Marketplace - American Public Media

There are just two weeks to go until "Tax Day" and if history is any clue, more Americans than ever will file their returns electronically to meet the April 15 deadline. The IRS says e-filing by individuals has been increasing every year, but that doesn't necessarily mean tax professionals are taking a hit.

In 2012, more than 80 percent of taxpayers filed electronically, and Bob Meighan, vice president of TurboTax, thinks he knows why.

"Because it's convenient, it's fast and probably most importantly to most people is that they can get their refund in about 10 days or so," says Meighan.

According to Meighan, business continues to grow, especially among the 60 million Americans who file simple returns. But for complicated tax situations, many filers continue to turn to professionals.

Joseph Nixa, a CPA with Gordon J Maier & Co. in Racine, Wisconsin, says despite what you might think, he hasn't lost business to tax prep software.
 
"The proliferation of tax return software, unfortunately, makes many people think they know the tax law," says Nixa. "We're getting more taxpayers that are preparing their returns, having problems and they're coming back to us."
 
Nixa says some clients say their refund wasn't as big as they expected after using a tax prep program, or they were notified of problems by the IRS.

A recent study finds the number of nights we cook with meat has fallen for the first time in eight years. And among meats, beef is taking the biggest hit. But beef sellers aren’t just sitting back and watching their prized cuts get beat up by chicken and pork. They’re adjusting -- by shrinking the size of portions.

“People aren’t eating as many steaks anymore because of the price,” says Harvey Gussman, owner of Harvey’s Guss Meat Company in Los Angeles. He sells steaks to restaurants around town. “The restaurants are having to make their menus more reasonable, so they’re going from a 16-ounce steak to a 12-ounce steak or a 12-ounce steak to a 10-ounce steak.”

And it’s not just restaurants serving up smaller steaks. Grocery stores are selling them that way. The beef you might see at the grocery store these days  is “further trimmed and more optimal portion sizes,” says Trevor Amen with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. In other words, smaller.

All that scaling back is adding up when it comes to our collective meat-stomach.

“In 2007, the average American ate 65 pounds of beef,” says Chris Hurt, an agriculture economist at Purdue University, “and for this year, we expect that to be down to 56 pounds.”

That’s 56 pounds of beef per person this year, or 89 10-ounce steaks. Hurt expect beef prices will break records again this year -- for the fourth year in a row. Adding pressure to the little meat trend.

Yes, it's that time of year again, April Fools' Day, when our co-workers and friends turn the office into their own private version of MTV's "Punk'd." But there is such thing as a bridge too far with April Fool's, and you got to know when to say when.

Spencer Reed at St. Louis Public Radio is a natural prankster. Frankly I'm surprised I've escaped this long without feeling the sting of his April Fool's hijinks. His family however is not so lucky.

"April 1st morning, I come into the kitchen, I'm making everyone a nice big breakfast, and I cut my finger off. There's fake blood everywhere, I'm screaming, I'm running around. My wife buys it every time, my kids freak out…It's hilarious," says Reed.

By keeping the crazy at home, Reed is actually applying the human reassures doctrine of April Fool's: That hilarious prank you like to pull on your friends won't necessarily play at the office.

"And you don't want it to be a negative career-defining moment," says Marci Raver, who runs the Contemporary Etiquette Institute in Ann Arbor. When in doubt, she says its best to show restraint.
 
"Whoopee cushions are still fun, but plastic wrap on the toilet seat is not fun. Hiding an alarm clock in someone's desk is fun, but pulling the fire alarm is not fun…It's also illegal," says Raver.

But, hey, putting the stapler in jello will always be hilarious. 

And finally, if you work in retail sales in this country you're not alone. REALLY not alone.

Turns out retail salesperson is the most common job in America today. 4.3 million of us are selling stuff in malls, big box stores, boutiques and the like. That's according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which also calculated the least common job they could find.

That would be a prosthodontist. They specialize in, among other things, false teeth.

