Money Talking

Republicans will control both houses of Congress starting this January. But before that happens, the current Congress has some unfinished business.

One of those issues is deciding whether or not to extend the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act, or TRIA. Passed shortly after the attacks on September 11, 2001, it provided a federal guarantee to cover losses sustained from a terrorist attack once they exceed certain thresholds. 

The original intent of the program was to give insurance companies time to develop pricing models that accurately assess the risk of a terrorist attack. Over time, the program would wind down as the burden shifted back to insurers.

But TRIA was extended twice – in 2005 and 2007 – and is now set to expire again on December 31. 

The Senate passed a reauthorization bill 96-3 last summer to keep the program largely intact. But House Financial Services Chairman, Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican supports a different version that raises the cost threshold before the government intervenes.

This week on Money Talking, Charlie Herman talks with WNYC's Ilya Marritz who's been covering the fight in Congress about why the stakes are so high for the real estate industry in New York.

After that, a conversation about annual employee reviews. Nikki Waller from The Wall Street Journal discusses new approaches companies are taking to evaluate employee performance.

And Sheila Heen, a contributor to the Harvard Business Review and co-author of Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well, examines how employees can – and should – take more control over the feedback process.

"One way to get coaching is to ask a very specific question,” said Heen. “'What’s one thing I’m doing or failing to do that you think is getting in my way or that you think would improve things?'"

President Obama put forth a plan this week calling on the Federal Communications Commission to adopt strict rules protecting net neutrality. The agency has been working to balance the interests of technology companies who create and transmit information over the Internet with the concerns of cable operators and equipment makers that build and maintain the infrastructure that carries that information.

Tech companies, like Google and Netflix, generally oppose proposals that allow broadband companies to charge different rates for faster speeds.

The president is pushing for rules that would reclassify broadband operators and permit more regulation, bringing them in line with how phone companies have been regulated for decades. That would prevent preferential pricing and eliminate the so-called "fast" and "slow" lanes."

Not surprisingly, broadband providers want a freer hand to negotiate pricing and say net neutrality, as it's known, will stifle innovation and curb investment in better infrastructure.

This week on Money Talking, Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia University and the man who coined the term "net neutrality" discusses why the outcome of this debate has the potential to fundamentally affect the way the Internet works, and by default, the way we work. 

Then, a look at encouraging curiosity and tough questions with Genevieve Bell, Intel's Director of User Experience Research. An anthropologist by training, Bell represents a growing trend of companies looking to social scientists to help predict what people will want in the future. 

An MBA is no longer the only path to a successful Fortune 500 career. And while a business degree still goes a long way, majoring in the social sciences may offer more than a life in academia.

Genevieve Bell is an anthropologist who, for the last 16 years, has been the in-house big thinker at Intel Corporation. Her official title is "Vice President and Intel Fellow at Intel Labs and Director of User Experience Research." Translation?

"We spend our time in people's homes all over the world getting a sense of what makes them tick, what they care about frustrates them. And using those insights to drive next generation technology development."

It turns out, social scientists are a good fit for this type of work. Intel has a research and development team who are paid to push the limits of chip technology. But if they can't get a sense of the devices those chips will power in the future, all that work could end up off the mark. Bell's job is to ask bigger questions about how and where technology will integrate into people's lives in world where we have the ability to put in everywhere. 

One of the challenges for big companies, Bell says, is "how do you keep refreshing your imagination so that you find and pay attention to the things that don't look like the future you imagined. And how do you maintain curiosity at a company level?"

She has no shortage of curiosity herself. She recently gave a presentation at the New York City Media Lab about the history of robots and the future of automation. (Check it out, if only to find out the origin of the word "robot." Some hints: Eastern Europe, Broadway, Marxism and Spencer Tracy.)

As companies look to find new ways of thinking, graduates with degrees in the humanities might be just what corporate America is looking for.

Voters went to the polls this week thinking about the economy and decided that Republicans were a better bet. The GOP's success means the party will control both houses of Congress come January.

With two years left, the Obama administration now faces a divided government and a long list of unresolved policy issues.

But cooperation might be more likely with Republicans in power that some might expect. Corporate tax reform, trade policy, immigration and the Keystone XL pipeline are all areas where the president and Congress may find common ground. 

