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The $85 billion in mandatory, across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequestration take effect today. The cuts could have immediate implications for federal workers, the unemployed, and federal aviation personnel. 

But what about the long-term effects of the reductions? Marketplace economics correspondent Chris Farrell joins Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson to discuss the sequestration's lasting impact on federally-funded scientific research.

The $85 billion in mandatory, across-the-board spending cuts known as the sequestration take effect today. The cuts could have immediate implications for federal workers, the unemployed, and federal aviation personnel. 

But what about the long-term effects of the reductions? Marketplace economics correspondent Chris Farrell joins Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson to discuss the sequestration's lasting impact on federally-funded scientific research.

Are the French losing their touch when it comes to seducing members of the opposite sex? Well, if the proliferation of books, DVDs and coaching sessions are anything to go by, many feel they need help.

It's a sunny afternoon outside the Pompidou Centre art museum. Nicolas breaks into a run. He and his coach have spied a target: sparkly t-shirt at two o'clock.

"Excuse me, I've just seen you and I think that with that t-shirt with sequins on you must be a gold-digger or something! Your style is really not bad," says Nicolas.

"Thank you. That's kind," the woman responds.

"In fact, I would have loved to talk to you, I really like your little smile as well. Unfortunately, I have to meet some friends. But if you like, you and me, we can exchange phone numbers," says Nicolas.

"That's kind, but I have a lover," she responds.

Listening in thanks to a discreet microphone clipped to Nicolas' shirt, coach Alex Roth shrugs. Rejection is OK, he says. Toughens you up. He's been there himself. That's why he founded Lifestyle Conseil, one of a number of similar French counseling companies, four years ago.

"When I was younger I was kind of obese, you know? And I was kind of lonely, not so many friends. And one day, I say OK, as a challenge to myself I said I have to lose some weight. I have to go out, to make some friends, to have a girlfriend. It was quite a hard job, but now I can help other men to do the same because I did the job before," says Roth.

Roth tells a classroom of note-taking students a cautionary tale about the importance of good spelling when texting women. A week of seduction school costs $1,300. For seminars like this, field work, and at the end, a party to which all the girls that have given their phone numbers to these apprentice seducers are invited. If all goes well, they'll end up perpetuating a long French tradition of seduction.

From films like "Charlotte and Véronique" to books and plays like "Dangerous Liaisons" and Molière's "Don Juan" -- and even the recent movie "Heartbreaker," whose remake rights have been bought by Working Title Films -- seduction has always loomed large in French culture. This was something French men were good at while those of other nations one might think of had to drink for several hours before so much as saying hello. But is it still true of the French today? Down in the Luxemburg Garden, I asked some present-day Charlottes and Véroniques to share their experiences.

"We were on a boat, a club on a boat, and we had just arrived and a guy came and say, 'Ah you dance so well!' And we said, 'Ah come on, we just arrived so you couldn't see us dancing or anything,'" says Juliette Minot. "[It was] a bad experience because he would say that to any girl."

Others had a similar reaction. The consensus: seduction classes? French men could use them. But back outside the Pompidou Centre, they haven't done the trick yet for Nicolas. How many girls has he approached this afternoon? Everybody's lost count. Possibly suffering from charm fatigue, he begins an umpteenth offensive with "Excuse me, I think you're not bad looking," to which the young woman replies: "Oh yeah? How many out of 10?"

Uh-oh. But despite these inauspicious beginnings he asks if they can "echanger leurs coordonnes" to which she replies "sans probleme." That's French for "no problem." And when he comes back to receive his coach's congratulations his smile, perhaps for the first time this afternoon, is a real one.

Money may not buy you love, but it can buy a lot of heartache. Breakups, divorces -- cash, or lack thereof, can cast a very dark cloud over many people's relationships. So how do we restore the warm embrace of financial intimacy to our lives? To answer that question, we're joined by Deborah Price. She's a former financial adviser and now CEO and founder of The Money Coaching Institute, and the author of "The Heart of Money: A Couple's Guide to Creating True Financial Intimacy."

"Financial intimacy is about learning how to communicate about money in a healthy way and fully disclose and be vulnerable and safe, and not something that many couples actually feel," says Price. "It's amazing how much emotion comes up when people speak about money and often there are a lot of feelings that we don't express."

