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We’ve all read articles suggesting that the Great Recession was a “generation-changing moment” where fast-spending consumers realized the errors of their ways. I remember reading the comment Jeff Immelt chief executive officer of General Electric Co. made to a shareholder group “If you think this is only a cycle you’re just wrong. This is a permanent reset.

Here’s a statistic that recently gave me pause:  45 percent of college students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills including critical thinking complex reasoning and writing during their first two years of college.

Between 4 percent and 14 percent of Americans who otherwise would have had a sufficient income stream in retirement became “at risk” of running short because of the housing and financial crisis of 2008-2009 according to a new report “A Post-Crisis Assessment of Retirement Income Adequacy for Baby Boomers and Generation Xers” by the Employee Benefit Research Institute

Wharton management professor Adam Grant has devoted his career to examining what motivates employees in the workplace. No matter the industry or job he says employees who know their work have a positive impact on others are happier and more productive than those who don’t.

I had the privilege of appearing on Fox 5 News on the morning of February 22nd with Tony Perkins.  You can watch the clip below to see my brief appearance on Fox 5 News.

Tim and I attended the 2011 TD Ameritrade Conference in San Diego earlier this month.  There were over 60 educational or keynote speakers to see and hear.  I thought I would briefly share a few highlights from six of the sessions I attended.

General Colin L. Powell

Perhaps lost in all the posturing about what would become of the Bush tax cuts was a valuable extension for qualified charitable distributions. The 2010 Tax Relief Act extended the tax-free distributions from Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) for charitable purposes through 2011 i.e. Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs).

Starting on January 21 2011 shareholders of U.S. companies will be able to give a thumbs up or a thumbs down to executive pay packages. You may remember that the “say on pay” vote was first introduced as a safeguard when U.S. financial institutions dubbed “too big to fail” received federal bailout funds thanks to the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).