Money Talking

Fights at work are never pleasant. In this week's Money Talking management conversation, WNYC's Business Editor Charlie Herman speaks with two experts who write and work with Harvard Business Review about how to stay composed during workplace kerfuffles and how to deal with office hotheads. Annie McKee is an executive coach, senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and co-author of Primal Leadership: Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence. Here are a few of her pieces of advice.  "Conflict at work can be really healthy and good. What we want to avoid are the dysfunctional conflicts and fights." "Most of us have issues, and we bring those issues to work. A lot of people are just plain insecure." "If you've got a co-worker or a boss who likes to throw word bombs across the table at meetings and little jabs and little digs all the time, you want to be sure that you understand that that's not about you, that's about them." Linda Hill is a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School and author of Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader. She says it's important to choose the right words when communicating with colleagues. But before you speak, you've got to listen.  "What you want to do in these conversations initially is make sure you understand what the conflict is really about."  "It's not about having the last word. It's about coming up with the right solution or the right answer." To hear the full conversation, click on the audio above or read more from McKee and Hill. And if you have tips you'd like to share, leave us a comment below or send an email.

The Chinese e-commerce website Alibaba is expected to have one of the largest IPOs ever when it goes public Friday. This week on Money Talking, regular contributors Rana Foroohar of Time magazine and Joe Nocera of the New York Times discuss who benefits, what you really get when you buy a share of the company and how much of a threat Alibaba could be for U.S. internet retailers like Amazon and eBay. 

Work is messy, but that doesn't mean that you have to be a hot mess at work. This week, as a part of Money Talking's first management conversation, WNYC's business editor Charlie Herman speaks with two experts from the Harvard Business Review on getting organized and maximizing your productivity at the office. Sarah Green is a senior associate editor at HBR and author of the article "8 Ways Not to Manage Your Email (and Five and a Half Tactics That Work)." Here are a few of Green's tips for how to handle that glut of email. Treat your email as an essential part of your job. Devote a specific amount of time each day to managing your email. Find a different method (not email) to manage your to-do list. Herman also talks to Ron Friedman, a social psychologist who specializes in human motivation and author of "How to Spend the First 10 Minutes of Your Day." He says it's important to define your goals for the day and stick to them.  Begin your day with a "visioning exercise" where you imagine your key accomplishments for your work day. Break down tasks into specific actions. Start each item on your to-do list with a verb (like this list!). To hear the full conversation about how to be more productive and organized with your email and your to-do list, click on the audio above. If you have some tips you'd like to share, leave us a comment below. 

Economists estimate that more than 200,000 jobs were created in August and that the unemployment rate dropped from 6.2 percent to 6.1 percent. We'll learn whether they're right when the monthly jobs report is released Friday morning. It's a report that always gets a lot of attention, but it's going to be even more as we approach the midterm elections in November. That's because how the economy is doing and how people perceive their personal finances could determine who they chose in the voting booth. This week on Money Talking, regular contributor Rana Foroohar of Time magazine and guest Cardiff Garcia of the Financial Times take a closer look at the economy and what it could mean for the upcoming election. Then a look at what Apple might have in store with its big announcement next week and the future of Uber and other "shared-economy" tech companies.

Congress returns from its summer recess in a little over a week, and there's a lot of work to be done on issues related to business and finance. This week on Money Talking, guest host Heidi Moore speaks with Ben White of Politico and Tim Fernholz of Quartz about what Congress could do this fall when it comes to tax inversions, infrastructure spending, immigration and the minimum wage. 

The retirement system in the United States is in shambles. Most people no longer have pensions. Many workers are not putting enough money into their 401ks and IRAs to build up enough retirement savings. And in today's society, Social Security payments cover very little of a retired person's costs. So, what's to be done?  This week on Money Talking, Joe Nocera of The New York Times and Rana Foroohar of Time magazine rethink retirement and discuss possible solutions to the problems plaguing America's retirement system. This conversation is also available as a video from MetroFocus, the weekly news magazine from New York and New Jersey public television stations THIRTEEN, WLIW21 and NJTV. 

There's been a lot of upheaval in the media world in the last few weeks. Gannett announced it will spin off its newspapers into a stand alone company. This follows Tribune which just sold off its publications, including the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times. This follows the earlier, high-profile spin-off at Time Warner, which sent print publications like Time and Fortune off on their own. And, of course, we can't forget the grandaddy of these splits led by Rupert Murdoch, owner of the Wall Street Journal.  This week on Money Talking, guest contributors Heidi Moore with the Guardian and Derek Thompson with the Atlantic discuss what these media moves mean, why they're happening now and what they say about the future of journalism. 

