Liviu Librescu,76, Professor, Engineering Science & Mechanics, and Holocaust survivor. Killed while holding off the gunman so his students could escape out the window.

 

Librescu was among the thirty-three people killed in the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, . He was killed during a class in the Norris Hall Engineering Building by a student (Cho Seung-hui, 23). He was 76 years old. Librescu held the door of his classroom shut while Cho was attempting to enter it. He was shot through the door but was able to prevent the gunman from entering the classroom until his students had escaped through the windows.

 

 

嗯。近几年来CEO的日子也不好过。从平均超过10年的任期缩减到4年。所谓Corporate Governance永远是在效率和权力限制间的tradeoff，和政体差不多。不过CG要灵活的多，但问题就是who set the rules？

提到最近推动CEO turnover的一大部分来自Hedge fund和institutional investors，可以考虑一下。

 

The Un-Imperial CEO
September 16, 2006; Page A8

The notion that the top job at big American companies is a sinecure has sustained a series of body blows in recent weeks. Bristol-Myers CEO Peter Dolan was shown the door on Tuesday. He joins William Clay Ford, who effectively fired himself at the company that bears his family's name, and Viacom's Tom Freston, pink-slipped by his chairman, in the ranks of now-former CEOs. Also this week, Hewlett-Packard's chairman of the board, Patricia Dunn, was shunted aside in the wake of that company's corporate-snooping imbroglio.

So it goes in the ranks of the Fortune 100. But the recent turmoil at the top of some of America's corporate powerhouses is as notable for the variety of ways it came about as for the number of chieftains ousted.

 
Why Corporate Boardrooms Are in TurmoilIt wasn't long ago that the scolds among our self-appointed corporate watchdogs were saying that CEOs were too imperial, "owning" their boards of directors and dictating their own "excessive" salaries without oversight or accountability for underperformance. These days, if anything, the opposite seems to be true. Perform or die.

Some of the shift in sentiment is blowback from the 1990s. It's certainly the case that CEOs will get more latitude when stocks are going consistently up and shareholders are kept happy. In a market that has largely drifted sideways for years now, hedge funds and other institutional investors have pursued above-market returns in part by pressuring companies to revamp -- often starting at the top.

In the wake of WorldCom's bankruptcy, corporate boards have also gotten more assertive. "What's my liability?" is the first question many potential directors now ask. And if they do take the job, they don't want to be accused, as WorldCom's board members were, of being asleep at the switch.

Much of this is to the good, even if the picture of the CEO as an overpaid and unaccountable corporate titan was always more political mythology than practical reality. As these columns have noted, CEO turnover has climbed sharply in recent years. According to Booz Allen Hamilton, today's CEO is less likely to retire in office than he is to leave early or be forced out. CEOs used to serve for an average of about a decade; today the average CEO lasts only about four years.

None of which is to suggest that it's time to hold a pity party for chief executive officers. Yes, they are well compensated. They get to sit in the corner office and even those who are forced out early often deplane with the proverbial golden parachute. But they have not yet found a way to gerrymander themselves into the sort of job security enjoyed by 90% of our elected representatives in Washington.

What's more, all this has been demonstrated several times in recent weeks under a variety of corporate-governance arrangements. Mr. Ford was not only chairman of the board as well as CEO, but he is an heir to Ford's founding family. This did not prevent him from stepping aside and appointing an outsider to succeed himself as CEO. Bristol-Myers's Mr. Dolan was ousted at the behest of an outside overseer appointed pursuant to a deferred prosecution agreement between the company and prosecutors. Mr. Freston was relieved of his duties at Viacom by a chairman that some consider to be imperious in his own right, Sumner Redstone. And at Hewlett-Packard, the board removed Ms. Dunn, a nonexecutive chairman, and replaced her with the CEO, Mark Hurd.

H-P has weathered some criticism for this "step backward" in corporate governance. But given the evident dysfunctionality of H-P's board prior to Mr. Hurd's appointment, it could hardly be claimed that the earlier situation in which the chairman and CEO positions were split represented some kind of corporate-governance nirvana.

There are plenty of cases in which separating the CEO and chairman jobs both works and makes good sense. But this is not to say that it is invariably a superior arrangement or a panacea for whatever one may think ails corporate America. Each of the companies that has found its way into the news over turmoil at the top had made its own arrangements. Several have since changed those arrangements, searching for an allocation of responsibilities that works better for them. It is this diversity and experimentation that over the long run gives American businesses the flexibility to become world-beaters.

