Money Talking

The Business Relationship Between the U.S. and China

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The leaders of the United States and China recently met to try to improve relations between the two superpowers.

This week on WNYC's Money Talking, regular contributors Rana Foroohar with Time magazine and Joe Nocera with the New York Times report from China on their conversations with Chinese government officials and business leaders and what they say about how likely a new relationship really is.

Foroohar and Nocera are on a reporting trip to China organized by the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation.

Looking ahead, Nocera speaks about Edward Snowden, the suspected leaker in the NSA PRISM scandal, who is currently marooned in Hong Kong.

Foroohar talks about how China will respond to pressure from the United States as China grows its own business intellectual property (IP).

Saturday Coffee Table: Money Talking Weekend Reading

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Money Talking host Charlie Herman and regular contributor Joe Nocera of the New York Times and Diane Brady of Bloomberg Businessweek tell us what they're reading this weekend.

Charlie Herman will be reading "Inside Google's Secret Lab" by Brad Stone in Bloomberg Businessweek. "I really want to find out more about what's going on with Google Glass and the driverless car and some of the other ideas that they think will change the world."

Diane Brady is reading the novel The Love Song of Jonny Valentine by Teddy Wayne. "When you look at people like Justin Bieber in the news, very interesting social commentary about where we are right now and whole sort of marketing of celebrity and the power of positive thinking, which I've written about as well and just some of the fallacies behind that."

Joe Nocera will be reading the galleys for the forthcoming book The Truth in Small Doses, a book about why we're losing the war on cancer by Clifton Leaf. "It's his exploration — years-long exploration — into the war on cancer, why we haven't won it, what we need to do, what's wrong with the system as it works now. It's coming out in early July."

Groceries, E-Books and the Future of Amazon

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

This week in a courthouse in Manhattan, Apple is defending itself against federal charges that it colluded with the nation’s biggest publishers to raise the price of e-books.

The case involves testimony from executives at Simon and Schuster and Penguin and emails from Steve Jobs, but another company forms the backdrop for the entire proceeding: Amazon.

When Apple introduced its iPad in 2010, Amazon dominated the ebook market. Now Apple is taking the stand to say its actions were not illegal, but were instead an attempt to end Amazon’s virtual monopoly.

This week on Money Talking, Joe Nocera with the New York Times and Diane Brady with Bloomberg Businessweek take a hard look at Amazon's hold on businesses from e-books to IT services to its most recent venture, delivering groceries in Los Angeles.

Saturday Coffee Table: Money Talking Weekend Reading

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 31 May 2013 04:00:00 -0400

Money Talking host Charlie Herman and regular contributors Joe Nocera of the New York Times and Rana Foroohar of Time magazine tell us what they're reading this weekend.

Charlie Herman will be reading "Amazon's (Not So Secret) War on Taxes" by Peter Elkind in the June issue of Fortune magazine. "This is a company that so many people use to buy items, and often times you got that advantage because you didn't have to pay taxes if you lived in certain states. Well, that might be coming to an end."

Rana Foroohar will be reading "Change the World" by George Packer in the New Yorker, which looks at how Silicon Valley money is starting to affect Washington. "It really gets at this zero-gravity world that is Silicon Valley, these people who are not only billionaires and millionaires en masse but with these ideas that are very utopian, notions about how they can change the world and have changed the world that they can translate into all these different spheres."

Joe Nocera will be reading The Billionaire's Apprentice: The Rise of the Indian-American Elite and the Fall of the Galleon Hedge Fund by Anita Raghavan, which was recently excerpted in the New York Times magazine. "The subtext is about the rise of an Indian elite in the United States, how they came to power, what they've done in the U.S. and how, in effect, disgraced they were by this scandal, and the little bit I've read of it so far is just fascinating."

How High Can the Stock Market Go?

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 31 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The stock market has been on a tear recently with one measure — the Dow Jones Industrial Average — up nearly 17 percent so far this year. The stratospheric rise makes you wonder whether the market can continue to set record highs or if the bottom is about to drop out.

