New Yahkas fleeing New Yahk

As before, New Yorkers under 30 are coming to Texas and other parts of the country looking for work and avoiding high taxes.

Unfortunately, they're not looking for jobs in construction and landscaping.

How long must we wait before they build that border fence across I-10 anyway?

I say "Welcome to Texas, we're glad to have you, and we don't care how you did it back East." That's the greeting I got when I finally made it to Texas a few years ago.

Fannie Mae comes back to the trough

Fannie Mae is asking for another $8.5B, after losing slightly more ($8.7B) for the quarter.

Is anyone surprised?

Note, though, that the AP assertion that

"The total cost of rescuing the government-controlled mortgage buyer is nearing $100 billion - the most expensive bailout of a single company."

is completely false. The AIG bailout was at least $164B to this point. The GM bailout, considering the original firm AND the new firm, has got to be close; when we include all of the wealth taken from the bondholders and original shareholders to give to the UAW, we're talking a whole lot more I'd guess.

Don't miss this part

"It takes into account $2.2 billion in dividend payments to the government."

So does it make any sense to pay dividends when they're just going to ask us to give them that money back plus more? Why are they paying dividends at all, to anyone? I know why - the managers must have flunked FINC 5133!

We don't need to exaggerate things here. FNMA is a troubling situation, as is it's little sister Freddie. But we can't forget the moral hazard episodes with AIG and GM, or overlook them, as many politicians would like for us to.

Alan Shepard, first free man in space

50 years ago, Adm. Shepard coined the phrase

"Why don't you fix your little problem ... and light this candle."

Or something to that effect.

Here are some more great space photos from LIFE magazine.

Cupcakes for finals!!! Yay!!!!

Under the "Oh, brother" category this week is the revelation that schools are doing special stuff for finals weeks and finals kick-offs.

Hey, I got a "care package" end of my freshman year, for finals, and it was the greatest thing. The alumni association at Charlotte sold these things to parents and my Mom saved her pennies to send me one. It literally made my whole week. Even though I was only 30 miles from home (that was a long way back then) a few candy bars and Nabs packs were what I needed. And the hot cocoa was a blast.

So... we can't underestimate the value of giving people a little unexpected gift once in a while.

Good luck on finals everyone. Professors too.

A warhorse is always a warhorse: the 12C by HP

The Hewlett-Packard 12C financial calculator is 30 years old, and it still stands as an icon among financial professionals. It uses reverse Polish notation or RPN (which is the REAL name, not a joke) and so the learning curve is steep. For those of us who learned on them, though, they are great and indestructable. Too bad they don't have spell-check or Web access.

There's a 12C app for the iPhone, along with other financial calculator apps.

"Skeptics say the HP 12c's followers are stubbornly clinging to a relic of an earlier era. "The financial calculator is headed the way of the wristwatch: a no-longer necessary device that users carry because of sentimentality, vanity or an unwillingness to change," says Bernie McSherry, senior vice president of Cuttone & Co., a brokerage on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Mr. McSherry prefers to use online programs."

Whatever. I remember hearing the same thing about the 2D spreadsheet and flat-file databases.

To ripoff "Jackie Brown":

"12C. The very best there is. When you absolutely, positively have to crunch every freaking number in the room. Accept no substitutes."

And in France they are called "Le 12C."

Leadership 101: The goose that laid the golden eggs

In every organization there are a few people who are key. Unfortunately, as a manager or leader, you'll be tempted to go back to those people time and again to get things done - because managers need people who get things done.

Well...those folks can be like the goose that laid the golden eggs. If they are the ones who are most effective, it's likely that they will be the ones who have the most responsibilities, leaving little time for their other duties like planning, building for the future, etc. Plus, they'll probably burn out faster than the worker drones around the joint.

This relates to Covey's 7 Habits in some sense: if your top people are busy fighting fires, there's no brain trust working on how to prevent tomorrow's fires. Quadrant II activities are more important than Quadrant I, but firefighting becomes a specialty after a while. (See First Things First, a task guide for living the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It's on the list.)

At UHCL, for example, there are a handful of folks directing program-level assessment. Most of the faculty seem to be involved, at least in our area, but the tasks of collection and description of results, and the task of moving assessment forward, always seem to fall to the same half-dozen people. And rightly so, because they know more about the topic. But what happens is the NEXT time something has to get done for accreditation or outreach or whatever, we're tempted to go back to those same folks. We know they're effective! We know they care!

Going back to the well too much, though, might run the well dry. It's a good lesson for any aspiring leader, but it's a hard one to learn. I think that history demonstrates that ineffective leaders are the one who continually exploit their best talent until it collapses.

The most effective leaders protect their top performers and prioritize what they have to do on a regular basis.

Unfortunately, those leaders are more common than the ones with common sense.

Wow, give the guy a break already!

President Obama's flunkies were out telling reporters how tough it was in the Situation Room yesterday, making the decision to snuff Osama Bin Laden. This commentary gives them hell for their cavalier attitude.

I don't think it should diminish the President's accomplishment here: he made a hard decision. For whatever reason, we don't know yet. But it had to be tough to call the shots on this one.