At a basic level, people want two things: basic security and financial stability. That’s why Presidential elections almost always come down to one of two inter-related issues: domestic (economy) and foreign affairs (security from threats abroad). Everyone wants a solid base of financial security in the form of a job and the knowledge that their way of life is not being threatened by force.

But beyond that, what makes the American Dream? Is it all about wealth and power? Or family and simple happiness? Does the American Dream change over time? Has it? And how do movements like the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street reflect general discontent over the attainability of the American Dream?

These are all questions we’d love for you to discuss in the comments section.

Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev — currently the 564th richest person on Earth — made the news in September 2011 when he used his KGB-acquired combat skills to punch fellow tycoon Sergei Polonsky out of his chair on a live Russian TV program. But how many other former Soviet secret police agents are there who could be listed in Forbes — or who at the very least earn big bucks in the capitalist economy despite their communist past? We list 10 former KGB men who are now staggeringly wealthy.

10. Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin’s reported wealth only amounts to around $150,000 in savings and an income of about $80,000 per year, but a number of former Russian government officials have asserted that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Former Chairman of the Russian State Duma Ivan Rybkin and political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky have both claimed that the Russian Prime Minister secretly controls hefty stakes in gas and oil companies such as Gazprom and Gunvor — to the value of over $50 billion, according to Belkovsky, which would make him Europe’s richest man. In 2010, a former business associate of Putin named Sergei Kolesnikov claimed in a letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that Putin was involved in a scheme to siphon off donations to a health infrastructure project into his own personal funds. If either is true, clearly the former intelligence man has done well for himself in the world — albeit in the sneakiest of ways.

9. Alexei Kondaurov

Alexei Kondaurov was a former head analyst at Yukos — a company which provided 20 percent of Russia’s oil production before being driven to bankruptcy in 2006 — and is currently a member of Russia’s State Duma for the Communist Party. The ex-KGB general is irreverent about the conflict between his political ideology and his wealth, illustrated by his quote on being both a millionaire and a communist: “There’s no contradiction,” he said. “Engels was an oligarch and Lenin hardly a vagabond.”

8. Andrei Lugovoi

Millionaire businessman, politician and former KGB bodyguard Andrei Lugovoi is now more famous for his scandals than his wealth. Apart from being arrested in 2001 for helping to arrange the escape of Nikolai Glushkov, who was being detained on fraud charges, he is currently wanted in the UK in connection with the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. Lugovoi is suspected of poisoning the Russian defector with radioactive polonium-210 during a visit to the UK in 2006, after traces of the material were found in three of the hotels in which he stayed. However, he is highly unlikely to be extradited since, as a member of the State Duma, he has immunity to prosecution, and the backlash from the Russian public has even helped his political career. Lucky for some.

7. Philipp Bobkov

Philipp Bobkov was a key player in the KGB during the 1980s and 90s, one who was instrumental in creating Soviet front organizations and resolving ethnic conflicts in the Soviet Union (and by “resolving” we mostly mean “inciting them and then taking credit for stopping them, by brutally suppressing the local population”). He apparently quietened down in his old age, going on to work as the head of a prominent private security agency for the Media-Most company — an agency containing thousands of ex-KGB members. Media-Most was founded by Russian media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky, so while we haven’t got a figure on Bobkov’s earnings there, for being in charge of so many men we’d wager they were pretty healthy. As a footnote, since said agency was accused of attempting to assassinate the oligarch Boris Berezovsky in 1994, Bobkov may not have given up on his dirty tricks just yet.

6. Andrey Belyaninov

This former KGB man has had a varied career, moving from serving with the international branch of the Russian intelligence service, to working as a financial expert at the (now defunct) REA bank, to heading the management board at Novikombank. The veteran finance expert then went on to serve as Director General at the state’s arms imports and exports agency Rosoboronexport (which had an export sales of $8.8 billion in 2009, incidentally) and is currently the chief of the Federal Customs Service of Russia. And they say that government employees don’t have to be smart… It’s a wonder Andrey Belyaninov didn’t give up intelligence work sooner.

5. Sergey Chemezov

The man with a monopoly on weapons in Russia was once an undercover KGB agent working in a company in Dresden, in the former East Germany, where his neighbor was a then-obscure fellow agent called Vladimir Putin. Chemezov now holds high-ranking positions in a number of companies, including a post on the board of directors at aircraft manufacturer Sukhoi (whose total assets reached $859.826 million in 2009). He is also the Director General at Rosoboronexport, the state-owned company which produces 90 percent of Russia’s annual weapons exports. Guess it’s not what you know, but who you know.

4. Nikolay Tokarev

Nikolay Tokarev was alleged to be a KGB officer in East Germany during the Cold War — another who reportedly befriended one Vladimir Putin in his younger years — but he has since transferred from the backstabbing world of espionage to the backstabbing world of international oil transportation. He is currently the president of the Russian state-owned company Transneft, an oil and gas logistics organization with over 100,000 employees and an income of $4 billion per year. Tokarev also previously tried his hand in another part of the state sector as president of Zarubezhneft, also a company involved with oil transportation. Not too shabby.

3. Viktor Ivanenko

Viktor Ivanenko was the former chairman of the KGB for the Russian Republic but, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1993 he moved to become the vice president of the petroleum company Yukos. He became a majority shareholder five years later, but soon resigned to work as an adviser to the Russian tax minister and later served as the vice president of the Development of Parliamentarianism in Russia foundation (whatever that is). In light of Ivanenko’s current net worth of $290 million, making him Russia’s 84th richest man at one point, some might say capitalism is better for the economy than the communism practiced during the time of the KGB — if you’re as high up in the business world as he is, anyway.

