Summit Begins in Nigeria
Creating better opportunities for women is key to Africa’s economic development, a Nigerian minister said Friday at the opening of a two-day African women’s economic summit in Lagos.
“If you invest in women, you are investing in humanity,” Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a respected economist and a former World Bank managing director, said at the summit’s opening….more
by Ha Nguyen
Like women all around the world, Vietnamese women have had to economise to deal with 
the global economic crisis.
Nguyen Thi Hoai in Ha Noi’s Hai Ba Trung District saves money by waking up early in the morning to cook breakfast and lunch for her four-member family rather than giving them money to eat outside.
Hoai’s husband Hoang Hanh, says thanks to his wife, the entire family enjoys a tasty breakfast and lunch. She often puts food in a box for them to take along to school and the office complete with different dishes than before.
“My dishes are healthy and nutritious, and more importantly we save VND3-4 million (US$140-190) per month,” Hoai said, adding that she also tries to visit her parents in law’s native village in the northern province of Hai Duong once a week to get organic vegetables planted by her parents to bring home….Read more
WASHINGTON (CBSDC) – A majority of women have emerged as primary breadwinners 
despite a large lack of confidence in their own financial decisions, according to Prudential Financial’s 7th biennial study of the “Financial Experience & Behaviors Among Women.”
The 2012 survey of 1,410 American women and 604 men – between the ages of 25 and 68 – finds that 53 percent of women make more money than their male counterparts, with an increasing number of women assuming this role as a result of partners losing jobs during the financial crisis, divorce and marrying later in life….article
For many, divorce signifies financial freedom. And, as a new study reveals, divorce can also signify great financial achievement.
According to Spectrem Group, a financial consulting firm that conducts monthly surveys, 
62% of high-income divorced women (worth $1 million or more) believe that they’ve benefitted financially from their divorces—and not just in the way you’re probably thinking.
The Group asked high-income divorcées how divorce affected their finances, and the results were surprising. Above all other changes, women cited increased financial literacy as the top money-related change in their post-divorce lives. Nearly three quarters of women polled said that they became “knowledgeable or very knowledgeable about investments” after their divorces…article
SOUTHWEST AIRLINES, America’s largest discount carrier (and its second-largest domestic airline in market share, just behind Delta Air Lines) has long been a subject of interest for business travellers. What’s the secret to the carrier’s continued success? Last July, The Economist speculated that Southwest’s secret is that its “staff… affect a madcap jollity reminiscent of British holiday camps in the 1970s.” That’s part of the story. But Southwest is also innovative and nimble, and willing to go against the grain. As the print paper noted last year, Southwest doesn’t charge baggage fees. The airline was an early adopter of jet fuel price-hedging. Southwest’s commitment to a single type of plane—the Boeing 737—has played a big part in its success.
While other airline fleets can employ 10 or more types of aircraft, Southwest uses just one, the Boeing 737. As V.P. of ground operations Chris Wahlenmaier explains “We only need to train our mechanics on one type of airplane. We only need extra parts inventory for that one type of airplane. If we have to swap a plane out at the last minute for maintenance, the fleet is totally interchangeable—all our on-board crews and ground crews are already familiar with it. And there are no challenges in how and where we can park our planes on the ground,since they’re all the same size and shape.”...article
Former CEO Colleen Barrett with female pilots… article
Tanglewood 75th Anniversary
Tanglewood
Lenox, Massachusetts
Tanglewood, the premier summer festival in the United States, celebrated its 75th Anniversary on Saturday, July 14th.
Tanglewood originated in an unlikely alliance between Henry Kimball Hadley, an associate conductor of the New York Philharmonic, and Gertrude Robinson Smith, a New York socialite who summered in the Berkshires. Hadley was also a composer, whose opera Cleopatra’s Night, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera, and disappeared into a black hole after seven performances. Robinson –Smith’s circle was wide. Including opera librettist Gertrude Stein and composer/conductor Nadia Boulanger.
Together Hadley and Smith created the first music festival in the Berkshires in a horse ring Hadley determined had perfect acoustics. Gertrude thought music would be ideal for the neighborhood farmers, but instead other socialites from New York who had homes in Stockbridge and Lenox, came in droves.
The only real complaint about Hadley’s programming was that selections from symphonies were thought to insult the sophistication of the listeners. Not so at the anniversary celebration, where bits of Rogers & Hammerstein and Haydn were served up.
James Taylor is a regular now at Tanglewood. Having fled his New England boarding school, where Mrs. Norman Rockwell taught for her entire career, Taylor has returned as a gracious and giving Tanglewood regular.
Emanuel Ax fell in love with the Berkshires and is a long time summer resident and supports the festival in many ways, but particularly as a performer. Yo-Yo Ma is another member of the Tanglewood family.
The exciting and musically rigorous Andris Nelsons, young conductor of the Birmingham 
Symphony Orchestra, took the stage for the wild and erotic Sarasate: Carmen Fantasy. Nelsons debut with the BSO came in New York early in the spring of 2011, when he gave a thrilling performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony at Carnegie Hall in New York.
Annie Sophie Mutter accompanied on the violin.
Nelsons returned after intermission with the Symphony Orchestra for Ravel’s choreographic poem, La Valse. It is difficult to put Nelsons effect in words. With this great orchestra to work with him to bring forth everything a composition offers, musicians and conductor engage in a present search for the soul of the music. The music zings directly to the heart. Enough has already been said about how nice it would be to have Nelsons in Boston. He will be there in January for his first subscription series. If someone makes sure to serve him superior fresh sushi for breakfast, lunch and dinner, he may be seduced into a more regular friendship with one of the world’s very great orchestras.
David Zinman conducted the New York Philharmonic in a modern Beethoven Festival earlier this year. This evening, he brought together Peter Serkin, the Symphony, the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and Music Center Fellows in an exuberant performance of Beethoven’s Fantasia in C Minor. In Zinman’s Tohhalle Concerts in Zurich dancing in the aisles would automatically follow the concert. The lovely lines of the chorale by Kuffner echoed in the night air: “accept you lovely souls, the gifts of beautiful art. If love and power join together, humanity is rewarded by God’s favor.” A celebration an extraordinary 75-year history.
Banks are created to match (1) people who have money to put away to earn interest with
(2) people and businesses who need loans. What a bank does with deposits and how it loans money are usually regulated. Our focus will be on the original purpose of a bank and whether banks over the world are fulfilling this function….article
Bob Diamond, former CEO Barclays.. Diamond (Dimon)’s are not a Girl’s Best Friend. Listen to the Song
Walking into a recent luncheon for the launch of Prudential’s study on the Financial 
Experience and Behaviors Among Women, I was greeted with the headline: “Women are primary breadwinners, whether they like it or not.” The first thought that popped into my mind was “Is that really true?” The second, as someone who reads and writes about the gender wage gap, was, “Show me a woman who wouldn’t like earning the most in the family.” Fortunately, the panel offered three money smart women along with a study full of statistics on the realities of how women manage their money and what we need to fix…..article
In Prudential’s latest Financial Experience & Behaviors Among Women study, both younger and baby boomer women identify themselves as financial beginners, though they feel empowered to call the shots on their own. Pru_Women-3