Hat tip, Barry Ritholtz:

When a fireman sees a house on fire, he sounds an alarm, dons his turnout gear, bravely rescues the occupants and puts out the fire.

When an investment banker sees a house on fire, he quietly sells the burning house short, uses the proceeds to buy a larger house for himself and, when someone suggests that his taxes be raised to help the homeless, he rails against the dangers of socialism.

Not unexpected, but still….a bummer:

G.M. said Tuesday that it would phase out its Saturn brand by 2012.

My 2000 Saturn SL2 will hit 100,000 miles sometime in the next month or so. It’s not the most stylish car on the road, but it is reliable as hell and gets +30 MPG on the highway even now.

The “different kind of car company” hasn’t been different for a while now, so in a way it’s not much of a loss to GM. Still, I can’t help but think that GM really screwed the pooch with this brand. Saturns are/were great cars with a loyal following. Now they’re a footnote.

I’d been planning to drive my Saturn until it dropped, but this news makes me want to make sure that day doesn’t come for a good long time. Time to call the mechanic and schedule a tune-up.

We, the United States of America, your top quality supplier of the ideals of liberty and democracy, would like to apologize for our 2001-2008 interruption in service. The technical fault that led to this eight-year service outage has been located, and the software responsible was replaced November 4.

Early tests of the newly installed program indicate that we are now operating correctly, and we expect it to be fully functional on January 20, 2009. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by the outage.

We look forward to resuming full service and hope to improve in years to come. We thank you for your patience and understanding.

Sincerely,
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

I’ve spent some time this weekend cleaning up old financial files, shredding, organizing, and otherwise winding up the 2008 paperwork in preparation for the tax season and the new year.

Somewhat appropriately, today’s New York Times includes a longer-than-usual Op-Ed on the many and varied failings of Wall Street, the SEC, and a financial system that has gotten amazingly screwed up. In a word (well two words): misaligned incentives.

The Madoff scandal echoes a deeper absence inside our financial system, which has been undermined not merely by bad behavior but by the lack of checks and balances to discourage it. “Greed” doesn’t cut it as a satisfying explanation for the current financial crisis. Greed was necessary but insufficient; in any case, we are as likely to eliminate greed from our national character as we are lust and envy. The fixable problem isn’t the greed of the few but the misaligned interests of the many.

Read on and be disgusted. Then read this for a possible path out.

Hat Tip, my favorite financial blogger: Barry Ritholtz’s The Big Picture.

The new GM plan is out and it’s not looking good for the Saturn brand going forward.

Saturn stopped being a “different kind of car company” a long time ago, but I still love my SL2.

Not unexpected, of course. GM is well f*cked and they need to take drastic steps to keep from going under. But still….

In the early days of my career, I had a lot of trouble with the fact that I was a Drama major. Employers tended to think that I was just marking time at a job until I ‘got discovered’. And back then, I didn’t have a good answer for their objections except to say that it wasn’t so.

Now, I know better.

One of the biggest things you learn when doing theater is that when the curtain goes up you have no excuses. Either you know your lines or you don’t. Either the costumes are finished or the actors are onstage in their underwear. Either the lighting people know their cues or the cast is standing there on the dark. There’s no way to hide from the audience when the spotlight is on you.

In short, theater may be a highly creative art, but talent alone is not enough. You need to be able to get the job done.

And that’s a transferable skill.

What I do today is worlds away from the productions of Brigadoon or The Desert Song that used to consume my life, but the focus on execution is exactly the same.

In my leadership classes at USF, we heard a lot about how managers focus on getting things done, but leaders focus on “vision”. There’s a lot to be said for that concept. But more and more, I’ve come to believe that you should never underestimate the power of execution, because without it, you don’t get to lead anybody anywhere.

This piece comes from chef Shuna Fish Lydon’s blog Eggbeater, written by a working chef about the workings of a restaurant kitchen, but if you look past the jargon of the chef you’ll find the advice is relevant to any team that has to produce, on time and under pressure.

The Weeds.

It’s an expression for line cooks by line cooks, but it is also something much larger. A euphemism. It’s an in-the-moment, during service expression.

But it can also refer to your whole career.

The Weeds

can take a whole department. A station. A restaurant. A person and their career.

On The Line the weeds will usually let you out of its stranglehold after the last table is out.
But if you’re really stubborn, The Weeds might have a lesson for you that takes a week, or five years.

When I train cooks I say the same thing over and over.

There are no cowboys on islands in kitchens. If you can be smart and honest enough to see The Weeds getting near, and you can ask for support before The Weeds claim you altogether, I and we can help you push through. But if we don’t know you need help until you’re drowning, not only is it too late to help you, it’s too late to save the food from merely being banged-out. And I don’t know about you but I have more pride in my food than to allow it to be banged-out.

Go, read the rest, share it, bookmark it.

Hat tip, Ruhlman.

There’s something wrong with this picture … would anyone care to guess what it is?

Jeff Matthews nails it:

What happened to the heroic, forward-looking rhetoric great leaders are supposed to provide in times of crisis?

FDR gave us “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Churchill gave us “We shall fight on the beaches.”

George Bush cruises in with “This sucker could go down.”

Afternoon update: OUCH. Largest one-day drop on the DOW, ever.

It’s worth it. Warning: NSFW language.

Hat tip, Todd Defren