2. Alexander Bortnikov

Now a board member at Sovcomflot, one of the largest Russian state-owned maritime companies, Alexander Bortnikov is a former KGB officer done good (in a way). Bortnikov was trained in Moscow, then worked with the intelligence organization before becoming the chief of the St Petersburg/Leningrad Region Federal Security Service (FSB) and later getting promoted to become first Deputy Director and then Director of the FSB. Rumor has it that he and other high-up members in the agency were involved in the plot to murder Alexander Litvinenko in 2006; then, in 2007, he was reported to have been implicated in a money laundering scandal connected with the murder of Central Bank first deputy chairman Andrey Kozlov. Managing a big organization might occasionally mean having to get your hands dirty, but that’s taking it too far.

1. Alexander Lebedev

It bears repeating: Alexander Lebedev, multi-billionaire banking and media tycoon, punched a fellow billionaire on a live TV program. In recent years Lebedev has acquired a number of major British papers for sums of around £1, and he shows as much acumen in the world of fisticuffs as he does in business. The oligarch formerly worked for the First Chief Directorate of the KGB for the better part of a decade, the Directorate being the body that was responsible for foreign operations and intelligence gathering. Judging by the fact that Sergei Polonsky (the man he hit) was knocked practically across the room with one blow, all that training must have paid off for the man estimated to now be worth $2 billion.

But for the time being, I’ve read that their profit margin hovers between ten and twenty percent. So while they make loads of revenue (billions), they also send almost half of that revenue out the company’s back door to the content owners. Then they have to pay for their technology infrastructure (servers, bandwidth, etc) and their employees.

So Netflix is one of those almost-sexy companies. They are obviously meeting a high-demand need. Ultra high-demand. And they are market leaders and innovators. But now they need to find better ways to increase profit margins.

Source: Gigom / HatTip: Brainz

It’s scary just how efficient the Nazis were at directing an entire country, including its population and industry, towards their evil goals. Everyone knows about the big three corporations that worked with the Nazis. Hugo Boss designed the intimidating uniforms of the SS (as well as the drabber brown shirts of the SA and the the Hitler Youth); Volkswagen designed the Beetle at Hitler’s behest and churned them out using slave labor; and IBM designed the punch cards that were used to systematize the extermination of people by race and class.

However, these weren’t the only companies that acted in collusion with the Nazis — other global businesses still recognizable today also sold their souls to the devil in different ways — and you might be surprised at some of the names that are to follow.

10. Chase Bank

On reflection, the collusion of Chase Bank (now J.P. Morgan Chase), with the Nazis isn’t so surprising. One of its major shareholders, J.D. Rockefeller, had directly funded Nazi eugenics experiments before the war. Between 1936 and 1941, Chase and other US banks helped the Germans raise over $20 million in dollar exchange, netting over $1.2 million in commission — of which Chase pocketed a cool $500,000. That was a lot of money at the time. The fact that the German marks used to fund the operation came from Jews who had fled Nazi Germany didn’t seem to bother Chase — in fact they upped their business after Kristallnacht (the night Jews throughout Nazi Germany and Austria were systematically attacked by mobs in 1938). Chase also froze the accounts of French Jews in occupied France before the Nazis had even gotten around to asking them to.

9. Ford

Henry Ford himself was a notorious anti-Semite, publishing a collection of articles under the charming title, The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem. Ford even sponsored his own newspaper which he used as a propaganda piece, blaming the Jews for World War I, and in 1938 he received the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal Nazi Germany awarded to foreign citizens.

Ford’s German operation produced one third of the militarized trucks used by the German army during the war, with much of the labor done by prisoners. What’s even more shocking is that Ford may have used forced labor as early as 1940 — when the American arm of the company still had complete control.

8. Random House

You may not have heard of Bertelsmann A.G. but you will have heard of the books published by its many subsidiaries, including Random House, Bantam Books and Doubleday. During Nazi rule, Bertelsmann published propaganda and Nazi literature such as “Sterilization and Euthanasia: A Contribution to Applied Christian Ethics.” They even published works by Will Vesper, who had given a rousing speech at the book-burning in 1933. Random House courted Nazi controversy again in 1997 when they added, “a person who is fanatically dedicated to or seeks to control a specified activity, practice, etc.” to the Webster’s dictionary definition of Nazi, prompting the Anti-Defamation League to say that it “trivializes and denies the murderous intent and actions of the Nazi regime.”

7. Kodak

When you think Kodak, you think of happy family photographs and memories caught on film, but what you should really be considering is the slave labor that the German branch of the firm used during World War II. Kodak’s subsidiaries in neutral European countries did brisk business with the Nazis, providing them with both a market for their goods and valuable foreign currency. The Portuguese branch even sent its profits to the branch in the Hague, which was under Nazi occupation at the time. What’s more, this company wasn’t just making cameras; they expanded into the manufacture of triggers, detonators and other military goods for the Germans.

6. Coca-Cola

Fanta is a tasty orange-flavored drink that was originally designed specifically for the Nazis. That’s right, ingredients for the cola that gives the brand its name were difficult to import, so the manager of Coca-Cola’s German operation, Max Keith, came up with a new drink that could be made with available ingredients.

In 1941, Fanta debuted on the German market. Max Keith was not himself a Nazi, but his efforts to keep the Coca-Cola operation alive through the war meant that Coca-Cola pocketed some handsome profits and could return to distributing Coke to American GIs stationed in Europe as soon as the war was over.

5. Allianz

Allianz is the twelfth largest financial services company in the world. Founded in Germany in 1890, it’s no surprise that they were the largest insurer in Germany when the Nazis came to power. As such, they quickly became heavily involved with the Nazi regime. Their CEO, Kurt Schmitt, was also Hitler’s economics minister, and the company insured the facilities and personnel at Auschwitz. Their Director General was in charge of the policy that paid the Nazi state instead of the rightful beneficiaries when Jewish property was damaged following Kristallnacht. What’s more, the company worked closely with the Nazi government to track down the life insurance policies of German Jews sent to the death camps and, during the war, insured the possessions stripped from those same Jewish people on behalf of the Nazis.