Where do those feelings come from? Price says from an early age, we begin to experience money mostly in the context of our parents. But because money is such a taboo subject, when we hear or watch our parents, we often see that there is a lot of emotion, sensitivity, even anger of stress, associated with money. "Money patterns and behaviors become hard-wired in the brain at early ages and then we express that conflict as adults. But for kids whose parents fought a lot about money or didn't talk about it, how do you attain necessary financial intimacy skills?

"I see couples who are really, really skillful smart people in every area of their lives, seem to malfunction when it comes to money," says Price. "Part of what [The Money Coaching Institute does] is we teach people how to begin to navigate those waters in a healthy way so that they can keep their relationships together."

Price says there are eight "money types" or archetypes in money coaching:

Innocent -- The Innocent takes the ostrich approach to money matters. Innocents often live in denial, burying their heads in the sand so they won't have to see what is going on around them. The Innocent is easily overwhelmed by financial information and relies heavily on the advice and opinions of others. Innocents are perhaps the most trusting of all the money archetypes because they do not see people or situations for what they are.

Victim -- Victims are prone to living in the past and blaming their financial woes on external factors. Passive-aggressive (prone to acting out their feelings in passive ways rather than through direct action) in nature, Victims often appear disguised as Innocents, because they seem so powerless and appear to want others to take care of them. However, this appearance is often either a conscious or subconscious ploy to get others to do for them what they refuse to do for themselves. Victims generally have a litany of excuses for why they are not more successful, and they are all based on their historical mythology. That is not to say that bad things haven't actually happened to the Victim.

Warrior -- The Warrior sets out to conquer the money world and is generally seen as successful in the business and financial worlds. Warriors are adept investors, focused, decisive, and in control. Although Warriors will listen to advisers, they make their own decisions and rely on their own instincts and resources to guide them. Warriors often have difficulty recognizing the difference between what appears to be an adversary and a worthy opponent.

Martyr -- Martyrs are so busy taking care of others' needs that they often neglect their own. Financially speaking, Martyrs generally do more for others than they do for themselves. They often rescue others (a child, spouse, friend, partner) from some circumstance or other. However, Martyrs do not always let go of what they give and are repeatedly let down when others fail to meet up to their expectations. They have formed an unconscious attachment to their own suffering.

Fool -- The Fool plays by a different set of rules altogether. A gambler by nature, the Fool is always looking for a windfall of money by taking financial shortcuts. Even though the familiar adage "a fool and his money are soon parted" often comes true, Fools often win because they are willing to throw the dice; they are willing to take chances. The Fool is really a combination of the Innocent and the Warrior. Like the Innocent, the Fool is often judgment impaired and has difficulty seeing the truth about things. An adventurer, the Fool gets caught up in the enthusiasm of the moment, caring little for the details.

Creator/Artist -- Creator/Artists are on a spiritual or artistic path. They often find living in the material world difficult and frequently have a conflicted love/hate relationship with money. They love money for the freedom it buys them but have little or no desire to participate in the material world. The Creator/Artist often overly identifies with the interior world and may even despise those who live in the material world. Their negative beliefs about materialism only create a block to the very key to the freedom they so desire.

Tyrant -- Tyrants use money to control people, events, and circumstances. The Tyrant hoards money, using it to manipulate and control others. Although Tyrants may have everything they need or desire, they never feel complete, comfortable, or at peace. The Tyrant's greatest fear is loss of control. Tyrants are often overdeveloped Warriors who have become highly invested in their need for control and dominance.

Magician -- The Magician is the ideal money type. Using a new and ever-changing set of dynamics both in the material world and in the world of the Spirit, Magicians know how to transform and manifest their own financial reality. At our best, when we are willing to claim our own power, we are all Magicians. The archetype that is active in your life now is the place you need to grow from. By understanding your own personal mythology and the history behind your current money type, you will become conscious of patterns and behavior that are preventing you from having the relationship with money you desire.

Learn more about these Money types. Price says to improve your own financial intimacy, you should first understand yourself relative to money, and do some exploration.

A lab at Duke University has taken us one step closer to mind-melding, using rats. Researchers trained a rat in Brazil to earn a reward. Next they attached that rat's brain to another rat in at Duke University through the always versatile Internet. The rat at Duke knew what to do with no training.

