Money Talking

As 2015's batch of bright-eyed graduates begins the job search, the economy might be finally cooperating, promising a stronger job market and more offers. Since the 2008 recession, it's been tough for college grads. The pool of job openings has been both small and specialized. And stubborn unemployment rates haven't been the only problem: troupes of Ph.D.-holding baristas are symptoms of underemployment. Economists are hopeful May's job report will tell a different story. Already, unemployment has dropped from 7.6 to 5.4 percent, and high skill jobs are on the rise. But underemployment is still about 7 percentage points higher than it was in 2000. Ylan Mui of the Washington Post and Derek Thompson of The Atlantic have been keeping an eye on the job climate for young employment hopefuls. This week, Money Talking host Charlie Herman invites them both to discuss whether "The Economy Is Still Terrible For Young People" or "The Newest Crop of College Grads May Find Underemployment Easing a Bit."   

As Wall Street and Washington anxiously await the latest GDP numbers, the reality about economic figures.

No one wants to be boring, and yet how often do you find yourself pinching yourself during a speech trying to stay awake? Perhaps the reason for bad presentations is because speaking in public is one of our biggest fears, right up there with death. We can be so scared of giving a bad talk, we create a self-fulfilling prophecy. But done right, even the smallest of speeches, even the weekly check-in with your boss, can "change the world, even if just a little bit," according to Nick Morgan, the president and founder of Public Words, a company that helps people tell their stories. He's also the author of Power Cues and is featured in the Harvard Business Review article, "How to Give a Stellar Presentation." He's studied what makes speeches good, and just as importantly, what makes them bad. He said there are some sure fire ways to make a speech boring: Start With a List: If you want to lose your audience at the very start, lead with a laundry list of things you'll cover. When you're speaking out loud, people don't connect to lists. Give them a reason to care first. Let In Your Nervous Filler: If you want to lose listeners, waste their time with niceties, coughs, and bad jokes. Shrug When You're Selling: If your body language is inconsistent with the things you're saying, people won't buy in to your message. Morgan says before you start a speech, you have to understand where your performance anxiety comes from. He says the reason speakers make all these mistakes is because they often set a standard for themselves that just isn't achievable. So they're humiliated before they even begin. Nerves let filler take the place of genuine communication.  Morgan says for big speeches, the solution is to use a personal story to hold the parts of your talk together. Get people emotionally invested by taking them on a journey with you.  But you can't make every little speech a story. It gets old. In day-to-day business meetings, Morgan says the solution to mediocrity and monotony is very simple. All you need to do is spend a few minutes before the talk focusing on the emotions you want to convey. Too often, people enter a meeting with a to-do list in mind instead of a desire to motivate. When your body language and tone evoke emotion, it makes a meeting hum with energy.

Robots are having a moment. They're breaking hearts in the movie "Ex Machina," splayed across the pages of The New York Times and filling the airwaves with a series from NPR's Planet Money on robots' role in the workforce. It's a story we've heard before: since the days of the Industrial Revolution, machines have threatened to take our jobs. But in the 21st century, this is not your great-grandfather's robot.  A recent paper by economists at Columbia and Boston University claims the kinds of robots being made these days might actually increase income inequality. And another study found that nearly half of U.S. employment could be a risk of being computerized. Money Talking host Charlie Herman asks Stacey Vanek Smith from Planet Money and Cardiff Garcia with the Financial Times what kinds of robots could threaten to edge out workers, and whether the government should step in and help.

Economists found if three key cities rezoned to allow taller buildings with more apartments and condos, the U.S. economy be nearly 10 percent bigger.

When you're the boss, your worst enemies at work might end up on your team. You're in charge of making the office bully feel good about work (and less mean) or pointing out the strengths of the workplace slobs (even if you're a neat freak). Motivating the people who make you crazy is Liane Davey's specialty. As President of Team Solutions at Knightsbridge Human Capital, her book You First: Inspire Your Team to Grow Up, Get Along, and Get Stuff Done and the Harvard Business Review article "How to Motivate Someone You Don't Like" provide specific strategies for how to be a good boss to employees with difficult personalities. First, Davey says, you have to understand why they rub you the wrong way. It comes down to three root reasons:  Interpersonal Rub: They're different from you on a personal level and you have a hard time relating to them. Off-putting Habits: Their quirks annoy you. You're the highly organized and they're the distracted and messy. You're an extrovert and they won't opine on a single thing. Disrespect: They're gruff or blasé about your authority. Their behavior make you feel undermined as a boss. When your employees get under your skin on a personal level, Davey says the key is to change your mindset.  Teambuilding: Remind yourself you're on a team: Surround yourself with people who have different strengths from you.  Spin Weaknesses as Strengths: Think about those quirks as complementary strengths. They're not messy, they're creative. Compliment people on their best traits, and make that a positive place from which to give feedback.  Empathize: An unhappy boss's instinct is to reprimand; empathize instead. When someone's unsavory or a bully, this is coming from somewhere. We tend to think that the bully is nasty and strong. but most often, they're very weak and overcompensating.  "We don't know what we like," Davey said. "We like what we know." She suggests that to warm up to the people you can't stand, you need to do the opposite of what you might think. Get to know them better; ask them to open up; cling to them. If they tell their story, you'll better relate to them on a human level.  Then remember that on a professional level, people different from you often bring different strengths. It's in your best interests to warm up to the ones who complement your own weaknesses. If you're meticulous and they're a mess, you're can both stronger when you work together. But you can't force anyone to like you. "It's a two way street," said Davey. If you understand where your employees or coworkers behaviors are coming from, that'll be enough to work with them better. You don't need to like people for the sake of liking them. And for those office bullies, she says, the best solution is to kill 'em with kindness (and keep giving constructive feedback).

