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Climate Change: A Perilous Path

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Bjorn Lomborg - Sep. 21 (Opinion) - Evidence is growing that relatively cheap policies like climate engineering and non-carbon energy research could effectively prevent suffering from global warming, both in the short and long term. Unfortunately, political leaders gathering at a special meeting of the United Nations in New York this week will focus on a very different response.

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Lehman's Lesson

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Roy C. Smith - Sep. 15 (Opinion) - Letting Lehman go was a mistake. The event triggered a three-month market panic the likes of which no one living can remember, shutting down the interbank credit market and the commercial paper market and causing an instant run on money-market funds, and on the debt and stock prices of other large banks and investment banks.

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When Democrats Turns On Themselves

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By David Gerstein - Jul. 08 (Opinion) - Obama needs to at least have the patina of bipartisanship. If the moderate Republicans watch their fellow centrists on the other side of the aisle resist their own base, they have even less of an incentive to meet the president in the left's unrealistic sense of the middle.

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A Weak American President

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Anne Bayefsky - Jun. 25 (Opinion) - President Obama has staked his reputation on being a human rights guru to people around the world. But his remarks at Tuesday's news conference and behavior since taking office have instead exposed a different persona--that of human rights charlatan.

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Top College Towns For Jobs

Wed, 20 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Matt Woolsey - May. 20 (Special Report) - Research universities tend to be great environments for business, as they’re flush with cheap, highly talented labor (recent grads), and the massive research and development budgets universities have. Plenty of the world’s top companies, including Dell ( DELL - news - people ), Cisco Systems ( CSCO - news - people ) and Google ( GOOG - news - people ), began in university settings.

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How Carbon Caps Could Help Detroit

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Andy Stone - Apr. 25 (News Report) - The auto industry that emerges from the current crisis will face tough new environmental standards, and that's not all bad.

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Tax Tea Party Time, Part Two

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Bruce Bartlett - Apr. 16 (Opinion) - many protesters implicitly assume that that the deficit has increased solely as a result of Barack Obama's policies. But in fact, the Congressional Budget Office was projecting a deficit of more than $1 trillion this year back in January, before any of Obama's policies had been enacted, and a cumulative deficit of $4.3 trillion through 2019. (CBO made no assumptions about what his policies might be in making its projection.)

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With Oil Cheap, Interest Fades In Offshore Drilling Rights

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Jesse Bogan - Mar. 19 (News Report) - Dismal oil and natural gas prices led to lackluster bidding in an auction of federal offshore leases in the busiest region of the Gulf of Mexico.

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The Obama Administration Double-Deals On Israel

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Forbes - By Anne Bayefsky - Mar. 02 (Opinion) - On Friday, administration officials led many Jewish leaders to believe that the president had decided to boycott the United Nation's "anti-racism" conference known as Durban II. At the same time, however, human rights organizations were being led to believe that the administration was not pulling out and was looking for a way to "re-engage."

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Harvard: The Inside Story of Its Finance Meltdown

Sat, 28 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Forbes - By Bernard Condon, Nathan Vardi - Feb. 28 (News Report) - Stocks were tumbling last fall as the new school year began, but at Harvard University it was as if the boom had never ended. Workers were digging across the river from Harvard's Cambridge, Mass. home, the start of a grand expansion that was to eventually almost double the size of the university. Budgets were plump, and students from middle-class families were getting big tuition breaks under an ambitious new financial aid program. The lavish spending was made possible by the earnings from Harvard's $36.9 billion endowment, the world's largest. That pot was supposed to be good for $1.4 billion in annual earnings. Behind the scenes, though, a different story was unfolding.

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Who Gives The Most?

