A Week's Worth
By Vic Roberts
| Deputy editor, Work & Money
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A downer: Stocks took a nose dive, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing nearly 400 points last week. Friday's 191 point drop was the biggest one-day selloff since May 19, 2003. Analysts pinned the decline on rising oil prices. The average price for regular unleaded reached $2.28 a gallon, up 28 percent from a year ago.
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Overwork? It seems to be on the wane, according to a survey by NOP World Consumer. Only 1 in 3 say work gets in the way of leisure, down from more than half in 1999. A record 53 percent said the point of work is to make it possible to have leisure time to enjoy life and pursue interests.
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Shareholder resolutions get lukewarm support from the top conventional mutual funds. For example, only half withheld votes against the four most targeted companies of the 2004 proxy season, compared with 95 percent for socially responsible funds, according to a study by the Social Investment Forum Foundation. Only 13 percent of conventional funds voted to separate the position of chief executive officer and chairman and none voted for resolutions that limited consulting by auditors. Conventional and SRI funds agreed on just one issue - the need for annual elections of board members.
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Trumped: Think you are in a high tax bracket? Most Americans do. Nearly 6 in 10 American adults said they believe they pay a higher percentage of income in federal taxes than billionaire Donald Trump, according to a survey commissioned by the Tax Foundation.
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