This week on Money Talking, regular contributors Rana Foroohar with Time magazine and Joe Nocera with the New York Times weigh in on what these market conditions mean for investors and those considering investing.

Then, Foroohar and Nocera discuss U.S-Chinese business relations on the heels of the announcement by the new Chinese president Xi Jinping that he wants to forge "a new type of great power relationship" between the two countries.

Both Foroohar and Nocera are heading to China next week for a reporting trip with a group of journalists.

Weekend Coffee Table: Money Talking Weekend Reading

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 24 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Money Talking host Charlie Herman, regular contributor Rana Foroohar with Time magazine and Peter Fisher, senior director of the BlackRock Investment Institute, tell us what they’re reading this weekend.

Charlie Herman will be reading Who Owns the Future? by the technologist and futurist Jaron Lanier. "He came to my attention in some aspects because he was very involved in working on the movie Minority Report, which has really becomes this kind of term that people use to say 'Oh, it's just like Minority Report,' meaning, technologies that kind of predict this dystopian future."

Rana Foroohar will also be reading Who Owns the Future? "I'm reading it because I am really fascinated by the idea of whether technology is creating jobs or destroying jobs right now. If you look historically, technology has always created jobs as a net job creator. But there are these periods of creative destruction in which there's a lot of change, as we're seeing right now."

Peter Fisher will be reading Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. "850 pages about this extraordinarily angry man who created some of the best art we've ever seen....He didn't have financial success and he relied on his brother Theo who subsidized him his whole life...and no one during his lifetime thought his art was worth anything, and of course, now it's extraordinarily valuable."

Where Is the Economy Headed This Summer?

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 24 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

As we approach the summer, the economy is looking like it's doing better: unemployment is falling, stocks are rising and housing is looking better than ever. In the past few years, however, the economy has also been improving right until this point, and then it took a turn for the worse. Will the same happen in 2013?

This week on Money Talking, regular contributor Rana Foroohar of Time magazine and Peter Fisher, senior director of the BlackRock Investment Institute, discuss whether the U.S. economy is truly in recovery.

They also weigh in on the Federal Reserve's recent policies of easy money and low interest rates.

Looking forward, Fisher previews the University of Michigan consumer confidence survey, which will be released next Thursday.

Foroohar examines the recession in Europe and the steps certain countries are taking to counteract its effects.

How Much is a College Education Really Worth?

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 17 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

This week on Money Talking, regular contributors Joe Nocera of the New York Times and Rana Foroohar of Time magazine weigh in on whether college is still worth the investment in this age of exorbitant tuition and skyrocketing debt.

As college seniors graduate this month, they're starting their careers in a sluggish labor market where salaries have stagnated and even finding a job can be difficult.

As a result, some students and parents might be asking whether that college degree was really worth the cost. As higher education has gotten more expensive, total student debt has risen to more than a trillion dollars — second only to mortgage debt. The amount has nearly tripled since 2004.

Weekend Coffee Table: Money Talking Weekend Reading

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 10 May 2013 18:19:31 -0400

Money Talking host Charlie Herman and regular contributors Joe Nocera of the New York Times and Rana Foroohar with Time magazine tell us what they’re reading this weekend.

Charlie Herman will be doing some listening this week in lieu (or perhaps in addition to) some reading. It's a radio story from the podcast Planet Money called "I Know I'm Supposed to Follow My Passion. But What If I Don't Have a Passion?" about a recent college grad who is trying to figure out what to do with his life. "He graduated about two years ago from an Ivy League school and he asks the prominent economist Tyler Cowen 'What should I do? I don't have a passion, where do I go?' And so Cowen basically met with him and two other economists to figure out 'How important is passion?'"

In advance of a reporting trip to China in June, Rana Foroohar will be reading The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers by Richard McGregor. "It is I think the best book I've ever seen written about the Chinese Communist party and its inner workings. Very few people know anything about how the party really operates, but he gets in as deep as I've seen anyone do working in English."