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Forbes - By Elisabeth Eaves - Dec. 26 (Opinion) - Americans give more to charity, per capita and as a percentage of gross domestic product, than the citizens of other nations. But why? It would be nice to believe that as a group they are just more generous. Of course, it's more complicated than that. For instance in the U.S., which is notably religious among wealthy Western nations, about a third of all charitable giving goes to houses of worship. Some of that money, in turn, goes to projects that have an obvious benefit to the needy, like soup kitchens. But some does not, rather going toward paying the church secretary and the rent. Volunteerism also complicates the picture. The Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies compiled a ranking of private philanthropy in 36 countries from 1995 to 2002. Based on giving alone, the U.S. comes first, giving 1.85% of GDP, followed by Israel at 1.34% and Canada at 1.17%. But based on volunteerism alone, the Netherlands comes first, followed by Sweden and then the U.S.

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How To Be a Good Billionaire

Thu, 25 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Forbes - By Susan Kitchens - Dec. 25 (Interview) - I actually started out thinking about philanthropy in the late 1990s when I was writing about a lot of the dot-com millionaires at the time and finding that a number of them were talking about philanthropy as a solution to what psychologists call sudden-wealth syndrome. There was a sense that getting rich very fast would be bad for their kids. They also didn't expect to have this money, and so they wanted to find ways to put it to work.

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The End Of Vietnam In American Politics

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Forbes - By John Zogby - Nov. 08 (News Analysis) - Barack Obama's win over John McCain marks the third straight defeat of a candidate who served active duty in Vietnam. The electoral dynamics may have been very different in 2000 and 2004 than they were in 2008, as were the war records and even the political parties of Al Gore, John Kerry and McCain. But each of them lost to men who never served in Vietnam.

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Selling Papers

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By James Erik Abels - Oct. 27 (News Report) - At some point, you start to dismantle the companies," says Atorino. The newspaper industry's cost structure, staffing and share price are based on an outdated business model that continues to define financial expectations. So the goal would be to slough off enough costs to let younger, more nimble newspaper businesses live without the artificial market pressure of year-over-year comparisons.

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The Bailout: An Owner's Manual

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Brian Wingfield, Liz Moyer - Oct. 04 (News Analysis) - Congratulations. If you're an American taxpayer, you've just become the owner of a brand-new $700 billion attempted bailout of the U.S. financial system. After a 263-171 vote by the U.S. House of Representatives Friday, President Bush signed the legislation, aimed at rescuing the freezing credit markets in an effort to shore up the failing economy. Actually, it's a bit bigger than $700 billion. The version of the bill that passed Friday contains some expensive add-ons, including a provision that keeps the alternative minimum tax (AMT) from encroaching upon the middle class in 2008, clean-energy tax incentives, disaster relief and the extension of expiring tax cuts for businesses and individuals. It also expands government insurance on bank deposits from $100,000 to $250,000 through 2009. You probably have questions. So do we.

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How Low Will Real Estate Go?

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Matt Woolsey - Apr. 29 (News Report) - Though the national real estate market remains bleak--in some neighborhoods vacant homes outnumber those that are occupied and sellers are being forced to lower asking prices in a bid to lure bargain hunters--it's assumed that when housing dips to a point where buyers think it represents a bargain, they'll buy back in. The problem is many of the markets that experienced steep 2007 price drops are still a long way from recovery. That's based on a Moody's Economy.com report prepared for Forbes.com. It predicts that 2008 isn't going to be any gentler than last year on slumping markets like Los Angeles, Sacramento, Calif., Las Vegas and Tampa, Fla., where market weakness is expected to cause 10% to 25% drops over the next year

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Europe Yawns At Rice Panic

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Lionel Laurent - Apr. 03 (News Report) - Rice panic is hitting Asia and the Middle East, but this might be the one food inflation scare that fails to make waves in Europe.

