focus on the original trilogy. It occurs to me that the “Star Wars” films have a lot to teach us about leadership styles.

In particular, the Galactic Empire strikes me as a quintessential example of how not to effectively run an organization. Let’s take a look at five of the Empire’s biggest mistakes and see how you can avoid them in your own organization.

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Mistake I: Building an organization around particular people, rather than institutions
Perhaps the biggest mistake of the Galactic Empire made is its singular focus on the preservation of power for the Emperor and a few of his chosen lackeys. There is a constant through line we see starting with “A New Hope” and running through to the end of “Return of the Jedi” of the Emperor consolidating more and more power into his own hands and that of his right-hand man, Darth Vader. In “A New Hope,” the Galactic Senate is disbanded in favor of regional governors hand-selected by the Emperor. By the time “Return of the Jedi” rolls around, the Emperor’s only advisor is Darth Vader, and his distrust in his organization is so complete that his only plan for succession is a desperate attempt to poach Luke Skywalker from the Rebel Alliance and get him to join his organization. Anytime your future plans depend on getting a rising star from a rival organization to join your team, you know that you have some serious institutional issues.

As the events of the movie make clear, the deaths of the Emperor and Darth Vader pretty much eliminated any opportunity for succession. A galaxy-wide organization was defeated simply by taking out two key individuals. Despite his decades of scheming, Palpatine’s organization barely lasted a day after he was gone.

Key Takeaway: Your organization needs to be structured so that talent is being developed on all levels of the organization, in order to ensure smooth functioning and ensure that it’s easy for people to rise in the organization in the event that key individuals leave. Responsibility should be distributed on several fronts, so that chaos doesn’t ensue if one person can’t be reached. Realistic succession plans are vital to developing an enduring organization.

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Mistake II: Depriving people of the chance to have a stake in the organization
By consolidating his power, the Emperor didn’t just ensure that his organization wouldn’t survive his death. He also deprived a key motivation for both his employees and the public-at-large: a feeling of having a stake in the success of the organization. The Emperor disbanded the Galactic Senate, removing the idea of any democratic stake in the government. He wiped out all references to the Force, so there was no longer any guiding ideology. His sole idea for maintaining control of the Empire was building the Death Star, on the theory that, in the words of Grand Moff Tarkin, “Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.” Similarly, while in the first “Star Wars” film, there was a scene showing officers in the Imperial Navy discussing strategy, by Return of the Jedi, it was clear that no feedback was being solicited anymore. The Emperor or Vader gave orders and that was it. No further discussion.

But as was ably demonstrated in this exchange in the movie “Office Space,” this is the worst possible way to get the best work out of your employees. Fear, combined with a sense of powerlessness, only inspires the bare minimum amount of work:

Peter Gibbons: You see, Bob, it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I just don’t care.
Bob Porter: Don’t … don’t care?
Peter Gibbons: It’s a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don’t see another dime, so where’s the motivation? And here’s another thing, I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob Porter: Eight?
Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That’s my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

Key Takeaway: In order to get the best work out of people in your organization, you need to solicit their feedback, engage them in the decision-making process, and ensure that they have a stake in the success of the organization

Forbes.com: 5 steps to turn wasteful meetings into drivers of success

Mistake III: Having no tolerance for failure
In an early part of the “Empire Strikes Back,” the Empire attempted to wipe out the Rebel Alliance once and for all in the Battle of Hoth. However, because Admiral Ozzel took the Imperial Fleet out of lightspeed too close to the Hoth system, the Rebel Alliance was able to detect the Imperial approach and quickly begin its defense. Enraged by this error, Darth Vader used the Force to choke Admiral Ozzel to death. Captain Piett, Ozzel’s second-in-command, was then promoted to Admiral and given command of the Imperial Fleet.

This swift, decisive punishment of failure is a huge error of management. First of all, mistakes are inevitable — especially in times where quick decisions are needed to be made on incomplete information. Rather than simply kill Admiral Ozzel, Vader should have attempted to direct him to a course of action that corrected his error. Instead, he threw the Imperial Fleet into organizational disarray as countless numbers of officers were suddenly thrust into new roles and responsibilities without the opportunity to learn them. This organizational chaos was undoubtedly key to the Rebels ability to escape in mass numbers, even as they flew perilously close to the Imperial Fleet.

Even beyond this one mistake, by adopting a management style of “failure leads to Force choking,” Vader developed an organizational culture that was destined to be weak. People would be afraid to offer feedback or suggestions, choosing instead to follow orders to the letter. This ensures that decisions are made at a very high level, and anyone under those levels will lack initiative or the ability to act on their local knowledge. What’s more, by punishing failure so harshly, the Empire provides an incentive for people within the organization to actually lead their superiors to failure. After all, the quickest way to promotion in the Empire is for your boss to make a mistake, so it’s in your own best interests to ensure that he does.

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Key Takeaway: It’s essential to remember that failure is the engine of success. Mistakes are inevitable, but the key to making them is learning from them. It’s also vital to ensure that organizations are flexible, capable of quickly adapting to changing conditions and allowing for initiative and quick action at all levels, even if that leads to some mistakes.

Mistake IV: Focusing all of the organization’s efforts into a single goal and failing to consider alternatives
When it came to the success of the Galactic Empire, the Emperor had one single idea that he was absolutely obsessed with: building the Death Star. The completion of the Death Star, with its ability to destroy entire planets, was the singleminded obsession of the Emperor. At no point do we ever see any alternatives broached. No scenes between Darth Vader and the Emperor debating the wisdom of building a second Death Star so soon after the first one was destroyed. Nobody suggests to the Emperor that it might be wiser to develop more flexible ways for the Empire to destroy planets, such as combining the firepower of several Star Destroyers at once.