Joe Nocera will be traveling to China on the same reporting trip as Foroohar in June. He's reading with the book Dreaming in Chinese: Mandarin Lessons in Life, Love, and Language by Deborah Fallows. "Deborah Fallows is a linguist and she lived in China for three years...and her way of exploring China was through its language, talking to people and learning about language and learning about China linguistically. And it's supposed to be a very funny book and it's supposed to be a very interesting way to come at China."

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon Under Attack

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 10 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Jamie Dimon, CEO and chairman of the nation's largest bank JPMorgan Chase, is facing criticism from prominent shareholders that could cost him his chairmanship.

Dimon has been called the "Last Man Standing" because he made it through the 2008 financial crisis with his reputation intact, but in a turn of events that verges on schadenfreude, he's under attack.

This week on Money Talking, regular contributors Joe Nocera of the New York Times and Rana Foroohar of Time magazine discuss how JPMorgan's $6 billion "London Whale" trading debacle, multiple federal investigations of the bank's business practices and Dimon's own unapologetic demeanor are raising the hackles of some of JPMorgan's biggest backers.

Looking ahead, Nocera talks about the news that Jeffrey Skilling, the former president of Enron, was able to get 10 years cut from his sentence, meaning he'll be getting out of jail in 2017.

Foroohar talks about the Dow's record highs.

Saturday Coffee Table: Money Talking Weekend Reading

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 03 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Money Talking host Charlie Herman and regular contributors Joe Nocera of the New York Times and Rana Foroohar with Time magazine tell us what they’re reading this weekend.

Charlie Herman will be reading "Robert Diamond's Next Life" by Andrew Ross Sorkin in this weekend's issue of the New York Times magazine, which is the Money issue. "Bob Diamond was the former CEO of Barclays who basically lost his job over the Libor scandal, and it's a great picture of him taking the subway to work like the rest of us schmoes. And it's a profile of him and sort of what his life is like now, post-losing this sort of pinnacle of British bankerdom."

Rana Foroohar will be reading a recent study from the Brookings Institution on money and well-being. "One of the big pieces of conventional wisdom comes from an economist Richard Easterlin who in the seventies famously came up with this idea that basically once you hit a lower middle class level of income...you actually don't get any happier for making more money....Brookings has done another look at these numbers and they're saying actually, money does buy happiness."

Joe Nocera will be reading "The Hunt for Steve Cohen" by Bethany McLean and Bryan Burrough in the June issue of Vanity Fair. "Bethany McLean has a co-authored piece in the current Vanity Fair about Stevie Cohen and SAC and the government's efforts to nail him for insider trading....I am avidly looking forward to reading this piece out of which I fully expect to finally understand what's going on with the federal government and SAC."

Apple and Corporate Taxes

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 03 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

If you had $145 billion on hand, you'd spend some of it right? Well, if you’re Apple, not quite.

The company sold $17 billion worth of bonds this week as part of a plan to give back $100 billion to shareholders.

Essentially, Apple would rather use its credit card and take on debt, than use the money it has sitting in the bank.

This week on Money Talking, regular contributors Joe Nocera of the New York Times and Rana Foroohar of Time magazine discuss the implications of Apple's decision and what it says about America's corporate tax structure.

Looking ahead, Nocera previews the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting, which takes places May 4 in Omaha.

Foroohar takes a look at the sequester's impact on the jobs number.

Saturday Coffee Table: Money Talking Weekend Reading

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 05:00:00 -0400

Money Talking host Charlie Herman and regular contributors Joe Nocera of the New York Times and Rana Foroohar with Time magazine tell us what they’re reading this weekend.

Charlie Herman will try to finish the novel Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon. “The thing is -- yes it’s about fathers and sons and it’s about relationships – but it’s also about a small business trying to confront what happens when a large, successful business comes in...That’s something we see here in New York City all the time. We worry about those stores that are going out of business; the ones that we never go into and never buy anything from and at the same time don’t want them to go away.”

Rana Foroohar has been busy reading quarterly earnings reports this week, but she did find time to pick up Ruchir Sharma’s Breakout Nations. “Like many people he has been bullish on the growth prospects of the U.S. relative to the rest of the world for some time, but he was first. He wrote this book a year ago, he was out ahead, and he’s got a lot of interesting things to say so anyone who’s in the investment community should pick it up, too.”

Joe Nocera will be reading The Power Surge by Michael Levi, an energy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “He’s a pragmatist. He doesn’t buy into the pieties of the right or the pieties of the left. He thinks about practical solutions, what works, what doesn’t, what makes sense, and where we’re truly headed in terms of energy.”

Companies and Political Contributions

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Publicly traded companies may soon be required to disclose political donations if the Security and Exchange Commission accepts the arguments from investors, elected officials and several corporate and securities law experts.

The SEC could make a decision as early as this month to change the rule, posing the first real test for Mary Jo White who was recently confirmed as chairwoman of the committee.

This week on Money Talking, contributors Rana Foroohar of Time magazine and Joe Nocera of the New York Times discuss whether such a change would be good for business or if it's simply politics at play.

Advocates of the disclosure say corporations should not be able to hide political donations from their shareholders. But opponents say the disclosure requirement is a bad idea. David Primo, a political science professor at the University of Rochester, told WNYC’s The Takeaway that corporate political spending does not pose any additional risk to a company beyond its day-to-day business.

Opponents also fear the rule will scare corporations from exercising their right to make political donations. “It could actually hurt shareholders if it leads to activism against corporations,” said Primo.

Some companies already disclose their political spending. Activist shareholders, especially those entrusted with public pensions like New York’s Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, have been successful in getting companies to disclose their political spending even in the absence of any federal rule.

Looking ahead, Foroohar is watching for the possibility of another bubble in the real estate market, in this case, the commercial market. And Nocera is watching if states that approved the sale of marijuana will begin taxing it like cigarettes.

Saturday Coffee Table: Google Fiber and Who's On the Time 100

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 05:00:00 -0400

Money Talking host Charlie Herman and WNYC contributor Rana Foroohar with Time magazine review what they’re reading this weekend.

Charlie Herman will be reading “Only Connect: Kansas City gives it up for Google” in the April edition of Harper’s Magazine. It’s about the rolling out of Google Fiber service in Kansas City. “This is the idea of trying to bring more and faster broadband, cable, internet and everything that goes with that to different communities. It gives an option other than cable, broadband and your telephone service. Is it really as successful as some people are hoping or claiming it to be?”

Rana Foroohar will be reading the Time 100 list which honors those who the magazine editors believe are currently the most influential people in the world. “It’s very tech heavy this year. One of the reasons that it’s tech heavy is that technology pioneers and these billionaires that have been created by this industry are getting much more involved in the public sector.” In its tenth annual year, the list features Elon Musk, the CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla, who is getting involved in space exploration.

Is Manufacturing Coming Back to the US?

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

There's been a lot of buzz about the comeback of manufacturing in the U.S. and the promise of new jobs. In the last three years alone, half a million jobs have already been created.

Companies ranging from Apple to Walmart have announced plans to start making things here in the U.S., or are pledging to buy more products with the label "Made in America."

The President believes the country can create a million manufacturing jobs in the next four years.

But will it be enough to replace the millions of jobs already lost, or the factories long since shut-down and moved overseas to China, Mexico and Vietnam?

This week on Money Talking, contributors Rana Foroohar of Time magazine and Joe Nocera of the New York Times explain what the future of manufacturing will look like.

One word: technology.

Nocera recently went to the Brooklyn Navy Yard to meet the people behind Spuni, an ergonomic baby spoon company. Thanks to 3-D printing and crowdfunding, the company hopes it will soon be manufacturing several hundred thousands spoons.

