Boy babies die, women hardest hit

I was horrified to read at Ace of Spades about two villages of women in Papua New Guinea who have killed all male babies to keep them from waging war:

The Papua New Guinea jungle has given up one of its darkest secrets - the systematic slaughter of every male baby born in two villages to prevent future tribal clashes.

By virtually wiping out the 'male stock', tribal women hope they can avoid deadly bow-and-arrow wars between the villages in the future.

'Babies grow into men and men turn into warriors,' said Rona Luke, a village wife who is attending a special 'peace and reconciliation' meeting in the mountain village of Goroka.

I agree with the point made at Ace's place:

The report sympathetically portrays these women as desperate hut wives who, faced with tribal extinction, are forced to take extreme measures in order to survive. One wonders how sympathetic the writers of this story would be if the men of the tribe killed all of the female babies to prevent them from growing up and committing male infanticide.

I doubt they would be sympathetic at all. But the commenters to the Daily Mail article that discussed the story certainly had sympathy for these female infant killers. One has to wonder about what kind of twisted morality commenters like the following must possess to write the following:

Stop judging these people with Western ethics. The commenters here have no idea how these people live and deal with life. I've lived with New Guineans and their minds do not work in the same way as Westerners. Overall they are gentle people and things must have got pretty bad for the womenfolk to kill their own children. In their minds it was the only way to save the village. Save your disgust for the baby killers in this country who should know better.

In any conflict, it's always the women and children who suffer through no doing of their own. And when everything has been ruined, and the men killed, they have to pick up the pieces and restore everything. They must have really had enough to kill their own children like that.

How horrendous that these women so no other option but to kill there own babies to prevent heartache in the future,its a lose lose situation for them.

No sympathy at all for the male infants that died, just for the women who had to do the killing, how pathetic.

Mantyhose?

Now I'e seen everything. Jose at Bracepundit let me know about a new gift for men--mantyhose--a male version of pantyhose. This has to be the stupidist idea I have heard in a long time. I agree with the stylist blog which says:

Unless you're playing Robin Hood or pretending to be Louis XIV (like you do), we think maybe you should pass this trend up in favor of, you know, looking hot. But to each his own, right? Whatever. We don't care what you do on weekends, we're just saying it's not in fashion.

There's even a book, Fashion of the 21th Century - Pantyhose for Men that has been put out by the manufacturer of mantyhose.

I hate pantyhose and I'm a woman, how the hell would a man wear them with all that hair on his legs? Wouldn't that be miserable? Are they trying to turn men into women because women buy more shit? What other reason could there be?

"They're savages," said shopper Kimberly Cribbs, 27. "It's sad. It's terrible."

If you need another reason not to go near the stores today, here's one:

A worker died after being trampled and a woman miscarried when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island Wal-Mart Friday morning, witnesses said.

The unidentified worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.....

Before police shut down the store, eager shoppers streamed past emergency crews as they worked furiously to save the store clerk's life.

"They were working on him, but you could see he was dead, said Halcyon Alexander, 29. "People were still coming through."

Only a few stopped.

"They're savages," said shopper Kimberly Cribbs, 27. "It's sad. It's terrible."

It seems that cities and congested areas breed the type of anonymity that would lead to such a tragedy.

Update: There is a chapter on panic in the book I am reading, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why. The author says that panic in a crowd is a tragedy, but one of errors, not malice:

But it is one of the more preventable human mistakes in the disaster portfolio. If mass gathering places are designed with physics in mind, than the prerequisites to panic should never develop. People will not feel potentially trapped, helpless, and alone. They will just feel crowded.

The author goes on to point out that the problem lies in the design of the space and the management of the crowd. Communication between the organizers and the crowd is also important. Perhaps more forethought needs to be put in place when stores expect large crowds.

Holiday boom or holiday bust for retailers?

I went to my local mall at 5:00 AM this morning. No, I have never done this before but some younger family members insisted on going to the sales and I am the only one up at 4:30 AM and was drafted to drive them. It wasn't incredibly busy but the people (mainly women) who were going into the stores in groups of two looked highly determined. I was reading this morning that holiday sales are starting early but retailers fear that consumers will not buy as much this year:

Experts predict this could be the worst sales season since the early 1990s as Americans hit by a housing slump and credit crunch make do with fewer holiday gifts.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters data have forecast that retail sales at stores open at least a year could fall 2.2 percent for November compared with 4 percent growth last year.

Excluding expectations for growth at discounter Wal-Mart, the expected decline is a more precipitous 6.6 percent.

Me, I plan on saving money and my sanity this year by shopping at Black Friday at Amazon. There is no way I am going near a store again this holiday season, I hope, unless I am drafted. I do plan on spending a bit less this year, but not much. How about you, are you buying fewer gifts this year?

Why aren't there more films like this [sigh...]?

Ever wondered why there are so few films you really like? It has to do with an old choice in strategy: do you focus on a narrow, specific audience and really satisfy their needs or do you try to appeal to a broader audience, having a larger base of customers but risking to not really satisfy anyone? It appears that � perhaps a bit unfortunately � in the film industry, it often pays to do the latter.

Professor Greta Hsu, from the University of California Davis, examined 949 movies in the US film industry and showed that films that fit more clearly into one specific genre (action, romance, comedy, drama, horror, etc.) generally are appreciated more by the audience. However, films that span various genres attract a larger audience, and that pays off at the box office.

Of course it�s a trade-off � do you go for a broad or a specific set of customers? � and one that most firms in most industries face. It depends very much on the characteristics of the industry where the balance lies; towards specialisation or towards being a generalist.

The fact that in the film industry many firms & films come out as quite general can partly be blamed on the role of marketing. You only really know what a film brings you once you�ve gone to see it (and paid for it). Smart marketers can make multi-genre films appeal to a variety of people, without them realising beforehand that it is going to be a bit of a mish-mash.

For example, the film Cocktail was marketed in four different ways by Touchstone Pictures, including different television commercials, each pertaining to a different genre. Similarly, Miramax produced two different ad campaigns to promote their film The English Patient, one emphasizing the film�s action and war components, and the other one emphasizing the romantic elements of the movie. It turned the film into a product that was purchased by a mass audience.

Altman, in his book Film/Genre, describes this Hollywood strategy as �tell [audiences] nothing about the film, but make sure that everyone can imagine something that will bring them to the theatre�.

Thus, although on average multi-genre films are less appreciated by customers than genre-specific films, it is the former that usually bring in the big audiences, and with it the big bucks. As a consequence, genre-specific films are much more of a rarity, although we love them. Once we see one, we may sigh �why aren�t there more films like this�?� but we really only have ourselves to blame: it is because we do let ourselves be tricked into seeing all this other (multi-genre) crap that it becomes relatively unattractive for film makers to make anything specific.

PJTV: Ask Dr. Helen: From Himbos to Holiday Stress

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

If you are feeling a bit stressed about the holidays (or just need a laugh), take a bit of time to watch my segment on PJTV. I answer your emails and questions from himbos to the holidays. The first question is from a male reader who wonders if it's okay to be an "intentional himbo" (pictures included). Then the topic turns to holiday stress including how to deal with politics at the Thanksgiving table and how to cope with gift-giving for the kids post-divorce. You can watch the video here ( free with no registration needed).

