Creating, collecting, and sharing thoughts and ideas. And learning along the way.
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Brilliant Bach!
I guess are things are looking up!
The Dow Jones industrial average crossed 12,000 points on Wednesday, fueled by President Obama call for a lower corporate tax rate and higher-than-expected new home sales in December.
The last time the index closed above that level was on June 19, 2008.
In midmorning trading, the Dow was 35.19 points or 0.29 percent, higher at 12,012.31, and the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was up 6.44 points, or 0.50 percent. The Nasdaq rose 19.58 points, or 0.72 percent.
During his State of the Union address, the president asked lawmakers to work with him to close corporate tax loopholes and use the additional revenue to lower corporate tax rates.
And the Commerce Department reported Wednesday that sales of new homes rose 17.5 percent in December from November to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 329,000 units. Still sales for all of 2010 were down 14.4 percent from 2009, agency said.
Shares in Europe were also higher. The FTSE in London was 1.3 percent higher. In Frankfurt, the DAX rose 1.2 percent, and the CAC 40 in Paris gained 1. percent.
When the Dow first crossed the 12,000 threshold, in October 2006, unemployment was under 5 percent and the economy was growing at 2 to 3 percent a year. Today, unemployment hovers near 10 percent and the economy has struggled to grow.
The markets returned to the 12,000 level in 2008 as the financial crisis was starting to unfold and some banks were warning of write-downs of debt. This week, investors are weighing tentative signs of a pickup in the economy, with factory production, retail sales and existing-home sales rising and unemployment claims trending down, and generally strong quarterly profit reports from a majority of companies.
But trading has been lukewarm ahead of the Federal Reserve policy-making arm’s first meeting of the year on Wednesday. The Fed is expected to leave rates unchanged, but traders will be closely watching for an update on the state of the economy.
Uri Landesman, president of the Platinum Partners hedge fund, said that while markets have been move higher, there was still some uncertainty about the economy.
“I would say that a five-month rally in the face of decidedly mixed economic data is unusual,” he said. “What it suggests to me is it is going to reverse itself. It is going to pause and regroup.”
“If you have a double dip in housing and nobody is employed the consumer is going to go back in hiding,” Mr. Landesman said.
He said he is estimating the S.&P. to fluctuate between 1,100 and 1,400 throughout the year, with a key resistance break-through at 1,305 signifying that the market has upward strength.
Antioxidants Fall From Grace
The popular dietary components may not do any good, and may actually harm.
Chris Cheadle / Corbis
To anyone who feels guilty for not gorging on antioxidants—actually, make that “antioxidants!,” which seems to be how grocery manufacturers think of them—redemption is nigh. For years the media, food labels, dietitians, and even scientists who should know better have bombarded us with advice to load up on antioxidants: compounds found (mostly) in fruits and vegetables that mop up free radicals, which are highly reactive clusters of atoms that have been fingered as the evildoers responsible for aging and for illnesses from cancer to heart disease.
“Buyer Beware” doesn’t begin to cover it! Click on the link above for the complete article.
Time for the old posts to come out to the new blog! This one was first published in my private blog on Thursday, December 04, 2008.
On a cold wintery mid-morning, what better a thing to bake than a loaf of my banana-walnut bread? So, here it is. I used a large round pan (actually my cheesecake pan), but technically, I suppose, a loaf pan ought to be used… Well, these things don’t matter too much to me—loaf pans, cake pans, cheesecake pans, square pans, they’re all one and the same. What’s of import is what’s inside them!
The other thing I made just now is choley—with a twist. I added a can of black beans to the standard garbanzo (or chickpeas) beans. Serve it up with hot steaming white rice, and its an entrée fit for a king, don’t you think? 🙂
Lovely blend of East and West in cooking techniques and choice of dishes, no? A slice of the banana-walnut bread will go nicely with a cup of tea or coffee. And the choley will be dinner, of course.
Bon Appetit!
Churchill Didn’t Say That
The King’s Speech is riddled with gross falsifications of history.