"The rat in North Carolina wasn't reading the mind of the rat in Brazil, it was more of a binary signal," says Slate Tech blogger Will Oremus. "So if the rat in Brazil pressed the lever on the right, a certain type of electrical signal would be sent to the brain of the rat in North Carolina and it learned to interpret that signal."

While we may still be a long way off from mind reading, the ability to send a simple signal from one brain to another brain, or from a brain to a computer is now here and could have vast applications for the medical field as well as other industries.

For example, last December a lab in Pittsburg helped a paralyzed woman feed herself chocolate with a robotic arm using similar technology, according to Oremus.

To hear more about the brain to computer communication, click on the audio player above.

 

 

Marketplace is on the road again asking people to finish this sentence: You know you’re wealthy when….

We’ve asked folks on the boardwalk in Venice Beach, California. We’ve talked to residents along New Orleans’ Saint Claude Corridor. This time around? Baltimore. From high-end kitchen appliances to home ownership to having happy and healthy kids – Baltimore residents may live in the same city, but they have very different ideas when it comes to what makes a person wealthy. Here’s a taste:

 “You know you’re wealthy when you don’t have to live paycheck to paycheck, and you’re comfortable with what you’re making,” says Angela Marinakis, 35, an unemployed student from suburban Baltimore.  

“When you don’t know what a gas bill looks like, or any type of bill.  No type of utilities or anything,” says Melvin Hall, 49, an electrician from Baltimore.

“You go to bed, and you stay eight hours sleeping in good shape,"  says Ronaldo Faria, 50, a sales executive from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

 “You know you’re wealthy when you’ve bought a Robot Coupe.  A Robot Coupe is a fancy name for a food processor.  Those are high end kitchen items so you’ll you know you’re wealthy when you do that," says Keith Jenkins, a culinary student from Baltimore.

“You know you’re wealthy when you have your husband and your children and your family around you," says Maryanne Schneider, a mom from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

For more responses and pictures from all over the country, take a look at the slideshow and map above.

 And let us know how you would answer that question. Let us know on Facebook,  Instagram or Twitter  -- use the hashtag #YouAreWealthyWhen.

There are arguably two high points in life. 1.) Being forced to to spend an hour taking an online multiple-choice quiz in order to qualify for a student loan. 2.) Having to go to traffic school on a Saturday to keep points off a driver's license. Now, right up there with them is what could happen to people who take intellectual property online without permission.

Several Internet service providers are launching a new Copyright Alert System this week to patrol for customers doing illegal downloads. The system will generate an escalating series of warnings. In theory, a user gets six strikes and then a movie, music or software pirate is out.

But what exactly happens on strike six? Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain joins Marketplace Tech host David Brancaccio to explain just that. 

India's finance minister has announced plans to set up the country's first ever women only bank. P Chidambaram says he hopes that it will be granted a license by October.

Supporters hope it will help women establish businesses and give them financial independence. But not everyone is a fan.

"No, no. I feel it is a very cheap and meaningless gimmick. I find it very strange. I never felt unsafe in a mixed bank. I do not think its necessary," says Rina Nag, who has spent her life working in a bank.

Women's rights have been at the center of a heated debate in India following the gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi late last year. The government is hoping that the $200 million it's investing to set up the banks signals a committment to women's issues and helps produce a new generation of Indian businesswomen.

Groupon’s board of directors fired the company’s CEO yesterday. Andrew Mason founded the daily deal site. This is, in many ways, a familiar story.

An ideas man builds up a business, takes it public, and then…

“Some kind of infrastructure is needed,” says James Abruzzo, co-founder of the Institute for Ethical Leadership at Rutgers Business School. “And clearly that was the case here."

The same thing happened to Steve Jobs. Apple’s board forced him out in the mid-1980s. Something similar happened at Yahoo! Jerry Yang started that company, and when he was CEO, he opposed a takeover bid from Microsoft. That was it.

Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a dean at the Yale School of Management, remembers Polaroid founder Ed Land’s last days as CEO.

“Analysts were saying, ‘How about the bottom line?’  He said, ‘The bottom line is in heaven.’”

Founders who become executives have vision. That’s a given, but management consultant and venture capitalist Peter Cohan argues they can be blinded by that.

“They think, I created this thing. I’m the only one who can run it.” 

And the fact is, Cohan says, no one is irreplaceable.

