Money Talking

Work can be full of things that just set you off. In fact, the office itself might even be the trigger. And once that trigger is pulled, your response could turn into raised voices or in your wildest dreams (or nightmares) thrown phones and flying chairs. But you can break the habits of counterproductive and even detrimental behavior without spending years lying on a couch. "It doesn't take long to change a habit. But it's hard. Really hard," writes Peter Bregman, CEO of Bregman Partners a leadership consulting and coaching firm, in a recent Harvard Business article "Quash Your Bad Habits by Knowing What Triggers Them." In the article, he suggests a simple a three-step process to change your behavior in the office.  Be aware. If you take a moment to pause before you react, you slow down your neurological response. That reaction comes from the part of the the brain where fight/flight/freeze reactions are decided. But by taking a beat, you can let whatever is happening get to the part of your brain that makes more rational choices. Resist urges. You might have an urge to react immediately, and that reaction might be a poor one. Before acting, ask yourself: What is the outcome I want from this situation? When you've thought about the desired outcome, you will react accordingly to get you closer to that goal.  Replace behaviors. You need something to de-trigger you and get you to the desired result. So whether you enlist daily meditation or use a "serenity now" mantra, any sort of replacement will be an improvement from your trigger-happy reaction. [Click on "Listen" to hear Bregman talk through these steps with Money Talking host Charlie Herman.] Think of your reactions as if they were a train and you were riding it to get to a final destination. Instead of sleeping through all the stops until the moment you arrive when you are forced to sprint off the train and completely forget your bag, consider five or six places to stop before you arrive at the destination. Maybe one stop is taking a deep breath and another is cracking your knuckles; identify what each stop is, get off on at each one, hop back on afterwards, and you'll arrive at a much more productive destination.

Oil prices have dramatically dropped to levels not seen since 2004. This week, the price of a barrel of oil traded below $30, down more than 60 percent from the recent highs in June 2014. For consumers, that's translated into a little money in their pocket: the average price of gasoline is $2.00 a gallon. So, cheap oil is good, right? This week on Money Talking, Rana Foroohar with Time Magazine and Gregory Zuckerman with the Wall Street Journal review the good, and the bad, about low oil prices and what it means for the economy in 2016.

Puerto Rico is in serious financial trouble. The government is struggling with $72 billion dollars in debt and it’s running out of cash. How the search for a solution to the island’s debt crisis could have ripple effects on the mainland.

There are a lot of bad bosses out there. "As I like to say, there are different flavors of bad bosses," adds Amy Gallo, an editor at the Harvard Business Review. When the flavor is "dumber than you," it's hard to know how to proceed. You don't want to be disrespectful, but you don't want to sit stagnant in a job where you're not learning.  If you think you're smarter than your boss, Gallo set out specific strategies about what you might do in her article, What To Do If You're Smarter Than Your Boss. 1. Accentuate the Positive: Have some humility and think about the ways your boss might actually have an edge on you. "It's your job, as his direct report, to unearth that expertise or unearth that experience you can learn from," Gallo said. 2. Cool down: Don't lead a coup. Your boss likely reached the heights where they currently sit for a reason. Trying to replace them or getting them fired not work out as you plan. 3. Find a stand-in: If you're not learning anything from your boss, go to other people in your organization. Don't be disrespectful to your boss, but ask some of his/her other colleagues for advice and mentorship.  4. Consider an exit. Only after you make good efforts to learn from the people in the building, if you're still having a hard time, it might be time to leave the company. [Listen to Gallo talk through these steps with Money Talking host Charlie Herman.]

It's been nearly eight years since the financial crisis, and interest rates have sat stagnant for just as long. Now, the Federal Reserve is ringing in the New Year early with some long-awaited news: a quarter-point raise in interest rates. This slight hike could be a sign of more moderate rates in the year ahead, and some are watching warily. The news polishes off a year full of business developments: the plunge in oil prices, the Chinese stock market crash, the historic climate plan agreed to in Paris, and the record-making mergers and acquisitions. And that's only a few of the top business stories of the year. Rob Cox with Reuters Breaking Views and Rana Foroohar from Time Magazine join Money Talking's to highlight the year's biggest economic moments and to make some predictions for the year ahead.

"Crazy times" at work are to be expected — busy periods when you're expected to work after hours to stay on top of things are par for the course in a demanding, fast-paced career. But if you're sending emails well into the night at all times of the year, that might actually be a problem. "You’re never taking that opportunity to rejuvenate...that will give you a fresh perspective at work," Maura Thomas, founder of RegainYourTime.com and writer for the Harvard Business Review, tells Money Talking. "If you don't take time to recharge...you’re running on empty all the time." But Thomas explains, there are ways to reclaim your off-time.

The Islamic State makes no secret of its advertisement efforts to recruit new members. Less well-known is how ISIS finances itself from within the territories it occupies. Money Talking host Charlie Herman talks with two reporters who've investigated how ISIS makes money: Stacey Vanek Smith from NPR's Planet Money and Erika Solomon from the Financial Times. They review how the combination of oil and gas, taxes, confiscations and antiquities keep ISIS running — and the ways countries trying to defeat the militants can do so economically.

This week and next, representatives from nearly 200 countries are gathered in Paris to try to write a plan to tackle climate change. It's a daunting task: a final proposal will unanimous support to move forward. Wall Street, investors and businesses won't get to vote, but they're closely following the talks to see how any proposals that emerge could affect global business. Host Charlie Herman talks to Peter Coy from Bloomberg Business and Gregory Zuckerman from the Wall Street Journal about what a new climate plan could mean for businesses and consumers.

