Snow-Shoveling Time, and No Snow to Shovel

Here in southern Pennsylvania for the first time that I can recall, we’re looking at a fair possibility of a winter with no snow events. The first four weeks of December were too warm for snow, and weather forecasters expect February and March to be 5 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. The best chance for snow, then, is right now. Instead, we expect a heavy rain event this weekend followed by a return to dry weather. It is too soon to predict the weather for the second half of the month in the same level of detail, but the snow will certainly be less than the snowfall of a normal winter if there is any snow at all.

To be sure, some will lament the absence of snow. The mild weather has been a problem for retail, with Macy’s reporting only a fraction of the usual winter clothing sales. Some shoppers were fooled by the October-like weather in December and completely forgot to do any Christmas shopping. Still, for anyone with a house or a car to take care of, it is undeniably less work this way. As long as there is no snow to shovel, I am using the hours freed up to clear vines and downed tree branches from my lawn. This is work that ordinarily would wait until March, and with no snowstorms, there aren’t so many downed branches this winter. The point is, I am getting ahead in my work. At the same time, households and businesses will find it easier to make ends meet financially while they pay a third less to heat their buildings. With only a small fraction of the usual snow removal expenses, the state government may eventually be able to pass a budget.

This might not seem such an exciting story, but economic trends are built on just such random large-scale events. The weather pattern is affecting not just Pennsylvania but a whole corner of the country. Recent economic forecasts have predicted a slight recession for the United States in 2016, but with the financial benefits of a benign winter, that becomes unlikely. If I am getting a head start on my early spring lawn work, perhaps I will also find the time to add to my work skills and solve new problems. In a similar way, students facing fewer snow days have the chance to learn more and become more productive.

On an individual level, if you have extra time because of the weather, use that time to solve some of your own persistent problems, and that will put you in a better place going forward. This mild winter weather is not a trend, more a chance event, so make the most of it.

Keep a Resolution Alive With Online Research

The tradition of new year’s resolutions survives because we like the idea of getting a fresh start. But new year’s resolutions are hard, as John Oliver recently pointed out. It’s completely understandable if you get to the end of the day and want to give up on a resolution. In fact, that’s perfectly fine as long as the next day you look for a new angle and try again.

The main reason resolutions are so hard is that we have convinced ourselves that we already know what we need to do. In practical terms, there is always something we need to know that we don’t know, something that’s a necessary part of what we’re trying to do. Fortunately, it’s easier than ever to find the answers you need.

To take perhaps the most cliched example possible, you might resolve to get in shape by working out several times a week. Traditionally, this resolution falls by the wayside when you get to a day when you don’t feel like working out. You can use your sorry unmotivated ass as the excuse for your failed resolution, or you can look up how to work out when you don’t feel like it. Everyone has days when they don’t feel like working out, so what do they do? If you search YouTube, you can find more than 100 answers, including these:

• Saeed Mobayed - Motivation to Workout When You Don't Feel Like It (Real Talks)
• Leah Mackenzie - My Number One Tip If You DON'T feel like working out!
• Sprint Martial Arts - How to exercise when you don't feel like it!

Usually rescuing a resolution is as simple as doing what other people have done when they faced the same challenge. You may be able to find the answer you need with a few minutes of searching.

Using the Collective Amnesia of the New Year

In one sense, the new year is just an arbitrary day on the calendar. If you want to make a change, the best time to do it is the moment you think of it. Waiting for the new year makes your change some number of days too late. In another sense, though, there is something going on with the new year. We collectively forget the past more easily as the new year gets started. You can use this to more easily make a change in your personal habits. The change made right around the beginning of the year is more likely to stick as you forget what your prior habit was. In a similar way, the new year is a tool used by those who want to change the emotional associations of a brand or company. Start talking about something new in the new year, and people begin to forget what the conversation was in the year just ended.

The rebranding team at Volkswagen, for example, can take this moment to shift the conversation away from the company’s diesel problems by starting to talk about its electric car initiative, or something else completely unrelated to emissions testing. Political candidates who looked weak and confused last year can take this moment to present themselves in a different style that they can hope comes across as more authoritative. If it works, last year’s gaffes will be quickly forgiven. Start looking for it, and you can find examples everywhere of people and organizations using the new-year amnesia to make needed changes.

Connecting the Extreme Weather Events

If you look at a weather map from this week, it looks like the flooding in Missouri and England and the melting at the North Pole are all connected. On the map, the warm moist air originates in the El Niño-influenced eastern tropical Pacific. It moves north, and colder air in the Rocky Mountains pushes it east. The warm air mass crosses the Caribbean and the North Atlantic Ocean, somehow holding together all the way to the North Pole.

Of course, a meteorologist would explain it differently, perhaps in terms of a counterclockwise flow around a cold air mass, but any way you look at it, it adds up to unusual weather patterns in far-flung places. In my own local area we have seen record high temperatures in the past week. The flood events in the United States and England certainly qualify as disasters, but it is the Arctic melt event just days after the winter solstice that is the most ominous effect. The Greenland ice sheet is protected from rapid summer melting by the heat taken up in the melting sea ice nearby. For that to happen, new sea ice has to form at this time of year. Missing two weeks of refreeze won’t have much impact, but if the Arctic Ocean sees five or six weeks of melt conditions one winter, that puts the world well on our way to a rapid Greenland melt-out.

This Week in Bank Failures

After an eight-year run, the rate of U.S. bank failures has faded to a near-normal level. There were eight bank failures in 2015, and a similar number is expected next year. This does not mean the banking sector has returned to vibrant health. As a whole, banking remains overstaffed by about 20 percent, and the high overhead combined with an overhang of troubled loans from a decade ago still weighs on hundreds of banks. Regulators this month warned of a new wave of bank speculation in commercial real estate similar to the one a decade ago that led to most of the bank failures since. Artificially low interest rates, which the Fed plans to keep at crisis levels into 2017, also limit banks’ earning power. However, investor confidence has improved enough and the number of deeply troubled banks has declined enough that troubled banks will more often be rescued by private investors than by deposit insurance.

U.K. rules restricting bonuses fall short of European Union requirements by exempting hundreds of hedge funds, fund managers, brokers, and other institutions. The businesses that London sought to exclude from bonus-size restrictions are large by any ordinary understanding but were exempted for being “small” by City of London standards.

Higher One skimmed off $31 million in financial aid intended for college students between 2012 and 2014 through hidden fees on its financial aid debit cards. In a settlement with regulators, it has agreed to refund the improper fees and pay $4 million in penalties.

In a separate debit card settlement, The Bancorp Bank will pay $1 million in restitution and $3 million in penalties after it ignored the terms of private-label debit cards it issued. Despite a name dripping with modern irony, The Bancorp Bank is an old-style corporate institution with little connection to the management agility or information technology of the modern banking industry. In the settlement with regulators, it has agreed to implement modern accounting systems that will enable it to comply with its own contracts.

Hyatt this week disclosed a payment transaction data leak potentially affecting all customers of the hotel chain. The malware was initially discovered November 30 but was not disclosed until December 23. Hyatt has been able to learn very little so far about the nature and extent of the data leak.

As the quarter ends, U.S. credit card issuers have made only modest progress in issuing the chip-enabled credit cards that were supposed to have been released one quarter ago. Probably in one more quarter the credit card industry will be able to replace most current active credit cards with the new card style.