Economic Outlook

Fed Retreat: "Very Serious" and "Gloomy"

Bloomberg news reports attendees of the Federal Reserve summer retreat in Jackson Hole are feeling pessimistic. Academics and policy makers attended the symposium where the timely topic was housing and monetary policy. At least one attendee expected that their peers would bolster his outlook – in fact the opposite was true. “I rather expected that […]

Project Management

What your project teams aren't telling you: the effort is doomed!

Most projects are train wrecks waiting to happen. A recent survey of 40 companies (most Fortune 500) and 2000+ projects revealed that 82% of employees say there are significant organization-wide initiatives underway in their workplace that will likely fail; 78% say they are personally working on a "doomed" project right now. 77% of employees described […]

Caught My Eye Financial Reporting Regulatory Environment

SEC Environmental Disclosures?

CFO.com reports that a diverse group of institutional investors, government treasurers and controllers, and corporations is calling for federal legislation and SEC clarification to help address global warming. Excerpt from story at CFO.com: "Global warming presents enormous risks and opportunities for U.S. businesses and investors," said Fred R. Buenrostro, chief executive officer of Calpers, in […]

Caught My Eye Investment Strategy

What should Apple do with all its cash?

In reaction to a recent article at BusinessWeek.com considering what Apple should do with its $12 billion cash hoard, Wall Street blogger Roger Ehrenberg explores the pros and cons of an internal VC fund for Apple and suggests that Steve Jobs et al consider the following questions: What is the right amount of cash Apple […]

Banking Women Professionals Workplace Flexibility

Tough Choices for Wall Street Women

Sunday's New York Times business section has a lengthy article on Wall Street's attempt to retain women professionals and woo back others that have left. It echoes many of the themes in Sylvia Anne Hewlett's March 2005 HBR article and features profiles of two women (one starting out, one attempting to return to Wall Street). […]

Women Professionals

Opt Out: Media Trend or Statisticly Valid Phenomenon?

Any reader of this blog knows that I am a strong supporter of providing options for professional women who want to have it all – a rewarding career AND a satisfying family life. Forte Financial actively recruits talented mid-career women, offering a flexible career path that enables them to raise children, care for elderly parents, […]

Russ Jones Writings

Peppercoin V2.0

By Russ Jones Peppercoin 2.0 extends the notion of transaction aggregation into both the physical world of small point-of-sale payments as well as across multiple merchants. Through this new “universal aggregation” capability, Peppercoin plans to aggregate individual consumer purchases at multiple merchants into a single card transaction. By doing this aggregation, the per-transaction fees that […]

Russ Jones Writings

Getting Out in Front of Financial Privacy

By Russ Jones Momentum towards stronger financial privacy for consumers in the United States has picked up a lot of steam over the last 30 days. While most welcome the change, some financial institutions are still tentative about the new direction, others are actively resisting it, and a few are not sure how to respond. […]

Russ Jones Scott Loftesness Writings

Critiquing a Liberty Alliance Critique

By Russ Jones and Scott Loftesness In a recent critique of the Liberty Alliance entitled "On Liberty and the Case for Anonymous Federation of Identity," (1) Doug Kaye raises several critical points about the Liberty 1.0 specifications: