BP chief's weekend sailing trip stokes anger at oil company
Pictures of Tony Hayward yachting at the Isle of Wight billed as a PR nightmare and insulting to those affected by oil slick
Crew aboard the yacht belonging to BP chief executive Tony Hayward at the Isle of Wight. Photograph: Chris Ison/PA
Images of the beleaguered BP chief executive, Tony Hayward, attending a yacht race on the Isle of Wight, just 48 hours after a hostile interrogation by a US congressional committee on the Gulf Coast oil spill, have provoked sharp criticism on both sides of the Atlantic.
President Barack Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, condemned Hayward's attendance at the event as "part of a long line of PR gaffes and mistakes" on ABC television, adding: "I think that we can all conclude that Tony Hayward is not going to have a second career in PR consulting".
NEW YORK, June 17 (Reuters) - Around the turn of every year, bankers can think of only one thing: the size of their bonuses.
Even beyond bonus season, they run different scenarios and assumptions, trying to calculate their number.
This distracts them so much that the bigger the bonus at stake, the worse the performance, according to behavioral economist Dan Ariely, who lays out his theory in his new book "The Upside of Irrationality" (HarperCollins, $27.99).
"For a long time we trained bankers to think they are the masters of the universe, have unique skills and deserve to be paid these amounts," said Ariely, who also wrote the New York Times bestseller "Predictably Irrational."
"It is going to be hard to convince them that they don't really have unique skills and that the amount they've been paid for the past years is too much."
Ariely's findings come as regulators try to rein in Wall Street's bonus culture after the 2008 financial collapse. The financial industry argues it needs to pay large bonuses to attract and motivate its top employees.
In an experiment in India, Ariely measured the impact of different bonuses on how participants did in a number of tasks that required creativity, concentration and problem-solving.
One of the tasks was Labyrinth, where the participants had to move a small steel ball through a maze avoiding holes. Ariely describes a man he identified as Anoopum, who stood to win the biggest bonus, staring at the steel ball as if it were prey.
"This is very, very important," Anoopum mumbled to himself. "I must succeed." But under the gun, Anoopum's hands trembled uncontrollably, and he failed time after time.
A large bonus was equal to five months of their regular pay, a medium-sized bonus was equivalent to about two weeks pay and a small bonus was a day's pay.
There was little difference in the performance of those receiving the small and medium-sized bonuses, while recipients of large bonuses performed worst.
SHOCK TREATMENT
More than a century ago, an experiment with rats in a maze rigged with electric shocks came to a similar conclusion. Every day, the rats had to learn how to navigate a new maze safely.
When the electric shocks were low, the rats had little incentive to avoid them. At medium intensity they learned their environment more quickly.
But when the shock intensity was very high, it seemed the rats could not focus on anything other than the fear of the shock.
This may provide lessons for regulators who want to change Wall Street's bonus culture, Ariely said. Paying no bonus or smaller bonuses could help fix skewed incentives without loss of talent.
"The reality is, a lot of places are able to attract great quality people without paying them what bankers are paid," Ariely said. "Do you think bankers are inherently smarter than other people? I don't." (Reporting by Kristina Cooke; Editing by Daniel Trotta)
Maze Cartoon - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pours gasoline on the fire. The fire is the UN Sanctions against Iran, and the gasoline represents Iranian Defiance. Created by Yonatan Frimer
(RTTNews) - The European Union has slammed Iran with additional sanctions, the fourth punitive measure on the Islamic Republic within a week.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's continued defiance to international calls to wind up its nuclear enrichment program has already cost the country heavily, as the United Nations last week placed its fourth set of sanctions on Iran, while Australia imposed Tuesday new sanctions on an Iranian bank, a shipping company, as well as a man connected to a construction firm owned by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Wednesday, the United States added Iranian individuals and firms to a blacklist.
European leaders, who have gathered in Brussels Thursday for a summit, expressed their "deepening concerns about Iran's nuclear program."
The United Nations Security Council approved a new round of sanctions against Iran last week for its refusal to curb the country's nuclear program, which the U.S. and its allies suspect is aimed at producing weapons. Iran denies that.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran favors a dialogue with the West, but will announce its conditions soon. He said the carrot-and-stick approach doesn't work and Iran will not make "one iota of concessions" to the West.