Five years have passed since the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell nearly a 1,000 points in a matter of minutes, and we're still trying to understand what happened. In the months after the crash, regulators concluded it was due a variety of factors, in particular, the actions of one institutional trading firm. But this month, Navinder Singh Sarao, an independent trader based in London, was arrested for manipulating the market that day in 2010. He's accused of "spoofing," or entering a series of fake requests into the market, effectively bluffing, and making other traders think the market is going up or down. He says he's done nothing wrong. Meanwhile, regulators are behind schedule on one potential protection against wily markets and suggest that as the stock market becomes more complicated, they won't be able to keep up. Money Talking Host Charlie Herman asks guests Rana Foroohar from Time Magazine and Heidi Moore from Mashable how the market could rest in the hands of one man -- and what, if anything, can be done to stop it from happening in the future. And then the Hamburglar. What more is there to say?

When former HP CEO Carly Fiorina enters the presidential race next week, as she's expected to do, she'll stand out as the only woman to enter the Republican ring. When she makes her announcement (and launches her second book), part of her message is expected to be that her experience as CEO makes her qualified to lead the country. It's an argument voters have heard before when business leaders run for elected office. Mitt Romney ran on his business acumen in the last presidential election. And Michael Bloomberg served as New York City's mayor for three terms after a successful career in business (which he has since resumed). But some argue that history hasn't been kind to businessmen who find themselves in the Oval Office. As for Fiorina, political analysts seem to have come to a consensus: she has no chance. She has never held political office, garnered just two percent of Republican votes in a recent poll, and has a decidedly mixed reputation in the business world. So why would she run for president? Money Talking host Charlie Herman asks business reporters John Carney of the Wall Street Journal and Sheelah Kolhatkar of Bloomberg Business Week: Do good CEOs make good presidents? And for that matter, what makes a good CEO in the first place?

If you've put your worst foot forward the first time you meet someone, all is not lost. When it's loathe at first site, there's still hope for a rebound. This week on Money Talking, Heidi Grant Halvorson discusses her new book from the Harvard Business Review Press, No One Understands You and What To Do About It and explains how you can get a second chance to make a better impression.

The research model for a recent study on financial greed was simple: Swiss sociologists invited bankers to report the outcomes of 10 coin tosses while no one was watching. Before subjects reported their outcomes, they were told which side — heads or tails — would be the winner of 20 dollars in each toss. In the first control group, these bankers seemed to tell the truth: subjects reported winning about 50 percent of the time. But when subjects were reminded they were bankers — what they call "identity priming" in sociology — they seemed to lie a little. They won 58.6 percent of the time — an outcome that's statistically unlikely to be true: They were likely cheating. As Deutsche Bank joins the ranks of banks punished for bad behavior this week, Money Talking's host Charlie Herman asks reporter Jessie Eisinger of ProPublica and Wall Street employee-turned-observer William Cohan — who wrote an article on the topic in this week in this week's Atlantic — whether Wall Street's culture has evolved since the financial crisis and whether or not it can be changed from the inside.

There's no doubt the two presidential hopefuls who entered the race this week are on opposite ends of the political spectrum. That's why it was so strange to hear Democrat Hilary Clinton and Republican Marco Rubio kick off their campaigns with uncannily similar economic messages: they say they want to fight for the working class. This week, Clinton billed herself as the candidate for the "everyday American," criticizing CEOs' swollen salaries. Meanwhile, Rubio told NPR he wants the Republican party — which, he said, is portrayed unfairly as "a party that doesn't care about people who are trying to make it" — to transform into "the champion of the working class."  Guest host Cardiff Garcia from the Financial Times probes whether the common messages we've heard actually match the candidates' records and asks how the two parties might tackle inequality differently. And guests Rana Foroohar from Time magazine and Joe Weisenthal from Bloomberg discuss ways to combat inequality with a messy tool not many politicians have been able to touch: the tax code.