"We can be sitting around table and say, 'Hey, this is an interesting idea, why is someone never done this before?' and literally three days later, we have the first prototype," said co-founder Trevor Hardy.

Looking ahead, Foroohar discusses whether the boom in shale oil in the U.S. will create jobs and Nocera looks at who is going to buy the nation's largest gun maker Freedom Group.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Trevor Hardy's last name.

Saturday Coffee Table: Money Talking Weekend Reading

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Money Talking host Charlie Herman, regular contributor Rana Foroohar of Time magazine, and guest Steve Bertoni of Forbes magazine tell us what they’re reading this weekend.

Charlie Herman will be reading "Made in the USA," the cover story of the latest issue of Time magazine co-written by none other than Money Talking contributor Rana Foroohar. The piece is about American manufacturing, whether or not it’s making a comeback and if it will create middle class jobs. "If these are pretty highly skilled jobs, they might not really be the savior that we hope it is."

Rana Foroohar will be reading the book Sugar in the Blood: A Family's Story of Slavery and Empire by Andrea Stuart. "It’s a topic I’m fascinated by which is the politics and economics of slave trade in the Caribbean and how it relates to sugar production....The book doesn’t get into this explicitly but it brings to mind other trade-offs we have today like really cheap clothing handmade by child workers in Asia."

Steve Bertoni is an associate editor at Forbes magazine. He'll be reading "Business Outsider" by Ken Auletta, a profile of Henry Blodget in the New Yorker. A former all-star tech analyst, Blodget was accused of civil securities fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2002 and agreed to a permanent ban from the securities industry. "He was banned for life and now he has a second life as the CEO and editor of Business Insider, which is a hot new business online publication that is actually a little controversial in its own sense."

Activist Investors Shake Up American Companies

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Some of the most well-known companies in corporate America have recently landed at the center of some pretty rough and tumble fights between their board of directors and activist investors.

This week on Money Talking, Rana Foroohar of Time magazine and Steve Bertoni of Forbes magazine discuss why there appears to be a sudden surge in shareholder activism and what it means for the company, the investors and the economy.

These investors, people like Carl Icahn, David Einhorn and Daniel Loeb, have been challenging businesses like Apple, Dell and Yahoo on issues ranging from how the companies spend their cash reserves to how much they are worth.

These kinds of shareholders may not have a seat on the board of directors, but they purchase a large enough amount of stock in order to push for major changes in the company.

In March, shareholder opposition to the $24.4 billion buyout of Dell by its CEO, Michael Dell, ramped up when Icahn joined the fight and made his own bid to buy out the company.

Einhorn, a hedge fund manager and president of Greenlight Capital, criticized Apple for holding on to too much cash and pressured the company to issue new stock. Apple CEO Tim Cook is now reportedly considering what to do with the company’s surplus.

Saturday Coffee Table: Money Talking Weekend Reading

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 08:50:01 -0400

Money Talking host Charlie Herman and regular contributors Joe Nocera of the New York Times and Rana Foroohar of Time magazine tell us what they're reading this weekend.

Charlie Herman will be reading "Silencing the Subway" by Christopher Maag in the online publication Narratively. "It's looking at the subway system that's being built here in New York, and in particular, trying to figure out ways to dampen the sound. I had spent some time with one company, a structural engineering firm, that was really looking at the different ways of trying to prevent that deafening noise that you hear."

Rana Foroohar will be reading the book To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism by Evgeny Morozov. "The book is basically taking on the cult of technology, the idea that all these companies...are going to make our lives so much better, that big data is going to tell us what kind of music and art are best, that technology has all the solutions."

Joe Nocera will be reading "Business Outsider," a profile of discredited Wall Street analyst turned journalist Henry Blodget by Ken Auletta in The New Yorker. "Blodget is the former analyst who was disgraced in the Eliot Spitzer Wall Street analyst scandal and had to pay a huge fine and was booted from the industry. And he's completely reinvented himself in that kind of only-in-America redemption story where he now runs a very popular website called Business Insider that covers the world of business."