Yes, the dreaded sequester is finally here, and as you've already heard many times, it's going to hit the Pentagon the hardest, cutting $50 billion or 9 percent of its budget. Putting aside questions of national security, what's that going to do to the economy in places that depend on defense spending?

Defense is big business in St. Louis. Under the sequester many of the 5,000 civilians working at nearby Scott Air Force Base are facing one day of unpaid leave every week.

But is a 20 percent pay cut for a few thousand people really going to hurt consumer spending in a region of 2.8 million?

"I'd say the effect is likely to be fairly minimal," says Glenn MacDonald, a professor of Economics at Washington University.

Defense contractor Boeing is the second-largest employer in the region, with a workforce of 15,000 people. But it's likely to be buffered from the immediate impacts of the sequester.

Roman Schweizer is a Senior Defense Policy Analyst at Guggenheim Securities. He says defense contracts are typically multi-year arrangements.
        
"So the brunt of that 9 percent cut would be spread over the course of anywhere from one to three to five years."

Which leaves plenty of time for Congress to reverse course, take money out of butter, and put it back in guns.

Today is the day the S-bomb -- sequester -- drops, though not for the first time in our history.

There have been sequesters before, five actually. The last time was 1991, when Barry Anderson served as the top civil servant at the Office of Management and Budget. He says that sequester was miniscule compared to today’s. The largest cuts were just 2 percent of any budget. Still, it was a pain to carry out.

"It is truly extraordinary…how detailed it was," he says.

The OMB had to oversee budget cuts for every discretionary government activity -- even down to maintaining lighthouse buoys in the Chesapeake Bay. That task prompted a confused government employee to contact Anderson directly.

“So I got a call from this guy saying, “How do I do this? I’m supposed to cut a couple percentage points of the funding for this, but all it is is floating out in the Chesapeake bay with its lights flashing,’” the former OMB official recalls.

Turned out, the only occasional task was to scrape bird droppings off the buoys.

"So I said, ‘You gotta do a 2 percent cut. Next time you send somebody out, have them only clean up 98 percent of the bird guano,’” Anderson says. “You can see the type of difficulty you can have implementing something like this."

The first sequester in 1986 was big -- more than $10 billion in mandated savings (today's sequester calls for $85 billion in cuts between now and September 30). That experience sobered Congress up about across-the-board cuts, says Jim Savage, a political science professor at the University of Virginia.

"It was painful enough so there weren't any big sequesters after that. They always found a way to get around it," he notes.

Until today.

Alan Simpson, the former Republican senator from Wyoming, tried to head off a sequester-style showdown by working to forge a deficit-reduction compromise between Republicans and Democrats. His blueprints with former White House chief of staff, Erskine Bowles, a Democrat, haven’t gained traction. This time around, he says some government agencies may opt for high-profile cuts to drive home a point. 

“They’ll go in and say, ‘Ha ha, we’re gonna close Yellowstone National Park. We’ll shut down the Smithsonian,’” he says. “They have a whole handful of stuff they can roll up solely dedicated to pissing off everyone in America.”

And maybe sober up the current generation of lawmakers.

This final note today, in which Warren Buffett basically tells corporate America to stop whining. Buffett's out with his annual letter to shareholders in his holding company Berkshire Hathaway. He is -- as befits a guy worth many billions of dollars -- relentlessly positive about the prospects for the American economy.

So positive, in fact, that he has a message for CEOs worried about the uncertainty today's political climate brings. "There's always been uncertainty," he said. And "if you're a CEO who has some large, profitable project you are shelving because of short-term worries, call Berkshire. Let us unburden you," he says.

He also, by the way, adds up the total percentage change the value of Berkshire Hathaway stock since he started running the company in 1964. Hang on to your hats -- ticker symbol BRK up 586,817 percent in the past 48 years.

Listen to our interviews with Buffett from last year, and hear his thoughts on Jamie Dimon and the investing mistakes he's made.

"Top Chef" judge Tom Colicchio has a new title this week. He is one of the executive producers of a new film on hunger in America. It's called "A Place at the Table”. 

The documentary examines hunger from the perspective of three people: A single mother of two in Philadelphia, a fifth grader in Colorado who must rely on friends and neighbors for food, and a second-grader in Mississippi who has health problems related to her diet of cheap, unhealthy food. 