Are men "going John Galt" at the health spa?

Is it my imagination or are more men going in for spa services these days? In the past few months, every time I go into the local spa I like, there are men having services or coming in to order services for themselves such as facials and massage. I used to watch men come in to order for wives or girlfriends but now the gift is for themselves.

Most of the men are middle-aged or older and I wondered if many of them have just decided to "go John Galt" and let others take on the burden of the world while they relax. Perhaps they have had enough of the work world and are taking more time for themselves, or maybe they want to look or feel better. Of course, this is just one observation of mine at one spa. Let's take an informal poll here. How many of you who are men use spa services?

Glenn Sacks on his recent DART campaign: "Father-bashing is so prevalent in the media today because there is little political cost to be paid for doing it. We launched the campaign in part because we wanted to show that there is a political cost to demeaning fathers, and in that regard we more than succeeded."

Advice or influence? Why firms ask government officials as directors

Let�s face it; outside directors are just a very strange phenomenon in our global economy. They form a business elite that operates as a self-governing clique. Moreover, these people are amateurs. Literally. The supervision of the management of a globally diversified company is just something they do on the side � a couple of days per year or so. Often they are CEOs of other companies � so that might help a bit (or harm a bit�) � but typically they have about half a dozen of these gigs. So, they can�t let any single one of them distract them too much.

It is a bit like we manage our own personal finances � paying bills and filing bank statements etc. In the evening, after a hard day�s work, while watching the X-factor, we quickly glance over the financials and put our signature on the most necessary evils before making a cup of coffee and turning our attention to the newspaper. Bills, bank statements, the accounts of a multinational; what�s the difference really?

But not all outside directors are (ex) CEOs. Quite often, companies also invite ex government officials to serve on their boards. The reasons for that, as research has indicated, are not too hard to fathom: They can provide advice, but they can also provide influence. I guess there�s nothing wrong with buying advice, but the idea of buying influence may be a bit more morally challenged�

Government officials can provide specific advice on how to deal with government-related issues. They have specific knowledge and experiences and can therefore provide valuable advice. But ex officials can also offer contacts for communication which are not accessible to other companies. Then, directorships start to become the currency used to buy influence, which makes it a bit more dubious. It certainly gets dubious if they provide for a direct way to influence political decisions. Some people have even suggested that board memberships for ex government officials are rewards for �services� rendered while they were in government� which would certainly be in the �barely legal� category.

It�s hard to examine which of the aforementioned reasons motivate firms to invite ex government officials onto their board. However, by analysing exactly which individuals get offered the job, we can get a bit of a sense of what�s going on. Professor Richard Lester from Texas A&M University and some his colleagues analysed this question � which government officials are most likely to be approached to serve on a board? � using data from the United States. They tracked all senators, congressmen and presidential cabinet ministers who left office between 1988 and 2003 and figured out which of them got offered directorships.

They found that the longer officials had served in government, the more likely they were to be approached for a directorship. I guess that could be because more experience gives them more influence but also because experience made them better advisors. Presidential cabinet ministers were more likely to receive board invites than senators, who were more likely to be approached than congressmen. I think this starts to lean towards an �influence� explanation for board invites rather than an �advice� one, but I guess one could still argue that cabinet ministers are simply the better advisors.

However, another clear finding was that these people would either get asked for a board very shortly after leaving their government position or not at all. Senators and former cabinet officers would usually be snapped up in the first year after leaving office. This could hardly be because after a year they all of a sudden would make for lousy advisors; it�s much more consistent with the fact that their ability to influence government decisions quickly deteriorates after leaving office. And it seems consistent with the idea that they get offered the job in return for services already delivered�

Finally, Richard and colleagues examined what happened in the case of a government change; that is, if the party in power (in the House, the Senate, or the White House) shifted from Democrat to Republican or vice versa. The effect of this was clear; the ex government official, associated with the party no longer in power, would lose much of his attraction as a potential board member. Because if the wrong party comes to power, you just lost much of your power to influence and with it your value as a potential board member. Clearly this points at an �influence� argument; companies ask ex government officials on their boards to bend political decisions in their favour. And I'm afraid this puts these officials firmly in the barely legal category.

The traits of heroes

This is interesting:

Stopped. Cold turkey. North Carolina authorities say a shopper clubbed an alleged carjacker with a frozen turkey as he tried to steal a woman's car in a grocery store parking lot Sunday.

Police say 30-year-old Fred Louis Ervin of Raleigh stole money from a gas station before running across the street to a Harris Teeter store in a town just south of Raleigh. Garner police say he began beating Irene Moorman Bailey while stealing her car.

Other shoppers came to her rescue, including one who hit Ervin with the turkey. Police did not release the person's name.

I am in the middle of reading an incredible book, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why that explains why it is that some people are prepared for disaster and others are not. One of the chapters in the book is on heroism and it found that those who are heroes like the above turkey clubber have confidence in their abilities. They tend to have an "internal locus of control"--that is, a sense that they shape their own destiny rather than looking to someone else.

Bystanders, on the other hand, tend to feel buffeted by forces beyond their control. 'They pay scant attention to other people's problems. They will concentrate on their own need for survival,' Oliner [a researcher] says.

According to the book, some common traits of heroes in a study of 450 acts of heroism found a whopping 91 percent of them performed by males. The author notes that this could be a bias of the sample used.... but anyway, the heroes in the study also tended to be working class men. They tended to be truck drivers, laborers, welders, or factory workers--physical jobs that required some risk, just like rescuing. A high number of the rescues were in rural or small-town America and 80% of the rescues happened in places with less than one hundred thousand people. The author opines that this might be because in small towns, people know one another and acts of kindness are recognized and remembered. A strong sense of duty to help others was also mentioned. I will hopefully post more on this incredibly fascinating book.

Being harassed about sexual harassment training

Professor Alexander McPherson speaks up on the sham of sexual harassment training (via Reason):

Four years ago, the governor signed Assembly Bill 1825 into law, requiring all California employers with more than 50 people to provide sexual harassment training for each of their employees. The University of California raised no objection and submitted to its authority.

But I didn't. I am a professor of molecular biology and biochemistry at UC Irvine, and I have consistently refused, on principle, to participate in the sexual harassment training that the state and my employers seem to think is so important....

I am not normally confrontational, so I sought to find a means to resolve the conflict. I proposed the following: I would take the training if the university would provide me with a brief, written statement absolving me of any suspicion, guilt or complicity regarding sexual harassment. I wanted any possible stigma removed. "Fulfilling this requirement," said the statement I asked them to approve, "in no way implies, suggests or indicates that the university currently has any reason to believe that Professor McPherson has ever sexually harassed any student or any person under his supervision during his 30-year career with the University of California"....

What's more, the state, acting through the university, is trying to coerce and bully me into doing something I find repugnant and offensive. I find it offensive not only because of the insinuations it carries and the potential stigma it implies, but also because I am being required to do it for political reasons. The fact is that there is a vocal political/cultural interest group promoting this silliness as part of a politically correct agenda that I don't particularly agree with.

Some of the hard-core commenters at Reason say the professor should comply--he signed up to work for the state and is a parasite, says one:

He is the one who chose to work for The State and make a living as a parasite. Work for the state- do what the state tells you.

