Apt. 11D

How Does She Do It?

Sunday's New York Times Business Section often profiles a CEO of a Fortune 500. I always look forward to these profiles, because I'm curious what makes such driven individuals tick. What are their unique personality traits or talents that propelled them to the top of the business world? Do they have a unique vision for the business world? Did they see opportunities that everyone else missed? 

 This Sunday, the New York Times focused on Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook. With Facebook's recent IPO offering, a profile on Sandberg was an obvious choice.

Nearly the entire article was devoted to the subject of how she combines her role as a mom with her career. Work-family balance is an important topic. As a mom, I have struggled with combining a career with my family's needs. However, the New York Times seems obsessed with this topic when it comes to women CEOs. They never ask a male CEO how he balances work-family, just the women. Don't men have kids, too? 

I guess I'm not the only one who was annoyed by this column. Rebecca Rosen is annoyed that the New York Times credits Sandberg's success with good "luck," rather than hard work. Penelope Trunk says that the New York Times failed to give the complete picture of what child-care looks like in a family with two hard driven inviduals who work in the tech industry. Multiple nannies are required to watch the kids. She says that you can't run a startup and expect to see your kids. She doesn't think that most women would be willing to make that trade off. Others, like Jezebel, are annoyed that Sandberg blames the victim, women, for lack of ambition for their lack of corporate accomplishments. Katy Waldman says that women do need to fight to get to the top and defends Sandberg. 

Sandberg made it to the top, not only because of luck and ambition, but because she played by rules. She didn't take off time to watch the kids when they were young. She didn't take lower positions or refuse to travel for business. She played by the rules. The trouble is that the rules don't work for most families. I would rather see a focus on leaders, both male and female, who made it to the top and did NOT play by the rules.  Because the rules suck. 

 

Other links: Sheryl Sandberg's TED speech. 

Mapping Income Inequality

A new study finds a decrease in the number of middle class neighborhoods, as people sort out into high-income or poor neighborhoods. 

From the New York Times:

 The study also found that there is more residential sorting by income, with the rich flocking together in new exurbs and gentrifying pockets where lower- and middle-income families cannot afford to live.

Constraints on State Colleges

We've been pickering for six days about college education, which is about three days longer than the rest of the blogosphere. Not that I'm keeping track or anything. 

After all that bickering, no one has convinced me why I would send my kid to a private college for $30-55K, instead of a state college of equal educational quality for $10-15K. Especially when that difference in price means a life time of college debt. 

The trouble is that state colleges may not be able to maintain their quality or their low price tag. 

Peter Orzag writes that under pressure from failing state governments, state colleges are not keeping up private colleges on a number of measures. With the effects of globalization and a poor labor market, we need quality college graduates more than ever.

His suggestions are interesting: 

One place to start would be to focus on raising productivity in public higher education, so that we could do a better job of delivering quality with constrained budgets. Would we be better off if research dollars were even more concentrated in fewer institutions, and a larger share of faculty specialized in teaching (which is often given short shrift at research universities)? Can more businesses partner with public colleges to create curriculums to teach specific job skills? Can remote learning and online coursework, especially for remedial subjects, finally realize their potential?

Links on the Jobs, College Debt, and Inequality

Well, we had a good ol' chat about student loan debt over the weekend. You all can keep talking about it. I'm leaving the thread open. Here are some links to recent relevant articles and reports:

Income inequality between age groups increased in the past year. Experts point to the declining value of homes and the rise in college debt. 

The typical U.S. household headed by a person age 65 or older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35, according to an analysis of census data released Monday.

While people typically accumulate assets as they age, this wealth gap is now more than double what it was in 2005 and nearly five times the 10-to-1 disparity a quarter-century ago, after adjusting for inflation.

Obama is doing what he should have done several years ago. Instead of giving the states a blank check and then letting them use the stimulus money to fill in the gaps in the budget. He wants to create jobs by fixing the aging infrastructure. We need WPA programs, not state budget fillers! Now, if he can only get this plan through Congress. 

In order to save money, state and local governments are filling jobs with contract workers, instead of full time workers. 

My Bottom Line

Now that we have avoided sure and near-term economic disaster by not extending the debt ceiling, pundits are pondering whether or not the deal that was passed was fair. Did it cut spending enough/just right/too much? Are we heading to another crisis by not stimulating the economy/spending too much/not raising revenue enough? Does this deal help/hurt/none of the above Obama in the next election? 

I'm reading all the links in my RSS feed and none of it sticks with me like the conversation that I had with the secretary at the moving company. 

I'm preparing for a big move at the end of the month. As I drive around doing errands, Ian tags along with his drawing book, pencil, and pencil sharpener. Yesterday, we went to the Barnes and Noble on Route 17 to sell old books. Today, I took him up to Mahwah to drop off a deposit check with the moving company. Because Ian is so sweetly quirky (and has red hair), I get into lots of conservations with strangers. After I explain why Ian is so quirky, people tell me their stories. People can be extremely nice, if you lower your guard first. 

When we were at the moving company, I marveled at their calendar on a huge dry erase board, which was packed with moves. I asked the secretary, if it was always that busy. She said no. I asked these were mostly local moves or were people going long distance. She said that some of the moves were local, but mostly people were getting out of the area. They were going to North Carolina or Pennsylvania, where the homes were cheaper and the taxes were lower. 

