November business highlights
— -- Key business events this month:
Nov. 10: Senate Committee on Finance holds hearing at 10 a.m. on "Unemployment Insurance: The Path Back to Work."
Nov. 16: Government reports on consumer price index for October.
Nov. 23: Congressional "supercommittee" is due to report on where to cut at least $1.2 trillion over 10 years from the federal budget.
Nov. 30: Federal Reserve releases its "beige book" survey of U.S. regional economic conditions.
Watch, Listen, Read
Salary Talk
Thursdays, salary.com or iTunes
The folks at Salary.com, the website that lets you plug in a job title and city to find a median salary, recently started a weekly podcast to help listeners boost their careers and their pay.
"The great part for our listeners is that we're … (bringing) in top-notch professionals and expert authors who will tackle topics such as how to get a raise, the best way to handle business presentations, tips to get hired, how to make your résumé stand out, etc.," says host Aaron Gouveia.
Scheduled to join the 25-minute podcast throughout the month:
Thursday: Linda Babcock, author of Women Don't Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation.
Nov. 15: Special Tuesday edition featuring Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs, who will discuss blue-collar jobs and the lack of skilled labor positions.
Nov. 17: Nancy Ancowitz, author of Self-Promotion for Introverts: The Quiet Guide to Getting Ahead.
The Layover
Travel Channel; Nov. 21; 9 p.m. ET/PT
Frequent long-haul business travelers know the feeling well: the sinking realization that, no matter how many times you do the math and factor in time-zone differences, your heartless itinerary really does include a 17-hour layover somewhere nowhere near your origin or destination.
What to do in a strange city when you have time to kill? Have a killer time, according to the tagline of Anthony Bourdain's latest show, The Layover. In the premiere, the salty, magnetic Bourdain strides through Singapore with natives, who give advice on where to eat, tour and nap at the airport and beyond. This being Bourdain, giant Ferris wheels and touristy cocktails are eschewed in favor of fish-head curries and street food, but footage of engaging locals sharing tips about their cities gives the show a bit more balance. One delightful Singaporean beats Bourdain in the sound-bite department when he explains why he wouldn't ride the world's largest Ferris wheel: "I'm scared of heights. And I'm scared of circles."
Pepsi's Challenge
CNBC; Thursday; 9 p.m. ET/PT
An hour isn't much time to devote to a company as sprawling as PepsiCo, but Lester Holt covers a lot of ground — from India to China to the American South — in his new CNBC documentary. Of particular interest: the company's new Global Nutrition division, and Holt's access to fascinating CEO Indra Nooyi, with whom he travels to her native India.
All on the Line
Sundance Channel; Nov. 25; 9:30 p.m. ET/PT
Because fashion sense and business sense don't always go hand-in-hand, many a talented clothing designer hits what this show calls a "roadblock to success." While the creative director of a magazine may seem like an unlikely candidate to save failing businesses on reality television, Joe Zee of Elle is well-suited for the task of giving designers a tough-love career makeover. Besides dispensing advice, Zee hooks the designers up with opportunities such as showings at Badgley Mischka or meetings with buyers. What's refreshing about the show is that a happy ending isn't guaranteed; sometimes the designers whiff.
Zee has his work cut out for him in the second season debut: The designer isn't sure of the selling price of his own pieces and his business is so cash-strapped, his assistants have been working for free.
Consuelo Mack WealthTrack
Public television and wealthtrack.com; Fridays; 7:30 p.m. (check local listings)
Consuelo Mack's in-depth interviews with financial movers and shakers often yield interesting sound bites as well, such as this recent one about how markets are being shaped by policy issues, from Pimco CEO Mohamed El-Erian: "We're now sitting in a back seat of a car that is being driven erratically by policymakers. They're arguing among each other. They're not even looking through the windscreen. They're not telling us where they're going, and somehow we have to stay in that car."