Try as we might, when something matters to us -- really matters -- it is hard to separate our hearts and our minds. Our brain, or perhaps it's our gut, sends out a warning signal. Be practical. Proceed with extreme caution. Whatever you do, don't spend a lot of money. While our heart tells us to go for it. Chase what you love. Follow your dream. Your dream job, in this instance. Say you want to be an actress, a chef or open a flower shop. It's not just about determination and grit, although there's a lot of that. It takes time and a whole lot of cash. You should also know that things may not end exactly as you'd hoped. Like in the case of fashion writer Michelle Dalton Tyree.

When I visited her, she answered the door wearing a fluorescent pink blazer, and electric blue shoes.

"I did realize today when I looked what I had on that I had stepped back into the '80s for just a brief fluorescent moment," she said.

Fluorescent's en vogue, I'm told. Which would make sense because Michelle's been all about fashion since she was young, working retail as a teenager and eventually becoming west coast retail editor for "Women's Wear Daily" as a grown-up.

"Fashion and retail were my dreams," said Dalton Tyree. "I always knew that I wanted to be a fashion editor and the little side dream was one day I'm going to open my own store.

The store's name was Iconology. And it was perfect. She and her sister opened it near an up-scale area in Los Angeles in 2006. It was custom-designed chic. It had white walls, black trim, refurbished Louis XVI Bergere Chairs in hot pink. And the clothes, I'm told, were to die for. Designers like Oscar de la Renta, Zac Posen and Karl Lagerfeld.

"It was only us and Fred Segal. We were the only ones to carry [Lagerfeld's] collecion," said Dalton Tyree. "We had a few coups. We had a few tricks up our sleeve that we were very excited about."

Michelle's taste was immaculate. Her timing, not so much. The store opened just before the Great Recession of 2008 started to bite. A writer's strike in Hollywood didn't help, as actors and TV stylists cut way back on their spending. But Michelle didn't go down without a fight. She threw parties at the store with celebrities like Jessica Alba. She partnered with fashion brands to promote the store. She stocked more inventory. Iconology got plenty of press, but not much in the way of sales. After just two years, the store closed its doors.

"There is a a piece of you that says uh-oh, your gut inside says this could be a problem, but your head overrides it because you have just put in this huge investment to this business," she said.

Six months before the store closed, Dalton Tyree said she had a moment where she thought it wasn't going to work. "We were still hanging on 'til the end just hoping because you put so much into it," she said.

Mind Games &Money -- Browse other stories in our collaboration with the New York Times. Plus, take our quiz to see how much emotions impact your personal finances, see the 15 happiest and saddest U.S. cities based on tweets, watch a video explainer about "goodwill," and learn lots of good facts about money and emotions. Explore now.

Richard Peterson, a psychiatrist and director of a financial consultancy called Market Psych in New York, says that for most people the response is to hang on when they are in a losing position and even more than that -- they tend to double down to take more risk. He explains that when we are losing money -- not to mention face -- humans being rationalize investing more; that if they put in just a little bit more things will turn around.

Craig Fox, who teaches decision making in the business school at UCLA, says there is another issue at work -- "sunk costs." Basically when anyone has "sunk" a whole lot of money into something -- be it a small business, an education or stocks -- and it is not coming back, it's almost impossible to walk away.

"Part of it is cognitive dissonance. Part of it is [people] don't want to know their investment was in vain," said Fox.

Donna Harris Earle knows about dreams. Hers came true the day she opened Oregon's Grand Salon and Spa. Armed with her esthetician's license and a skill for applying permanent makeup, she took out a small business loan for $230,000 in 2007. She borrowed another $100,000 from her 401(k) and spent it all to turn an old bank in Beaverton, Ore., into a 7,000 square foot salon with 27 employees and offering every beauty service from facials to hair removal.

"Yeah, I know. Big mistake," said Harris Earle. "I look at myself when I play Monopoly, I go all out. I am in it to win it."

And it looked like she was winning -- for a time. Then the 2008 financial crisis hit. And her customers disappeared. She tried to reinvent, advertise differently, but it didn't work. Donna had to lay off employees, downsize her space, sell her furniture. She even lost her house just so she could keep the business going.