She said that she and her husband don't make that much money and can't afford a home, so they live in a trailer park a few miles away. They would like to move, but they are afraid that they won't find work elsewhere. 

Trapped in a trailer park. 

I'm not sure what the answers are, but I have A LOT of sympathy for this woman. This woman is my bottom line and is always my bottom line. Show me how to make this woman's life better, and you have my vote and my allegiance. 

Holding Hostages

It looks like that we're going to have a debt ceiling agreement soon. But what a bad deal. And the road that we took to make this deal is full of ashes and dead bodies. 

I'm horrified that our country was taken hostage  in order to make political points. That's what just happened. 

Paul Krugman writes,

For the deal itself, given the available information, is a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status.

On Friday night, my babysitter didn't leave when we got home. Instead, she stayed in my kitchen and vented for an hour. She and her boyfriend can't get married, because, four years after getting his college degree, he still can't find a job. He's caddying at the local golf course. She's a classroom aide and never expected that she would have to support a family. They are selling their gold at Sell Your Gold parties. Perhaps they are clinging too long to a traditional suburban family arrangement that no longer exists. 

Where can he find a job, she begged. I told her that he should get a nursing degree. 

The economy is in the pooper and this deal isn't going to help the unemployed 2o-somethings. 

But that bothers me less than the ruthless and cynical politics that happened this week. More Krugman,

In the long run, however, Democrats won’t be the only losers. What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question. After all, how can American democracy work if whichever party is most prepared to be ruthless, to threaten the nation’s economic security, gets to dictate policy? And the answer is, maybe it can’t.

Bloggers are hating this Krugman column, because he blames Obama for this crappy deal. I'm not sure that Obama did badly here. He was dealing with political psychopaths who don't give a crap about the political costs of shutting down government. There's little room for negotiation when you're dealing with insanity. 

Debt Ceilings and Financial Basements

Last night, as I watched Obama and Boehner address the nation about their inability to reach a compromise about the debt ceiling, Steve wandered into the room and calmly stated that he plans on cashing out of the stock market on Wednesday. My husband, who is always a glass half empty sort of guy, is ready to retire to a family compound in Montana with a carload of beans and guns. I think they're going to have to come up with some sort of compromise in the next eight days, but they are going to wait for the clock to run out until the last minute. 

The New York Times' chart comparing spending during the Bush and Obama administration was flying around on Twitter last night. It's a nice one. 

  

A stand-off between Republicans and Democrats is nothing new, but what's interesting/disturbing about this fight is the influence of the Tea Party on the Republican Party. I think lots of us have been waiting for the emptiness of the Tea Party Republicans to become obvious and for politics to return to normal. It hasn't happened yet. 

It's forcing even optimists like myself to consider the outcome of doomsday events. It is beans and gun time? 

Reactions from the RSS feed: 

John Quiggan, Crooked Timber "One thing the Tea Party has shown is that, in the current dire state of the US, there are few penalties for abandoning moderation. What the US needs at this point is someone willing to advocate a return to the economic institutions that made America great – 90 per cent top marginal tax rates, strong trade unions, weak banks and imprisonment for malefactors of great wealth."

Andrew Ross Sorkin, Deal Book "While the sky indeed may fall if the sides cannot compromise, the fact that the market has been calm has served only to deepen the resistance to a deal. People who perhaps should be worried don’t seem to be, and worse, appear to have stopped listening to the warnings."

Megan McArdle "These guys are out of ammunition.  They don't even have any good arguments left to fire at each other.  Which I think means we're hosed."

Dan Drezner "After last night's stunningly useless set of speeches, I'd put the odds of the U.S. not raising the debt ceiling by August 2nd at 1 in 2."

Nate Silver "To get something that is mutually agreeable to at least some members of Republican Study Committee and the Congressional Progressive Caucus is going to be extremely difficult."

Lead in China

A couple of months ago, Steve showed up at the Good Will on Route 17 with a car load of crap. They said they would happily take the clothes and cookware, but they wouldn't take our old toys, because they didn't want to deal with the lead paint from China.

China's lead problem is bigger than the paint on a Thomas the Tank Engine toy. 

A heart-breaking article in the New York Times reported that "one-third of Chinese children suffer from elevated blood lead levels." The article pointed to battery factories and metal smelters as the biggest offenders. 

How many of those products are ending up on the shelves in Target? 

The Downward Slope of Housing Prices

In an article that I could have written myself (or maybe I already did in a blog post), the New York Times reports that housing prices continue to drop, and the percentage of home ownership falls to its lowest level since 1998. 

The Northeast, particularly the suburbs around NYC, did not experienced the same housing crisis as the rest of the country. Until this spring. Suddenly, we're seeing late 90's housing prices.

The inventory is weird, too. Some towns have too much; other towns have only problematic homes. People are putting off retiring to Florida for a year or two with the hopes that prices will bounce back. My guess is that they won't bounce back next year, and we're going to see a glut of houses on the market next year, which will bring down prices even more. 

According to the NYT, people are renting rather than getting into the real estate mess. I understand that everyone is scarred from the real estate bust -- I know I am -- but bargains are out there. I've got my eye on one Victorian that has already dropped $160,000 in a very fancy town. Too bad that we have to sell our place first. However, we might be able to afford a weekend place in upstate New York, even if we don't move. 

St. Joseph, Do Your Thing!

Since we haven't gotten an offer on our house yet, my mom brought me a little Catholic voodoo.