Good morning. A few things to start the day — Goldman gets sued, the Pentagon expresses concern about consumer protection and a list of new economy slang:
Pension fund sues Goldman Sachs over compensation (CBS)
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers pension fund said the bank allocates about 47 percent of its 2009 revenue toward compensation, according to the Reuters news agency. The lawsuit aims to recoup some of the compensation for Goldman shareholders, saying the payments “vastly overcompensate management and constitute corporate waste.”
The Oscars, the NFL and failed public policy (Real Clear Markets)
In both cases, however, the consumer sits in the middle of this game as the two sides hurtle towards each other. I suspect that many people would like to sidestep the whole mess and say, “A plague on both your houses.” Yet it is public policy to a certain extent that leaves the TV viewer stuck where he is because over time government has granted the major players in these battles certain rights and exemptions to laws that have given them leverage over the rest of us.
Game consoles are zapping US energy (Marketplace Morning Report)
Noah Horowitz is with the Natural Resources Defense Council. He says the most popular models are energy vampires.
NOAH HOROWITZ: If you leave your Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 on all night long when you’re done, you’re using as much energy each year as two new refrigerators would.
Pentagon weighs in on consumer protection (PBS NewsHour)
This is hardly the first time the military has concerned itself with consumer protections.
Since 1994, the military has required personnel to receive financial literacy training. At first, it seemed that required education had little effect: A 2005 report by consumer advocacy group Center for Responsible Lending found that 1in 5 active-duty military personnel had been payday borrowers in the past year and that “predatory payday lending costs military families over $80 million in abusive fees every year.”
Recession slang: Ten new terms for the new economy (Christian Science Monitor)
- Decruited, adj. To be fired from a position one has not even started yet.
Sample sentence: “At first I felt really bad about being decruited from that corporate law firm after spending two summers of law school interning for them. But then I decided to make the most of my funemployment and use my signing bonus to travel around Europe.”
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