4. Novartis

Bayer, though notorious for its origins as a sub-division of the manufacturer that made the Zyklon B gas used in the Nazi gas chambers, isn’t the only pharmaceutical company with skeletons in its closet. The Swiss chemical companies Ciba and Sandoz merged to form Novartis, most famous for its drug, Ritalin. In 1933, Ciba’s Berlin branch fired all of the Jewish members of its board of directors and replaced them with more “acceptable” Aryan personnel; meanwhile, Sandoz was busy doing the same with its chairman. The companies manufactured dyes, drugs and chemicals for the Nazis during the war. Novartis has owned up to its culpability and tried to make amends in the manner of other complicit firms by contributing $15 million towards a Swiss fund for compensation to the victims of the Nazis.

3. Nestlé

In 2000, Nestlé paid over $14.5 million into a fund to try to deal with claims of slave labor suffered at their hands from Holocaust survivors and Jewish organizations. The firm has admitted that it acquired a company in 1947 that had used forced labor during the war and has also stated that “[It] is either certain or it may be assumed that some corporations of the Nestlé Group that were active in countries controlled by the National Socialist (Nazi) regime employed forced laborers.” Nestlé helped with the financing of a Nazi party in Switzerland in 1939 and ended up winning a lucrative contract, supplying the entire chocolate needs of the German army during World War II.

2. BMW

BMW has admitted using up to 30,000 forced laborers during the war. These POWs, slave laborers and inmates of concentration camps produced engines for the Luftwaffe and so were forced to aid the regime in defending itself against those who were trying to save them. BMW focused solely on aircraft and motorcycle manufacture during the war, with no pretense of being anything other than a supplier of war machinery to the Nazis.

1. General Electric (GE)

In 1946 General Electric was fined by the US government owing to its nefarious wartime activities. In partnership with Krupp, a German manufacturing firm, General Electric deliberately and artificially raised the price of tungsten carbide, a material that was vital for machining metals necessary for the war effort. Though only fined $36,000 in total, General Electric made around $1.5 million out of this scam in 1936 alone, hampering the war effort and increasing the cost of defeating the Nazis. GE also bought shares in Siemens before war broke out, making them complicit in the use of slave labor to build the very same gas chambers where many of the stricken laborers met their end.

What are we supposed to do with the American Dream? You know, the one where you work hard at a friendly, faceless corporation, have a McMansion with a white picket fence and 2.5 kids, and vacation on the Kona Coast every year?

The Great Recession has scoured the dead skin off this dream. I think it still exists in our national psyche, something like a psychological heiroglyph, but current economic conditions have stuck the old version of it into a harsh, almost surgical light.

After exploring the dream in more detail, I came to the conclusion that the dream hasn’t disappeared. Indeed, some of its main tenets, including homeownership and business ownership, are still very much intact. Indeed, the dream’s trajectory, assuming it projects the way I think it will, is something to look forward to. Here’s my breakdown.

Where We Are Now

Working hard and basking in the fruits of your work—the nice house and car, the decent, secure life situation—still does happen for people. But consider the obstacles that employees in today’s world face:

• Wage stagnation (combined with price inflation)
• Fewer long-term guarantees for jobs
• Sparse pension plans
• Increased global and technological competition
• An unemployment rate of 10% or more means more competition from your peers
• No guarantees higher education will get you a job

That’s in addition to a couple of new norms:

• Having a part-time job or two full-time jobs has become more common

• Diving deep into the debt that supported consumer spending between 1990-2008 isn’t an option anymore. You used to be able to tap your inflated home value through a refinance, then spend away. Or grab your credit card and indulge in the national negative savings rate. Since the financial crisis, however, banks have made accessing personal debt harder. Saving is a new norm; many people can’t sustain steady debt the way they used to. That translates into forsaking the new entertainment center, backyard pool or convertible that used to be an American Dream-themed reward, or entitlement.

Austerity is necessary during times of recession, but I’ve noticed that downward mobility has also become a fact of life for many Americans. For example, older Americans are especially having trouble finding new jobs. Some manage to stabilize themselves off savings. When that runs out, and your real estate assets have depreciated, you end up downsizing.

Our Bootstraps Are Broken

Will hard work really dredge you out of today’s hypercompetitive, underemployed, time-stressed situation? The economic situation makes the staunch American individualism and can-do attitude feel more like weight on Atlas’s shoulders than a real solution. We can’t work our way out of this one, because the jobs don’t exist, or we’re so overworked that we don’t have time.

The traditional American Dream, based on hard work and ever-increasing income, is what Matt Miller calls the Dead Idea. “One in three Americans, of all races and at all income levels, now live in families that earn less than their parents did,” he writes in this CNN article. “Americans see themselves as authors of their economic fate, while Europeans tend to believe that forces outside the individual’s control have greater influence. Yet the forces that are now undermining upward mobility in America are in fact largely outside people’s control,” he says.

What Next?

Knowing this, what’s the best way to revise the old American Dream? There’s a collective movement towards increased sustainability (read: less waste, in all senses of the word), social cooperation, especially through technology; and increased self- and community reliance. It sounds communal and countercultural, and in some ways, this “Echo Boomer” meme is.

As I researched this shift more, however, I’ve found that it’s not a matter of communes vs. staunch capitalism. We’re moving in a hybrid direction. Americans are still holding onto the old dream, albeit with modifications. For example, “seventy percent of Americans still view home ownership as part of their own American dream,” according to this Forbes article. What’s more, Echo Boomers are on board. “(T)he demographic most interested in living the dream is actually the Y generation, A.K.A. the ‘millennials’ aged 18 to 34.”