Tech Giants Battle for Mobile Market Share

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Look out iPhone. You've got (even more) competition.

Facebook launched new software Thursday called "Home" that will put the social media company front and center on phones that use the Android operating system.

Meanwhile, Samsung announced plans to open 1400 mini-stores inside Best Buy stores to compete with Apple stores. It's the biggest step the South Korean electronics maker has taken as it encroaches on Apple's dominance in the United States.

This week on Money Talking, regular contributors Joe Nocera of the New York Times and Rana Foroohar of Time magazine examine the battle for mobile market share among tech giants like Google, Facebook, Apple and Samsung.

Looking ahead, Foroohar discusses the economic ramifications of the sequester and Nocera talks about the business implications of the Rutgers basketball scandal.

Saturday Coffee Table: Money Talking Weekend Reading

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Money Talking host Charlie Herman and regular contributors Joe Nocera of the New York Times and Rana Foroohar of Time magazine tell us what they're reading this weekend.

Charlie Herman will be reading "Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead?" by Susan Dominus, the cover story in this week's New York Times magazine. "It's a profile of Adam Grant. He's described as the youngest tenured and highest rated professor at Wharton — No, I'm not jealous — and he's an organizational pyschologist. He studies workplace dynamics. And he has a new book coming out called Give and Take. And the idea is that maybe the way that employees can be motivated to work harder, and that it's not just money, and it's not just career advancement, but that it's the idea of motivating people to help others, the sense that you're contributing to other people's lives by mentoring, by teaching, by trying to find ways to make the rest of the world better, might actually be a better way to motivate people."

Rana Foroohar will be reading "Overstating the Costs of Inequality" by Scott Winship in National Affairs. "I'm very interested in the topic of inequality and the economic cost of inequality. It's something that I've been writing about for a while.... He's making some interesting arguments about how the research that we've heard so much about about how inequality decreases social mobility and slows economic growth and can actually cause imbalances that eventually lead to financial crises, is not quite right."

Joe Nocera will be re-reading the 1973 book The Dance of Legislation: An Insider's Account of the Workings of the United States Senate by Eric Redman. "The book as I recall it is so much about the give and take of legislation, the horse trading, the compromising, and I'm kind of curious to see if I read it again through the prism of the era that we live in, whether it seems like it comes from a different age, a different time and barely even the same country."

Can a Thriving Housing Market Last?

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Across the country, home prices are up, foreclosures are down and mortgage rates are unbelievably low. The inventory of homes is also low, which means it's hard for buyers to find the right place.

The New York City metro area is right in line with those trends. Whether it's a two-bedroom on the Upper West Side, a brownstone in Carroll Gardens or a split-level in Northern New Jersey, buyers lured by the healthy housing market are nevertheless struggling to find a home.

"We're seeing inventory falling over the last couple of years. This is a national trend, not just in New York," said real estate appraiser Jonathan Miller of Miller Samuel.

But, as you might expect, the New York market does have some of its own dynamics thanks to the large number of wealthy individuals who live here.

"Last week, I was fortunate enough to get four offers. Three of those four offers were all cash. There is a lot of cash in the New York area," says Brian Lewis, executive vice president at Halstead Property, LLC.

This week on Money Talking, regular contributors Joe Nocera of the New York Times and Rana Foroohar of Time magazine weigh in on whether the recent upswing in the housing market is sustainable and a sign of a true recovery.

Looking ahead, Foroohar and Nocera examine the future of J.P. Morgan Chase and the bank's CEO Jamie Dimon.

Weekend Reading: Iraq, Abdullah & Touch Screens

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 04:00:00 -0400

Money Talking host Charlie Herman and regular contributors Joe Nocera of the New York Times and Rana Foroohar of Time magazine tell us what they're reading this weekend.