This is ridiculous. The professor did not sign up for this crap 30 years ago when he took the job. Now due to political reasons and feminist dogma, he is supposed to attend training implying that all male professors are guilty of sexual harassment. Sure, women may have to attend the workshop too, but we all know who they're really talking to. I think the state has more obligation, not less, than private enterprise not to force workers to participate in politically charged training that they find offensive. Those who push this politically correct agenda should remember that what goes around comes around and they may one day find themselves being forced to do something they do not agree with or risk losing their job. Then, they will have no one to blame but themselves.

"Men are nothing but props in Hollywood..."

So says Oscar nominated filmmaker Lionel Chetwynd in a fascinating conversation with Roger L. Simon on the wimpiness of men in Hollywood on PJTV. "To be a man is to be seen as damaged," says Chetwynd. I have to agree that Hollywood has done everything it can to feminize men and treat traditional male traits as evil and worthy of humiliation. Watch the show and see what you think.

The underground economy

I read with interest an article entitled, In Ethnic Enclaves, The U.S. Economy Thrives (Hat tip: Newsalert):

Dr. Alethea Hsu has a strange-seeming prescription for terrible times: She is opening a new shopping center on Saturday. In addition, more amazingly, the 114,000 square foot Irvine, Calif., retail complex, the third for the Taiwan native's Diamond Development Group, is just about fully leased.

How can this be in the midst of a consumer crack-up, with credit card defaults and big players like General Growth struggling for their existence? The answer is simple: Hsu's mostly Asian customers � Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese � still have cash. "These are people who have savings and money to spend," she explains. "Asians in Orange County are mostly professionals and don't have the subprime business...."

The center, reconstructed from a failing old mainstream mall purchased in 2005, is now roughly 90% occupied. "We are doing so well that we are expanding the mercado," Legaspi says, referring to the thriving centers dominated by very small businesses run from attached stalls that are a popular feature of many Latino-themed centers. "It's all cash economy. They pay their bills with cash. The banks and credit card companies are not involved. It's true capitalism, and it works."

Latino shoppers, he suggests, also have been less impacted by the stock market collapse than other consumers. After all, relatively few, particularly immigrants, have large investments on Wall Street. In addition, even if they have lost their jobs, particularly in construction, Legaspi adds, they tend to pick up other employment, even at lower wages, often in the underground economy. "They get paid in cash, and they pay in cash" [my emphasis].

My initial thought about the article was that I like that the "ethnic enclaves" are said to be "true capitalism" that works but when I got to the part about Latino immigrants going into an all cash economy as a result of the "underground economy," I must say, I was a bit puzzled. Afterall, this would imply that they are paying no taxes--not even payroll taxes--and not filling out income tax forms like the rest of us. Isn't this illegal, hence the name "underground economy?" They play by one set of rules, the rest of us another?

Mike Huckabee, in our interview with him for PJTV discussed how the fair tax would be more fair since those in the underground economy would pay taxes on what they bought. This seems like a good idea to me. I wonder how big the underground economy is? I thought about this the other day after overhearing a conversation at the hair salon.

One of the customers having her hair done was talking about how flush in cash she was because of her new job. "I'm making a lot," she stated to the hair sylist, "it's all under the table, of course." "That's the best way," replied the sylist. Is this really fair to the other Americans who pay their fair share of taxes? I don't think so, do you?

How to tame an analyst

Let�s face it; analysts are just a very strange phenomenon in our global economy. These people advise us to buy, sell or hold particular companies� stock but we also all know that the banks that employ them make money if we buy. More importantly, we know that these very same companies that they advise us on are the banks� customers (e.g. for their M&A deals), which makes it a rather hefty conflict of interest (especially when the real advice should be �sell, now!�). Moreover, on what information do these analysts base their recommendations? 1) The same o-so-reliable numbers as the rest of us have too, and 2) talking to the company�s sweet-talking CEO. Ooo� that�s comforting�

That is of course a nice, glamorous perk for the average analyst; being invited to personal audiences with a real-life CEO. Mind you though, if you subsequently don�t write nicely about their company, they won�t invite you back! That�ll teach you!

Or do you think I am exaggerating now, and really starting to create a gimmicky parody of what really is a very serious financial business? Well, let me tell you a story. And it is a story about facts.

Professor Jim Westphal from the University of Michigan and Michael Clement from the University of Texas Austin examined exactly this issue: the relationship between CEOs and analysts. They surveyed a total of 4595 American analysts and examined the strategies and performance of the companies they made recommendations on.

In the surveys, they asked the analysts to what extent they had been given the privilege of personal access to certain top executives, in the form of private meetings, returned phone calls or conference calls, and so on. And how often this form of individual access was denied. They also asked them about personal favours that these CEOs might have done for them, such as putting them in contact with the manager of another company, recommending them for a position or giving advice on personal or career matters. Then Jim and Mike ran some numbers.

First of all, their statistical models showed that the CEOs of companies that had to announce relatively low corporate earnings started to significantly increase the number of favours they handed out to analysts, by granting them personal meetings, jovially returning their phone calls and making some much-appreciated introductions. Similarly, CEOs of companies that were about to engage in diversifying acquisitions � a rather controversial if not dubious strategy that the stock market invariably hates � engaged in much the same thing. Clearly, these CEOs were trying to sweet-talk the analysts and mellow the mood ahead of some rather disappointing announcements they were about to make. The question is: did it work�?

What do you think? Is the pope catholic? Is Steve Jobs whizzier than MacGyver? Did Neutron Jack eat all his meat?! Is Bill Clinton heterosexual�?!?! Sorry, let me not get carried away in analogy here, the answer is yes.

Of course it�s yes. It works. Analysts who received more personal favours from a CEO would rate a company�s stock more positively when he announced disappointing results or engaged in questionable strategies. And if they didn�t? Yep, you guessed it: those analysts who in spite of the favours had the indignity of downgrading the company�s stock all of a sudden ceased to see their phone calls returned, would be denied any further personal meetings and sure as hell were not given the phone number of the CEO�s golfing buddies. And the only remaining advice they ever received was to get a life and bend their bodies in ways that would enable self-fertilisation.

And this worked too. Not the self-fertilisation but the social punishment of the degrading analyst; other analysts aware of their colleagues' loss of status would be significantly influenced by their plight when making their own recommendations: they made sure not to follow them into the social abyss and were unlikely to downgrade the firm of such a CEO.

Thus, sweet-talking works. But mostly if followed by a good dose of old-fashioned bullying.

PJTV: Interview with Mike Huckabee

The Glenn and Helen show comes to PJTV! We interviewed governor Mike Huckabee about his new book, Do the Right Thing: Inside the Movement That's Bringing Common Sense Back to America. Huckabee describes those of us who are right-leaning libertarians as "faux-cons" in his book--what does that mean and are we still welcome in the Republican party? I ask him on the show and he answers. Also, Instapundit readers send us their questions for Mr. Huckabee--making our job easy. Huckabee was an excellent guest (he has a lot of practice with his own tv show on Fox) and is definitely worth watching. If you haven't checked out PJTV, do so.

Reflections on Jonestown

Neo-Neocon reflects on Jonestown on the 30th anniversary:

The first relevant lesson to be learned is the danger of blindly following a charismatic leader. Jones became more deranged later on, but as his congregation grew in the 60s and 70s, he was a respected member of the San Francisco community, with connections to Democratic politicians (I�m not sure there�s any other kind in San Francisco) and a strong reputation for racial equality.