"I really was that committed and emotionally involved. I was going to go full board on this. Even if it took me down it didn't matter because I had already made up my mind -- I was going to make it work," said Harris Earle.

Fox calls that positive illusion.

"We overestimate our ability to control outcomes that have some element of chance. Overconfidence. Optimistic bias that we tend to overestimate the extent to which good things are going to happen, especially to us," said Fox.

And so people plan poorly "because we imagine the scenario of things going perfect. And so we don't build some slack into our budgets for time and for money for the inevitable ways in which things can go wrong," he said.

But Donna Harris Earle did manage to rescue a little piece of her dream. She still has the spa, but today it's a lot smaller -- just 850 square feet. And she employs only a handful of people.

Back in Los Angeles, Michelle Dalton Tyree declared bankruptcy when her store closed -- a financial bloodbath she said she just emerged from in December. But Michelle said it didn't take long to come to terms with her loss.

"There was a moment when we went to our attorney's office to officially file bankruptcy," she recalled. "There we were quaking, tears welling up, and he looked at us -- he was this fabulous Ari Goldish character -- and he said 'Michelle, let me tell you something. Some of these companies I work with are on their fifth and sixth bankruptcies. You haven't seen anything yet.' I thought, god let this be the last one that I ever do. But it put it into perspective at that moment. I thought, OK, this is not over for me, this was one piece that failed."

And Michelle did salvage something from Iconology's demise. The skills she developed getting press for her store, she's parlayed them into a new venture -- a marketing firm for retail outlets. She's got a blog, too -- FashionTrendsDaily.com. She's happy with what's she is doing now.

"It is such a fabulous vehicle for so many different directions. I'm not looking at it as will it fail or will it succeed? It really has so many legs," she said.

As for the retail business, she says you couldn't pay her to try that again -- dream or no dream.

Try as we might, when something matters to us -- really matters -- it is hard to separate our hearts and our minds. Our brain, or perhaps it's our gut, sends out a warning signal. Be practical. Proceed with extreme caution. Whatever you do, don't spend a lot of money. While our heart tells us to go for it. Chase what you love. Follow your dream. Your dream job, in this instance. Say you want to be an actress, a chef or open a flower shop. It's not just about determination and grit, although there's a lot of that. It takes time and a whole lot of cash. You should also know that things may not end exactly as you'd hoped. Like in the case of fashion writer Michelle Dalton Tyree.

When I visited her, she answered the door wearing a fluorescent pink blazer, and electric blue shoes.

"I did realize today when I looked what I had on that I had stepped back into the '80s for just a brief fluorescent moment," she said.

Fluorescent's en vogue, I'm told. Which would make sense because Michelle's been all about fashion since she was young, working retail as a teenager and eventually becoming west coast retail editor for "Women's Wear Daily" as a grown-up.

"Fashion and retail were my dreams," said Dalton Tyree. "I always knew that I wanted to be a fashion editor and the little side dream was one day I'm going to open my own store.

The store's name was Iconology. And it was perfect. She and her sister opened it near an up-scale area in Los Angeles in 2006. It was custom-designed chic. It had white walls, black trim, refurbished Louis XVI Bergere Chairs in hot pink. And the clothes, I'm told, were to die for. Designers like Oscar de la Renta, Zac Posen and Karl Lagerfeld.

"It was only us and Fred Segal. We were the only ones to carry [Lagerfeld's] collecion," said Dalton Tyree. "We had a few coups. We had a few tricks up our sleeve that we were very excited about."

Michelle's taste was immaculate. Her timing, not so much. The store opened just before the Great Recession of 2008 started to bite. A writer's strike in Hollywood didn't help, as actors and TV stylists cut way back on their spending. But Michelle didn't go down without a fight. She threw parties at the store with celebrities like Jessica Alba. She partnered with fashion brands to promote the store. She stocked more inventory. Iconology got plenty of press, but not much in the way of sales. After just two years, the store closed its doors.