看到某同学的nick里写着“新华社下令，禁止路透、道琼斯和彭博等向中国的银行和金融机构直接出售新闻信息”，心想真搞笑。然后在WSJ看到了评论：原来是真的……无语……

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Old China News Agency
September 12, 2006; Page A20

China's state-run news agency, Xinhua, literally means "New China." How ironic, given its very old business tactics.

Xinhua has released a sweeping update to a 1996 law on foreign news agencies that smacks of expropriation and may violate China's World Trade Organization commitments. The document asserts the Chinese government's right to broadly censor foreign news companies' content over a range of sensitive subjects, including "sovereignty" (read: Taiwan), "religion" (Falun Gong), or China's "interests" (Iran, Burma, Sudan). Article 12 of the new regulations gives Xinhua "the right to select the news and information released by foreign news agencies" and to "delete" offending material.

We doubt they'll succeed. No self-respecting foreign news agency will allow the Chinese government to read an article before it's published on the mainland. For financial newswires that provide real-time pricing and market information -- such as the one owned by this newspaper's parent company, Dow Jones -- censorship would be literally impossible. Chinese banks, brokers, insurers and traders -- the bulk of which get their information from foreign news companies -- also won't appreciate seeing markets move against them because they received their information late.

The real story here, then, may be Xinhua's ambitions. According to Sunday's document, "foreign news agencies" will no longer have the right to sell news directly to their customers. They'll have to ply their wares through a Chinese "agent," which presumably will require a few yuan for its trouble. The Journal reported yesterday that this "agent" will be the China Economic Information Service, which, no surprise, is appointed by Xinhua.

As recently as 1996, Xinhua tried unsuccessfully to push through censorship rules on foreign news organizations. It also tried to bar government institutions from buying news products directly from foreigners, and to fix subscription prices. After a pitched battle, Dow Jones, Reuters and other news organizations agreed to register with Xinhua on an annual basis. But they refused to submit to censorship, price setting, or government middlemen who'd take a cut of their profits.

From a business standpoint, Xinhua may now feel that it has no other option than to assert monopoly control. In the decade since the prior rules were promulgated, domestic news organizations have proliferated. Media Partners Asia Ltd. in Hong Kong estimates there are some 3,000 registered newspaper titles, and more than 9,000 magazines, not to mention proliferating blogs. In the most profitable and fast-growing segments, such as financial newswires, Xinhua has essentially been left in the dust.

But why muscle in now? Perhaps Beijing's political elite feel threatened . Freedom of information is unsettling to any authoritarian state. In recent years Beijing has alternatively creaked opened, then slammed shut, the television industry and lifestyle magazines. In recent months, the Communist government has also floated new rules restricting reporting of natural disasters and riots; increased oversight of local television broadcasters; convicted New York Times news assistant Zhao Yan and Singapore's Straits Times reporter Ching Cheong, and so on.

Xinhua is the Communist Party's mouthpiece, a symbol of what China really is. The reformers among Beijing's elites need to explain to their colleagues that returning to old habits of censorship won't protect their future.

 

是说insider trading的。通常sell要比buy多很多，“Thomson considers any sales-to-purchase ratio under 20 to be a bullish indicator”，Thomson Financial是个很著名的金融数据公司。

而且sell的原因也不一定是对于公司前景不看好，很多是出于分散化的考虑（diversify），“Brokers typically advise executives with a lot of wealth tied up in company stock to diversify by selling some at regular intervals, and such sale programs are automated, with no further input from the executive.”

市场也通常认为buy比sell要convey more information，“"When we evaluate a stock that we might trade, insider activity gets a weighting of about 15% in our criteria," Mr. Prokupek explains. "Obviously, the buys tell you more than the sells, so we especially keep an eye out for those."”（is it a research question?)

里边还给出了不少数据，可以有个概念。有兴趣的看看
 
Buy Signs From the Top Ranks

Executive Purchases at Large-Cap Companies Suggest a Bullish Bent
By PETER A. MCKAY
September 11, 2006; Page C1

The phrase "insider trading" usually conjures up negative images among everyday investors -- visions of Gordon Gekko-types using illicit gossip to cash in.

But most insider activity is entirely legal: Executives regularly buy and sell shares of the companies that employ them, and in doing so can give smart investors clues to figure out where stocks may be headed.

The latest evidence -- culled from Securities and Exchange Commission filings, where insiders must report such trades -- has both bullish and bearish streaks, but it's mostly positive.

On the one hand, August sales were up sharply, nearly tripling to $3.76 billion. That may sound like a screaming "sell" signal, but the data need a bit of context. The majority of insider transactions tend to be sales, which often don't reflect executives' views of their stocks. Brokers typically advise executives with a lot of wealth tied up in company stock to diversify by selling some at regular intervals, and such sale programs are automated, with no further input from the executive.

