On a money mission
With the prospects of a double-dip recession in the air, money is the story if you don’t have any. In any case, now’s the time to stay abreast of the market.
Forbes has some great investment advice under the title “The 10 Steps to Make Your Kid a Millionaire,” a newsstand grabber if ever there was one. The mag weighs in on any number of topics, from investing in chip stocks, rather than tech stocks, and how to appeal a housing tax bill: find out what your neighbors are paying, the mag advises. We also liked a piece on all the treasures that could be hiding in the attic. We were particularly entertained by Forbes’ media writer, Jeff Bercovici, who has some choice words for AOL and Arianna Huffington in a feature that takes apart their months-old business marriage of convenience.
Fortune has a “Reinvent Your Career” cover story. Unfortunately, the magazine’s reinvention over the last few years has made it a shadow of its former self, and this issue is no exception. There are profiles of billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn and Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha, who are interesting subjects. But they both respond to written questions in question and answer features. How un-insightful!
Bloomberg Market‘s July issue offers the fascinating tale of former McKinsey chief Rajat Gupta’s fall from grace. The article covers Gupta’s life, starting from his childhood in India to his education at Harvard to this year, when the Securities and Exchange Commission sued him, charging he shared illegal tips with Raj Rajaratnam. The mag says Gupta, a former high-flier in the corporate world, including a seat on the board of gold-plated Goldman Sachs, was dipping his toes in risky waters even before allegedly passing illegal tips to Rajaratnam. Gupta was breaking serious ethical rules at McKinsey, for example, by starting his own consulting firm on the sly, Bloomberg said. Gupta, who seemingly had it all, started playing with fire due to his wish to jump from the millionaires’ club to the billionaires’ club.
Mob tip No. 1: “No self-respecting gangster ever wears his seat belt,” according to “Mob Rules” author Louis Ferrante, featured in Bloomberg Businessweek. The issue touches on everything from the Euro debt crisis to fixing the US economy. Don’t miss the piece on how Disney “brainwashes” a new generation of loyal followers with English-language private schools in China. The latest economic indicator is pegged to the washed-up ’70s band Styx, which is no longer in demand at corporate events as it had been during the recession. Businesses are booking higher-end talent again. Acts like Lady Gaga, whose business manager, tech finance whiz Matthew Michelsen, also is highlighted in the magazine.
In an interview with the New Yorker, Wall Street prosecutor Preet Bharara brushes off critics who say he fiddled with Raj Rajaratnam’s insider-trading case while ignoring the bigger scandals that caused the financial crisis, namely the mortgage mess. “Do we look like we’re afraid to prosecute anyone?” says Bharara. Whether yes or no, US Attorney General Eric Holder and his boss, Barack Obama, haven’t done much to pursue big Wall Street villains, the mag says. That includes reversing moves by the Bush administration to isolate Bharara’s Southern District of New York — the best-equipped to prosecute accounting fraud — from major investigations.
New York goes in-depth on the Feds’ controversial move to “cull” Canadian geese from the city’s parks to prevent another airplane crisis that needs a hero like Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger. In the now-infamous Prospect Park Lake incident last summer, Feds in kayaks rounded geese onshore, separated the adults from the goslings, and “euthanized” 368 of them with carbon dioxide gas at an off-site facility. “I’ve been called lots of names,” says Federal wildlife biologist Lee Humberg, who last year supervised the removal of 1,676 geese from the Big Apple. “All we can do is keep working.”
Time‘s Joe Klein does a pretty good job hashing through the GOP’s list of presidential hopefuls, which pits “real candidates vs. marketing geniuses” and “establishment Republicans vs. pitchfork populists.” A bit more engaging, though, was a piece on the trial of Casey Anthony who, accused of murdering her 2-year-old daughter, is descended from a long line of Mothers From Hell. Among them are Australia’s Katherine Knight, who stabbed her lover to death then tried to feed his remains to his son and daughter. In January, Julie Schenecker of Tampa, Fla., shot her two teenage sons, explaining that they had been “mouthy and disrespectful.”
Newsweek puts Bill Clinton on its cover, smiling big with his gin blossom protruding towards the reader, offering “14 ways to save America’s jobs.” While not everybody’s idea of summer reading, a lot of these ideas are worth thinking about — for example, the energy-saving makeover the Empire State Building recently got, which will cut its annual electricity bill by 38 percent, covering the cost of the retrofits in less than five years. Elsewhere, the mag is light on Anthony Weiner coverage, which amounts mostly to an assessment of his wife’s fashion choices during the crisis, which exuded “control and calm amid chaos.”