Respectable Negroes of the Week

Cynthia Fitzgerald
When Cynthia Fitzgerald started out in pharmaceutical sales 20 years ago, she received ample training on the right and wrong ways to sell medical products. Right was selling on the merits. Wrong was luring customers with perks and freebies. It was O.K. to buy doctors lunch or dinner, for example, but tempting them with lavish gifts was taboo...
But she says those early lessons didn’t serve her so well when she went to work on the other side of the table in 1998, in health care purchasing. Going by the book, and expecting her colleagues and employer to do the same, cost her a job, most of her friendships and several years of her life, she says.
Eventually, Ms. Fitzgerald decided to file what could become one of the largest whistle-blower lawsuits on record...


Hugo Chavez (yes, he's a Negro)
In two weeks, Venezuela seems likely to start an extraordinary experiment in centralized, oil-fueled socialism. By law, the workday would be cut to six hours. Street vendors, homemakers and maids would have state-mandated pensions. And President Hugo Chávez would have significantly enhanced powers and be eligible for re-election for the rest of his life...
Chávez loyalists already control the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, almost every state government, the entire federal bureaucracy and newly nationalized companies in the telephone, electricity and oil industries. Soon they could control even more...
“We are witnessing a seizure and redirection of power through legitimate means,” said Alberto Barrera Tyszka, co-author of a best-selling biography of Mr. Chávez. “This is not a dictatorship but something more complex: the tyranny of popularity.”

Jay-Z
Wads of dollar bills are usually as much a part of rap videos as fast cars, diamond-encrusted jewellery and scantily-clad models. But in an apparent nod to the low value of the dollar, rapper Jay-Z's new video Blue Magic features another currency...
The US currency has been ticking off historic lows over the past few months as falling US interest rates make other currencies more attractive. It recently passed $2.10 to the pound, reached parity with the Canadian dollar and set an all-time record of $1.4752 to the euro. Other more conventional market-watchers have also been snubbing the dollar, including the billionaire investor Warren Buffett.
There have been no suggestions that Jay-Z's fellow rapper 50 Cent could be considering a move into a different currency.

(Kidding aside, respectable negroes paying attention to money markets should know that the dollar is in a steep decline. START INVESTING IN EUROS!!)