The second lesson is to beware of the trust that gullible and trusting human beings can place in that charismatic leader. Jones required that people give over their lives and their assets when they became followers�a danger sign. Members had varied reasons for joining, but it can probably be safely said that most of them were exceedingly idealistic. According to the testimony of many of the survivors (a small group, but an articulate one), once they realized the true character of the man in whom they�d placed such hope and faith, it was too late. They were in a prison, subject to various forms of physical and psychological torture in Jones� attempt to control the inmates. And in the final year before the terrible end, the prison we know as Jonestown was at least as isolated as Alcatraz, because it was located in the heart of the Guyanese jungle.

Speak Up!

I read with interest this good advice from Ted Nugent on speaking up in California and the rest of the country:

You don't need tough love in America, you need tougher love. Around the water cooler, at the church, at school. At the work place, at the picnic, and the bowling alley. You should be pounding the desk with your fist, raising hell, and take this beautiful state back from the pimps, and the whores, and the welfare brats, and the gang-bangers who seems to have all the rights in the world while the good people, the productive, law abiding people don't have jack squat -- and I think I am going to throw up.

So many people who do not support Barack Obama and are downright sick of the creeping socialism in our country are not speaking up. It is imperative to do so, even in small ways. The other day, I was at a drugstore and the clerk was talking to what looked like a Baby Boomer who was discussing how he voted for Obama. They both scoffed that not many in Tennessee voted for him, "what do you expect?" said the older guy, "this is Tennessee we're talking about." They both chuckled in agreement. I looked at the clerk and said in a loud voice, "So what you're saying is those of us here in Tennessee who voted for McCain are rednecks, is that right?!!!!" There were several people milling around in line at this point and the clerk turned red and stammered, "No, ma'am," and went on to give some lame explanation about what he meant. But I knew I had him. He was visibly shaken and I hope the next time he decides to diss Tennesseans while at work, he'll think twice.

Please remember that most people are cowards, if you speak up, they will often back down or stammer. Too many times, we let liberals get away with making fun of Republicans and those of us who do not agree with them politically. This needs to stop and the only way to do it is to speak up in the classrooms, public and at work. Remember that we are 56 million strong--those of us who did not vote for Obama. We are hardly alone.

"I'm just another man crying, 'I don't know this person. I don't have their kid.' It's a routine they're just used to."

Reader Chris sends in a pathetic story about a man who was forced to pay child support for a kid even though he was not the child's father:

When Walter Andre Sharpe Jr. signed for a certified letter from Dauphin County Domestic Relations in 2001, he didn't know he was signing on for a seven-year nightmare. Since then, the Philadelphia man has been thrown in jail four times, lost his job, become estranged from his four children and spent more than $12,000 to support the child of another man.

It finally stopped in May 2007 when a judge reversed a finding that he was the father. But the same judge has since ruled that Sharpe is not entitled to any compensation, not even the money he was forced to pay to support the child.

Think this can't happen to you? Think again. Many times, people think that these mistaken cases are few and far between until it happens to them. Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young in their book, Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systemic Discrimination Against Men, point out that one of the problems inherent in our legal system is inefficiency. The authors suspect, however, that this inefficiency would not be tolerated if women suffered from it and I agree. For instance, the authors state, "Officials in Los Angeles County have admitted to going after the wrong man for child support payments approximately 350 times a month."

Women's groups would stick up for women who suffered this type of injustice and put a stop to it. I can't imagine things will improve in many (if any) states with the incoming administration. This is why it is so important for men's rights activists to keep up with these issues and fight back when they can. It may be an uphill battle, but it is worth the struggle to keep innocent men like Walter Sharpe out of jail.

What really caused the 2008 banking crisis?

When you compare the 2008 banking crisis with the Enron debacle, with Ahold�s demise or even with the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal in 1984 some surprisingly clear parallels emerge. Various explanations have been offered for each of these crises, ranging from top management greed, failing watchdogs to insufficient government regulation and inappropriate accounting and governance structures. Yet, there is one common cause underlying all these symptoms and triggers, and that is the structural failure of management.

One central element in each of these disasters, including the banking crisis, is caused by the division of labour and specialisation within and across organisations. In the case of investment banks, financial engineers drew up increasingly complex financial instruments that, among others, incorporated assets based on the American housing market. Yet, the financial engineers didn�t quite understand the situation in the housing market, the people in divisions and banks participating in the instruments didn�t quite understand the financial constructions or the American housing market, and when it all added up to the level of departments, groups, divisions and whole corporations, top managers certainly had no clue what they were exposed to and in what degree.

Similarly, in Enron, managers did not quite understand what its energy traders were up to, Ahold�s executives had long lost track of the dealings of its various subsidiaries scattered all over the world, and also Union Carbide�s administrators had little knowledge of the workings of the chemical plant in faraway Bhopal. The complexity of the organisation, both within and across participating corporations, had outgrown any individual�s comprehension and surpassed the capacity of any of the traditional control systems in place.

Another crucial role was played by the myopia of success. Initially, the approach used by the companies involved was limited and careful, while there were often countervailing voices that expressed doubts and hesitation when gradually less care was taken � there certainly is evidence of all of this in the case of Enron, Ahold and also Union Carbide. However, when things started to work and bring in financial returns, as in the case of the banks, the usage of the instruments increased, sometimes dramatically, and they became bolder and more far-reaching. Iconoclasts and countervailing voices were dismissed or ceased to be raised at all. For example, in Ahold and Enron, the financial success of the firms� approaches suppressed all hesitation towards their business strategies.

This caused a third element to emerge: it actually became improper not to follow the approach that brought so much success to many. In the case of investment banks, other banks and financial institutions that did not participate to the same extent as others, received criticism for being �too conservative� and �old-fashioned�. Investors, analysts and other stakeholders joined in the criticism, and watchdogs and other regulatory institutions came under increasing pressure to get out of the way and not hamper innovation and progress.

Similarly, Enron was hailed as an example of the modern way of doing business, while analysts (whose investment banks were greatly profiteering from Enron�s success) recommended �buy� till days before its fall. Similarly, Ahold�s CEO Cees van der Hoeven continued to receive awards when the company had already started its freefall. All of these organisations� courses of action had been further spurned and turned into an irreversible trend by the various parties and stakeholders in its business environment.

This relates to a fourth management factor that contributes to the formation of a crisis. It�s the factor that is related to what was on everyone�s lips in the immediate aftermath of each of the aforementioned crises: greed. Somehow, all organisations and individuals involved seemed to have let short-term financial gain prevail over common sense and good stewardship. But in all these cases, greed was not restricted to the few top managers who ended up in jail or covered in tar and feathers. Ahold�s shareholders initially profited as much as its executives. Investors, politicians and even customers shared in equal measures the early windfalls of Enron; likewise for the investments banks. Even the Church of England made big bucks on the financial practices they so heavily criticized in the days following the collapse of the system.