"There is a a piece of you that says uh-oh, your gut inside says this could be a problem, but your head overrides it because you have just put in this huge investment to this business," she said.

Six months before the store closed, Dalton Tyree said she had a moment where she thought it wasn't going to work. "We were still hanging on 'til the end just hoping because you put so much into it," she said.

Mind Games &Money -- Browse other stories in our collaboration with the New York Times. Plus, take our quiz to see how much emotions impact your personal finances, see the 15 happiest and saddest U.S. cities based on tweets, watch a video explainer about "goodwill," and learn lots of good facts about money and emotions. Explore now.

Richard Peterson, a psychiatrist and director of a financial consultancy called Market Psych in New York, says that for most people the response is to hang on when they are in a losing position and even more than that -- they tend to double down to take more risk. He explains that when we are losing money -- not to mention face -- humans being rationalize investing more; that if they put in just a little bit more things will turn around.

Craig Fox, who teaches decision making in the business school at UCLA, says there is another issue at work -- "sunk costs." Basically when anyone has "sunk" a whole lot of money into something -- be it a small business, an education or stocks -- and it is not coming back, it's almost impossible to walk away.

"Part of it is cognitive dissonance. Part of it is [people] don't want to know their investment was in vain," said Fox.

Donna Harris Earle knows about dreams. Hers came true the day she opened Oregon's Grand Salon and Spa. Armed with her esthetician's license and a skill for applying permanent makeup, she took out a small business loan for $230,000 in 2007. She borrowed another $100,000 from her 401(k) and spent it all to turn an old bank in Beaverton, Ore., into a 7,000 square foot salon with 27 employees and offering every beauty service from facials to hair removal.

"Yeah, I know. Big mistake," said Harris Earle. "I look at myself when I play Monopoly, I go all out. I am in it to win it."

And it looked like she was winning -- for a time. Then the 2008 financial crisis hit. And her customers disappeared. She tried to reinvent, advertise differently, but it didn't work. Donna had to lay off employees, downsize her space, sell her furniture. She even lost her house just so she could keep the business going.

"I really was that committed and emotionally involved. I was going to go full board on this. Even if it took me down it didn't matter because I had already made up my mind -- I was going to make it work," said Harris Earle.

Fox calls that positive illusion.

"We overestimate our ability to control outcomes that have some element of chance. Overconfidence. Optimistic bias that we tend to overestimate the extent to which good things are going to happen, especially to us," said Fox.

And so people plan poorly "because we imagine the scenario of things going perfect. And so we don't build some slack into our budgets for time and for money for the inevitable ways in which things can go wrong," he said.

But Donna Harris Earle did manage to rescue a little piece of her dream. She still has the spa, but today it's a lot smaller -- just 850 square feet. And she employs only a handful of people.

Back in Los Angeles, Michelle Dalton Tyree didn't do so well. She was forced to declare bankruptcy when her store closed -- a financial bloodbath she said she just emerged from in December. But Michelle said it didn't take long to come to terms with her loss.

"There was a moment when we went to our attorney's office to officially file bankruptcy," she recalled. "There we were quaking, tears welling up, and he looked at us -- he was this fabulous Ari Goldish character -- and he said 'Michelle, let me tell you something. Some of these companies I work with are on their fifth and sixth bankruptcies. You haven't seen anything yet.' I thought, god let this be the last one that I ever do. But it put it into perspective at that moment. I thought, OK, this is not over for me, this was one piece that failed."

And Michelle did salvage something from Iconology's demise. The skills she developed getting press for her store, she's parlayed them into a new venture -- a marketing firm for retail outlets. She's got a blog, too -- FashionTrendsDaily.com. She's happy with what's she is doing now.

"It is such a fabulous vehicle for so many different directions that I don't see it now as something, I'm not looking at it as will it fail or will it succeed because it really has so many legs," she said.

As for the retail business, she says you couldn't pay her to try that again -- dream or no dream.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses," reads a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty, but these days we might want to add "your rich and well-heeled." The U.S. government has been issuing a growing number of so-called EB-5 visas, which grant residency to immigrants who invest at least half a million dollars in the U.S. and create or save no less than 10 jobs.

