Why Is It So Hard to Hire Great People?

From The Atlantic: This week, Google admitted that its infamous brainteasers -- e.g.: "How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?" -- are awful at predicting who will be a good employee.

Your reaction might be: um, FINALLY. And, sure, thinking about windows-per-housing-unit isn't the most direct way to assess engineering skill or creativity. But Google's flawed strategy was the answer to another brainteaser: What's the best way to hire great employees, anyway? People are complicated, organizations are complicated, matching people and organizations is complicated, and it's extremely difficult to predict who will be brilliant and who will be a bust.

"Years ago, we did a study to determine whether anyone at Google is particularly good at hiring," Laszlo Bock, Google's senior vice president for people operations, told LinkedIn. "We looked at tens of thousands of interviews, and everyone who had done the interviews and what they scored the candidate, and how that person ultimately performed in their job. We found zero relationship. It's a complete random mess...."

Read all about it at http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/why-is-it-so-hard-to-hire-great-people/277122/

Weird’s Deep Thoughts (Weekend Insight Edition): Who’s to Blame for Rising Inequality?

In a recent defense of the 1 percent, Harvard economist Greg Mankiw admitted it might be bad if the rich got richer by sucking cash from the economy without giving any value back. A new study suggests many of the rich -- especially bankers and CEOs -- are doing just that. …” the 1 percent are just richer than you, and getting even richer all the time, because they are better than you, they deserve it and more….”

Josh Bivens and Lawrence Mishel, economists at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank, argue in a study responding to Mankiw that most of the rise in income inequality over the past few decades is due to the soaring pay of CEOs and Wall Street bankers who are milking money from the markets rather than generating much in the way of economic production.

"A substantial part of the extraordinary rise of top 1 percent incomes is not a result of well-functioning markets allocating pay according to value generated, but instead resulted from shifting institutional arrangements leading to shifting of rents to those at the very top," Bivens and Mishel write.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/21/banker-ceo-pay-inequality_n_3478573.html?utm_hp_ref=business

Ex-Enron CEO Jeff Skilling's Sentence Cut

From CNBC:  One of the country's most notorious financial scandals came to a protracted legal conclusion Friday as ex-Enron Corp. CEO Jeffrey Skilling — already in prison for his role in the once-mighty energy giant's collapse — was resentenced to 14 years as part of a court-ordered reduction and a separate agreement with prosecutors.

Skilling's sentence was reduced by 10 years, and his attorneys say it's likely that with time off for good behavior and other factors he will be released in 2017….

For more go to http://www.cnbc.com/id/100830977

The Last Mystery of the Financial Crisis Solved

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi writes: What about the ratings agencies?  That's what "they" always say about the financial crisis and the teeming rat's nest of corruption it left behind. Everybody else got plenty of blame: the greed-fattened banks, the sleeping regulators, the unscrupulous mortgage hucksters like spray-tanned Countrywide ex-CEO Angelo Mozilo.

But what about the ratings agencies? Isn't it true that almost none of the fraud that's swallowed Wall Street in the past decade could have taken place without companies like Moody's and Standard & Poor's rubber-stamping it? Aren't they guilty, too?   Man, are they ever. And a lot more than even the least generous of us suspected.  Thanks to a mountain of evidence gathered for a pair of major lawsuits by the San Diego-based law firm Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, documents that for the most part have never been seen by the general public, we now know that the nation's two top ratings companies, Moody's and S&P, have for many years been shameless tools for the banks, willing to give just about anything a high rating in exchange for cash……

Wait…wait…there’s more at http://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-last-mystery-of-the-financial-crisis-154447818.html

Is the Drop in Financial Markets an Overreaction or an Early Innings of a Sell-off?

From CNBC:  Stunned investors are now wondering whether the markets' big selloff was an overreaction or a sign of more volatility to come.  Global financial markets plunged Thursday after the Federal Reserve roiled Wall Street by saying it could reduce its aggressive economic stimulus program later this year. Concerns about China's economy heightened worries.

The global selling spree began in Asia and quickly spread to Europe and then the U.S., where the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 353 points, wiping out six weeks of gains.  But the damage wasn't just in stocks. Bond prices fell, and the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note rose to 2.42 percent, its highest level since August 2011, although still low by historical standards. Oil and gold also slid….

You've lived it, now read all about it at http://www.cnbc.com/id/100833913

Money Honey: Morgan Stanley to buy final 35% of Smith Barney/ Wealth Mgmt

 According to MarketWatch: Morgan Stanley MS -2.11%  announced on Friday it has received regulatory approval to buy the final part of the Morgan Stanley Smith Barney Holdings LLC from Citigroup Inc. C -2.94%  . The purchase of the final 35% will be completed this month, fulfilling a key strategic priority, said the firm in a statement. Morgan Stanley will notify Citigroup of its intent to buy the remaining share for the established price of $4.7 billion in cash and the closing is expected to be around or on June 28, 2013. The firm will record a negative adjustment to capital of approximately $200 million to reflect the difference between the purchase price and its carrying value, negatively impacting diluted earnings per share in the second quarter. MSSBH will redeem Class A preferred interests owned by Citigroup for $2.03 billion at the time of the transaction. Morgan Stanley shares were up 0.5% in premarket trading.

More?  Check out . http://www.marketwatch.com/story/morgan-stanley-to-buy-final-35-of-smith-barney-2013-06-21-7915621

Gold Now at Levels Worse Than April's Big Selloff

From CNBC:  “….Gold, which has declined more than 30 percent since its peak of around $1900 in 2011, has fallen victim to a heavy bout of selling since April. The benign global inflationary environment has lessened the appeal of the metal as a hedge against rising prices. In addition, prospects for a scaling back of liquidity in the world's largest economy, alongside a stronger U.S. dollar, have also weighed on the precious metal.

“Jim Iuorio, managing director at TJM Institutional Services, says he has seen a shift in sentiment among investors towards gold, which doesn't bode well for prices.

"Something has changed materially in the sentiment in the gold market and that's become evident to me. Even today when the stocks were taking on the chin and people flocked to bonds, they didn't touch gold," said Iuorio…..”

More?  Check out http://www.cnbc.com/id/100833475