The greed factor, however, does not stand alone; it is built into the structure of the whole corporate system. Traders are incentivised to concentrate on making money; top managers are supposed to cater to the financial needs of shareholders above anything else � opening themselves up to severe criticism if they don�t � and customers are expected to choose the best deal in town without having to worry where and how the gains were created. However, none of these parties actually see what lies behind the financial benefits, and where they come from. The traders just see the numbers, the investors only see their dividends and earnings per share and the Church of England simply chose the best deal while the archbishops were unaware it amounted to short-selling. The high degree of specialisation and division of labour both within and between the financial institutions may have revealed the result of the process but showed no sign of how these profits were actually produced.

In combination, all these elements create a system that escalates risky short term strategies until it culminates into an irreversible course of action. Consequently, it becomes unseemly to do anything else. As in a pyramid investment scheme, everybody is interlocked and benefits until the whole structure collapses, sometimes with devastating consequences. The 2008 banking crisis is only unique in the sense that it did not concern one organization but a whole global sector of interlocked firms, due to the high degree of similarity between the various corporations and their business strategies and the unprecedented extent of the financial linkages between them.

All these things point to one underlying cause: the structural failure of management. The management systems used to govern these organisations were unable to control the inevitable process towards destruction. Whether analysing Enron, Ahold, Union Carbide in 1984 or banks in 2008, the striking commonality is the sheer inevitability of the disaster; each of them were accidents waiting to happen, given the state of the organisation.

More rules and regulations and more quantitative and financial controls are unlikely to solve the problem, and prevent similar events from happening in the future. All organisations and people involved in these cases, ranging from top managers to traders and customers, were governed and incentivised by means of quantitative and financial controls. However, today�s businesses are too complex to be controlled by rules and financial systems alone.

Instead, organisations will need to tap into the fundamental human inclination to belong to a community (such as an organisation), including people�s desire to do things for the benefit of that community rather than focus on their individual, narrow interests. These are alien concepts in the City today, where incentives are geared towards optimising individual, short-term performance while company loyalty and a sense of community are all but destroyed by the financial incentives and culture in place. Yet, when such human desires to contribute to a community are artificially suppressed through narrow financial incentivation schemes, weird things can happen � and the 2008 banking crisis certainly was one weird thing.

"I, for one, have been punished enough. I already own an American car."

So says David Harsanyi, in his recent column, "Taxpayer money may be handed to a rotting partnership."

A 15-year-old girl killed her classmate so she could "feel her pain:"

A 15-year-old accused of fatally shooting her classmate was upset because the two had recently stopped talking and told police she brought a gun to school because she "wanted her to feel pain like me," according to an affidavit.

Violent girls often attack other girls over relationship issues or boys. They, just like boys, need to learn the boundaries of anger. Unfortunately, in our "you go girl culture," that probably won't happen.

Is a nation of "Little Princesses" a good thing?

A reader (thanks!) sends in this story on the over-inflated self-esteem of today's teens:

Today's American high school students are far likelier than those in the 1970s to believe they'll make outstanding spouses, parents and workers, new research shows.

They're also much more likely to claim they are "A" students with high IQs -- even though other research shows that today's students do less homework than their counterparts did in the 1970s.

The findings, published in the November issue of Psychological Science, support the idea that the "self-esteem" movement popular among today's parents and teachers may have gone too far, the study's co-author said.....

For example, in 1975, less than 37 percent of teens thought they'd be "very good" spouses, compared to more than 56 percent of those surveyed in 2006. Likewise, the number of students who thought they'd become "very good" parents rose from less than 36 percent in 1975 to more than 54 percent in 2006. And almost two-thirds of teens in 2006 thought they'd be exemplary workers, compared to about half of those polled in 1975.

As for self-reported academic achievement, twice as many students in 2006 than in 1976 said they earned an "A" average in high school -- 15.6 percent vs. 7.7 percent, the report found.

Compared to their counterparts from the '70s, today's youth also tended to rate themselves as more intelligent and were more likely to say they were "completely satisfied" with themselves.

There was one exception -- measures of "self-competency" (i.e., agreeing with statements such as, "I am able to do things as well as most other people") did not rise between 1976 and 2006. According to Twenge, that may mean that young people continue to feel great self-worth even as they remain unsure of their competence in specific tasks.....

The article points out that some researchers think kids are smarter and doing better than their counterparts.

But Twenge, who is the author of a book on young people's self-views called Generation Me, isn't convinced. In fact, she believes that today's parents may be sending another crop of young Americans down the same path.

"I have a 2-year-old daughter," she said. "I see the parenting of kids around her age, and I haven't seen this changing. Look around -- about a fourth of the clothing available to her says 'Little Princess' on it."

I wonder where all of this inflated self-esteem without competency will lead us?

Questions Needed

Hi all, I am doing a segment for an upcoming PJTV segment on coping with the holidays. I would appreciate any questions you have about surviving the holidays this season. It can be about politics, family relationships or anything else having to do with holiday stress. You can leave them in the comment section and I will choose some to read on air. Thanks!

How to improve your conversation skills at a cocktail party (or prove yourself a first class geek)

Now, I know most Dr. Helen readers are just dying to impress others at a cocktail party by boring people with a bunch of facts. But seriously, do you ever wish you had more facts at your fingertips about politics, science, religion or the arts? If so, check out this new book, Know It All: The Little Book of Essential Knowledge. It's a nifty little compact book that has facts and information on just about every topic and is designed to help you hold up your end of a conversation at a cocktail party or just in general. I was never one to give a damn about whether I impressed others at a soiree, but you can use the information for other reasons, such as to help your kids with their homework or just to answer their questions about how the world works.

There are quizzes on all the material that help you remember what you've learned. For example, questions in a section on "The Structure of Society" include: "What was the title of Thomas More's most famous work?" [Utopia] or "Name the man who is widely viewed as 'the father of economics'" [Adam Smith]. Now, many of you intelligent Dr. Helen readers will already know the answers to these questions and others like it, but there may be some poor souls out there in need of help.

If so, it would make a great gift or stocking stuffer for someone who would like a quick reference on practical knowledge or even for yourself to brush-up on facts from certain areas that you may have long ago forgotten.

PJTV--Conservative Culture and Mandatory Community Service

You can watch a segment of PJTV with me talking to Bill Whittle about conservative culture (reading your emails and comments), why Obama's mandatory community service might backfire and why the self-esteem movement failed. Take a look at PJTV--it might just be the next big thing in conservative culture.

Too hot to handle: Explaining excessive top management remuneration

In many countries the topic of �excessive top management compensation� � especially for CEOs � triggers much emotion, social outcry and even calls to arms for politicians to finally regulate the issue and introduce mandatory caps on salaries. And I used to think that this was all nonsense, because the arguably high salaries of CEOs were simply the result of a market mechanism and �the way it is� (and certainly none of politicians� business). However, the more I learn about academic research on CEO compensation and the workings of boards of directors (who usually determine a CEO�s remuneration package) the more I realise there is more going on than that.

First of all, there has been quite a bit of research that has tried to show that CEO compensation is tied to firm performance. It ain�t. That research has tried, has tried hard and harder, but just could not deliver much evidence that CEO remuneration is determined by firm performance. Admittedly, some studies have uncovered some minor positive relations between pay and performance but it wasn�t much.

