While financial reform is needed, there’s no reason to wait for it. Sarbox is already there. And even if financial reform is enacted without loopholes, there’s no reason to think it will be enforced if laws already on the books, such as Sarbox, aren’t. @Robert Reich Fraud on the Street

The 20th century was a century of the redistribution of wealth; the 21st century will probably be a century of the redistribution of work. @Futurity.org – Will 90 be the new 40?

Taking time out to put your personal finances in gear can reap both immediate and long-term benefits, from cashing gift cards to reallocating investments. This checklist can help you formulate a strategy, providing tips, the time needed to achieve them, and links to additional resources. @31 Steps to a Financial Tuneup – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com

Some people seem to have an affinity for pursuing paths that lead to pain and frustration. It is like they seek out situations that give them the opportunity to feel wronged. Does this self-defeating behavior have a psychological payoff? Perpetually being a victim may give a person a way to consistently feel morally superior to the institutions, people or situations that they feel have wronged them. @Mind – It’s Self-Defeating Behavior That Done Them Wrong – NYTimes.com

All the standard stuff Kawasaki usually talks about.

…in the end, success in business comes from the willingness to grind it out. It’s not because of the brilliant idea. It’s because you are willing to work hard. That’s the key to my success.

@Corner Office – Guy Kawasaki – I Want 5 Sentences, Not ‘War and Peace’ – Question – NYTimes.com

I came across this while reading a review on Amazon (where you’ll always find something interesting or at least comical):

The lone inventor/entrepreneur is a nice fantasy, but in practice it seldom works out that way. Brilliance is often incremental in nature, and, well, you’ve heard the saying. “If I have seen further, it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants.” Compare that to the Galt fallacy, where you’re born on third and think you hit a triple. Basing an entire political worldview off of it? That’s bordering on solipsism.

@Amazon.com: Barry Milliken’s review of The Spirit Level

The Last Psychiatrist analyzes an author’s thoughts about marriage that appeared last summer in The Atlantic:

if marriage is to blame, why did it take 20 years of it to figure it out?

See it @Atlantic Capture

How we view the Depression today has much to do with how leaders chose to portray their actions then. Whether we realize it or not, we are still reacting to those portrayals more than we are to the actions themselves. What really changed was the way the world’s elite thought of themselves and their institutions. Above all, what happened in the early 1930s was a loss of trust in authority—a loss of faith that the institutions that ordered society could be counted on to provide stability and prosperity for those willing to work for it. Suffering the most damage was the great, but still relatively new and fragile Western idea that anonymous and uncoordinated exchanges among millions of strangers could be trusted to lead to good outcomes without supervision or filtering. @The Real New Deal – John V. C. Nye – The American Interest Magazine

Are we finally in a recovery? Who’s “we,” kemosabe? Big global companies, Wall Street, and high-income Americans who hold their savings in financial instruments are clearly doing better. As to the rest of us – small businesses along Main Streets, and middle and lower-income Americans – forget it. @Robert Reich (The Sham Recovery)

If there is one conclusion to be drawn from the life of Leonardo, it is that procrastination reveals the things at which we are most gifted — the things we truly want to do. Procrastination is a calling away from something that we do against our desires toward something that we do for pleasure, in that joyful state of self-forgetful inspiration that we call genius. @How to procrastinate like Leonardo da Vinci • Psychology Evolution

Politicians… have long known that appeals to emotion are more effective than appeals to logic—not because people are stupid but because the mind is designed to use logic as a tool for supporting our beliefs rather than for changing them. What the Heaths do well is to explain how important it is to bring both systems (emotional and rational) onboard for change—and explain why that still isn’t enough. All the good intentions and native intelligence in the world can be defeated if the setting is not right. But small changes to one’s environment can have a big effect. @Book Review: Switch – WSJ.com

The only reliably shocking stance now is to be traditional. @alaindebotton

This response to the book What Darwin Got Wrong covers a lot of ground and gives background information on the book’s authors that the thoughtful reader may find heplful. @What Darwin’s Doubters Get Wrong – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education

Men are sometimes portrayed in the media as buffoons or oafs. People are prone to say that such portrayals are harmless and men should just get a sense of humor. Read the rest of this entry »

[Harm Bandholz, an economist at Unicredit Markets] said he is concerned that so much of the economic rebound is a result of government spending rather than a revival of private income and jobs. That situation is unsustainable, he said, because the government has had to borrow massively to prop up the economy and cannot continue that binge for long. @American reliance on government at all-time high – Washington Times