The Two Secrets to Job Satisfaction In my 10 years at Edina Realty, I’ve attended easily 1,000 company meetings — small, big, and everything in between. Never, absolutely never, in any of those meetings, did I ever hear fellow Edina agents refer to their clients as “Muppets,” “marks,” or “suckers.” At Goldman Sachs, that happens...Read More
Negotiating 101 I don’t play poker (or do international diplomacy), but my day job — selling residential real estate — does involve a fair amount of negotiating. So, I think I can say with some confidence that good negotiators don’t usually announce, “I don’t bluff,” as President Obama reportedly just said about dealing with Iran’s...Read More
Did Wronged Consumers Misbuy it? Lloyds Banking Group PLC will reduce some of the bonuses awarded to top executives in 2010 following an insurance misselling scandal that resulted in the U.K bank handing hefty compensation to consumers, a person familiar with the matter said Monday. Last year, Lloyds set aside £3.2 billion ($5.06 billion) to compensate...Read More
Quid Pro Quo: Higher Rate for Inflation Indexing With Mitt (“Carried Interest”) Romney ascendant — and the U.S. deficit bulging — capital gains’ current, historically low tax rate (15% for long-term gains) is coming under intensifying scrutiny. Should capital gains be taxed higher — and more like earned income? Probably. But they almost certainly should be indexed...Read More
Victims Turning Away From — Not Towards — Politics One of the puzzles — at least to me — is why millions of people who’ve been the most harmed by the housing bust haven’t created more of a groundswell for political reform. Or just plain accountability. Yes, I’m aware of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street...Read More
“Some Day, Son, This Will All Be Yours” It’s a given that, in a market of some 20,000-plus Twin Cities home sellers at the moment, some are more motivated than others. Which ones? You can usually tell by how well each home is priced, staged, marketed, etc. But there’s another, surefire way to know that a...Read More