The other hopeful aspect to Gen-Yers is that they’re entrepreneurially oriented. Since small businesses hire a huge proportion of employees in America, this bodes well, even in while the American Dream model is changing slightly. The fact that the majority of innovation has moved from R&D parks and into small startups is also encouraging, and negates the idea that global competition will turn us all into fruit vendors.

In other words, the American Dream is still entrepreneurial. It still involves homeownership. It just doesn’t center around swimming in debt to coddle the senses as much; it’s more community-oriented. If some parts of the American Dream have composted, these are the shoots growing out of them. This gives me hope.

Economic bubbles have been around since the birth of currency. Created by a wide range of factors, from excessive monetary liquidity to plain old human greed, exuberance and stupidity, they can be described as a trade in products or assets valued far higher than they should be – which is inevitably followed by a crash in prices.

Seek to uncover the causes behind some of history’s most famous bubbles and you’ll find that many arose out of a pretty bizarre set of circumstances. It seems that these economic events can strike the most unusual of markets at the most unlikely of times. Below we take a look at 10 such examples.

10. Tulip Mania

In 1593, tulips were brought from Turkey to Holland and the Dutch instantly fell in love with this most beguiling of flowers. By the latter months of 1636, certain varieties of tulip were worth more than an Amsterdam house! While demand grew exponentially, supply was initially low, compounded by bulb buyers filling their inventories and the four to seven years it takes tulips to reach flowering size.

The Dutch started trading their homes for tulip bulbs, which increased 20 times in value in a month. But these over-inflated prices could not last long, and within weeks prices fell to one hundredth of this value.

9. South Sea Bubble

The term “bubble” itself originates from the inflated stock prices of the South Sea Company, a British joint stock company granted exclusive rights to trade with South America in 1720, in return for financing the British government’s war debt.

This was a time of lavishness and opulence in Britain, with many wealthy speculators desperate to invest in a company that wildly promised astronomical returns, trading wool and fleece for piles of jewels and gold. Shares in the company quickly reached 10 times their value. But when the bubble burst, many of the country’s elite were left destitute.

8. Rhodium Bubble

Every bit as mysterious as it sounds, the Rhodium Bubble of 2008 saw prices of the rare chemical element increase from $500 per ounce in late 2006 to $9,500 per ounce in July 2008, before falling even more rapidly back to $1,000/oz in January 2009. Nobody’s quite sure what sparked the buying frenzy, but it seems to have been a combination of demand in the American car industry, a bullish market in rare metals and at least one rogue speculator on Wall Street leading on the herd of investors.

7. Railway Mania

Railway Mania, another British phenomenon, grew throughout the early 1840s, peaking in 1846 when a staggering 9,500 miles of new railway lines were authorized, around a third of which were never actually built. As the price of railway shares increased, more money poured in, largely from the new, affluent middle classes that had arisen from the smoke of the industrial revolution.

As few had predicted, it ultimately became clear that building railway lines was not as lucrative and easy as investors had been told by wily entrepreneurs. The collapse was unavoidable, and many middle-class families lost their life savings as a result.

6. Romanian Property Bubble

Romania is said to be the country with the highest house price to income ratio in the world. Spectacularly, the price of an old communist-era apartment rose by 1,000% between 2002 and 2007, leaving apartment prices in Romania’s capital city, Bucharest, rivaling those in Paris or London.

Factors thought to have contributed to the boom include growth in the Romanian banking system, high salaries being earned abroad, a poor supply of properties – and money laundering requirements restricting the activities of corrupt businessmen.

5. Mississippi Bubble

In 1716, John Law established the Banque Générale Privée and a year later the Compagnie d’Occident (or The Mississippi Company), which ended up with a complete monopoly on France’s colonial trade, not to mention responsibilities for collecting French taxes and minting money. The company’s share prices sky-rocketed from 500 to 18,000 livres a share.

The popularity of company shares was so great that they prompted the need for more paper bank notes, which The Mississippi Company was only too happy to print. And when shares generated profits, investors were paid in those very same notes. The bubble finally burst when it became clear that the number of notes being issued was far in excess of the metal coinage the company held. As you might expect, John Law fled France soon afterward, disguised as a woman!

4. Florida Land Boom

In the early 1920s, daring entrepreneurs like Carl G. Fisher went to great lengths to promote Miami as a tropical haven, at one stage erecting an enormous billboard in New York’s Times Square reading, “It’s June in Miami.” Before you could say “Everglades,” developers were pouring into the area, ordering vast amounts of building supplies in the process.

These supplies clogged the rail system, and rail companies soon banned the use of their routes for this purpose. Then in January 1926, a schooner sank blocking Miami harbor, starving the area of building supplies altogether. The 1926 Miami Hurricane was the final nail in the coffin, rendering many local developers bankrupt.

3. Poseidon Bubble

In the 1960s, nickel was in high demand and prices were greater than ever thanks to the Vietnam War, but industrial action against the world’s major supplier, Inco, had led to a supply shortfall. When Australian mining company Poseidon NL discovered a potentially lucrative nickel mining site at Windarra, Western Australia, its share price grew dramatically along with investments in other mining companies and mining in general.

Numerous new and dodgy companies were listed, some of which didn’t even have mining leases. Many investors lost money on them, negative press ensued, and share prices in mining plummeted. By the time Poseidon started producing nickel, nickel prices had dropped too and insufficient profits ensured the company was not able to stay afloat.

2. Dot-com Bubble

The dot-com is one of the most well known bubbles in living memory but also one of the strangest. The bubble grew to bursting point between 1995 and 2001 with investment pouring into thousands of new internet firms, many practicing risky policies of growth over profit (brand building and networking in particular), believing that if they built up their customer bases rapidly enough then profits would surely follow.

Novelty and a difficulty in valuing these companies led to some rather enthusiastic investments. But the growth in the tech sector proved deceptive. Poor business practices led to high profile court cases, and the stock market began to tumble, along with hundreds of dot-coms. The bubble finally burst on March 10, 2000, resulting in a mild but long-felt recession.

