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My niece lived with us for a while back in the early '90's just after she graduated from college. At that time, the job market was dismal even for young people with college degrees. Lizzie and her female friends worked at temporary jobs and quickly immersed themselves in the job market at the lowest rungs of the ladder. Job-hunting for their male counterparts was dramatically different. The guys played basketball most of the day while waiting for the "perfect job" to present itself. These guys probably wound up working for the women who got a year's head start in the work force. I thought about my niece while reading the news recently that Abigail Johnson was promoted to head the fund-management operation of giant Fidelity Investments, making her heir apparent to run the entire company. The size and influence of Boston-based Fidelity (the biggest mutual fund company in the country, with more than $900 billion in assets) makes the 39-year-old Ms. Johnson arguably the most powerful woman in America. Granted, she comes from the right gene pool - her grandfather founded Fidelity and her father, Edward Johnson, is currently chief executive. However, she has continuously proven her ability and acumen while rising through the ranks from analyst to fund manager to corporate executive. With other women breaking the "glass ceiling" throughout Corporate America, such as Carly Fiorina at Hewlett Packard, more women are running businesses and becoming senior decision-makers. While our society still hasn't achieved genuine gender equality, there's no question that recent years have seen significant progress. The financial services industry is a good example. It has a sizeable representation of women who have the capacity to remain focused and meticulous. Men can focus for a while, but then they start thinking about baseball or golf and whether or not this has really been the right career move after all. (If you've seen the movie "Boiler Room," which takes place in a scruffy stock brokerage firm, you know the kind of male behavior I'm talking about.) The person who tops a firm's organizational chart, male or female, has an immense impact on how everyone in an organization works, thinks and behaves. Yes, the staggering salary levels of these top people seem surreal. Can any single individual really be worth that much? I mentioned this to a friend who sits on the board of several public companies and has been involved in hiring several famous CEOs (in one case the notorious "Chainsaw Dunlap" at Scott Paper.) He replied, "The person at the very top has an enormous impact on the entire organization. In most cases, people don't realize or appreciate to what degree the choice of CEO has on their lives." Assuming this is true, what does it mean to have an increasing number of women running Fidelity, HP and other large companies? Presumably, women in the work force will have more role models and an even greater incentive to excel. Just knowing that a woman is running the company next door can make a difference in someone's attitude towards work. It may inspire women with little or no work experience to seek employment and develop their abilities and skills in a new career. That brings us to a little-publicized feature of the tax bill just passed by Congress. Spouses who make less than $40,000 will be able to contribute all of their income into a 401(k) plan. A second income of $35,000, for example, could be entirely tax deferred as a contribution to the family's retirement nest egg. The new bill offers many provisions that will have an enormous positive impact on the expanded use of retirement plans. Until now, the maximum has been the lesser of $10,500 or 25% of annual income per year. Many mismanaged plans have arbitrarily capped the maximum at only 15% per year. As a consequence, women entering the work force and earning additional family income over and above what their husbands are bringing in have been taxed at punitive rates -- over fifty percent in most cases. Remember, when
a spouse goes to work, he or she generates "additiona
Total liabilities The accompanying notes are an integral part of this financial statement. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
