Tell It To Al

Anthony Hardwick, who rounds up carts in the parking lot at a Target in Omaha, has well over 150,000 signatures on the petition he started on change.org to roll back Black Friday from midnight to 5 a.m.

“”A midnight opening robs the hourly and in-store salary workers of time off with their families on Thanksgiving Day,” his petition reads.  “By opening the doors at midnight, Target is requiring team members to be in the store by 11 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. A full holiday with family is not just for the elite of this nation — all Americans should be able to break bread with loved ones and get a good night’s rest on Thanksgiving!”

But Hardwick has nothing to complain about, if Target’s official response is any guide.

“The team member you are referencing is not now, and has never been, scheduled to work on Thanksgiving or Black Friday at Target,” Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder said.

Hardwick, as well as officials at change.org, however, insist Hardwick was slated to work on those days, and has yet to hear otherwise from his employer, except in the press. And Hardwick has all along said he’s  taking his stand for his co-workers, not himself.

Black Friday is now officially insane, with midnight openings following Turkey Day. But 34% of consumers say they plan to shop on that day, up from 31% last year, according to a survey by the International Council of Shopping Centers  and Goldman Sachs.

Click here to read my column about Hardwick on MarketWatch.

Why be CEO when you can be ninja, kahuna or head cheese?

“Titles such as executive or manager don’t stand out,” says Paul Lewis of Providence, R.I., business card printer, Moo.com.

“So why not stand out a bit by giving yourself a job title that sums you up as a person rather than limits you to just one aspect of what you do?”

Yeah, why not? I once had a job pumping gasoline at a full-service station and called myself a petroleum transfer engineer. Now, I could change my title to something like “Scribe From Hell.”  I noticed, however, that Paul Lewis listed his own title, disappointingly, as “head of marketing.”

Here are the Top 20 modern job titles discovered by Moo.com: 1. Sales Ninja. 2. New Media Guru. 3. Word Herder. 4. Linux Geek. 5. Social Media Trailblazer. 6. Corporate Magician. 7. Master Handshaker. 8. Communications Ambassador. 9. Happiness Advocate. 10. Copy Cruncher. 11. Transportation Captain. 12. Web Kahuna. 13. Marketing Rockstar. 14. Problem Wrangler. 15. Superstar DJ. 16. Digital Dynamo. 17. Designer Extraordinaire. 18. Head Cheese. 19. Plumber Hero. 20. Movie Magic Maker.

What is the wackiest title you’ve seen on a business card?

It’s painful watching Denver’s hometown airline churn through one restructuring and cutback after the next. I talk about with Matt Flener of Denver’s NBC affiliate, 9News.  Click here if video above doesn’t load.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff is balking at approving a settlement between Citigroup and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Citigroup wants to settle fraud charges related to mortgage securities it sold, and it wants to do it without admitting nor denying guilt.

This is standard operating procedure for the SEC, but Rakoff has paused to consider the obvious. If a massive fraud has been committed, as the SEC alleges, shouldn’t someone have to admit it? He’s asked the SEC if maybe it doesn’t have some sort of obligation to establish the truth.

The judge has a point. If companies can keep settling without admitting nor denying guilt, how to we stop corporate fraud?

Click here to read my column in the Sunday Wall Street Journal. And click here to read a column I wrote last year on a former federal prosecutor who thinks mortgage fraud ought to be prosecuted. Imagine that. Prosecuting fraud.

Ron Paul constantly complains that the dollar is losing its value, but apparently not as an advertising platform.

His supporters have been stamping his name on bills since at least 2008.

Isn’t it illegal to advertise on dollar? Yes.

Is anybody going to do anything about it? Probably not.

Click here to read my column on MarketWatch.

Celebrity chef Mario Batali has apologized for comparing bankers to Stalin and Hitler.

It’s never a good idea to compare anyone to Stalin or Hitler, who occupy a class of evil unto themselves. If you’re doing it at an Occupy rally, you’ll lose credibility. And if you’re doing it while you’re running places where the well-healed eat their power lunches, you’ll lose customers.

Calls for boycotts reverberated over Bloomberg news terminals, the news service reports. Click here to read the details from Bloomberg.

“It was never my intention to equate our banking industry with Hitler and Stalin, two of the most evil, brutal dictators in modern history,” Batali said in an apology released through a spokeswoman.

Perhaps potential boycotters will now reconsider. At least this chef  is willing to eat his own cooking.

For-profit prisons run on a per diem rate – the  more people they keep locked away on a given day, the more money they make.

It’s little wonder, then, that the industry lobbies lawmakers to be tough on crime. But in Pennsylvania, owners of a private juvenile detention center paid kickbacks to judges  to put more kids in jail.

The industry, to say the least, is saddled with a gruesome set of economic incentives.

Click here to read my column about it on MarketWatch.

And click here to read a new report from the American Civil Liberties Union called “Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration.”

Another multibillion-dollar investment firm blows up. Hundreds of millions of dollars are missing. Regulators asleep at the wheel. Some overpaid CEO making reckless bets with other peoples money …

It sounds like the banking industry during the Bush era, but no, the game goes on under President Obama.

Click here to read my column on Jon Corzine’s MF Global debacle in The Sunday Wall Street Journal.

Click here to read my column on the archives at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co on MarketWatch.com. And click here if the if the slide show doesn’t appear above.

If the Occupy Wall Street protest holds on to Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park through the winter, it’s going to be because of people like Lauren DiGioia.

I met DiGioia, 26, around midnight in a nor’easter as she took  care of protesters around her.

She’d had a long day dealing with everything from wet bedding to hypothermia, but she was still serving hot chocolate with a smile on her face, even as others left the protest for the night.

DiGioia says the trying life of protesting in the park is better than the life she lived before. She joined the protest about a week after it began on Sept.17 and hasn’t looked back. Click here to read my column on MarketWatch.