This week on Money Talking, regular contributors Rana Foroohar of Time magazine and Joe Nocera of the The New York Times discuss whether Republican victories are good news for business and if the parties will move beyond the distrust and obstruction that has come to signify Washington. 

Then picking up with contributors at the Harvard Business Review about the challenges that vex us in today's workplace. This week, Heidi Grant Halvorson, Associate Director of the Motivation Science Center at the Columbia Business School, explains "How to Make Yourself Work When You Just Don't Want To."

Ending procrastination at the office (or on Capitol Hill) is easier than you think. 

At times, it seems like procrastination is an actual affliction. It sneaks up when we least expect it, undermines our productivity and then diminishes our ability to get anything done. In the end, we're left feeling defeated and wondering why we can't get motivated to tackle the things we know we should deal with, but just don't want to do.

Heidi Grant Halvorson, Associate Director of the Motivation Science Center at the Columbia Business School, has a simple strategy for overcoming our tendency to put things off:

And the results? Grant Halvorson put it this way in her original article in the Harvard Business Review, "Can you imagine how much less guilt, stress, and frustration you would feel if you could somehow just make yourself do the things you don’t want to do when you are actually supposed to do them?  Not to mention how much happier and more effective you would be?"

California recently issued permits to Google, Audi and Mercedes to test 29 self-driving vehicles on any public road in the state. These cars are self-driving, but not driver-less. Licensed drivers approved by California will be in the cars at all times as backups in case the technology fails. This may look like the beginning of a new world of driving, but are they safer? After all, these vehicles are still just machines run by computers.

This week on Money Talking, host Charlie Herman talks with Cardiff Garcia from the Financial Times and Will Knight from the MIT Technology Review to get a reality check about self-driving cars and what it means for the economy, the auto industry and for us.

It's earnings season again, that quarterly ritual when investors anxiously wait for companies to report their financial results. In the wave of new regulations passed during the Great Depression, the government decided that public companies owed their investors an update every three months. But in the 80 years since, public filings have gotten longer and more complex, putting a strain on management.

Writers with the Lex column at the Financial Times think these frequent filings might not be worth it, that they lead to short-term thinking by companies and put too much focus on stock prices instead of the long-term health of companies. This week on Money Talking, Sujeet Indap, a columnist at the Financial Times, makes the case that U.S. investors might be better off if companies had fewer filing requirements and provided information when it really matters.

Then picking up with contributors at the Harvard Business Review about the challenges that vex us in today's workplace. This week, Jeff Weiss, a professor at West Point and Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, reviews how "Negotiating is Not the Same as Haggling:" turns out negotiating for a raise is not the same as buying a car.

Global markets have been on a wild ride for the past two weeks as investors act on fears of a slowdown in global growth. The IMF recently lowered its global economic growth forecast as there are new concerns rise that Europe is sliding closer towards another recession. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve later this month is scheduled to end its bond buying program that helped stimulate U.S. economic growth. This week on Money Talking, regular contributors Rana Foroohar of Time magazine and Joe Nocera of The New York Times discuss why investors are so spooked, the impact of low oil prices and how Ebola is helping to fuel the jitters. Even in the U.S., where the economic recovery appears to be on solid ground, markets remain volatile. 

It's the one year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act and millions of people have health insurance for the first time. Premiums haven't spiked as some predicted, but more than 30 million people are still uninsured. But as the 2015 enrollment period approaches, some employers are scaling back benefits, offering plans with higher deductibles and in some cases, forcing employees into the marketplace to find coverage. This week on Money Talking, regular contributors Rana Foroohar of Time magazine and Joe Nocera of The New York Times discuss Wal-Mart's recent decision to stop covering part-time employees who work less than 30 hours per week and whether the law has lived up to its promises or just confirmed the suspicions of its critics. 

New reporting by The New York Times suggests that the U.S. government could have kept Lehman Brothers out of bankruptcy six years ago. The Lehman bankruptcy marked the moment when a rocky, unstable economy turned into a full-blown financial crisis. This week on Money Talking, regular contributors Rana Foroohar of Time magazine and Joe Nocera of The New York Times examine how the crisis might have been different if Lehman was indeed, too big to fail. Also, a look at whether the New York Federal Reserve is too close to the banks it's charged with regulating. "This American Life" and ProPublica reported on secret tapes recorded by a Fed employee showing the central bank's unwillingness to aggressively confront questionable practices at Goldman Sachs.