Sunday, January 24, 2010

Healthy work environments

Game studios seem to be particularly susceptible to this problem, but I would imagine that there are some firms in every field that habitually abuse their employees. Probably best not to work for such a company.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Federal Reserve pump and hold

"The Working Group on Financial Markets, also know as the Plunge Protection Team, was created by Ronald Reagan to prevent a repeat of the Wall Street meltdown of October 1987. Its members include the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Chairman of the SEC and the Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Recently, (2007) the team has been put on high alert because of increased market volatility and, what Hank Paulson calls, the systemic risk posed by hedge funds and derivatives....

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the UK Telegraph notes, "Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson has called for the PPT to meet with greater frequency and set up a command centre at the US Treasury that will track global markets and serve as an operations base in the next crisis. The top brass will meet every six weeks, combining the heads of Treasury, Federal Reserve, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and key exchanges."

This suggests that the PPT could, in fact, be the driving-force behind the ongoing stock market rally.