The only economic factor that has delivered some consistent results worth mentioning � indicating a positive influence on CEO pay � is firm size: bigger firms pay better. Although this may be an intuitive result, it is actually not that clear why... Why do the CEOs of big firms earn more? Do CEOs of big firms put in more hours? Not that I know. Is managing a firm with 100,000 employees that much harder and more demanding than managing a firm with a tenth of that number on their payroll? Not necessarily. So what is it? I guess one could argue that a top manager of a large firm can do more damage if he messes it up and, since large firms generally have more resources available than smaller firms, they hire (and pay) the best. Yeah... I guess that could be it... Although research has also shown that, on average, large firms are not really more profitable than small ones, so I am not sure these better paid guys actually are better at their jobs. But anyway, we have found one thing that seems to explain top executive pay, so let�s not be too critical about it but accept it with grace.

But, beyond plain size, what then does determine CEO remuneration? Well, let�s start with who determines CEO compensation. In most counties, for public firms, that�ll be the board of directors. And, specifically, the directors that serve on the firm�s remuneration committee (usually 3-5 outside directors). And, yes, there has been some research on these bozos.

Three professors who did research on the relation between CEO compensation and boards of directors were Charles O�Reilly and Graef Crystal from the University of California in Berkeley and Brian Main from the University of St. Andrews. They studied 105 large American companies and first computed the relation between a bunch of economic factors (such as firm performance and firm size) and CEO remuneration. The only thing they found was a connection between company sales and CEO pay. In short, on average, if a firm�s sales increased by $100 million during the CEO�s tenure, his salary would go up by $18,000. That�s hardly impressive, now is it...?

Then, Charles, Graef and Brian did something a bit more interesting. You have to realise that the directors on these committees are usually CEOs or ex-CEOs themselves. Therefore, Charles and his colleagues compared the salaries of these director CEOs to the salaries of the CEOs of the companies for which they served on the remuneration committee. There was a strong relationship between them. An increment in the average salary of such an outside director with, say, $100,000 was associated with a jump in salary of $51,000 for the CEO, after statistically correcting for all the results due to the effects of firm size, profitability, etc.!

Charles, Graef and Brian argued that this association could only be the result of some sort of psychological social comparison process. The directors on the remuneration committee who decide on the CEO�s salary simply determine this guy�s pay by looking at what they themselves make at their companies. And thus, doing this, they don�t feel hindered at all by irrelevant issues such as the firm�s actual performance during the tenure of the CEO or any other silly things like it!

And guess what, who do you think determines who gets asked to serve as an outside director for a firm...? Any guesses...? Yep, it�s usually a company�s CEO who generally nominates new outside directors. That does make it rather tempting for a CEO to be rather selective about which peers you nominate to serve as director and determine your compensation packages, doesn�t it...? Since, according to Charles, Graef and Brian�s research, their wealth may nicely domino into your bank account. The last people you want on your board are those guys who are on a meagre package themselves; because they would likely curb your dosh as well. Instead, bring in the rich guys; they�ll make you rich too!

Jules Crittenden on the Obamaglow: "We get to sit back and watch the show. Gonna make the world a better place? Kumbayah, dude."

Ask Dr. Helen: Where is Conservative culture?

My PJM column is up:

Is there no creativity today among those who lean right? If so, where can you find it?

Read the column and let us know what books, magazines, shows, music, movies, etc., you consume to get your dose of conservative ideas. Do you organize or belong to any groups that have conservative or libertarian ideas? Lastly, how can we reach out and support more right-leaning culture?

The Optimistic Child

I thought I would take a break from politics to tell you about a book I am reading that might be of interest to some of you. I have always liked the work of Martin Seligman who wrote Authentic Happiness that I wrote about here. But the other day at work, I picked up a colleague's copy of Seligman's The Optimistic Child: A Proven Program to Safeguard Children Against Depression and Build Lifelong Resilience and then bought a copy. It is definitely worth a read if you have a depressed child or just want to help your child see the world in a less pessimistic way.

Seligman starts off describing the problem of pessimism in our society. "It boils down to this: dwelling on the most catastrophic cause of any setback. Pessimism is fast becoming the typical way our children look at the world." He goes on to state that "pessimism is an entrenched habit of mind that has sweeping and disastrous consequences: depressed mood, resignation, underachievement, and even unexpectedly poor health."

Later in the book, Seligman takes on the self-esteem movement, stating that the way Armies of American teachers along with American parents are trying to bolster kid's self-esteem is actually eroding kid's sense of self-worth. "By emphasizing how a child feels, at the expense of what a child does--mastery, persistence, overcoming frustration and boredom, and meeting challenge--parents and teachers are making this generation of children more vulnerable to depression. Often, people think that low self-esteem leads to school failure, drug use, dependence on welfare and other social ills. But the research literature shows just the opposite. Low self-esteem is a consequence of failing in school or being on welfare, of being arrested--not the cause."

The rest of the book focuses on direct information and techniques for parents to help their child overcome the depression that comes from thinking in a pessimistic way. "Children who are prone to depression focus on the worst-case scenario, about their troubles and about the problems of the world. They blame themselves for the uncontrollable: they gravitate to the most negative interpretation.... Such children can learn to think about other factors that may have contributed to the problem, so that they can problem-solve by focusing their energy on the parts of the problem that are under their control."

The final chapter talks about the limits of optimism, for example, pointing to studies that show that depressed people are accurate judges of how much skill they have, whereas non-depressed people think they are more skillful than others judge them to be.

Anyway, it is a good book with some good information if you are a parent or teacher in need of some help for a child who suffers from depression.

"Hey, Mr. President, leave those kids alone! "

Cliff Mason at CNBC:

You can't teach American kids civics by forcing them to do community service work. We're stubborn, in fact, that's our singular national virtue. For a guy who spends so much time decrying cynicism, he sure seems to be pushing a program that will make the next generation even more cynical than me and my millennial buddies, and we're a tough act to follow. Call me a skeptic, but this "Ve haf vays of making you serve" program just doesn't seem like the kind of thing that encourages civic-mindedness. In general, coercion doesn't tend to produce good results.

Here's to hoping that "national service" itself was a cynical ploy on Obama's part and he'll forget all about once he takes office. Hey, Mr. President, leave those kids alone!

Another feel-good program that will backfire

Gateway Pundit has a post on the compulsory community service that Obama is asking of middle, high school and college students. The change.gov website states:

Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.

My guess is this crap will work as well as the self-esteem movement did in the 70's and 80's which is to say, it will probably backfire. In fact, according to psychologist Martin Seligman in a book I am currently reading, The Optimistic Child: A Proven Program to Safeguard Children Against Depression and Build Lifelong Resilience, kids are more depressed today than ever due to fake self-esteem programs. One reason, according to Seligman is that our society has changed from an achieving society to a feel-good one. I would say that forcing kids to act like do-gooders will be just as fake as instilling self-esteem and result in resentment and irritation later in life.

And seriously, who wants their help? Bird Dog at Maggie's Farm blog asks a good question, "are people really so helpless in America that they need pimply high-schoolers or condescending do-gooder college kids - who know nothing at all about life - to "help" them?"

Why not teach people how to help themselves and achieve their own goals instead of sending a group of youth forced by government mandate to assist them in feeling like victims? Or why not at least make it voluntary as some have suggested in the comments. If education and helping others to help themselves is done voluntarily, it might be a good thing. But why the government coercion?