1. Uranium Bubble

Of all commodities, what could be stranger than uranium? In the 1970s, uranium hit spot prices of around $110 a pound, but dropped down to below $20 pound in the 1990s, and this is were it stayed… until 2005. A perception of future nuclear energy demand from emerging economies, reactor lifetime extensions in the West and low inventories of uranium led to a swift increase in prices from 2005 to 2007, causing a huge spike in stock prices for uranium mining and exploration companies.

Alas, these prices could not be sustained. A sharp fall post-2007 caused many mining and exploration companies to go bust. But the bubble did leave a lasting legacy: known and inferred uranium reserves increased by 15% in that two year period alone.

In all seriousness, business can be pretty funny. From rickety leadership to entropic working styles, the business world, like real life, is shaded with chuckles. Here are 100 funny business quotes and sayings* that hold a grain of truth in their humor.

*attributed where sources were available

If you see a bandwagon, it’s too late. James Goldsmith

Early to bed and early to rise probably indicates unskilled labor. John Ciardi

Why join the navy if you can be a pirate? Steve Jobs

The problem with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat. Lilly Tomlin

He’s taking this company to hell, and we’re riding shotgun.

She got kicked upstairs. (She was promoted to a higher position that’s less appealing than her current one. This is business jargon.)

Don’t piss on my back and tell me it’s raining. Old West quote

Run your idea up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes it.

We have paralysis by analysis.

Get the right people on the bus and in the right seat. Jim Collins

The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary. Vidal Sassoon

When you’re up to your armpits in alligators, it’s hard to remember to drain the swamp. Ronald Reagan

Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them. Communications axim

When you assume, you make an “ass” out of “u” and “me.”

Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and it annoys the pig. George Bernard Shaw

Always forgive your enemies. Nothing annoys them more. Oscar Wilde

Don’t corner something meaner than you. Old West saying

Failure is not an option—it comes bundled with the software.

A picture is worth 1,000 words, but it uses up 3,000 times the memory.

The successful man is the one who finds out what is the matter with his business before his competitors do. Roy L. Smith

Eagles soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.

Every employee rises to the level of his own incompetence. The Peter Principle

Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Cyril Northcote Parkinson/Parkinson’s Law.

The light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off due to budget cuts.

A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him. David Brinkley

A meeting is an event at which the minutes are kept and the hours are lost.

The higher a monkey climbs, the more you see of its behind. Joseph Stilwell

They slipped into the gene pool when the lifeguard wasn’t looking.

He has hit rock bottom and started to dig.

Success in almost any field depends more on energy and drive than it does on intelligence. This explains why we have so many stupid leaders. Sloan Wilson

The wheels are turning, but the hamsters are all dead.

Make it idiot-proof and someone will make a better idiot.

I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig, you get dirty; and besides, the pig likes it. George Bernard Shaw

If you give him a penny for his thoughts, you’ll get change.

Nothing is illegal if a hundred businessmen decide to do it. Andrew Young

There’s no secret about success. Did you ever know a successful man who didn’t tell you about it? Kin Hubbard

There’s no business like show business, but there are several businesses like accounting. David Letterman

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats. Howard Aiken

If it’s stupid but works, it isn’t stupid.

There’s an enormous number of managers who have retired on the job. Peter Drucker

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day. Robert Frost

Accomplishing the impossible means only the boss will add it to your regular duties. Doug Larson

Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. Winston Churchill

A budget tells us what we can’t afford, but it doesn’t keep us from buying it. William Feather

If you can count your money, you don’t have a billion dollars. J. Paul Getty

The worst part of success is to try to find someone who is happy for you. Bette Midler

A company is known by the people it keeps.

At some time in the lifecycle of every organization, its ability to succeed in spite of itself runs out.

Money can’t buy friends, but you can get a better class of enemy. Spike Milligan

Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things. TS Eliot

If you would like to know the value of money, try to borrow some. Benjamin Franklin

Don’t stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed. George Burns

If not controlled, work will flow to the competent man until he submerges.

If you don’t know what to do with many of the papers piled on your desk, stick a dozen colleagues initials on them and pass them along. When in doubt, route. Malcolm S. Forbes quotes

It is better to spend money like there’s no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there’s no money. PJ O’Rourke

Never invest in anything that eats or needs repairing. Billy Rose

If at first you don’t succeed; you are running about average. MH Alderson

The most popular labor-saving device is still money. Phyllis George

Nothing recedes like success. Walter Winchell

Find a job you like and you add five days to every week. H. Jackson Brown

It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse. Adlai Stevenson

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it. WC Fields

Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings, they did it by killing all those who opposed them.

If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style. Quentin Crisp

Never put off until tomorrow what you can avoid altogether.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure. Mark Twain

If at first you don’t succeed, try management.

If at first you don’t succeed, take the tax loss. Kirk Kirkpatrick

Aim low, reach your goals, and avoid disappointment. Scott Adams/Dilbert

Life is like a dogsled team. If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes. Lewis Grizzard

The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one. Oscar Wilde

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind. Aristotle

In the early days all I hoped was to make a living out of what I did best. But, since there’s no real market for masturbation I had to fall back on my bass playing abilities. Les Claypool

Beware of any enterprise requiring new clothes. Henry Thoreau

Do not underestimate your abilities. That is your boss’s job.