Posted Monday, Jan. 24, 2011, at 12:20 PM ET
Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter in The King’s Speech The King’s Speech is an extremely well-made film with a seductive human interest plot, very prettily calculated to appeal to the smarter filmgoer and the latent Anglophile. But it perpetrates a gross falsification of history. One of the very few miscast actors—Timothy Spall as a woefully thin pastiche of Winston Churchill—is the exemplar of this bizarre rewriting. He is shown as a consistent friend of the stuttering prince and his loyal princess and as a man generally in favor of a statesmanlike solution to the crisis of the abdication.
Did you know all that? I didn’t, but I did see the movie and liked the story for its non-political reasons.
For the full article on Slate, click the link right above this.
Will you watch the SOTU speech tonight? If not, you can always come back here for a recap and for other interactive features courtesy the White House.
Case Studies from Harvard Business School:
On November 26, 2008, 175 people died in Mumbai, India, when 10 terrorists simultaneously struck sites. Of the five locations�all well-known landmarks�the beautiful domes of the hotel known as the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower would become most closely associated with the horrific attacks in the world’s collective conscience. “Not even the senior managers could explain the behavior of these employees.”
A new multimedia case by HBS professor Rohit Deshpand bffers a flip side to the nightmarish scenes that unfolded in real time on television screens around the globe. Produced in collaboration with Ruth Page and David Habeeb of the HBS Educational Technology Group, “Terror at the Taj Bombay: Customer-Centric Leadership” documents the bravery and resourcefulness shown by rank-and-file employees during the siege. (The case is not yet available to the public.)
Video interviews with hotel staff and senior executives, combined with security footage of the attack, create a documentary-like account of events that took place over the course of 59 hours. The case also covers the hotel’s history, its approach to training employees, the “guest is God” philosophy inherent in Indian culture, and the question of how the hotel will recover after the attacks.
Underlying this framework is a central conundrum: Why did the Taj employees stay at their posts, jeopardizing their safety in order to save hotel guests? And is this level of loyalty and dedication something that can be replicated and scaled elsewhere?
“Not even the senior managers could explain the behavior of these employees,” says Deshpand. “In the interview, the vice chairman of the company says that they knew all the back exits�the natural human instinct would be to flee. These are people who instinctively did the right thing. And in the process, some of them, unfortunately, gave their lives to save guests.” A dozen employees died.
Most difficult case
Deshpand, a native of Bombay (now Mumbai), says it took a full week to conduct the interviews. “This is the hardest case I’ve ever worked on. One reason is that I had no conception of what it would be like to have people confront the trauma again. We objectify it, keep emotion at a distance, but after 15 minutes of questions with a video camera in a darkened room, there are deeper, more personal reflections of what happened. It was really, really hard.
“The other thing is that I grew up there. So the Taj is part of my memories, too. As one of the interview subjects said, the Taj is their Taj, meaning anyone who has ever walked through its doors. It’s a place that means many things to many people.”
In one interview, Taj general manager Karambir Singh Kang describes his father, a military man, telling him that his job is like being the captain of a ship. “I think that’s the way everyone else felt, too,” says Kang. “A sense of loyalty to the hotel, a sense of responsibility to the guests.” Several hours into the siege, Kang’s wife and two young sons died in a fire that swept through their apartment on the hotel’s top floor. Even after receiving the news, he insisted on staying at his post to help direct a response to the ongoing attack. (The battle for control at the Taj would continue a full two days after other locations had been secured.)
Nothing in the employees’ training could have prepared them for such an unprecedented situation, Deshpand� fays. Yet further interviews and text documents from the case provide background on the unique culture of Tata Sons, the Taj’s parent company, while also revealing the exacting process for selecting, training, and rewarding Taj employees for their work.
Mandate to delight
Awards are given for longer terms of service, for example, with Group Chairman Ratan Tata (HBS AMP 71, 1975) personally recognizing those who have served 10 to 35 years and more. Employees who have demonstrated outstanding service are selected for inclusion in the Managing Directors Club and recognized across the organization.
