Suggesting that corporations have a protected right of speech and that money/spending is a form of that protected speech gives them hugely disproportionate influence over U.S. politics. It’s undemocratic.

David Rothkopf in our chat just now, when a reader asked him what he thinks of Super PACs.

planetmoney:

A breakdown of what the average American household buys, based on government data (PDF) for December, 2011.

We didn’t include everything, but we included the biggies, as well as some smaller categories that caught our eye.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Credit: Lam Thuy Vo / Planet Money

Dear average Americans, please spend more on books, magazines, and newspapers and less on alcohol. Your friend, Newsweek.

(via npr)

[via]

A new study out today shows how top CEOs are walking away from their jobs with literally hundreds of millions of dollars—even after they do a crummy job. That’s wild. Gary Rivlin writes about the news today:

“You’re fired” can be the sweetest words these days when you’re the CEO of a publicly traded company. Sure, Leo Apotheker must have felt lousy when Hewlett-Packard dumped him as chief executive last September after less than a year on the job. But the sting of humiliation was no doubt softened by a $12 million cash payment the company gave him despite the lousy job he had done.

But now a new study released Wednesday shows that $12 million ain’t nothing in the age of the imperial CEO. GMI, a well-regarded research firm that monitors executive pay, looked at the largest severance packages ex-CEOs have received since the start of 2000.

To earn a spot in the top 20, a CEO would need to have received a golden parachute in excess of $100 million.

Read it on the Beast.

Zooey Deschanel does good things with her money (according to financial docs recently filed by her lawyer and promptly obtained by Internet).

I generally think customers don’t want to be nickled and dimed.

You can say that again. The head of retail products at Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Services, on the news that big banks have backtracked on their plan to charge monthly debit fees. (WSJ)

When corporate strategy meets election spending, by the lovely Dan Stone.

Think you’re having a tough financial year? Russian billionaires are basically an endangered species. Last year there were 110 billionaires in Russia. Today there are just 32.

From our weekly biz video series, Sum Total