This week on Money Talking, a summer smackdown in the business world. First, Rupert Murdoch ended his courtship of Time Warner by sending an email to that company's CEO Jeff Bewkes saying his $80 billion offer was off the table. Has the media world finally hit "Peak Murdoch"? Then, the Federal Reserve and FDIC told 11 of the largest banks that their plans to avoid bankruptcy without causing severe problems for the economy were not up to snuff. And finally, tax inversions. American companies are expressing interest in moving their headquarters overseas in order to lower their taxes. But after Walgreens abandoned plans to "move" to Switzerland, are inversions becoming less popular? Cardiff Garcia of the Financial Times and Diane Brady of Bloomberg Businessweek join Money Talking.

Since the genome was sequenced 10 years ago, personalized medicine has started to catch fire. Pharmaceutical companies are now developing drugs for so-called orphan diseases, which affect only a small sliver of the population. It sounds great, but there’s a potential problem: The cost. Some of these drugs cost a thousand dollars a pill. This week on Money Talking, regular contributors Joe Nocera of the New York Times and Rana Foroohar of Time magazine speak to guest host Heidi Moore of the Guardian about what personalized medicine means for consumers, drug companies and insurance companies. This week's episode also explores what Argentina's default means for the global economy and a set of American hedge funds that invested in the country. 

Some investors are worried that fighting in the Middle East and the stalemate between Russia and the west could threaten the U.S. economy. This week on Money Talking, regular contributors Joe Nocera from the New York Times and Rana Foroohar from Time magazine discuss how these and other events happening abroad could affect U.S. economic growth. Plus, inversions. More U.S. corporations are rushing to "invert," or incorporate in another country with lower tax rates. Money Talking discusses whether this spate of inversions could inspire Congress to change the tax code. 

On this Fourth of July, Money Talking takes a moment to look at the innovative ideas, services and products that might fuel U.S. economic growth in the years ahead. Regular contributors Rana Foroohar of Time magazine and Joe Nocera of the New York Times join host Charlie Herman to reveal their choices for the innovations they believe will bring about some of the biggest changes. And then a discussion about the word "disruption." Does it need to be disrupted?

This week Money Talking revisits topics discussed in recent months: whether the economy can get out its perpetual rut and Bitcoin. After a severe winter that sent the economy into negative territory at the start of the year, have things turned around this summer? Regular contributors Joe Nocera of the New York Times and Rana Foroohar of Time magazine review their predictions about economic growth for the year ahead, and if the recent stock market record highs are trickling down to the everyone.  Plus, what ever happened to Bitcoin?

An internal investigation at General Motors into a faulty ignition switch concludes that there's been an 11-year history of failures at the company. But in releasing the report Thursday, the company's CEO, Mary Barra, said there is no proof of a conspiracy to hide the issue. The faulty ignition switch that costs less than a dollar to replace has been blamed for more than a dozen deaths. It also led to recalls of millions of vehicles and resulted in a multi-million-dollar fine, with even more payouts expected. This week on Money Talking, regular contributors Joe Nocera of the New York Times and Rana Foroohar of Time magazine discuss the report and what it means for GM's future. Plus, a discussion of new SEC recommendations that target high-speed trading. 

June 4 marks the 25th anniversary of Tiananmen Square, when student-led protests in China were ruthlessly put down by the country's government. Today, China is poised to surpass the United States as the world's largest economy. Perhaps that's not too surprising for a country of 1.3 billion people that has embraced capitalism and seen its economy boom. This week on Money Talking, WNYC contributors Joe Nocera of the New York Times and Rana Foroohar of Time magazine discuss how the meteoric rise in China's economy is connected with the Chinese government's response to Tiananmen Square and what it means for it to surpass the U.S. as the world's largest economy.

Money Talking host Charlie Herman and regular contributors Joe Nocera of the New York Times and Rana Foroohar with Time magazine have a discussion about the business books they're reading this Memorial Day weekend. Charlie Herman is reading Barbarians at the Gate by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar. "What I'm really curious to see is what has changed in the more than 20 years since this book was written in the Wall Street corporate culture...especially now when you see a lot of activist investors putting pressure on companies, and there are a lot of buyouts that are happening now." Rana Foroohar is reading The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert and thinking about how companies are responding to climate change. "I've been thinking a lot about what this means for business. Because there are stories already about countries like the Netherlands, for example, that are exporting their dike technologies to different parts of the world where seas are rising." Joe Nocera is reading the newly released Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America's Most Powerful and Private Dynasty by Daniel Schulman. "It's a surprisingly straightforward book. It's not a polemic in the way a movie that's about to come out — Citizen Koch — is a diatribe against them. But it really does tell you fascinating things about how, for instance, their father was one of the founders of the John Birch Society."