Why would a celebrity chef who owns high end restaurants in three major cities care about hunger? Colicchio credits his wife, who came face-to-face with hunger while mentoring a young girl. Another reason? His mother, who ran a school lunch program in his hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey.

“[His mother] said ‘these kids who come into my lunchroom for breakfast and lunch -- I know this is the only thing they’re eating all day and I’m really fighting to get them some healthy food, at least a choice,’" says Colicchio. "It changed my complete view."

Colicchio says government action is essential to address hunger in America. "If the hunger problem in America was just about charity or money, it would have been solved already," he says.  

He adds, “If you look at the public health issues the government has solved before like yellow fever and cholera -- these are issues that we thought were just issues of the poor, issues of the inner city. It wasn’t until government found out that it was either through mosquitoes or through water that was tainted. That took care of these problems.” 

Colicchio says that if political candidates and government officials don’t begin to speak out on hunger in America, they risk being labeled as “pro-hunger.”

Colicchio is also launching a social action campaign to curb hunger in America, tied to the release of the film.

We've been exploring the housing market in cities across the U.S. This week, we turn our attention to Houston. There are very few areas around the country, growing as fast as Houston. In fact, the city was recently named "healthiest housing market for 2013" by Trulia. Thai Klam is a broker for RE/MAX 360 in Houston and joins us to discuss the Texas city's real estaste market.

"The economic landscape of Houston is really diverse. We have financial sectors along with the things that you think about -- oil, gas and the port of Houston. We have tons of jobs relocating here," says Klam. "If you're looking for purchasing homes in the Houston area, inventory's scarce as it is across the nation. We have such a diverse housing market that has been completely booming with the lack of new construction and pent-up demands to buy. So you're seeing a lot of rental properties coming up. You're seeing a lot of new apartment complexes being developed to accommodate the buying pool that is unable to buy. Currently right now it's a seller's market. It's shifted like that within the past, I'd probably say, 12 months. Buyers have to be educated in expectation to either submit a full-price offer or compete against other buyers that are possibly out there," says Klam.

Klam says the average price of a home is about $172,000 right now. He says at this time last year, the same home might have cost around $160,000. That's about an 8 percent appreciation over a year.

"You've got several types of buyer pools that are out there. You've have the Generation X and Y, and the Millennials coming to the market. That's about 84 million consumers altogether. And then the Baby Boomers, you're seeing a lot of downsizing as well," says Klam.

As for the outlying areas of Houston, Klam says you might be surprised to find that there's not much inventory that's out there.

Glenn Kelman, CEO of Redfin, a real estate software company, joins us this week to discuss listeners' letters.

Rita from Jones Creek, Texas, made a refinance request back in October, but is still waiting for it to close and cannot get a striaght answer from her mortgage holder. Should she forget about the deal and seek out another lender since no funds have been released yet?

"I think there are two factors militating against a speedy approval. No. 1, you're in Texas and you're trying to take cash out. For whatever reason in that state, cash-out loans require a special kind of voodoo. It's very difficult to do. The other is that you tried to get the money in October. That's when rates were at an absolute historic low and every loan officer was inundated across the country. But having said all that, it's unacceptable. You should not have to wait four months. The typical amount of time required is two months. If you're buying a house, it's usually one month. So I would try to talk to the folks who work with that loan officer, his boss, her boss, someone in management in that office to try to understand exactly what's taking so long. Just have them document everything that they need to close the loan," says Kelman.

Kelman says it may make sense to go to another bank at this point.

For more advice -- including the risks of refinancing with smaller banking institutions -- click play on the audio player above.

This final note as we leave off today. The end of the beginning, perhaps, at the once-charmed daily discounter Groupon.

It's been a rough ride for the company almost since the day it went public. Shares are down 75 percent over the past year. 24 percent just today.

Which will make what I'm about to tell you completely predictable. Founder and CEO Andrew Mason is leaving the company. The best part was his farewell email. "After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I've decided that I'd like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding -- I was fired today. If you're wondering why... you haven't been paying attention."

This may not come as a huge surprise to most of you, but a study out of Oxford University last month found that vegetarians are 32 percent less likely to be hospitalized, or die, from heart disease than are meat-eaters.

