Corporate Governance in USA and Japan

Found this great website, and will try to use in my paper on Employees and Corporate Governance.

http://www.financialarmageddon.com/2010/10/the-liars-and-thieves-are-moving-ahead-in-this-country.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+financialarmageddon+%28Financial+Armageddon%29

Also quite excellent:

http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/wheres-waldo-graphs-unemployed-and-not-counted

Employment law

On Sept. 12, 2001, there were no commercial flights in the United States. It was uncertain when airlines would be permitted to start flying again—or how many customers would be on them. Airlines faced not only the tragedy of 9/11 but the fact that economy was entering a recession. So almost immediately, all the U.S. airlines, save one, did what so many U.S. corporations are particularly skilled at doing: they began announcing tens of thousands of layoffs. Today the one airline that didn't cut staff, Southwest, still has never had an involuntary layoff in its almost 40-year history. It's now the largest domestic U.S. airline and has a market capitalization bigger than all its domestic competitors combined. As its former head of human resources once told me: "If people are your most important assets, why would you get rid of them?"

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/02/04/lay-off-the-layoffs.html

Kyoto

Just got back to Tokyo from Kyoto. The bus ride to Kyoto was quite long.  I have to say I didn't really sleep at all. It started off auspicious enough.  I was with Yumi, and we were waiting in the rain here in Tokyo, near Tokyo Station.

During the bus ride I thought it might be tricky to fall asleep so I popped what must have been like 2 Valium.  It didn't do much good. I got to Kyoto super tired but in good spirits.

We had to wait a bit until the tourist office open so that we could see about a hotel room.  So we waited in the cafe and had some breakfast.

Later we went to the tourist office, there was a great deal of bickering.  I jokingly feigned worry about the hotel situation, which didn't go over well despite insisting that I wasn't worried since we could get a room in Osaka.

The Golden Temple was a small let down.  It was nice but rather small and chalk full of tourists. 

All in all it was great to spend more time in Kyoto.  I spent yesterday and much of today in Osaka which was also nice.  I especially enjoyed the Sauna World, which had excellent baths.