Meet EB-5 visa holder Runhao Zeng, who goes by Philip. Zeng is a finance major at UCLA and one of about 1,500 foreign nationals who got an EB-5 visa in 2011.  

He got the visa because his dad, a wealthy Chinese businessman in the precious metals industry, was able to plunk down a $500,000 investment in Brooklyn's new Barclay's Center, home of the Brooklyn Nets.

"In an investment there is always risk, but that risk is pretty minimum because we know that the Nets have been a pretty good team," Zeng says.

The catch is that in exchange for visas, the Zengs' investment must satisfy a government review that it created or saved 10 American jobs.

Last year the number of EB-5 visa holders grew to 3,600. This year, it's predicted to be closer to 10,000.

Recipients are mostly businessmen and entrepreneurs. Zeng says those are exactly the kind of people the United States needs to revive its tepid economy.

"From an American point of view, I think it's a good policy, because think about it, you have to put $500,000 away for five years," says Zeng. "I mean your family has to be in really good standing in society."

So people like Zeng get a U.S. visa, businesses can access capital, projects get launched, jobs are created. What's not to like?

"Well, the first concern is that we shouldn't be selling U.S. citizenship, because that's what we're doing, secondly, if we are going to sell U.S. citizenship let's at least charge more for it," says Mark Krirkorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a DC think tank which favors tighter immigration controls. "That's ridiculous. I mean, that's banana republic level of policy."

Krirkorian says if we are going to be selling green cards, the cost should more like $10 million, and it should go directly to the treasury, not developers.

But cities across the country don't necessarily see it that way. Over the past couple years publicly funded economic development offices have opened in communities specifically to attract foreign investment to local projects…and the carrot?

"The visa is everything, the visa is the carrot," says Tim Nowak, head of the Gateway to the Midwest Investment Center, which opened this week in St. Louis.

Nowak says the EB-5 program has filled the void left behind by tighter lending standards at banks. On top of that, the interest rates paid to EB-5 investors is often much lower than what banks charge.

"So, the project wins because it's cheaper money, and the investor wins because their ultimate return is their permanent residency here in the United States."

Since it was established 20 years ago, federal officials say, the EB-5 program has attracted $2.2 billion in investment, but that's less than one percent of the total pool of direct foreign investment in the U.S. today.

Starting Monday, fans of the My Little Pony series will be able to stuff their own customizable Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash at Build-A-Bear workshops across the country.

Seated next to the usual crowd of little girls might be some unexpected customers: middle-aged men. 

The adult male fans of the "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" TV series call themselves "bronies" (and we can't forget their female counterparts, "Pegasisters") and they shell out big bucks to dress up like their favorite characters. 

"It's all about the values of the show,"said Dan Silver, a toy analyst who runs the website TimetoPlaymag.com. "They fell in love with the show and they know everything about My Little Pony. They know the voices, they know the artists. It's an unbelieveable club so to speak and it just keeps growing." 

The My Little Pony franchise is incredibly important for its parent company, Hasbro. Their most recent earnings report singled out the franchise's double digit sales for helping to boost profits in their little girls department. 

Silver said that having the brony fan base is a big boost to Hasbro's bottom line.  

"These fans are collectors. They go out and buy the toys, they buy the T-shirts and they buy all the other licensed merchandise. You're talking about a $100 million-plus brand to Hasbro. " 

But even Silver admitted the sight of a grown man making his own Pinkie Pie at Build-A-Bear will be a bit strange. 

"It will make for an awkward experience when they come in," he said. 

A trader with a high-profile hedge fund was charged today with securities fraud related to insider trading. The hedge fund itself had already agreed to pay the SEC $614 million earlier this month to settle some charges.

"They're paying $600 million in order to get off scot-free, without having to admit to doing any wrong," said Reuters' Felix Salmon.

Meanwhile, arguments are rising in favor of kicking Cyprus out of the eurozone.