In fact, Americans are eating less beef, chicken and pork than in the past. Some of it might be the rising cost of meat, but it's also likely that news of the downsides to a carnivorous diet are getting to us. We are realizing that veggies and grains are better for you.

Thus the relatively quick success of the Santa Monica, Calif.-based fast food chain Veggie Grill. It serves up what the industry calls a plant-based diet. That means no animal fat -- no butter, no milk, no eggs. Its burgers and chicken sandwiches are made from soy, and the flavor is catching on.

There are 16 outlets on the West Coast, including a handful in Oregon and Washington. Greg Dollarhyde is the CEO and, buoyed by healthy sales and $20 million in financing, he plans to double the number of restaurants in the next 18 months.

"The plan is to go up and down the West Coast because it's the same time zone and easy to get to," said Dollarhyde. "But we get all sorts of emails of 'When are you coming to New York? When are you coming to Boston? When are you coming to Dallas?'"

But how do take a plant-based diet to, say, Chicago -- home of the deep dish pizza and the Union Stock Yards? Dollarhyde has one word: taste. As long as the food tastes good and familiar, people will come.

But he will make sure not to grow too fast. "The biggest concern is when you change time zones," Dollarhyde explained. "If you are on the West Coast and you go to the East Coast, you are just getting up and they are at lunch. Then when you are at lunch, they can't find you. And if something goes wrong, that is a long plane ride to fix it."

That said, however, he does hope to have a Veggie Grill in New York sometime next year.

The European Union is moving to place an iron leash on bank pay. New rules approved Thursday would put strict caps on bankers’ bonuses. That’s Europe’s latest response to widespread anger at financial firms in the wake of the economic crisis.

Americans are pretty angry at bankers too, but there’s practically no chance of something like this happening here. Like diesel cars, techno music and soccer, capping bank bonuses is one of those things Europe loves that just don’t fare quite as well in America.

“We have not in the States, at least so far, really gone down a path of capping pay,” says Stanford professor Dave Larcker, who studies corporate pay. “I’d be very surprised if you sort of see hard caps come out in the States.”

Wall Street loves the ability to reward or punish with bonuses. A trading blunder cost JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon half his bonus year. Still, the $10 million bonus he received was nearly seven times his salary. The EU rule would limit bonuses to no more than double base pay.

Nothing as extensive as the European proposal has moved forward in the U.S. But some things have changed on Wall Street since the financial meltdown. All-cash bonuses are largely a relic of the past.

“A few years ago, if I said your bonus was $100, you got $100,” explains Joe Sorrentino, managing director at Steven Hall & Partners, which advises Wall Street firms and others on compensation. “Now if I say your bonus is $100, well, you may get $25 or $50 now in cash and the rest is gonna be deferred in either stock or cash. And you may not see that for three years from now.”

That shift is to prevent bankers from doing crazy things that drive big bonuses in the short term, but hurt their company, or perhaps humanity, in the long term.

There’s also a problem with capping bonuses. It’s kind of pointless.

“Human ingenuity is boundless,” says Georgetown finance professor Sandeep Dahiya. “The minute the rules are written, you can expect everyone to pore over them and find any loophole.”

For example, if bonuses are capped, firms can just juice up salaries. But that would mean guaranteeing pay before getting results. And that's something Wall Street hates.

So does the City. Banks in London's financial district are complaining about the planned EU restrictions. If the rules go through, they would create a compensation gap that could drive talented and rationally greedy European bankers to competitors in the U.S. and Asia.

Kai Ryssdal: The European Union's decided to do something -- to try to do something, anyway -- about how much bankers get paid. There were some new rules approved today to put strict caps on bonuses.

We've tried to limit executive compensation over here, too. But it's turning out that no matter where you are, it's hard to do. Marketplace's Mark Garrison explains.

Mark Garrison: Diesel cars, techno music, soccer. Some things Europe loves just don’t fare as well in America. Add to that list capping bank bonuses. Stanford professor Dave Larcker specializes in corporate pay.

Dave Larcker: I’d be very surprised if you sort of see hard caps come out in the States.

Wall Street loves the ability to reward or punish with bonuses. A big trading blunder cost JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon half his bonus last year. Still, Dimon’s $10 million bonus is nearly seven times his salary. The EU rule would limit bonuses to no more than double base pay. Now, it’s not that nothing’s changed in America.

Joe Sorrentino: A few years ago, if I said your bonus was $100, you got $100.