Right now, this is a job. If I advance any higher, this would be my career. And if this were my career, I’d have to throw myself in front of a train. Jim Halpert/The Office

Every man has a right to be conceited until he is successful. Benjamin Disraeli

You never become a howling success by just howling. Bob Harrington

Success means only doing what you do well, letting someone else do the rest. Goldstein S. Truism

Success and failure are both difficult to endure. Along with success come drugs, divorce, fornication, bullying, travel, meditation, medication, depression, neurosis and suicide. With failure comes failure. Joseph Heller

Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake. Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower

Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure. Earl Wilson

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. Napoleon Bonaparte

One of the greatest victories you can gain over someone is to beat him at politeness. Josh Billings

There’s nothing so improves the mood of the Party as the imminent execution of a senior colleague. Alan Clark

I’m not the smartest fellow in the world, but I can sure pick smart colleagues. Franklin D. Roosevelt

Make sure you have a vice president in charge of your revolution, to engender ferment among your more conventional colleagues. David Ogilvy

A consultant is someone who takes the watch off your wrist and tells you the time.

An expert is someone called in at the last minute to share the blame.

Speak the truth, but leave immediately after.

For maximum attention, nothing beats a good mistake.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important. Bertrand Russell

Sources: SMBTN, Businessballs, Basicjokes, Thinkexist, OfficeHumor, DennyDavis

While most kids stick with lemonade stands, some young entrepreneurs take their business much further. Millions of dollars and multiple countries further, that is, with products in tech, software, business, and even bacon. We detail 10 of those talented and well-supported kids below.

Sean Belnick

Though his business isn’t as all-pervasive as, say, Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook, 20-year-old Sean Belnick has still made an impact on his community, and has a businesses with far-reaching popularity. With something as simple and ubiquitous as the common chair, the BizChair.com founder turned his $500 at the age of 14 into at least $24 million by 2006.

The company Belnick started from his bedroom now employs 75 workers. His offerings include medical equipment, computer and office furniture, home furnishings and school furniture as well. With a base in Kennesaw, Georgia, and a warehouse (that stocks most of the things he sells) in Canton, GA, as well as notable customers like the Pentagon, American Idol and Microsoft, we’d say he is doing pretty darn well for himself.

Adam Horowitz

The origins Adam Horowitz’s miniature financial empire came about in a bad way, but he has since made good. He, along with fellow classmates, launched a distressingly popular nasty gossip blog when he was 15. Needless to say, the parents shut it down right quick.

Still, the experience taught Horowitz about the potential in internet marketing. So he started his own site, Urban Stomp, which hosted music and listed the locations of parties in his local area (he lived in the Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles). To pull in cash, he sold clothing through affiliate sites.

Horowitz was unprepared for how successful it would be. His first listing (an accidental posting to the home of an 80-year old neighbor) drew over 700 rowdy teens. Ouch. But what started out as an awkward foray into the world of digital business has since been turned around.

Horowitz now teaches courses to 15+ year olds on how to make money online, and he runs mobile marketing sites like ‘Mobile Monopoly,’ and ‘Cell Phone Treasure,’ which have both earned him over $100,000. Additionally, he has another one that is up and coming, ‘Dude, I Hate My Job!’

What does this budding young entrepreneur do in his spare time? He tools around in his 2010 Audi A5 and playing Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 on his 360. Moral of the story: Not all video gamers are shiftless slackers. And, whether or not you agree with internet marketing affiliate-based programs, you have to give the kid props for starting this up on his own.

Leanna Archer

In many places, young people can’t even start work until they hit the age of 16–child labor laws makes sure of that. And even if we don’t want to go back to the days of Dickensian-inspired ‘A working child is a happy child,’ we certainly can’t discount young ladies like the 13-year old Leanna Archer.

So what did this tiny Trump do? Why, no less than started her very own hair care empire from her parents’ basement.

People had begun to ask Leanna what she put in her luxurious locks. It was, in fact, a pomade made by her grandmother. She told them that it was her grandma’s secret recipe, but then she got the wild idea to market this to people she knew.

Her parents weren’t so hot on the idea, but after her grandma whipped up a batch of the stuff and Leanna stuck some in baby food jars to give to her classmates and ostensibly their parents, the money began rolling in. She had already researched the particulars on obtaining a business license and about getting a Tax ID. So impressed were her folks was they all but said, ‘Where do we sign up?’ And that’s how Leanna’s Hair came to be.

Angelo Sotira

For lovers of art, whatever form it takes, be it in words, the stroke of a brush, the strike of a chord, the click of a camera shutter, or the click of a mouse, few can argue the wild success of deviantArt.

Begun in 2000 by Angelo Sotira (who was 18 at the time) and a few others, dA is a monstrously popular site where users can set up an account to show off their work, sell prints of their work, buy sponsored merchandise, view others’ work, as well as comment on others’ work. As of 2010, 14.5 million ‘deviants’ call the site home, with over 100 million submissions (an average of 140,000 a day).

Despite its success, deviantArt had its share of troubles. One of the founders, Scott Jarkoff, was let go, and there was a whole legal mess between Angelo and the third founder. Supposedly Angelo was going to use dA’s own money to pay for legal costs.

However it all ends up, we’d like to think that deviantArt is here to stay. Get your act together boy. You’ve got lots of folks who want to continue making and showing off the goods!

Abbey Fleck

Who doesn’t love crispy, tasty bacon? In 1993, then 8-year old Abbey Fleck was making bacon one morning with her dad. Normally you drain those curly strips of artery-clogging goodness on paper towels, but the Flecks were out, and nobody wants to use newspaper or anything else with ink on it.

That’s when Abbey and her dad came up with an ingenious and far healthier way to cook bacon – by letting it drip cook. Their microwave-safe, inch-deep plastic skillet comes with a framework above the dish to support the rashers of bacon. When they’re done cooking, you just dispose of the grease as usual. You still need a paper towel to keep it from spattering all over the place, but no longer do you have to let your strips of salted pork sit in congealing grease that gets all over your fingers and makes a huge mess.

Numbers are lean, but Abbey and dad’s Makin BaconCE appliance has really helped her, er, bring home the bacon.