The dynamics of authority in an office — figuring out how to be a boss or dealing with your own boss — are tricky enough without throwing age into the mix. How does it feel to have a manager who's younger than you are? Or to manage someone who's older than your parents? Peter Cappelli, professor of management at the Wharton School tells Money Talking host Charlie Herman that as average life expectancy rises in the U.S., people are choosing to stay in the workforce longer, and not all of them want to be at the upper echelons of corporate America. Meanwhile, as young workers are identified as future leaders of organizations, they can rise through corporate ranks quickly and end up managing older workers. This means being a young boss or having a boss who's younger is becoming more and more inevitable. In his book, Managing the Older Worker, published by the Harvard Business Review Press, Cappelli examines and explains how to navigate the awkward new organizational order.

If you've stepped into a mobile phone store recently, you know the cell phone market is not exactly dummy-proof right now. Carriers have created a series of charts and graphs to explain a newly complicated web of options for cell phone users. On its face, the change to the market makes it look like plans got more convoluted and phones got much more expensive. But the first mover in the market shift, T-Mobile, actually just made phone pricing radically more transparent and plans more customize-able. If you do your homework, it might be the best time to score a deal on the cell phone market. Money Talking host Charlie Herman wades through the details with Tim Stenovec from TechInsider and Ian Kar from Quartz, just in time for your holiday shopping.

After the attacks in Paris last week, leaders on both sides of the Atlantic are under pressure to prevent future violence. In the open-border, economically united Eurozone, there's been a call to close borders. And while the Greek debt crisis created a fiscal wedge between Euro members, the attacks in Paris have presented a cultural threat to the idea of the Eurozone. Meanwhile, in the United States, FBI Director James Comey said that this is a time for U.S. business and government to come together and called on companies to share encrypted information with authorities, where appropriate, to protect against attacks. Host Charlie Herman talks with Rana Four-hour of Time Magazine and Rob Cox of Reuters BreakingViews about how November 13 could affect business and economic policy around the globe.

For outsiders looking in, it seems like fantasy sports are worlds unto themselves. And in the digital age, these worlds are used by millions of Americans, they're fast-moving, and they're worth hundreds of millions of dollars. After investigation the two biggest websites that operate these fantasy sports worlds, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has determined they're illegal in this state. In cease-and-desist notices submitted to FanDuel and DraftKings, the Attorney General's office wrote that much like a lottery, the websites mislead customers into believing they can win big, when the chances of winning are actually slim.  He also cited concerns about public health and economic risks associated with gambling.  But how different are online fantasy sports games from poker or even trading on the stock market? Money Talking host Charlie Herman talks with Andrew Stern from Business Insider and Tim Fernholz from Quartz about the nuts and bolts of the multimillion dollar industry and who stands to lose if the Attorney General shuts down the two websites.

Everyone can be a creative genius. Right? In the workplace, that's a dangerous proposition, according to Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, CEO of Hogan Assessments and professor of Business Psychology at University College London. Describing an article he wrote for the Harvard Business Review, Chamorro told Money Talking host Charlie Herman that to some degree, creativity levels are hard to change. And that's a good thing. "Most people, as much as they may not like hearing this, have average creativity," he said. There needs to be a diverse ecosystem at work made of people with varying degrees of creativity. Creative visions need to be executed, he said. If everyone's in his or her own head about creative ideas, nothing will ever get done.  That said, there are still small ways to get a little more creative in your everyday tasks at work. Get feedback. We're not good at evaluating our own work. If you want to expand your mind, find a good critic.  Get training on creative thinking skills. The way to get more creative is to get away from the daily grind. Chamorro said mindfulness, taking walks, or switching tasks can help us get a new perspective on the task at hand. Read up. Chamorro said it might sound anti-creative to do a lot of research, but, he said, "You need to know the rules of the game in order to break them." Become an expert in a subject area to get a feel for what kinds of creative risks you should take. Follow your passions. If you're not excited about the work you do, you won't put enough energy into it to think creatively. Bosses looking to make their employees think more creatively should assign tasks that tap their employees' interests, and they should also build teams with different kinds of minds: both great idea generators and skilled project managers. "Creative teams that have too many people who are traditionally creative would never get anything done," Chamorro said. 

Since the financial crisis, the battle cry from many reformers has been "Break up the big banks!" But bankers argue that new rules and regulations are making banks "dramatically safer." So which is it? Are banks boring again? Or is there more to do to limit the activities of the nation's biggest financial institutions? Money Talking host Charlie Herman asks Sheelah Kolhatkar from Bloomberg Businessweek and Heidi Moore from Mashable how far reforms have gone and whether we're protecting ourselves from the next crisis. 

Today, The Federal Reserve, America's central bank, is an object of national obsession, at least for anyone wondering — or worrying — about the economy.  After the financial meltdown in 2008, the Fed bailed out banks when they were in trouble and then lowered interest rates to nearly zero to jumpstart economic growth. Now that the crisis is over, the (unending) question is, "When will the bank raise interest rates?" But the steps the bank took to bail out the economy have also drawn criticism, especially from those who think the Fed is overstepping what it can or should do. In many cases, they're complaints that have been lobbed at the Fed since its creation more than a hundred years ago. Roger Lowenstein has followed the Federal Reserve for years as a financial reporter who has written for the The Wall Street Journal, Business Week and Fortune. In his latest book, America's Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve he explains how the arguments today about the financial system and the Federal Reserve echo the same ones that were made when the bank was created in 1913. Listen to Lowenstein take Money Talking host Charlie Herman back in time to the days when supporters of the national bank were a daring minority, fighting an epic battle for greater financial stability and uniformity.