 
Journal reporter Peter A. McKay talks about the recent rise of insider selling and what that means for the stock market.Moreover, insider purchases also have gone up in recent months, especially at large, household-name companies. That historically has been an upbeat sign, because executives who put up their own money to buy their companies' shares are among the most well-informed people regarding those businesses' prospects. According to the research firm Thomson Financial, insider purchases more than doubled marketwide last month to $329 million.

Together, the activity makes for a ratio of sales to purchases of 11.4, meaning there was $11.40 in stock sold for every $1 of stock bought by insiders. While that's a lot more selling than buying, Thomson views the latest data optimistically, highlighting the buying. Given that sales always far exceed buys, Thomson considers any sales-to-purchase ratio under 20 to be a bullish indicator. The ratio, which Thomson calculates to reflect any taxes and costs related to options exercises, has been under 20 for the past two months.

"Insiders are saying, 'Yeah, this is a good time to get in and increase ownership exposure,'" says Mark LoPresti, a Thomson vice president and senior analyst.

Other analysts second that sentiment, pointing out that, at a time when the market is beset by skittishness over the economy's health and the future of interest rates, the fact that some corporate insiders want to have more of their wealth tied up in their companies' stocks is a good thing.

Mr. LoPresti notes that the sell/buy ratio for large-cap stocks was 10.77 in August, indicating the least amount of selling activity in that sector of the market since early 2002, when Thomson began tracking such measures. "You like to see the large caps leading the way because they're widely held," he says.

Purchases also can be sparked by factors other than sheer sentiment, especially the vesting dates of options that are part of executive-compensation packages. And, even in cases in which an insider simply elects to buy stock on the open market, there's always a possibility he or she may get burned, just like any other investor.

And not every sector of the market is as appreciated by insiders: Mid-cap stocks -- those with stock-market values between $724 million and $2.6 billion, according to Thomson's parameters -- posted a sell/buy ratio of 31.26 in August. And small-cap stocks were essentially sending a neutral signal, at 21.48, according to Thomson.

That less-sanguine snapshot was also an accurate reflection of the broad stock market last week, when investors were hardly in an upbeat mood. The Dow Jones Industrial Average for the week shed 72.04 points, or 0.6%, to end at 11392.11, up 6.3% on the year. The Standard & Poor's 500-stock index fell 0.9%, or 12.09 points, to 1298.92, up 4.1% on the year. The Nasdaq Composite Index fell 1.2%, or 27.37, to 2165.79 for the week, off 1.8% on the year.

Some investors have been using insider-trading data to hunt for bargains amid the market's recent sluggishness.

David P. Prokupek, chief executive of Geronimo Partners in Denver, says his asset-management firm recently began buying shares in Dell partly because the computer-hardware company's founder, Michael Dell, bought about $70 million in stock in late May.

"When we evaluate a stock that we might trade, insider activity gets a weighting of about 15% in our criteria," Mr. Prokupek explains. "Obviously, the buys tell you more than the sells, so we especially keep an eye out for those."

Tobias Levkovich, chief U.S. equity strategist with Citigroup, says he gives more credence to insider transactions in certain industries than others. For instance, he finds financial-services companies' transactions tend to be a telling indicator, as their executives tend to be especially savvy investors.

"The insider activity is far from a perfect indicator in most sectors," he says. "It's not always safe, for instance, to assume that management knows where the business is headed, because there may be some factor outside their control that affects the company."

In its most recent weekly rundown of insider activity, Vickers Stock Research Corp. listed Sovereign Bancorp, online brokerage TD Ameritrade Holding, and software firm Avid Technology as having the most upbeat insider-trading patterns.

By contrast, search engine Google, online data-management firm Salesforce.com, and manufacturing-technology firm MKS Instruments have seen disproportionate insider selling, suggesting potential downturns in those shares, according to Vickers.
 

 

昨天看到的专栏。很有意思。比较了04年和00年的税收分布情况；也就是在Bush时期和Clinton时期（泡沫破灭前），不同收入阶层对于税收的贡献。结果还是有点让人惊讶的。在Bush时期，反倒是富人对于税收的贡献更多些。

对于没有概念的人，稍微解释一下，为什么我说这个结果比较counter intuitive。Bush是坚持减税政策的；而对于一般累进税来讲，减税主要受益者是富人；换句话说，穷人可能也没什么税可减。Bush推行的降低投资所得税更是如此：穷人很难有钱去投资。但实际结果却是富人对于税收贡献的比例增加。

其实换个方式也不难理解。就像供求一样。降低了价格，需求增加了，可能反而总的利润更高。也就是有一个optimal point。那么对于税率的降低，可能促使富人更倾向于realize他们的investment gain，从而增加了税收。

作者还提到了另一种可能，也就是在Bush时期，富人们的收入比Clinton时期相对于穷人更多了。不过在收入比较来看，貌似不是这样。

 

Incomes and Politics
September 2, 2006; Page A8

One sure sign that the economy is doing well is when the left revives that old political warhorse, inequality. With GDP growth of nearly 4% for three years running and a jobless rate of 4.7%, it's their last economic resort in an election year. But when you look at the actual evidence, the inequality campaign also proves to be trumped up.