"That's what people said about Greece too," said Leigh Gallagher of Fortune magazine. "This question's going to come up again and again the more these crises start happening. And it does prove the euro, way back when it was planned -- we're finding out that maybe you can't have fiscal unity without political unity."

The two also offer their weekend #longreads picks.

Felix Salmon suggests:

• Rob Reich in the Boston Review on charitable foundations.
• Kate Losse on Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg and her 'Lean In' social movement.
• Haley Sweetland Edwards on where laws go to die.

Leigh Gallagher picks:

• Fortune's look at marijuana entrepreneurship.
• Mississippi's great green hope.
• Joe Nocera's op-ed in the New York Times on saving children from guns.

What role do your emotions play when it comes to making financial decisions?

Some people would spend lots of money on their pets. Others get emotionally invested in pursuing their dream job. In a special collaboration with the New York Times, we examine how our feelings influence our personal finances -- from your spouse to your house. We look at why the young and rich are choosing to give away their wealth, how some seniors are taking on more debt because of their family members, and Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal explores what happens when chasing your dream doesn't work out.

To help you gauge how emotional you are about money, we've put together a special grid. Find out how emotion drives your money decisions by taking our quiz. Watch a video explainer about "goodwill" and find out why it's so important to a business. Explore an infographic to see the 15 happiest and saddest U.S. cities based on tweets. Plus, the most and least positive nations worldwide. Also, facts about money and emotions, and helpful tips to keep you stress-free when it comes to your personal finances.

Click here to explore the grid and resize your browser to make it dance.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s website is now home to the country’s largest public database of consumer complaints.

When the CFPB posted 19,000 consumer complaints on its website last summer, people responded with infographics and iPhone apps to process the data. The bureau just upped the number of complaints to more than 130,000, and it’s asking for new tools.

CFPB Director Richard Cordray says consumers can use the database to compare financial companies, and banks can use it to improve their service.

“For us it informs our work,” he says. “If we’re getting a number of complaints on an issue that really brings it to our attention.”

The chart below was built using the CFPB's publicly-accessible database and includes a list of each individual complaint and what it was about.

More than half the complaints are about mortgages, and almost 60 percent of those are over loan modifications, collections or foreclosure. Almost 80 percent of bank account complaints are about checking accounts.

The CFPB checks whether consumers have relationships with the companies, but it doesn’t make sure the gripes are valid, and that bothers some bank trade groups.

“This is no different than having data dumped on how many sightings Elvis has had at McDonalds,” says Richard Hunt, president of the Consumer Bankers Association. “Let’s make sure this is verified information. That’s all we’re saying.”

The bureau says its open-data agenda is the way to the future, and this time it wants tweets from people who find interesting trends.

The turmoil surrounding NBC's Today show has been getting a lot of attention in recent weeks. The show has ceded its long-held number one position in the ratings to Good Morning America amid a high profile, unsuccessful tryout of Ann Curry as co-host. It may seem trivial, but it's a big deal to the TV networks where morning shows are big business.

A Maryland energy company wants to build the world's third-tallest structure to generate downdraft power in the Arizona desert.

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to propose a new rule today that will require refiners to cut the amount of sulfur in gasoline by two thirds.

Maybe you remember that photo that was all over the place a few months back, of a New York policeman giving a pair of boots to a man who was panhandling, barefoot, on a cold night. 

The photo, snapped by a tourist who posted it on Facebook, became a symbol for simple acts of kindness to strangers.  It also foisted Jeffrey Hillman -- or, as he got labeled in so many headlines, "The Barefoot Homeless Man" -- in to the national spotlight. 

First, news came out in December that he wasn't actually homeless. This week, more headlines.  Lots more, focusing on the fact that he is still panhandling, and reportedly owns 30 pairs of shoes. 

So why all the fascination this one man? 

The latest media frenzy started this week after a New York Post reporter spotted Hillman at the end of a day of panhandling, and wrote an article titled “Bum Given Boots by Kind-Hearted Cop is Back to Begging Barefoot.” In the article, Hillman is described as counting a "huge wad of bills with the dexterity of a bank teller." 

