Word: bigs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Larger homebuilders - the ones that sat on big stores of land going into the bust - have to find another way. These days, CBH Homes' headquarters, just south of Interstate 84, are chillingly quiet. The game is no longer volume - the busloads of investors from California stopped coming long ago - but efficiency. Owner Corey Barton squeezes costs wherever he can, which is why half of what CBH builds (which still isn't much) now belongs to its slimmed-down Advantage Collection. The trick: boxier floor plans cut out embellishments like bay windows and take fewer materials and less time...
Would this intervention be flawlessly executed? Of course not. But if ham-handed pay rules drive risky, highly rewarded activities out of big banks and into smaller firms - if big banks become boring again - that might not be all bad, since smaller firms presumably pose less risk to the financial system...
...Some CEOs who are critical of the compensation status quo but who don't want government telling them how to pay people point to taxes as a possible answer. "I wish income was more equitable," the head of a big financial institution told me recently. "I have no problem with paying 50% taxes or more. But government meddling with compensation practices is a bad idea." Yes, raising tax rates would bring negative consequences: more incentive for evasion, less incentive for risk-taking and entrepreneurship. Lowering the top rate had its negative consequences too, though. It's a matter of which...
...Big Tobacco's New Targets," by Jeffrey Kluger, in which both North and South Carolina are listed as states with no restrictions on smoking in restaurants [July 27]: I am extremely pleased to report that in Rock Hill, S.C.--and, as of Jan. 2, 2010, in all of North Carolina--restaurants are smoke-free. Patronage has increased, and there's a new, fresh ambiance in all of them. In Rock Hill--one of several areas in the state to pass such a law--the new ordinance went into effect on May 1, though several restaurants had by then already banned...
...said they had tried to haggle, and a stunning 80% were successful. "What you can do today is unbelievable," says Herb Cohen, an expert dealmaker and the author of the 1980 classic You Can Negotiate Anything. "Americans may finally learn that price tags weren't put there by the big printer...