Joe Sorrentino is with Steven Hall & Partners, which advises Wall Street firms and others on compensation.

Sorrentino: Now if I say your bonus is $100, well, you may get $25 or $50 now in cash and the rest is gonna be deferred in either stock or cash. And you may not see that for three years from now.

That shift is to prevent bankers from doing crazy things that drive big bonuses in the short term, but hurt their company, or perhaps humanity in the long term. There’s also a problem with capping bonuses. It’s kinda pointless.

Sandeep Dahiya: Human ingenuity is boundless.

Georgetown finance professor Sandeep Dahiya.

Dahiya: The minute the rules are written, you can expect everyone to pore over them and, you know, find any loophole and any way.

If bonuses are capped, firms will just juice up salaries. And that means guaranteeing pay before getting results. And that’s something Wall Street hates. In New York, I'm Mark Garrison, for Marketplace.

Jack Lew was sworn in as new Treasury Secretary today. He probably had a rough first day on the job. There's a lot on his plate -- with those big federal spending cuts looming tomorrow. Which got us to thinking: How can you avoid pitfalls your first day on a new job? We asked the experts -- people with first-day horror stories you won’t believe.

We came across Marvin Address at a food truck in downtown Washington. He owns an insurance company now, but his first job  was in the Air Force working as an air traffic controller. He was nervous on his first day -- so jittery, he lined up two planes to take off. Facing each other.

“And I got a call in the tower," he says. "And the pilot said, 'Tower, am I looking at another airplane that’s coming my way?'”

Luckily, Address was able to re-route the planes and no one was hurt. But he learned an important lesson that day: Keep your eyes open -- literally.

Another lesson might be "know thyself." Victoria Hernandez got a job at a chocolate bar factory a few years ago -- not knowing she was pregnant and suffering from morning sickness. She says, “I guess the aroma got to me so bad."

Yeah, you know what happened next.

“I threw up all over the conveyor belt," she says. "And all over the chocolate bars and everything. They had to shut down the whole left side of the building because of me."

Kathy Caprino is a career coach. She says if you screw up, or throw up, the first day on the job, admit your mistake. If it’s not too serious, try to laugh it off. But she says it’s best to try to prevent first-day slip ups in the first place.

“Get hip to your own trip,"she says. "What are the things that could trip you up? Look at those and protect against those."

And here’s some advice that could help our new Treasury Secretary. If you’re a new manager, you embody the hopes and fears of your workplace. Or, in Jack Lew’s case, your country. Just do your best. Don’t take anything personally. And have a thick skin. We asked our Facebook fans for their own first day horror stories. Here's what you told us.

[View the story "Worst first days on the job" on Storify]

Much has been made of politicians' unwillingness to negotiate in these last hours leading up to the possible budget sequestration. But not negotiating happens all the time in the business world, says Ed Brodow, a negotiation expert who helps a variety of people and institutions. In business, a tough stance simply means deal or no deal. Will we make money, or lose money?

"In the business world they're much more pragmatic about this," he says. "There's no excuse for not getting the job done because you have to be responsible to your shareholders."

But politicians have a much different relationship with constituents. Looking tough can take precedence over practical matters.

"So they'll go out and make all kinds of outlandish statements," he says. "We're not going to do this and we're going to do that, and then they get into a closed room and they make a deal."

Which is what will eventually happen, he says. But we may have to go over the edge first. Thomas Kockan at the MIT Sloan School of Management says that happens in labor negotiations. The sequester situation reminds him of an air traffic control strike in 1981. The industry and the union were each too beholden to their constituents.

"Both parties allowed themselves to get backed into those corners, and the result was a disaster for everyone," he says.

Lots of jobs and money were lost, and an entire industry had to be rebuilt. He says after the sequester takes effect, negotiation will be more likely, but also more difficult. Making deals once the parties are fully in crisis mode makes everything more tense, he says.

John Siegel is a mediator in the Washington, D.C., area who works with families. He says all the nasty language being thrown around shows that, despite their griping and grousing, politicians are still not really in crisis mode. Because if they were, they'd act and speak very differently.

"When the moment of crisis comes they don't say things to deliberately upset the other people," he says, "because they need the other people for a solution."

Listen for that change in language in the next week or two, he says, as reality of the budget sequestration hits home.