The Quincy Patriot-Ledger thinks this is strange, but I think it's just how the Massachusetts legisl

From http://www.patriotledger.com/business/x1514848730/MASS-MARKET-Land-of-the-weird-and-home-of-the-strange:

Best example of why companies are reluctant to start doing business in this state: I’m sure the executives at the Wegmans corporate office in Rochester, N.Y., had no idea their much-beloved supermarket would be greeted with so much resistance. The town of Westwood embraced Wegmans’ request for a beer and wine license for the first Wegmans in the state, but it also needed the Legislature’s approval. First, Rep. Angelo Scaccia (who was helping out a rival chain) held up the bill until Rep. Paul McMurtry (who represents Westwood) kept blocking nearly every other piece of legislation from moving forward until the Wegmans bill came up. Then Rep. William Galvin (who represents Canton, where residents are worried about traffic) blocked the request, holding up other bills, until finally relenting two months later. Then Sen. Brian Joyce (who also represents Canton) blocked the bill, until Sen. Marian Walsh (who also represents Westwood) finally pushed it through on a Friday afternoon this month. No wonder it took Wegmans eight decades to come here.

It all just strikes me as standard operating procedure for legislators. On the other hand, this was just odd:

Most enigmatic corporate name change: South Shore Co-operative Bank officials decided that the bank had a few too many words in its name. So as part of a corporate “rebranding,” the Weymouth bank unveiled its new name – “S Bank” – in October. Well, if bank executives wanted a name that people would talk about, they certainly succeeded.

"S Bank"? Really?
I guess someone made good money coming up with that name.

Yesterday's NY Times, on perverse incentives.

From http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/opinion/04lewiseinhorn.html:

The Madoff scandal echoes a deeper absence inside our financial system, which has been undermined not merely by bad behavior but by the lack of checks and balances to discourage it. “Greed” doesn’t cut it as a satisfying explanation for the current financial crisis. Greed was necessary but insufficient; in any case, we are as likely to eliminate greed from our national character as we are lust and envy. The fixable problem isn’t the greed of the few but the misaligned interests of the many.

A lot has been said and written, for instance, about the corrupting effects on Wall Street of gigantic bonuses. What happened inside the major Wall Street firms, though, was more deeply unsettling than greedy people lusting for big checks: leaders of public corporations, especially financial corporations, are as good as required to lead for the short term.

Richard Fuld, the former chief executive of Lehman Brothers, E. Stanley O’Neal, the former chief executive of Merrill Lynch, and Charles O. Prince III, Citigroup’s chief executive, may have paid themselves humongous sums of money at the end of each year, as a result of the bond market bonanza. But if any one of them had set himself up as a whistleblower — had stood up and said “this business is irresponsible and we are not going to participate in it” — he would probably have been fired. Not immediately, perhaps. But a few quarters of earnings that lagged behind those of every other Wall Street firm would invite outrage from subordinates, who would flee for other, less responsible firms, and from shareholders, who would call for his resignation. Eventually he’d be replaced by someone willing to make money from the credit bubble.

OUR financial catastrophe, like Bernard Madoff’s pyramid scheme, required all sorts of important, plugged-in people to sacrifice our collective long-term interests for short-term gain. The pressure to do this in today’s financial markets is immense.