Deciding stuff � that�s the easy bit

Some time ago, my colleague at the London Business School, Phanish Puranam, and I ran a short survey with 111 top managers; all alumni from our School�s senior executive programme. We gave them a list of 35 strategic management topics asking them to rate each of them on a 7-point scale, ranging from unimportant to very important for corporate leaders in today's business environment.

The three things that these senior executives said were the most important issues in their view and experience were:
1. Attract and retain talent
2. Decide on the company�s next avenues of growth
3. Align the organisation towards one common goal

Some further (statistical) analysis showed us that the number one � �attract and retain talent� � pertained to things such as putting together an effective top management team, and managing top management succession. Many business leaders see as their main task to recruit and develop other leaders, and it seems our senior executives were no exception.

The second one � �decide on the company�s next avenues of growth� � reminded me of a survey one of the global consulting firms used to run (I believe it was the then Anderson people). They ran an annual survey asking CEOs �what keeps you awake at night?� It was one of these PR endeavours aimed at getting some free publicity in the business press, bolstering their image as a source of management knowledge & wisdom. However, this survey was not a great success, and they seized to run it, simply because every year the same thing came out on top (which made it rather boring and hardly ideal to get the business press excited�) and that was: �The firm�s next avenue of growth�. Our survey confirmed this result.

The third one � �aligning the organisation towards one common goal� � pertained to this thing that tends to make non-senior executives (including business school professors) smirk: creating a mission and vision statement. These vision things inevitably seem to lead to some generic yet draconian expressions (e.g. �to be the pre-eminent� something) that could only be generated by a de-generated consultant brain. Moreover, inevitably they appear to be highly similar to the terminology on the wall of the firm next door. Nevertheless, our senior executives do seem to take them quite seriously. I guess they�re typical of top managers� efforts and struggle to �align the organisation towards one common goal�; in their desperation they even turn to hammering a mission or vision statement on the canteen�s wall. Guess it really is a struggle.

What struck me about all these three topics, however, is that none of them are decisions. It seems � also from analysing the remainder of our survey � that top managers are quite unfazed by strategic decisions, no matter how big and far-reaching they are. But things they can�t �decree� � like having an effective team, organic growth, or a common vision � is what keeps them awake.

Indeed, you can�t just declare �I decide that next year our organic growth will be 30 percent�. Instead, you will have to build and nurture an organisation which fosters innovation and motivates people and other stakeholders to achieve autonomous growth. You can�t just decide to have it, like you decide to pursue a particular acquisition, enter a new foreign market, or diversify into a new line of business. Similarly, you can�t just decide to attract and retain talent, or decide that �from now on everybody will believe in the same vision and aspiration�. It simply doesn�t work that way. And apparently top managers are a lot more comfortable with stuff they can decide than with things that are not under their direct control; things they need to foster and carefully build up over a longer period of time. And I don�t blame them: that stuff seems easier said than done.

Is the market really better under a Democratic administration?

I was checking the stock market at CNBC a few minutes ago and clicked on an article entitled, "Build an Investment Strategy for an Obama Presidency." Here is what I learned:

To shift your long-term investment strategy so that you take advantage of the next four years - and then some - stay with a diversified portfolio but consider making adjustments in your holdings to capitalize on an Obama presidency. Zachary Karabell, economist and president of River Twice Research, reminded that despite popular belief, the stock market tends to do better under a Democratic administration than a Republican administration.

I remember reading about some study on Democrats being better for the market than Republicans a while back in the blogosphere and decided to find out if this was true. Not according to The Wall Street Journal that says divided government is best for the market:

Then there are the various party mixes between the president and Congress. If John McCain wins and we have a Republican president and a Democratic Congress, history leads us to expect an average 10.3% total return from stocks and 3.3% real GDP growth. If Barack Obama wins, and we have a Democratic Congress too, then according to history stocks will average 13.8%, and real GDP growth 3.3%.

But that's no argument for voting for Mr. Obama. Vote for Mr. McCain -- but vote for Republican senators and representatives too. When Republicans have controlled the whole government, it blows away anything Democrats can do. Stocks have averaged 17.5%and real GDP growth 3.3%.

By the way, as fond as Democrats are of saying how poorly stocks have performed under George W. Bush, here's a sobering fact: Stocks averaged 14.1% return in those Bush years when Republicans controlled Congress -- and when Democrats got in there and mucked things up, the average has been a loss of 8.9%. That's not even including 2008 year-to-date, which doesn't look so pretty.

If the electorate were really smart, it would elect a Democratic president and a Republican Congress. Under that deal, stocks have averaged a 20.2% total return, and real GDP averaged 4%. That tells us that economic and stock market success isn't really about partisan politics at all. Sadly, nobody has a political incentive to conduct a study about that.

No, I guess not.

Looking ahead to 2010

What are constuctive things that right-leaning folks can do if they don't like the change in guard this time around? How about look ahead to the 2010 Senate election cycle and try to help those Republicans coming up for re-election keep their seats and assist the Democrats in losing theirs? I picked up a copy of Michael Barone's excellent book, The Almanac of American Politics, 2008 to see what senators are up for re-election. Here is what I found:

Democrats up for re-election

Bayh, Evan (D-IN)
Boxer, Barbara (D-CA)
Dodd, Christopher J. (D-CT)
Dorgan, Byron L. (D-ND)
Feingold, Russell D. (D-WI)
Inouye, Daniel K. (D-HI)
Leahy, Patrick J. (D-VT)
Lincoln, Blanche L. (D-AR)
Mikulski, Barbara A. (D-MD)
Murray, Patty (D-WA)
Obama, Barack (D-IL)
Reid, Harry (D-NV)
Salazar, Ken (D-CO)
Schumer, Charles E. (D-NY)
Wyden, Ron (D-OR)


Republicans up for re-election

Bond, Christopher S. (R-MO)
Brownback, Sam (R-KS)
Bunning, Jim (R-KY)
Burr, Richard (R-NC)
Coburn, Tom (R-OK)
Crapo, Mike (R-ID)
DeMint, Jim (R-SC)
Grassley, Chuck (R-IA)
Gregg, Judd (R-NH)
Isakson, Johnny (R-GA)
Martinez, Mel (R-FL)
McCain, John (R-AZ)
Murkowski, Lisa (R-AK)
Shelby, Richard C. (R-AL)
Specter, Arlen (R-PA)
Thune, John (R-SD)
Vitter, David (R-LA)
Voinovich, George V. (R-OH)

I wonder if Arnold Schwarzenegger might run against Barbara Boxer for her Senate seat or if Chris Dodd will survive his ties to the housing crisis? Perhaps if conservatives and libertarians work together to defeat a few Democrats and keep Republicans in place, 2010 will be a more welcoming place for us. Anyone out there with any concrete ideas on how to go about doing this--other than the obvious such as putting up and running websites like EvanBayhwatch.com etc?

"It's the economy, stupid."

I was just watching numerous young Obama fans celebrating on the Fox News channel and read the stats scrolling across the bottom of the page. They stated that over 60% of voters who were worried about the economy voted for Obama. That, for me, summed it up in a nutshell. So many right-leaning types are trying hard to figure out what they did, what the Republicans did, and why they lost. Each election cycle, there's always a theme. For the last two elections, it was Iraq and national security.