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The Biggest FDA Reform In A Decade

Mon, 24 Sep 2007 09:26:20 -0700

Forbes - By Matthew Herper - Sep. 24 (News Report) - You wouldn't know it from the lack of fanfare, but the Food and Drug Administration is getting its biggest overhaul in a decade in a dramatic coda to Merck's withdrawal of the blockbuster painkiller Vioxx three years ago. A bill to give the FDA more power passed both houses of Congress with only a handful of no votes, and the president is expected to sign it into law. Because the bill is attached to the re-authorization of an important part of the FDA's funding, a veto is unlikely. If the law doesn't pass soon, FDA head Andrew Von Eschenbach is going to have to start informing staffers that their jobs are no longer funded. The bill represents a victory for advocates of higher standards for making sure that drug side effects are known and promptly dealt with. Before Vioxx was yanked, some of the changes being made would be unimaginable. Until now the claims drug companies like Merck (nyse: MRK - news - people ) and Pfizer (nyse: PFE - news - people ) made about their medicines were, to a degree, negotiated. Labeling discussions between Merck and the FDA dragged on, and as a result, the agency will now be able to dictate what claims companies can make with much more force.

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Democracy Ascendant

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 10:20:48 -0700

Forbes - By Michael Maiello - Aug. 27 (Review) - Democracy's Good Name by Michael Mandelbaum ($28, Public Affairs, 2007). At a time when the U.S. is occupying two countries thick with militarized fanatics abhorring democracy, Michael Mandelbaum, a foreign policy professor at Johns Hopkins, brings us a loving tribute to the concept. But his theories about the conditions needed for it to take root in a nondemocratic country are little comfort for Americans hoping to see successful resolution of the nation's wars. Put simply, democracy can't be imposed by invasion and occupation, he says. It just won't take. It has to evolve naturally, and it can only survive in a nurturing environment. The first requirement, which Mandelbaum gives the most attention to, is a capitalist economy. Property ownership helps provide the individual liberties that lead to democratic governments. Another requirement is a strong civil society, including all manner of nongovernmental associations like political parties, trade groups and sewing circles. That civil society is evidence of trust between people and of their willingness to compromise with one another.

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All Together Now

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:15:01 -0700

Forbes - By Liz Moyer - Aug. 23 (News Report) - The largest U.S. banks are rallying together to put an end to the global credit crunch that has throttled stock and bond markets and shaken the confidence of investors and consumers. Nearly a week after disclosing that it was having severe problems raising cash in the short-term debt markets, Countrywide Financial (nyse: CFC - news - people ), one of the biggest U.S. mortgage lenders, got a welcome reprieve in the form of a $2 billion equity infusion from Bank of America (nyse: BAC - news - people ) late Wednesday. The investment essentially bails Countrywide out of a tight situation, ensuring it will survive until the credit crunch subsides. Bank of America -- which along with Citigroup (nyse: C - news - people ), JPMorgan Chase (nyse: JPM - news - people ) and Wachovia (nyse: WB - news - people ) disclosed earlier Wednesday that it had borrowed $500 million from the Federal Reserve's discount window in solidarity with the central bank's efforts to calm markets -- said it was making the investment in Countrywide in part to help stabilize the mortgage sector.

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Close to the Vest

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 08:18:31 -0700

Forbes - By Quentin Hardy - Jun. 15 (News Report) - The search giant's young millionaires are cashing in and checking out. This is not entirely bad news for Google. Google was good to Bismarck Lepe. He started working there in 2003 when he was 23. But he left in April with a few million dollars, enough to start his own company. It's going to produce a high-definition Web video site called Ooyala. In gratitude, he says, "I'm going to build a company that is bigger than Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people )." Over the past year a trickle of Google alums like Lepe have left the Mountain View, Calif. Internet search-and-advertising company to start or invest in companies of their own. Get ready to see a torrent. The reason is simple: Their money is turning a nice ripe green. Two big batches of stock options granted before the company went public in August 2004 have fully vested in the last 12 months. A 2002 grant that was priced at 30 cents a share vested a year ago. Another, priced at $4 a share in 2003, vested in April. With Google's stock now above $500 again, that's happy math. Insiders figure there are at least 700 people roaming the halls worth a minimum of $5 million, many of them worth multiples of that. Google's torrid growth has changed the place. There were 350 employees five years ago. Now there are 13,000. Craig Silverstein was the first hire by founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. He's still there, as director of technology, but says the chaotic pace of product development means "it's harder for the people at the top to keep things straight." Silverstein has made well over $100 million in Google stock and says that for old-timers like him, "economically, you are volunteering to be here." What keeps him going is his interest in solving hard computational problems alongside other smart Googlers. Not everyone feels the same way. Veterans complain of wasted effort on overlapping projects and d