Charlie Herman is reading Jon Lee Anderson's article in the New Yorker, "How We Forgot Iraq." "He wrote about the build up to the war in Iraq ten years ago, he was in Iraq during the fighting." Herman adds, "I'm curious to see him recapture the mood and what's actually happened in Iraq ten years later."

Rana Foroohar will be reading the article "The Modern King in the Arab Spring" by Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic about Jordan's King Abdullah. "OMG. He trashes everybody," says Foroohar referring to the king. She adds, "All these thought bubbles that you always imagine must be in leaders' heads, suddenly they're on the page."

Joe Nocera also plans to read the Atlantic. He's checking out the cover story, "The Touch-Screen Generation" by Hanna Rosen. "Hanna Rosen comes away very skeptical, or at least appears to be skeptical, ultimately, about whether these apps are good for children or not."

Money Talking: Is Energy Independence A Reality?

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

For years, politicians have called for the nation to end its dependence on foreign oil. That time could be fast approaching.

This week, the Energy Information Administration forecast that the U.S. is expected to produce more oil than it imports for the first time since 1995. Most of the increase will come from shale fields in North Dakota and Texas.

The news comes after earlier reports that the U.S. could produce more oil than Saudi Arabia by 2020.

This week on Money Talking, regular contributors Rana Foroohar of Time magazine and Joe Nocera of the New York Times join WNYC's Business Editor Charlie Herman to assess just how the nation is becoming more energy independent and what it means for the economy. Also, with the U.S. consuming less foreign oil and other countries like China picking up the slack, how will that change global alliances.

Looking ahead, Foroorhar is keeping a close eye on what happens to the stalled bailout of the island nation of Cyprus. Nocera, on the other hand, is watching what happens to J.C. Penney's CEO Ron Johnson as he tries to fix the ailing retailer.

Saturday Coffee Table: Money Talking Weekend Reading

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 11:15:07 -0400

Money Talking host Charlie Herman and regular contributors Joe Nocera of the New York Times and Rana Foroohar of Time magazine tell us what they're reading this weekend.

Charlie Herman will finish reading Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. "While it's not necessarily a business story per se, I think it really does kind of tie into how you actually, how you get the political system to work in times of crisis, and we've been going through a lot of them recently."

Rana Foroohar will be reading Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo. "She spent years in this ghetto by the airport reporting on the lives of these people who are the dark side of globalization in the emerging world, and what really strikes me is that the core problem of the rich world and developing world is the same: Inequality."

Joe Nocera will be reading the article "Guggenheim is Flexing its $170 Billion Muscles" in the latest issue of Fortune magazine. "Guggenheim Partners is this firm that nobody has really ever heard of that in the last fourteen years has gone from being fundamentally the family fund for the Guggenheim family, the same Guggenheim family that built the museum, to being a sprawling hedge fund, privaty equity fund that has over $170 billion in assets."

Assessing Mayor Bloomberg's Impact on the Economy

WNYC, New York Public Radio — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Over his 11 years as mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg has pushed for economic development, immigration reform, public health initiatives and gun control, among other issues.

After a judge blocked his administration's ban on sugary beverages this week, Bloomberg quickly arranged a press conference where he defended the policy.

"I’m trying to do what’s right. I have to defend my children and you and everybody else to save lives," he said. "Obesity kills. There’s just no question about it."

Bloomberg has fewer than 300 days left at City Hall, and the roadblock on sweetened drinks means he may not have time to implement one of the biggest public health initiatives he's pushed for during his tenure.

It also raises the question of his legacy.

This week on Money Talking, regular contributors Rana Foroohar of Time magazine and Joe Nocera of the New York Times assess the economic impact of Bloomberg's policies and discuss how he might put his clout and $27 billion fortune to work after he leaves office.

Looking ahead, Foroohar talks about the news that former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is writing a book about his experience during the financial crisis.

Nocera examines how March Madness brings the NCAA hundreds of millions of dollars in just a few short weeks.