Now those issues are in the background and this time around, it's the economic crisis, with a little (or a lot) of help from the media in pushing it to the forefront in people's minds. Why is this important? Because rather than think the country is going through some incredible demographic shift of Republican-hating left-wing ideology, it is rather comforting to know that the major reason people voted for Obama in this election was the economy. McCain was actually polling pretty well right before the economic crisis. Next election cycle, it will be something else. It might favor the Republicans or it might not. But to think that the entire philosophy of individual rights, small government, national security and gun rights is lost on a new generation of voters based on this one election is not only foolish, it shows a degree of cynicism that may not be accurate. The next two or three election cycles will need to be evaluated before we can can say that America has rejected the ideas of free markets and free minds.

"Stay positive and focused"

So, how is everyone dealing with the aftermath this morning? I like what Michelle Malkin had to say:

There is no time to lick wounds, point fingers, and wallow in post-election mud.

I�m getting a lot of moan-y, sad-face �What do we do now, Michelle?� e-mails.

What do we do now? We do what we�ve always done.

We stand up for our principles, as we always have � through Democrat administrations and Republican administrations, in bear markets or bull markets, in peacetime and wartime.

We stay positive and focused.

We keep the faith.

We do not apologize for our beliefs.

Good advice.

How to justify paying top managers too much

The level of top managers� compensation is often a contentious topic of much spirited debate. Basically, most people think these buggers get paid too much. The buggers claim it�s simply the result of the market mechanism; supply and demand: Good buggers are scarce and therefore they earn hefty salaries (like movie stars, football players and other half-gods-to-be-worshipped).

Although there is of course a bit of a market at work, it has to be said that the people who determine the pay of a company�s CEO � the board of directors � do face a conflict of interest of sorts. Board memberships are nice jobs to have, in the sense that they are usually rather lucrative gigs and provide a pleasant dosage of power and prestige for those who get them. And � and this is where the conflict of interest arises � it�s mostly the company�s top managers who nominate new board members. In the spirit of �don�t bite the hand that just fed you�, board members may be inclined to nominate their benefactors (i.e. the CEO) handsomely by returning the favour in the form of a nice compensation package.

Moreover, as research has shown, those directors who deviate from this social norm (and for instance vote for a relatively low CEO compensation package) will be frowned upon by the rest of the business elite, spat at and given the cold shoulder until they �come to their senses� and don�t display such ridiculous behaviour any longer.

For this reason, in various countries, boards of directors now have to justify the compensation packages that they give to their CEOs by explicitly comparing the firm and its performance to a �peer group�. The idea is that, due to this forced comparison, it becomes more difficult for boards to step out of line.

The tricky thing is, of course, how do you determine who the company�s peer group is�?

It seems most logical to simply pick a group of firms in the company�s main industry, right? Right� but even firms in one and the same industry are usually not entirely comparable; you have many different types of banks, pharmaceutical companies can be vastly dissimilar, software companies are hardly all alike, and one retailer is not identical to the next one. Therefore, boards have a bit of flexibility regarding who to include in their firm�s �peer group�. And that�s of course a rather inviting opportunity for a bit of old-fashioned manipulation�

Professors Joe Porac, Jim Wade and Tim Pollock analysed the composition of the peer groups chosen by the boards of 280 large American companies. For each peer group, they examined how many firms were in there that were not from the company�s primary industry � thinking that then there just might be something fishy going on. Subsequently, they looked at the financial performance of the peer groups, of the companies in the sample, the performance of each company�s industry and the size of the CEOs� compensation packages.

They found that boards would usually construct peer groups consisting of firms in the company�s primary industry. On average, there were some 30% of firms in those peer groups that weren�t in a company�s line of business. But, guess what: This figure increased significantly if the firm was performing poorly; then the board would construct a peer group of firms (outside the company�s industry) with quite mediocre performance, to make the firm look better. They did the same thing if everybody in the company�s industry was performing well; then a poorer performing peer group obscured the fact that the good performance of the company was nothing unusual in its industry, again making it look comparatively good.

Finally, boards would compose peer groups that consisted of comparatively poorly performing firms from outside the company�s industry if its CEO received a relatively hefty compensation package; then the seemingly high performance of the firm would come in handy to justify the CEO�s big bucks.

Joe, Jim and Tim concluded �boards selectively define peers in self-protective ways�. Which simply means that they dupe us to pay the buggers too much.

Election Feeling Meter

Professor Stephen Bainbridge's response if Obama wins: "I plan on throwing a major hissy fit, followed by a bender of historic proportions" (via Instapundit).

I am hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. No matter what happens, get out and vote!

How are you feeling about today's election?
	Fine, just another election
	Disgusted
	Anxious
	Just get it over with already.
	What election?
	Who cares, I'm going John Galt.
	I'm with Bainbridge, throw a hissy fit if Obama wins.
	Other
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Jerusalem Post: "For Americans who have chosen to live in Israel, the candidates' Israel positions are not matters of party loyalty or cheap rhetoric. They are matters of life and death. That may explain why, in spite of the onslaught of Editorials From Famous Jewish Obama Apologists, exit polls (themselves the subject of some controversy) showed that Americans in Israel (less than a quarter of whom were registered Republicans) voted for McCain over Obama by an overwhelming 76% to 24% margin."

Roger Kimball at PJM (via Instapundit): "I understand that larger and larger swaths of America are turning purple if not blue as affluence coupled with tertiary education and cultural relativism transform more and more people into latte-drinking, NPR-listening, global-warming hysterics who regard Karl Rove as an evil genius and Sarah Palin as an anencephaltic breeding machine on skis."

Wrap rage?

First there was road rage, then air rage, now wrap rage. How much frustration can a person take? Seriously, I do remember when my daughter was young how upsetting it was to try and open some of the ridiculous packaging that items came in, but we just got this little tool and I have never had much of a problem since.

Neo-Neocon hates the time change. I feel the same. What do you say?

"Going John Galt" in Japan (via Instapundit)?

More on tipping

Okay, so many of you have emailed or commented on my previous post on tipping stating that this is an unfair strategy as it penalizes people who do not believe in wealth redistribution. This comment is a good example:

I am a school teacher who has been delivering pizzas for some extra bread, and will be buying into our owner's next store as an investor.

Also I deliver to a lower middle class/working class neighborhood as well. The other night at a house, saw a Ford F-150 in the driveway (and no it did not appear to be Dad's work truck) and a Toyota Camry. Nice Hispanic lady answered the door, married, three kids and what do I see in their living room? A 60 inch tv! Hmmm I work two jobs and can't afford a 60 inch tv. Bet they can't afford to buy their kids health care huh?

Of our eleven pizza drivers, I know of no one who is voting for Obama, except for one spaced out kid who is a total idiot (and probably isn't registered anyway). And we have drivers all over the spectrum from "older guys (I am 43)" to young college age kids.

Please don't take it out on us.

There is no way I could. In the space of the past 24 hours, I have been out to eat three times and left even bigger tips than I usually do. I am watching people work hard and I know I cannot withhold money to local people in Tennessee that are so industrious. Perhaps in blue cities or where it is clearer that people believe in redistributing wealth, it would be easier. Another thought is that if as many of the servers and pizza delivery people are for McCain as commenters are saying, he must be doing pretty well.