"You showed bad temper, reneged on your promise and again resorted to devilish manners," he said of the powers that imposed sanctions. "We set conditions (for talks) so that, God willing, you'll be punished a bit and sit at the negotiating table like a polite child," he told a crowd during a visit to the central Iranian town of Shahr-e-Kord. His speech was broadcast live on state TV.
Maze Cartoon UN Bombing Iran with Sanctions By Yonatan Frimer Cartoon maze of a UN fighter jet dropping bombed marked "Sanctions" on Iran, while he has other with the name of known targets and the pilot says, "If these don't work, then we drop the real ones!" Created by Yonatan Frimer
Click here for a printable, hi-res version of this maze Click here for the maze solution.
More on this maze's topic:
U.N. imposes another round of sanctions on Iran
UNITED NATIONS -- After several months of grueling diplomacy, the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday imposed a fourth round of sanctions on Iran's military establishment -- a move that the United States and other major powers said should prompt the Islamic Republic to restart stalled political talks over the future of its nuclear program.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the foreign ministers of allied nations asked the European Union's chief diplomat to pursue talks with Iran at the "earliest possible opportunity," and President Obama asserted that "these sanctions do not close the door on diplomacy."
"We think that the sanctions send a kind of message to the entire Iranian leadership, which.... (Read Source Article)
Cartoon Maze Chemtrails Vs. Kassam Rockets By Yonatan Frimer Maze cartoon of two monkeys talking about the skies in the USA and in Israel. In the USA there are "Chemtrails from who knows what" and in Israel their are Qassams that "We know are from Gaza" Created by Yonatan Frimer Click here for a printable, hi-res version of this maze Click here for the maze solution.
I am appalled that Helen Thomas's comments on Israel prevent her from speaking at Walt Whitman High School's commencement ["Helen Thomas bows out of speech," Metro, June 7]. I am also disgusted that Ari Fleischer and Lanny Davis conducted a campaign to punish Ms. Thomas, no doubt as retribution for her outspoken questions when they served in earlier administrations. Freedom of speech, however, is lost to their petty maneuvering.
Most of us would not agree with Ms. Thomas's unfortunate and seemingly uninformed comments about where Jews might live in peace. But she has the right to say what she thinks, and listeners can decide whether she is foolish, biased and out of touch. Had she spoken at Whitman, perhaps she would have retracted, perhaps she would have lamented further . . . or maybe not.
Maze Cartoon for Editorial use on the Economy of Greece. A 747 marked "Economy of Greece" flys while chained to two bags of debt that are carried by the IMF and EU. Created by Yonatan Frimer
Maze Cartoon - Effects of Human Error on Stock Market
Maze cartoon editorial showcasing how stocks are effected by human error, buy having a bull represent stocks and a cowboy wrangling him to represent human error.
Cartoon maze of how the Tea Party started. By Yonatan Frimer
Cartoon maze editorial of a bunch of sheep in a field. One sheep stands up and exclaims, "I will no longer be a follower!" The rest of the flock yells, "Me too!" and the group in the front explaim "If this catches on, we got to get that fox on board."
Cartoon Maze: Who you calling chicken? By Yonatan Frimer Maze cartoon of a bunch of chickens, labeled with the name of terrorist groups around a Turkey, labeled AKP, the ruling party in Turkey, and the Turkey exclaims, "Who you calling chicken!" Created by Yonatan Frimer Click here for a printable, hi-res version of this maze Click here for the maze solution.
"Hamas's resistance fighters were meant to defend their land. They won an election. I've told American officials before that I do not consider Hamas a terror organization, and I still don't. They are defending their land," he was quoted by Turkish media as saying.
Turkey likens Israeli raid on aid ship to 9/11 attacks
By Sheldon Alberts, Washington Correspondent, Canwest News Service
WASHINGTON — Turkey's foreign minister on Tuesday likened Israel's deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, demanded U.S. solidarity and harshly criticized the Obama administration for not issuing a "clear condemnation" of the assault.
Denial of the Armenian Genocide From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Denial of the Armenian Genocide is the assertion that the Armenian Genocide did not occur in the manner or to the extent described by scholarship. The Armenian Genocide is widely acknowledged by genocide scholars to have been one of the first modern, systematic genocides,as many Western sources point to the sheer scale of the death toll as evidence for a systematic, organized plan to eliminate the Armenians.