But if that is the immediate reason for the new attention on Hillman, there is also a deeper reason, that’s been around as long as there have been people in need, says Michael Katz, author of the book "The Undeserving Poor."

“We can't help everybody who asks. We never have enough resources for that. So in fact we have to draw lines, as difficult as drawing those lines may be,” Katz says. The lines of distinction are often drawn, says Katz, between the “deserving,” and the “undeserving.”  The “worthy” and the “unworthy.” 

Katz sees all the news reports here as efforts to adjudicate which side of the line Jeffrey Hillman falls.

The trouble, Katz says, is that when you get down to an individual life, “you begin to find that the distinction melts away.  The boundaries become truly indistinct.” 

And in the case of Jeffrey Hillman, who is a 54-year-old army veteran, with a history of mental illness and drug abuse, who has been homeless for several years but recently moved in to publicly subsidized housing, the lines are blurry too. But that’s not the point for John Graf, who grew up with Hillman in Plainfield, N.J. 

They'd lost touch after high school graduation when Hillman joined the army. More than 30 years later, last December, Graf read one of the first stories about "The Barefoot Homeless Man" and recognized his old friend. Graf reached out, and has since been helping Hillman pay utility bills and rent on a publicly subsidized apartment. 

This new batch of attention Hillman is getting “has really taken him back from what recovery we have started to make, with everyone coming to his door with cameras,” says Graf, who says he was taken out of context in the New York Post article that ran this week.  He says he is trying to help Hillman move to a new apartment to avoid further attention. 

“He’s been given gifts over the years, so he does have clothing, he does have shoes,” Graf says.  

So is Hillman deserving? Undeserving? “He's served his country, he's got a mental illness,” says Graf. “What are we doing as a community, as a society, to get him the help that he needs?”

Rick Flagan is a professor of chemical engineering at Cal Tech in Pasadena. In front of his office he has a beautiful view of the mountains a few miles away. But it hasn't always been that way. "When I first came here there were months when you could not see the mountains. It's a dramatic change," says Flagan.

Flagan says what changed were emissions from power plants that burned high sulfur fuels. Eventually those plants switched to fuels with less sulfur, which reduced smog and improved air quality significantly.

The EPA announced today that it wants to follow a similar path and reduce sulfur emissions in gasoline by two-thirds. According to the EPA, the reduction in air pollution could save as many as 2,400 lives and prevent 23,000 cases of respiratory illness in children per year.

But reducing sulfur levels in gasoline will come at a cost to refineries. The American Petroleum Institute says it would add nine cents to the price of every gallon of gas. The EPA has its own estimate. It says it would cost less than a penny.

"I know there is a sense out there that the industry is crying wolf. I would say that they are probably crying wolf puppy," says Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst with Gas Buddy. "At any moment, that puppy can turn into a wolf if the right conditions prevail, and we really have no way of knowing what sort of conditions are going to be around in 2017."

It's nearly impossible to predict the price of gas that far into the future. And if the cost of cleaner gas does add nine cents to the price of a gallon it doesn't necessarily mean people will pay more at the pump. It could spur changes in people's driving habits. They might drive less or buy a more fuel efficient car. But even that isn't always a given.

"One might think that after the most expensive year on record people would move down to more efficient vehicles. But they haven't," says Kloza.

The top two selling vehicles of 2012 were both full-size pickups.

Hedge fund trader Michael Steinberg pleaded not guilty to charges of insider trading today, after he was led away from his Park Avenue home in handcuffs.

The spectacle turns up the heat on his employer -- SAC Capital Advisors -- one of this country's biggest hedge funds. Even though just a few weeks ago, SAC paid $600 million to settle separate allegations of insider trading.

It's been quite a week for Stephen A. Cohen, the namesake behind SAC Capital Advisors, who paid $155 million for a Picasso painting. That was all before we learned that Cohen bought $60 million beachfront home in the Hamptons.