Such incentives aren’t so unusual, of course. But interviews with senior management demonstrate how seriously the task of building a customer-centric culture and value system is taken at the Taj and its parent company, Indian Hotels.
“Every time they interact with a guest they should look for an opportunity to delight him,” says H.N. Srinivas, senior vice president of human resources. During a 24-hour stay, a guest will have an average of 40 to 42 contacts with employees. “We’ve mapped it,” he explains.
When it comes to selecting employees, Indian Hotels CEO Raymond N. Bickson describes how he first looks for “nice people who are not afraid of serving people.” He can teach them to be a bellman, a waiter, or a desk clerk, he continues. “But I can’t teach them to be nice. I can’t teach that spirit of ownership.”
“In India and the developing world, there’s a much more paternalistic equation between employer and employee,” says Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Sons. “I think that creates a kinship.” Every employee donates a small portion of their salary to a pool that can be drawn on in the event a colleague suffers an accident or other significant personal setback.
To date, Deshpand� uas taught the case in the School’s Owner/President Management Executive Education program; he expects it to be used more widely, particularly since it can also be taught as an example of managing the postcrisis recovery of a flagship corporate brand.
No clear answer
The question of why the Taj employees demonstrated such loyalty elicited a variety of responses from students, Deshpand� fays.
“For example, some suggested that it has to do with governance of the Tatas; two-thirds of their profits are donated to charitable causes, so the employees feel that they are working for a higher good.” But the IT firm Tata Consultancy Services has had many of the same difficulties with employee retention that other Indian IT firms experience. “In that case, the loyalty might be more to self rather than to the organization,” he says.
A definitive answer to the question of why the Taj employees behaved as they did may not be possible; but managers who read and view the case will likely come away with a clearer sense of what it takes to build a particular culture and value system and how to recruit, train, and reward employees in nonmonetary ways.
“It’s all of those very specific things that build a customer-centric culture in an organization,” Deshpand� fays. “This example far exceeds anything I’ve seen before.”
Julia Hanna is associate editor of the HBS Alumni Bulletin.
The old adage, ‘the book is better’ holds true for ‘The Kiterunner,’ yet another book turned into movie, although the least of my criticisms would be that it strayed from the original script—because it didn’t really, and perhaps therein lies its flaws. Stylistically, it lacks the finesse of a slick drama that tugs at the heart’s strings from the very first scene. Instead, the dialogue seems dry, and the adult actors lack conviction. The children on the other hand, make up for these drawbacks, and the one line, For you, a thousand times over has as much a haunting tone to it when said by both Hassan, the hazara boy, and much later by Amir to Hassan’s son.
To those for whom the sport of kite-flying is a novelty concept, these scenes would certainly be most enjoyable, and even more so to those who have enjoyed this sport themselves. I myself have the fondest memories of having flown many a kite from my rooftop in my childhood home each year toward the end of winter/early spring on bright sunny afternoons. Although traditionally a sport for young boys, my father in his infinite love for his only child, albeit a girl, remained quite oblivious to this obvious fact even as he taught me the many intricacies of launching the kite, biding my time before letting it lift higher and higher–only to let it fall back to fool another nearby kite–and then to stealthily swoop under it to let the manja do the trick in cutting down the competitor! Oh, the memories… In my case, I didn’t always have someone to run down the kite, and instead let the neighborhood boys get it for themselves; still the thrill of victory was no less sweet or diminished.
But coming back to the movie, the larger themes of loyalty, betrayal and redemption at last are faithfully played out—if only the delivery didn’t lack that inexplicable je ne sais quoi quality, it might have had the desired effect of total devastation—the kind that leaves you warm all over and weak in the knees even as your heart is breaking. Yet despite depriving us of this sensation, it is still worth a watch, and if nothing else, is a good window into the world of the despicable Taliban in modern Afghanistan (now there’s an oxymoron if I ever saw one!).
–Friday, January 18, 2008