The only other goal we ever see the Emperor pursue, apart from the destruction of the Rebels, is to get Luke Skywalker to turn to the Dark Side and succeed Darth Vader and possibly the Emperor himself. As discussed above, having only one succession plan, based entirely around getting a key player from a rival organization to change his mind, showed remarkable lack of foresight. This singleminded obsession with one way to succeed is something that undermined not only the Galactic Empire, but also many other organizations throughout history. Kodak focused on film even after developing digital technology. Borders focused on brick and mortar years after it was clear that a strong Internet presence was key to the book business.

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Key Takeaway: It’s vital to be flexible and adaptable to changing circumstances. You should always consider alternatives to your course of action and develop multiple plans for achieving particular goals in case one or more plans don’t pan out.

Mistake V: Failing to learn from mistakes
The Galactic Empire devoted years, an enormous amount of money, and an enormous amount of manpower to building the Death Star. After it was built, the Death Star only successfully completed one mission before it was destroyed by the Rebels. And the Empire’s response? Build a bigger, newer Death Star to serve as a target for the Rebel Alliance. In the second case, the Death Star wasn’t even completed before the Rebels managed to destroy it again.

Despite the failure of Force choking Admiral Ozzel to improve performance by the Imperial Fleet, Vader Force choked Captain Needa after his failure to capture the Millenium Falcon shortly thereafter.

Both the Emperor and Vader were obsessed with turning Skywalker to the Dark Side of the Force, even after Skywalker made it clear that he’d rather die than abandon the Rebel Alliance or join the Dark Side.

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You may see a pattern emerging here. Perhaps the Emperor and Vader were blinded by their success taking control of a millennia-old Republic and turning it into an Empire, but it’s clear that they became very overconfident in their own abilities. Despite making the same mistakes over, and over again, they still moved stubbornly, blindly forward without ever changing course. And then kept on moving forward without changing their paths until the Empire was destroyed.

Key takeaway: While it’s admirable to not let setbacks hold you back from pursuing your goals, its vital to learn from every failure in order to correct your course of action. Failing to learn from your mistakes and repeating them will inevitably lead to the destruction of your organization.

The bottom line: Ultimately, the Galactic Empire failed as an enduring organization because of incredibly flawed leadership at the very top. By building an organizational culture based on fear, lack of independence, and an unwillingness to adapt to changing circumstances, the Emperor set the stage for his own inevitable failure.

The Clicker: How much would the Death Star cost?

Management lessons to learn fom ‘Star Wars’

admin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:55:19 +0000

20Th Century Fox

Darth Vader’s impatience with subordinates’ mistakes led to a culture inside the Galactic Empire that hurt team building. Oh, and killed Admiral Ozzel too.

updated 7 minutes ago 2012-02-22T17:47:23

Forbes.com: The most outrageous job interview mistakes

Forbes.com: How to stay creative at any age

Peter Gibbons: You see, Bob, it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I just don’t care.
Bob Porter: Don’t … don’t care?
Peter Gibbons: It’s a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don’t see another dime, so where’s the motivation? And here’s another thing, I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob Porter: Eight?
Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That’s my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

Forbes.com: 5 steps to turn wasteful meetings into drivers of success

Forbes.com: When everything is urgent, nothing really is

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Despite the failure of Force choking Admiral Ozzel to improve performance by the Imperial Fleet, Vader Force choked Captain Needa after his failure to capture the Millenium Falcon shortly thereafter.

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The Clicker: How much would the Death Star cost?

Home sales jump to fastest pace in 2 years

admin — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 17:20:37 +0000

Fred Prouser / Reuters

Sales of previously owned homes rose 4.3 percent in January, the fastest pace in almost two years, a trade group reports.

By Msnbc.com staff and wire

Sales of previously owned homes surged in January to the fastest pace since May 2010 in another sign that the housing market is slowly making some headway against its longest dip since the Great Depression.

The National Association of Realtors, a industry trade group, reported Wednesday that existing-home sales — the lion’s share of the housing market — rose 4.3 percent in January. The equates to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.57 million homes, which is still well below the 6 million pace that economists say is needed for a healthy housing market.

“Overall this is not such a bad number. It’s reflective of a better jobs market, but the improvement is going to be in fits and starts,” said Yelena Shulyatyeva, U.S. economist at BNP Paribas in New York.

First-time buyers, who are critical to a recovery, increased slightly to 33 percent of sales. In healthy markets, first-time buyers make up at least 40 percent.

Homes at risk of foreclosure made up 35 percent of sales last month, up from 32 percent in December.

The tenor of the report was weakened somewhat by a sharp downward revision to December’s sales data to show only a 4.38 million-unit rate rather than the previously reported 4.61 million-unit pace.

That followed an annual revision of the seasonal factors for the series going back three years. Sales in December actually fell 0.5 pct from November, instead of the 5 percent increase reported last month.

There were no revisions to monthly prices and inventory data. Economists polled by Reuters had expected sales to rise to a 4.65 million-unit sales pace.

Still, the report was the latest to add to tentative signs of improvement in the housing market. The inventory of unsold homes on the market is shrinking.

Last month, there were 2.31 million unsold homes on the market last month, the lowest since March 2005. That represented a 6.1 months’ supply at January’s sales pace, the lowest since April 2006 and down from 6.4 months in December.

A supply of 6 months is generally considered ideal. But the median sales price fell 2 percent to $154,700 in January from a year ago.

The Federal Reserve has suggested a number of ways other policymakers could step in to help the beaten-up market, including giving government-controlled mortgage finance firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac a bigger role in refinancing loans.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.