"A big week for SAC Capital and Steven Cohen. Maybe not the best big week," said Max Wolff, a senior economist at Greencrest Capital. "Keeping SAC open at this point as well as keeping to the conspicuous consumption schedule that Mr. Cohen is very famous for are part of an attempt to show that business will continue to go on."

Cohen’s hedge fund has been under pressure for six months as insider trading allegations mounted. Additionally, investors have pulled almost $2 billion out of SAC Capital.

"Very few individuals have been tagged with insider trading and have been able to go forward with any kind of credibility," said James Cox is a professor of securities law at Duke.

But, to some, this feels a bit like the world has changed.

"This almost feels like the end of an era," said Marion Maneker, talking about Cohen’s art collection. Maneker said Cohen blazed a trail for financiers collecting art. "He’s not really doing something he’s hasn’t done in the past.  He’s just coming back to a place he was in 2007."

If you’ve ever heard a story about a company selling for billions of dollars, you might have asked yourself -- what are they actually getting for all that money?

An accountant would say that a company’s total value is the sum of its net assets plus goodwill.

Net assets are the things that the company could sell if it went bust and had a yard sale: that’s equipment, real estate and the brand name. Goodwill is everything else. It’s what accountants call the intangible assets: the staff, who can walk out the door any time they please... along with their ideas and their skills. And the company’s reputation.

It’s the stuff that can just melt away.

Think about a cable car operation on a mountain. Let’s call it Mt. Woe. The owner, Ellen, bought a gondola for $1 million, and the right to use it on the mountain for another million. Her business ferrying skiers up and down the mountain goes gangbusters, and a businessman offers her $50 million to buy her out. Ellen is stoked!

But the next day, she wakes up to find there’s no snow. Global warming has come to Mt. Woe. She calls the businessman, but his offer has now fallen to just $2 million: the cable car itself, plus the right to use it on the mountain. The rest of the value of Ellen’s company -- the goodwill -- was the staff and the skiers, but most importantly, the snow; it has melted away, never to return.

Leaving Ellen very badly needing a drink.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected to propose a new rule today that will require refiners to cut the amount of sulfur in gas by two-thirds. The move is being touted as one of the Obama administration's most significant air pollution initiatives.

The sulfur in gas doesn’t pose a health threat, but what it does do is affect a car’s catalytic converter. That’s the device that controls emissions.

“The function of the catalytic converter is basically to serve as a filter,” says Kent Moors is at the Institute for Energy and the Environment at Ducane University in Pittsburgh. “Sulfur has a tendency to reduce the ability of the catalytic converter to do that.”

Simply put, the more sulfur there is in gas, the more pollution your car spews. The EPA says the new rule could cut air pollutants by up to 80 percent. That’s equivalent to taking 33 million cars off the road.

Environmentalists and state regulators support the rule, and so do carmakers. So who’s opposed to it? The oil industry.

“The essential posture of the industry is to argue that increasing the sulfur standards will result in a higher cost to the end user,” Moors says.

Oil companies say the price of gas could rise by up to nine cents a gallon because of the rule. The EPA counters that it would only increase by one cent a gallon.

The New York International Auto Show opens to the public today on a high note for the industry. Pent up demand from the great recession has car sales on the rise.

Automobile Magazine's New York editor Jamie Kitman joins Marketplace Tech host David Brancaccio from the floor of the show to discuss the auto market and how relaxed credit terms have customers buying again.

The Egyptian Navy says it caught three men trying to cut a big Internet cable that runs under the Mediterranean. A military spokesman says the cable belonged to Telecom Egypt, the major phone and Internet company in the country. No motive was suggested. Experts say there have been Internet slowdowns recently in Egypt, and as far away as Pakistan.

Chester Wisniewski, at the computer security firm Sophos, joins Marketplace Tech host David Brancaccio to discuss the incident.

Banks are open for the second day in Cyprus after two weeks of closure. From the outside, things appear to be calm. The President of Cyprus said this morning that the country will not leave the euro.

Marketplace's Stephen Beard joins Morning Report host Jeremy Hobson to discuss the mood on the island and how other countries in the region are reacting.