If you can't find the show on your local public-television station, each Friday's episode starts streaming at wealthtrak.com on the following Monday. November's guests:
Friday: David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff
Nov. 18:Tom Gallagher, principal with The Scowcroft Group
Nov. 25: Mark Holowesko, CEO of Holowesko Partners
Check it Out: What's in November business magazines
Bloomberg Markets
Bloomberg Markets profiles William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and second only to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke in wielding power over monetary policy. A former Goldman Sachs chief U.S. economist, Dudley is trying to change the image of the central bank as a closed club that caters to Wall Street, writes Caroline Salas Gage. To so do, he'll need to stare down bankers, who are objecting to efforts by Dudley and his colleagues to tighten regulations.
Harvard Business Review
Marc Goodman, a counterterrorism consultant, believes business can learn from organized crime. Writing in Harvard Business Review, Goodman says international crime groups such as the Russian Business Network, South America's Superzonda and the worldwide ShadowCrew are no collection of brass-knuckle thugs. These global criminals are sophisticated managers of talent and technology, having become adept at expropriating legitimate business tactics. Goodman lists five lessons companies can learn from the activities of such groups.
Smart Money
One name leaps out on Smart Money's list of the top 30 players who will shape your finances in the coming year: singer Lady Gaga.
According to the magazine, the pop superstar is tech savvy, teaming up with Web darling Zynga to offer fans early access to tunes. She's also investing alongside Google Chairman Eric Schmidt and other notables in start-up The Blackplane, which aims to let celebrities harness their fan bases across multiple social-networking sites.
The International Economy
Economist Ronald McKinnon, writing in The International Economy, finds it bewildering that with so much at stake last summer, Democrats and Republicans couldn't agree on deficit reduction.
McKinnon suggests that a look at a famous 19th-century dinner party could provide impetus. The outcome of that dinner was that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison agreed to the federal government's assumption of states' war debts, while Alexander Hamilton agreed to a plan to move the capital from Philadelphia to the banks of the Potomac.
-- By Gary Rawlins
5 questions for Causes.com CEO Joe Green
Q: What is Causes.com?
A: Causes is the largest platform for activism and philanthropy. We make it fun and easy for people to find causes they care about, take action on behalf of those causes and magnify their impact by involving their friends. Since our founding in 2007, Causes has brought together 177 million people in 530,000 cause communities where they have taken over 1 billion actions.
Q: How is Causes linked to Facebook, since you and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, were roommates at Harvard?
A: My background is as a grass-roots organizer, where I learned that activism is fundamentally social. People want to be altruistic with their friends. Before Facebook, the Internet was anonymous; you did not know who anyone was or how they were connected. While Mark Zuckerberg is very supportive of Causes, we are a separate company built on the Facebook platform. We were one of the launch applications on the Facebook platform, and have been one of the most successful over the past four years.
Q: How has social media influenced the non-profit world?
A: Causes is helping existing non-profits better engage their supporters, and helping a whole new breed of organization emerge based on grass-roots support. Social media will lead to full scale transformation of the non-profit industry, from top-down direct marketing to bottom-up grass-roots organizing, and a much more direct connection between people and the impact they are having.
Q: Is Causes.com involved in politics?
A: People use Causes to organize around almost anything, including many political issues. We currently have a ton of growth and activity around the Occupy Wall Street protests. During the 2008 election, we ran a very successful campaign to get people out to vote. People could donate their Facebook "status" to remind their friends to vote, and in four days we had 5 million people signed up to have their statuses all change on the morning of the election reminding friends to get out and vote.
Q: What is the most pressing issue in the tech world now?
A: The current conversation about the economy, which is focused on fiscal issues, is a complete distraction. We should focus on spurring innovation, and that is all about human capital. There is a dearth of talented engineers to hire. Every company, from start-ups to larger companies, faces a shortage of talent. We would gladly pay higher taxes if we had access to more great engineers. In the long term the solution is better education and more people majoring in computer science; shorter term, the fastest solution would be to make it easier for talented immigrants to work at tech companies. This would not take American jobs, as we have hired all the talented American engineers we can find. Making it easier to hire engineers on visa will create American jobs in the service sector to support these additional engineers.