Tell It To Al

When people ask me, should they buy gold, I tell them my two favorite sectors are canned food and ammunition.

The end of the world is near, and even if it isn’t, a lot of people think it is, as evidenced by the hit National Geographic Channel show, “Doomsday Preppers.” Needless to say I am a big fan of the show, but if  they did a spot on me, they’d learn I’m woefully under-prepared for the end.

Click here to read my column on MarketWatch. And watch me yack about it on the Wall Street Journal’s  online show, above.

Citigroup didn’t just hide bad mortgages from the government, it celebrated its employees who did this most successfully.

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal.

For all the bashing Wall Street gets, for its cutthroat aggression, blatant dishonesty and outright fraud,  you’d think only highly evolved sociopaths would want to work in the industry.

The truth is, there are plenty of good people working in finance who know exactly what’s going on and aren’t afraid to speak frankly about it.

Larry Doyle is one of them. After a long career on Wall Street, he is taking on the ills of Wall Street on his blog, Sense on Cents.

Click here to read my column on Doyle on Marketwatch.

A survey of more than 1,000 people reveals that nobody wants to be a corporate executive.

Nobody.

I found this difficult to believe, but there it was in a press release headline: “Survey Finds That People Don’t Want To Be Corporate Executives.”

What? Nobody wants to make millions of dollars a year being a professional jerk? Nobody wants a corporate jet paid for by shareholders? Nobody wants a golden-parachute contract that ensures even when they flame-out, they still win big?

I suppose it’s all in the way you pose the question.

Boulder, Co.-based Intelligent Office, provider of virtual, professionally staffed office space for mobile executives and small businesses, says most people it surveyed would rather be independent entrepreneurs than climb the corporate ladder. Click here to read details of its survey in a press release.

“We believe there is a paradigm shift happening in our culture as it relates to work style,” said Tom Camplese, Chief Operating Officer. “We have been watching this shift take place … by talking with entrepreneurs, business owners, and mobile executives on a daily basis.”

Click here to take Intelligent Office’s “Work IQ” survey and see if you want to be a corporate executive.

Of course, the survey never directly asks what you want to be. It simply asks things such as whether you like wearing casual clothes and whether you like working at home. If the answers to these questions is yes, the methodology assumes you are better suited to entrepreneurship than corporate life.

Maybe that’s a safe assumption. But I think if the survey asked, would you like to make millions screwing thousands of people out of their jobs, homes, pensions etc., it might have tapped at least one person who said, hell, yes. I mean, a certain percentage of every demographic group contains at least one sociopath.

I, for one, would like to be a work-at-home CEO, never changing out of my sweats.  But the survey didn’t ask.

Find yourself getting too much sleep?

Harvard Professor David Edwards has the answer: Inhale some caffeine.

Edwards is the inventor of Aeroshot, now on sale in Boston, New York and over the Internet.

No pesky Starbucks to slurp down. Snap open a tube, breath in, and the caffeine does the rest.

Click here to read my column on MarketWatch.

Only two in 10 people say Corporate America has a “very good” reputation, according to the latest Harris Interactive poll measuring companies’ “Reputation Quotient”, or RQ.

Not surprisingly. the five companies with the best reputations are Apple, Google, Amazon.com, Coca-Cola and  Kraft Foods.

Also not surprising are the companies at the bottom. “Bank of America, AIG and Goldman Sachs find themselves in dangerous territory, occupying the same … space that defunct companies occupied in years past before expiring,” the survey reports.

One interesting footnote: “Berkshire Hathaway, 2010 RQ winner, falls by 7 points and slides from 4th place in 2011 to 24th in 2012.” Looks like that little ol’ stock scandal took the storied company down a few notches. Click here to read my column on that.

Once a company loses some of it’s reputation, it’s hard to get it back, particularly in a grueling economic malaise.

“Corporations are facing significant headwinds as they try to win and preserve consumer trust, said Robert Fronk, executive vice president and Global Corporate Reputation Practice Lead for Harris Interactive.

Click here for a press release on the survey. And click here for a slide show highlighting survey results.

A $25 billion settlement between the federal government, 49 states, and America’s five biggest banks does little to address the causes of the housing crisis.

Click here to read my column in The Sunday Wall Street Journal.

Click here to watch me talk about it with Matt Flener, anchor at Denver’s NBC affiliate 9News.

You’re broke. You can’t get a job. You lost your home to  foreclosure. And your credit card bills are staggering.

What are you doing buying a pricey Valentine’s Day gift?

“Being fiscally responsible on Valentine’s Day does not have to be unromantic,”  said David Jones, President, Association of Independent Consumer Credit Counseling Agencies. “If you simply take the time to think first, you can determine how to convey your Valentine message without overspending.”

The group advises people to spend with their brains instead of their hearts. Here are a few of its tips:

* “Cook dinner at home rather than going out.” (Hamburger Helper is for lovers, too.)

*”Give a gift of service rather than flowers or jewelry. “(Yeah, like rub my back, will ya?)

* “Schedule quality time together after Valentine’s Day rather than overspending at the last minute.”  (I spend so much time running around retail hell looking for the right thing, I don’t have time for a romantic dinner, anyway.)

I say Valentine’s Day is really just a scheme to sell greeting cards, flowers, chocolates and jewelry. Don’t be distracted by the temporal things in life. Stay the course. And when you get it together, remember: It’s so much easier to celebrate Halloween.

What’s the difference between the mob and Wall Street?

The mob has a moral code, says Malcolm Kushner, author of the “The Official Book of Mob Humor.”

Kushner, who created an economic indicator called the Cost of Laughing Index, spent two years collecting jokes about organized crime.

The result is an anthology of gags and one liners like this:

“Who was the last person to see Jimmy Hoffa? Jacques Cousteau.”

A philosophical insights such as this:

“Nothing is certain but death and taxes, and we don’t pay taxes.”

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch.

A lot of things seem to have gone unnoticed in the story of Heather Peters, who made national headlines for beating Honda in small-claims court.

She’s not only a lawyer, but a former member of the Arnold Schwarzenegger administration, who knows how to deal with big companies and big issues. Honda stepped into a public relations nightmare when it decided not to settle with her over the issues with her car.

Honda is now trying to appeal an embarrassing judgment that Peters won in small claims court, claiming her 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid did not get the 50 mpg Honda advertised. She says it gets more like 30 mpg.

The car maker is taking the case to an appellate court where it can deploy its corporate lawyers. One reason Peters thrashed Honda so soundly was because lawyers aren’t allowed to represent others in small claims court. Honda was totally outgunned.

After chatting with Peters for quite some time, I found her to be a woman who can back up every claim she makes. She’s got documents for just about everything she says and pulls them out quickly.

She’s not going to  be beaten easily in court, even by a whole team of far more powerful lawyers. And even if she does lose, what has she lost? A $9,867 judgment that Honda hasn’t paid her yet, anyway?

This is going to  be like watching a bunch of big corporate thugs beat up on a woman who they should be treating as a customer. If they win, they will only look like bullies. But if they lose, they will really look like wimps.

Who’d want that job? Sure makes me glad I never went to law school.

Click here to read my column on Marketwatch.com.