The Treasury Department will soon release the latest IRS data on who paid how much in taxes in America through 2004. We've had an early look at the numbers, and anyone who reads the front pages of our leading dailies may be surprised to learn that the Bush years compare very well by tax and income equality to the sainted Clinton era.

 
First, the new data show that the bottom 50% of Americans in income -- U.S. households with an income below the median of $44,389 -- paid a smaller share of total income taxes in 2004 (3.3%) than in Bill Clinton's last year in office (3.9%). That 3.3% is the lowest share of total income taxes paid by the bottom half of earners in at least 30 years, and probably ever. The majority of American families with an income below $40,000 pay no income tax at all today, and many of them also get a welfare subsidy from the Earned Income Tax Credit that effectively offsets much of what they pay in payroll taxes.

By contrast, Americans with an income in the top 1% paid 36.9% of all federal income taxes in 2004, down slightly from 37.4% at what was the height of the dot-com boom in 2000. But the top 5% and 10% of earners saw an increase in their tax share over that same period, with the top 5%'s share rising to 57.1% in 2004 from 56.5% in 2000. If this isn't the definition of a highly "progressive," aka redistributionist, tax code, we don't know what is.

 HOT TOPIC

 
A Report Card for American WorkersEspecially instructive is what has happened to tax shares since the tax rate on capital gains and dividends was cut to 15% in 2003. These investment tax cuts have corresponded with a huge spike in tax payments by the affluent. Between 2002 and 2004, the income tax share of the top 0.1% of earners rose to 17.4% from 15.4%. A reasonable conclusion is that much of this increase reflects tax payments on capital gains and dividends -- which have soared by an astounding 79% and 35%, respectively, since the rate cuts.

Democrats and their media pals dismiss all this by saying that the richest are paying more taxes because they're making out like bandits in the Bush years. Former Clinton economic adviser Gene Sperling grouses that the 1990s were "an era of shared prosperity," but that the Bush policies have produced "a disappointing decade on inequality."

The new IRS report contradicts that fairy tale too. Let's use the left's own definition of fairness and examine the actual new IRS evidence (see chart). During the Clinton Presidency, the share of total income earned by the richest 1% increased to a post-World War II high of 20.8% in 2000, from 13.8% in 1993. By contrast, in the first four years of the Bush Presidency, the income share of the top 1% fell slightly to 19.0% from 20.8%.

The decline in the share of total income earned was even more pronounced when we look at the income shares of the top 0.1%; they earned a greater share (18.9%) of total income by the end of the Clinton era than they did in 2004 (17.4%). Some of this can be explained by the 2001 recession and subsequent strong economic expansion. The rich got socked hardest when the stock market plunged, though the dramatic income and wealth gains in the last three years are again raising income shares of the middle and upper income groups. The income share earned by the rich was still lower in 2004 than during Mr. Sperling's decade of allegedly "shared prosperity."

Some of our readers may not recall all of the front-page articles and editorials assailing the inequality in the 1990s. That's because there weren't many in contrast to the current spate, as the Media Research Center has documented. The inequality theme somehow only emerges when Republicans are in power, and this or that statistic can be trotted out to play to the stereotype that the GOP cares only about the rich, or Halliburton.

The truth is that there has been a modest widening of the income gap in recent decades, regardless of which party is in power. That gap seems due largely to growing returns on education and skills in the global economy. Americans without a high-school diploma are losing ground against those who have college degrees. But this argues not for higher taxes on the rich, who already pay the vast bulk of U.S. taxes. It argues for reforming K-12 education so even the weakest and poorest students can compete against the world.

In any event, it's a mistake to put much stock in these class-envy statistics on income shares, gini quotients, and wealth gaps that Washington and the media like to stress. There's nothing that policy makers can do about them in the short run, and a preoccupation with inequality will do actual harm if it leads to policies such as higher tax rates that reduce economic growth. We'd suggest readers ignore the inequality fad that is intended for election-year consumption and keep their eyes on what really matters -- the policies that promote growth and prosperity for all Americans.