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Spectrum Warriors

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:57:56 -0700

Forbes - By Brian Caulfield - Jun. 11 (News Report) - Think Apple's iPhone is cool? You haven't seen anything yet, tech entrepreneurs promise--that is, if the phone companies would just get out of their way. And they're asking the Feds to help them out. This year the Federal Communications Commission will auction off another chunk of wireless spectrum; the U.S. Senate will hold hearings on the plans for the sale this week. Now a band of technology veterans and wireless entrepreneurs is asking the FCC to set aside a chunk of that spectrum as a kind of sandbox for entrepreneurs.

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It's Time To End Worker Exploitation

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 10:14:35 -0700

Forbes - By Linda Chavez-Thompson - Jun. 06 (Opinion) - Growing up in western Texas as the daughter of cotton sharecroppers, I spent my summers weeding cotton, five days a week, 10 hours a day, in 95-degree heat. As grueling as this workload was, others had it even worse. For foreign workers toiling as "guest workers" (or "braceros") alongside us in the cotton fields, the five-day work week was an impossible luxury. They were often stiffed on wages, and health care was simply non-existent. Viewing them as units of production, employers worked them to their limit, knowing that the following season a fresh unsuspecting batch would arrive.

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Google-Proof PR?

Fri, 25 May 2007 10:31:41 -0700

Forbes - By Andy Greenberg - May. 25 (Special Report) - Sue Scheff's business, Parents Universal Resource Experts, places troubled teens in reform schools--and generates a lot of controversy. Disgruntled clients have accused Scheff's company of sending kids to abusive programs, and the Web is full of complaints: A quick Google search used to reveal sites describing her as a "fraud," a "con artist" and a "crook." Google Scheff's name now, however, and the first few pages of results are far less controversial: They include Scheff's own sites about teen pregnancy, her upcoming book, and, until recently, recipes for broccoli casserole and pork chops. That last one might seem strange to Scheff's friends, who know she doesn't cook. "The truth is, if it doesn't go in the microwave, I don't make it," she admits.

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Ten People Who Could Change The World

Thu, 24 May 2007 11:09:30 -0700

Forbes - By Elisabeth Eaves - May. 24 (Special Report) - What does it take to produce a world-changing breakthrough? Humans try again and again to arrive at a formula. These days, the X-Prize Foundation sponsors competitions in areas such as space travel and genomics, with a mission, it says, "to bring about radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity." As far back as 1714, meanwhile, the British government pursued this same so-called "market approach" to sparking innovation, offering a king's ransom, £20,000, to solve the seemingly intractable longitude problem. Sailors could not accurately determine their longitude at sea, limiting exploration and resulting in deadly shipwrecks. Part of the problem with the market approach, though, is that humans aren't always imaginative enough to know what we need. Eighteenth-century British leaders knew they needed to figure out longitude. But the vast majority of discoveries are at least semi-accidental. Given the serendipity behind so much innovation, it may seem like folly to predict who will change the world--but we're doing it anyway, if for no other reason than to spark creative discussion. We've looked far and wide to come up with our 10 revolutionaries. They're young thinkers and scientists whom you've probably never heard of, doing work that is radically new and potentially world-changing. Together, they might transform medicine and computing, pollution and poverty, and our understandings of the brain and the cosmos--in short, they really could change the world.

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