Skirting office politics is for fools. Business psychology professor Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic says there's no way around it: when you've got people, you've got politics. Humans, he says, are inherently emotional creatures and "office politics" is really just another name for human psychology. "Maybe in a hundred years or 20 years, robots will take over for us, and they'll be less political, but at this stage, it's just us versus us," he said.  In his article for the Harvard Business Review, "The Underlying Psychology of Office Politics," Chamorro says if you want to understand the place you work, you have to learn to play the game: Pay attention: Invisible forces of power are at play in any office. You can't ignore the dynamics; you're a part of them.  Put yourself in others' shoes: Empathy is key in understanding the psychology of the workplace and how to get along. Don't believe everything you hear. Even for employees who fancy themselves apolitical, a little skepticism makes you smart. It helps protect against people who might try to manipulate office dynamics. Even though politics are inevitable in the workplace, the best companies have collective psyches that encourage both competition and compassion. Chamorro says they strike a healthy balance of three fundamental human needs that drive human behavior: Get Along With Others: Human life is only possible if we live together. That's why we have an instinctual need to connect. Getting ahead: In tension with the need to make friends is the need to make a name for ourselves. Finding meaning: We want to understand the world's patterns, predict behavior, and be ready for what comes.  When these three needs are in balance, employees are more engaged, and, in turn, they're more productive. Chamorro says while politics are inevitable in any organization, they don't have to be toxic. "If you're too political," he said, "you'll self destruct."  But the only way to change things is from the top. "Senior leaders create culture in an organization," he said. "It's not a matter of hours or days or weeks. It takes months." Leaders can replace conniving employees and put in processes that make things more transparent and decrease the degree to which employees perceive the inevitable politics at play. For the employees at the bottom, you have to learn to play the game before you. And if the politics is too much, maybe it's time to find a new job. "If you want to move up, you have to play the game," Chamorro says. "Once you get there, stop playing the Machiavellian game."

Leave it to economists to spin a story about the strong dollar as a troubling sign. The dollar is strengthening faster than it has in nearly forty years: the euro-to-dollar exchange rate is almost back to 1:1. American tourists have more buying power overseas, imports are inexpensive, and acquisitions of foreign companies come at a cheap price. Just this week, Fedex bought Dutch package delivery company TNT. But a soaring dollar bill also means buyers abroad are less interested in expensive American goods. If history's any indication, a strong dollar can be an omen of economic downturns ahead. On this week's Money Talking, Rana Foroohar of Time magazine and Josh Barro of The New York Times explore the roots and risks of our strong American currency. And then a look at the future of TV as HBO's hit show Game of Thrones becomes available to viewers without cable. HBO's new stand-alone app, HBO Now, launched this week, is just one in a series of new platforms that's freeing content from cable providers and lets viewers watch traditional TV on a desktop in real time.

When social controversy strikes, good business sense says companies should sit in nonpartisan silence. Customers could fall on either side of a debate. But this week, just as Indiana passed a "Religious Freedom" law and Arkansas considering passing a similar law, a tidal wave of strong denouncements from Fortune 500 CEOs — from Apple's Tim Cook to Wal-Mart's Doug McMillon — was almost immediate. In their view, the laws would let businesses refuse service to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender customers. Marriott's CEO Arne Sorenson went as far as to call Indiana's move "an idiocy."  Money Talking host Charlie Herman asks why corporations would suddenly feel the need to speak out, and guests Cardiff Garcia of the Financial Times and Heather Landy of Quartz suggest the outpouring of CEO opinion could mean the role of American business in social politics is shifting. Our statement on Arkansas #HB1228 pic.twitter.com/KFPd91ejdo — Walmart Newsroom (@WalmartNewsroom) March 31, 2015 "Our internal policies have and will continue to stand up against #discrimination" http://t.co/vfXmIGzZKy #s4egala pic.twitter.com/IW25DYXwws — Marriott Internat'l (@MarriottIntl) March 31, 2015 There’s something very dangerous happening in states across the country. http://t.co/QJTkCuZVdo — Tim Cook (@tim_cook) March 30, 2015 Today we are canceling all programs that require our customers/employees to travel to Indiana to face discrimination. http://t.co/SvTwyCHxvE — Marc Benioff (@Benioff) March 26, 2015 Angie's List will withdraw campus expansion proposal due to passage of #RFRA http://t.co/N4s7mFhhl6 — Angie's List (@AngiesList) March 28, 2015 An Open Letter to States Considering Imposing Discrimination Laws http://t.co/2iNMMP0aIt — Jeremy Stoppelman (@jeremys) March 27, 2015 Statement from #FinalFour coaches regarding the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act ... #RFRA pic.twitter.com/zOiX8oh99Q — NCAA (@NCAA) April 1, 2015 Unacceptable. "Defying Criticism, Arkansas Legislature Passes Bill on Religious Freedom", via @nytimes http://t.co/wLn98jt42E — Jack (@jack) March 31, 2015 Joint Statement from NBA, @WNBA, @Pacers and @IndianaFever

Would you rather scratch out your eyes than deliver bad news at work? Most people would. Navigating a difficult conversation is tough but it's a key skill for leaders. Karen Dillon, former editor of the Harvard Business Review, explains how to handle those tough talks you've been putting off.