Cameron Johnson

While this millionaire he didn’t invent Beanie Babies, they certainly got him off to a good start. Cameron Johson started his first business at the age of nine. At age 12, he sold his sister’s Beanie Babies on the internet for a tidy profit of $50,000. (We wonder, did she know? Little girls are rather possessive about their stuffed cute things. The greenbacks were probably enough to sway her from murdering her brother for selling what was probably a cherished collection.)

Since then, he has became (at 15) the youngest American to be elected to a Tokyo board of directors. Johnson even released a book about it, called 15-Year Old CEO, which peaked at #4 on the Japanese best seller list.

With his diverse knowledge and mad marketing skills, this young entrepreneur has enjoyed appearances on notable shows including Oprah Winfrey, MSNBC, CNBC, as well as articles in the Washington Post and the New York Times. One thing is for certain, the young Johnson is one businessman to keep your eyes on.

Fraser Doherty

When you think of making millions, you probably don’t think about jam, Smuckers or Welches notwithstanding. But one Scottish youth, Fraser Doherty, made his millions off just that.

Doherty began making jam from fruit and fruit juice, based on his grandma’s recipe, out of his parents’ kitchen at the tender age of 15. He mostly sold to friends and fellow churchgoers, but demand quickly spiked, outstripping his ability to produce.

Since starting, Doherty’s jam has spread to virtually every grocery chain in the UK and Ireland, including the biggest UK retailer of them all, Sainsbury. His product, SuperJam, comes in a wide array of unique flavors, including blueberry & blackcurrant and rhubarb & ginger.

This religious lad isn’t even about the money. Sure, the profits are as sweet as the jam, but he loves making the stuff so much that that’s all he focuses on. Still, it must be nice having the dough roll in doing something you love.

Seth Priebatsch

This quirky CEO didn’t start out rich, but his savvy, coupled with his can-do spirit and obsession with success, has made him one of the hottest commodities in the IT market.

SCVNGR’s ‘chief ninja’ (“because you never negotiate with ninjas”) has a unique hit with the eponymous smart phone app. It’s a software platform where, like a scavenger hunt, you accomplish tasks in certain real-life places. This might seem counterintuitive, but in a world where sedentary games like Farmville and Mafia Wars, to say nothing of World of Warcraft or Rift and Minecraft (all good games in their way) fill the market, there’s something to be said for a game where it forces you to go out and do stuff.

Ironically, Seth doesn’t do a whole of that. For many, all work and no play is unhealthy, yet Seth seems to thrive on it. In fact, he seems to be happiest behind his desk.

Anshul Samar

What do high school and chemical warfare have in common? Anshul Samar, mostly.

In a world where hotshot entrepreneurs are becoming CEOs of their very own companies at a younger and younger age, Samar is set to make his mark own unique on the gaming world with his neat trading card game, called Elementeo. In it, you and your opponent each have sets of chemicals that you use to destroy one another at the atomic level. Elementeo is basically an exercise in ‘making chemistry fun’ for kids.

Samar didn’t just start in the last few months. As far back as the fourth grade, he had an idea for a chemistry-based card game, but it took him years to work out all the quirks (or quarks, for you card-playing particle physicists out there).

Now, the 10th-grade CEO of the impressively named Alchemist Empire, Inc. is set to introduce millions of kids to his unique brand of fun and learning. In a market flooded by trading card games like Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Magic: The Gathering, this is arguably one of the freshest ideas.

In addition to starting up a fun little game, Samar’s interests span from music (he plays the guitar, drums and keyboard), to the Debate Club, basketball, poetry and activities dealing with youth empowerment.

Juliette Brindak

When it comes to empowering little girls and teaching them about what it means to be a smart, savvy, successful adult, role models aren’t always in abundance. Those that are don’t always work out as planned.

Take Barbie, for instance. Sure Mattel’s behemoth started with the best of intentions, but it led to stereotypes and unrealistic expectations about a woman’s life and appearance.

Juliette Brindak wanted to do something more, something that could not be misconstrued and would provide a positive influence. Ergo, you have her site, Miss O and Friends. She first conceived of the site at age 10. Now, at 19, she and her site are worth about $15 million.

For parents, the site, which hosts a club called Miss O Moms, offers informative and engaging information about children and families. For young ladies, Miss O provides a safe place for them to explore what it means to be a young woman, hang out in a virtual environment with friends and schoolmates and develop meaningful and fun relationships.

Sites like Facebook don’t really cut it, because you have to at least be 13, and little girls are, if nothing else, curious and creatures, just like their icky boy counterparts. What better place than MissOandFriends to figure out who they are?

If you think that athletes are athletes and executives are executives, and never the twain shall meet, think again. There are quite a few CEOs and high-powered corporate types who have gone on to become super successful. And athletics isn’t the only field where these diamonds in the rough turn up. Here are five people who became wild successes after leaving corporate America.

Evelyn Stevens, the “Wall Street Cyclist”

Not so long ago, Evelyn Stevens was a young, successful mid-level executive at the investment firm of Gleacher Mezzanine (now Arrowhead Mezzanine). She had a penchant for cycling, but no one knew just how potent that urge could be, or where it would take her. She, like most executives who work 50+ hours a week, could only sneak in a little exercise here and there.

When she bought a bike, all that changed. One year, after visiting family in northern California, she decided to try her hand at cross country cycling.

She did not win, but that wasn’t the point. From then on, her path was set. Evelyn, as it turns out, is gifted with athletic genes, and they gave her a leg up in all the subsequent races she participated in, as well as the tests she undertook in order to find just what it was that made her such a superior cyclist.

Thanks to that innate skill, and her competitive drive, she is now one of the top female cyclists in the world. She’s no Olympian, but with hard work, she could easily get there.

