Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Biz bits

By wire services
Published February 27, 2005

PRESIDENT BUSH'S VISION of an "ownership society" has merit, but it comes at an especially bad time, Yale economics professor Robert Shiller writes in the Atlantic. He says the program would pile more financial risk onto individuals already burdened by a volatile job market, productivity-enhancing automation, escalating home prices and a risky stock market. Shiller - known for Irrational Exuberance, his 2000 book about the stock market bubble - says insurance, broadly defined, is the solution, and we should "build on the social-insurance system we already have, not replace it." That includes Social Security.

SEVERAL SCHOLARS SAY business schools are at least partly to blame for the corporate scandals in recent years. MBA programs are based on simplistic models of human behavior as well as the idea that the goal of business should be to maximize shareholder value, the scholars say. "Business school students learn that managers cannot be trusted - so when they become managers their behavior is of the untrustworthy sort . . . hence scandals such as those at Enron, where business-school-educated executives were prominent," according to the Economist. B-schools, responding to this criticism, now offer classes in business ethics, among other reforms.

GAMING IS THE NEWEST and possibly strongest pillar of the media world today, BusinessWeek says. "Once just a hangout for teenage boys, gaming has grown up and gone mainstream, luring both genders and every age and interest group." It's no surprise, then, that film studios, media giants, gamemakers and Japanese electronics companies are battling to win the Game Wars. "Every day there's merger talk as big gamemakers buy small fry and movie studios size up game outfits as takeover targets," the magazine says.

IF YOU NEED to fill your gas tank, do it at the beginning of the week. Gas usually costs less then, TravelSmart magazine says. People drive more on the weekends, so pump prices usually are raised on Fridays.

SHARES OF WPT ENTERPRISES have soared almost 200 percent since August when the West Hollywood, Calif., company went public. The reason, Bloomberg Markets says, is the highly successful television program World Poker Tour, which WPT produces. But investors should be cautious, the magazine says: More than a million WPT shares have been sold short by investors who think the price will drop.

- Compiled from Times wires and Web sites.

[Last modified February 27, 2005, 00:12:17]