Jorge Plasencia, CEO of República Ad Agency

Everyone has to start somewhere. Jorge Plasencia was no different. At the tender age of 14, he started out working for the Promotions department of a Miami-based, Spanish-language radio station. His savvy and intelligence quickly saw him move up the station ladder. Later on, he became the Director of Hispanic Marketing for the Florida Marlins Baseball Club. The team enjoyed great (and more importantly measurable) success and a broad level of appeal within the Spanish-speaking community of Miami. This was thanks primarily to Plasencia’s implementation of numerous marketing programs and turnkey sales that allowed the team to develop a loyal following in the Spanish community.

Following his time with the Marlins, Jorge worked for ’80s music sensation Gloria Estefan and her husband, marketing mogul Emilio Estefan Jr. With the Estefans, he was Vice President of Estefan Enterprises Inc., which was a global company devoted to ventures in the the hospitality, media and entertainment industries. Not only was he responsible for corporate development and publicity, he helped manage the day-to-day business affairs of artists like Gloria herself, as well as Latin sensation Shakira.

Then, after a stint with Univision Radio, where he served as the Corporate Vice President and Operating Manager, he formed his own company, República. And it is República which is perhaps his greatest legacy. The branding, advertising and communications company, which prides itself in its ability to provide a far-reaching assortment of information and knowledge to the Spanish-speaking communities of south Florida, boasts Burger King, the aforementioned Marlins and local grocery chain, Sedano’s Supermarkets as clients, among others.

Scott Belsky, CEO of Behance

Formerly of New York City-based investment giant, Goldman Sachs, Scott Belsky was just an associate with a promising career. But he wanted more, so he left Sachs to attend Harvard Business School. It was there that he developed the idea that would eventually become Behance.

But what is Behance? It is a site that lets artists from almost every medium, market and sell their work, as well as seek out job opportunities/commissions. But unlike other sites, like DeviantArt, which is primarily focused on the showcasing of art rather than the marketability of it, Behance is a small company with a long reach. In his work with Behance, Scott has brought together appreciators of art, the artists themselves, investors as well as potential employers of the artists whose portfolios his site helps create.

Belsky is also the founder of The 99% (which takes its name from Edison’s quote, “Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration”). The 99% is a Behance think tank that is constantly coming up with new and innovative ideas about how to market Behance’s ever expanding roster of artists and clients, to get them out there, and make them, and by extension Behance itself, more visible.

Kweise Mfume, Former CEO for the NAACP

Born Frizzell Gray on October 24, 1948, the man who would eventually become CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) lived an interesting life. At one point, after dropping out of high school, he worked three jobs to help support his family. But it was also around this time that he fell on the wrong side of the law. (What he did, or even ‘if’ he did anything is open to debate. He contends that he was picked up simply because he was young and black – or as is commonly referred to in the Black community as “driving while black” or “fitting the description.”)

During his teen years Frizzell also fathered five children. However, after turning 23, he returned to school, got his GED and promised himself that he would never return to that life again. And so he didn’t.

In the early 1970s, Frizzell adopted the name Kweise Mfume at his aunt’s behest, in an attempt to draw closer to his roots. While it translates to ‘conquering son of kings,’ one can forgive Mfume for such an ostentatious-sounding name. Given his achievements since turning his life around, his name seems quite fitting.

He would go on to earn a Bachelor’s degree from Morgan State University and a Master’s of Liberal Arts degree from John Hopkins University. Mfume served several terms in Congress and the Senate, then in 1996 was elected the CEO of the NAACP, where he would serve from 1996 to 2004.

Juliet Huck, CEO, TheHuckGroup

For those who have served as jurists in high profile cases involving lots of exhibits and pictures, you may have seen some of Huck’s work, or work from one of her employees. She once worked out of a Los Angeles-based litigation support company as the art director. What this meant was that she provided renderings and sketches to the court based on the needs of a particular case. However, she thought she could do better. Unfortunately, her superiors at the time didn’t think it was what was wanted, so they shot her down.

That did not dissuade her. Far from it. She took her savings, which amounted to about $11,000 or so, and drafted up a business plan. She wanted to be able to provide top quality, engaging litigation-centric art, and this was her golden ticket, as it were. Still, the business did not come easy. Even after securing a loan, and networking, it took her three months to nail down her first customer. Said customer was a law firm that paid her $20,000 per month for five months in order to keep her on retainer. In the years that followed, she developed a reputation for excellence and has expanded her efforts. She now has roughly nine employees, working in offices in the cities of L.A., Chicago, and Ormond Beach, Florida.

Oil prices are levitating; as a result, everyone is freaking out about food. Food prices, that is, which threaten to increase more (and cause riots, and shortages, and all those other fun aftereffects) as oil climbs the stairway to heaven.

I recently wrote a couple of articles for a Minyanville feature package on food prices. Here’s a sum-up of their findings on food prices:

Corn, sugar: Pray for good weather and a loss of government interest in ethanol* so that corn prices don’t skyrocket. Sugar is in a similar situation.
Meat: Due to rising prices and production constraints, chicken is set replace beef as America’s meat of choice over the next decade.
Wheat, dairy: Wheat prices look like they might actually go down. So do dairy prices. Both, however, are strongly linked to corn prices.
Fruit, veggies, vegetable oils (and products containing them), and even beer stand to increase.
Coffee, ironically, is in the scariest situation, if you happen to be an addict. Hoarding coffee might be a very good idea.

Minor food price increases, at the very least, seem to be in the cards for most foods no matter what the global (weather, political, and economic) climate. Spikes, as is generally the case with commodities, may or may not materialize, though coffee price hikes are pretty much guaranteed. One company, Japanese food ingredients giant Ajinomoto has had revamped its operations recently to tackle rising prices.

Are food prices worth the worry? A better question might be “how pessimistic are you?” Or perhaps “do you have a disposable cash stash, just in case?”

Taken in concert with the rate at which Americans are now using food stamps, unemployment, and the general national situation, food-price prognoses currently have me in Camp Worry.

*when pigs fly.