Goldman Sachs is in the news for its plan to pay out record bonuses while our national economy limps along toward "recovery." But, they're also planning to force their executives to donate a percentage of their bonus to charity.

As it prepares to pay out big bonuses to employees, Goldman Sachs is considering expanding a program that would require executives and top managers to give a certain percentage of their earnings to charity.

The move would be the latest in a series of initiatives by Goldman to soften criticism over the size of its bonuses, which are expected to be among the largest on Wall Street, bringing average pay to about $595,000 for each employee — with far higher amounts for top performers.

Read the rest of this New York Times article, by Louise Story, here.

In related news from The Charlotte Business Journal: BofA ready to pay big bonuses

Also, from NPR: 2009 ends with fewer banks

And, from The Daily Beast: Obama to slap fee on banks

More on bank bonuses from CBS:

A North Carolina company is helping people save money and energy. This is what we call a win-win situation, people.

Katie Trabelsi has started a business aimed at providing folks with "greener" homes and pockets.

She calls it Greenlight Go.

"The concept of my store is to help you save money and to help you save energy," Trabelsi said.

Greenlight Go opened in November in downtown Winston-Salem at the corner of Burke and Fourth streets.

Products in the store include LED bulbs, dual-flush toilets, KVAR energy controllers used for reducing energy consumption and Greenswitch single-control devices that cut power to designated lights and outlets.

"I've got a lot of things that can retrofit in your home that can cut your electric bill by 40 percent," Trabelsi said.

She works with companies that she calls "green partners" for people needing products such as energy-efficient windows and insulation. She plans to add more products, such as tankless water heaters and water filters.

Her store's hottest seller, she said, is a $399 NatureMill indoor food composter that is odor free.

Homeowners can throw in their leftover food scraps, such as banana and orange peels, and have compost in 14 days.

"It costs just 50 cents in power a month," Trabelsi said.

Read the rest of this Winston-Salem Journal article, by Fran Daniel, here.

Even a 9-year-old can make a home more energy efficient:

On the plus side:

The Charlotte Business Journal is reporting a "‘Major announcement’ planned at Charlotte’s Husqvarna site" is expected today. (That can't be bad, right?) Update: Husqvarna will bring 160 new jobs to Charlotte.

Even Rock hill is getting a little boost: Composite Resources adds 50 jobs in Rock Hill

However, the paper also posted this: Report: Charlotte area loses 37,500 jobs

Hang on tight, folks -- 2010 promises a bumpy economic ride.

If you're on the job hunt, here's a word on hot jobs from U.S. News and World Report:

Let me tell you about my holiday trip to Illinois: Liquor was for sale at gas stations, the grocery store, Wal-Mart and every other place you could by consumable merchandise. One liquor store -- bless their hearts -- was open on Christmas Day. And, guess what? Hell did not freeze over. No Bibles imploded. There were no news stories about wild, drunken masses in the streets. It was just business as usual.

So, what's our state's damn problem? Why do we have an ABC Board anyway? If you don't want to drink, don't drink. But "don't should on me," brother.

What a useless waste of tax payer dollars and resources.

State Alcohol Law Enforcement agents said the Mecklenburg County ABC Board and the liquor company Diageo broke state alcohol laws during a November dinner for the board at which Diageo paid the $9,000 tab.

The agents charged the board with accepting illegal gifts and charged Diageo and one of its representatives with providing the gifts and unlawfully entering an ABC store for reasons other than conducting business.

Read the rest of this Charlotte Observer article, by Mark Johnson, here.

From Sister Louisa:

*blink* Are we in a parallel universe? Well, even if we are, this is a welcome change: Accountability.

On his first real day as Bank of America's new CEO, Brian Moynihan flew from his home in Boston to speak to bankers in Raleigh, where he acknowledged that his industry had helped cause the economic crisis and would help end it too.

Moynihan also touched on the bank's commitment to the Carolinas, with a short history lesson on the bank's founding in Charlotte in 1874. He drew applause when he told the crowd that Bank of America “has thrived for 135 years as a North Carolina Company, and it will continue to do so.”

Speaking to about 1,000 people, Moynihan acknowledged that the financial services industry acted too fast and loose with its lending, which helped lead to the economic crisis. He did not single out his own employer for particular blame.

“During the last few years, many consumers borrowed more than they should have, and we helped them do it,” Moynihan said, referring to too-loose standards for lending. He also said the banks increased penalty fees to make up for all the free products it offered, and “these fees hit a small group of customers particularly hard as the economy hit the skids.”

Read the rest of this Charlotte Observer article, by Christina Rexrode, and a Q & A with the new CEO, click here.

It's been said before, and I'll say it again: Green is the new black.

The North Carolina Green Business Fund will hand out more than $8 million in stimulus money as part of an initiative to help small businesses statewide develop and commercialize promising green and alternative energy technologies.

The fund is seeking proposals for the competitive grants, which are worth up to $500,000 each, Commerce Secretary Keith Crisco announced in a written statement issued Tuesday.

Read the entire Charlotte Business Journal article, by Chris Baysden, here.

Can a "green" business be a profitable one? This successful business man says "yes."

Just like momma says: You make the mess, you clean it up.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Duke Energy Corp. (DUK) will spend $93 million to resolve violations of federal emissions rules at a coal-fired power plant it owns in Indiana, federal officials said Tuesday.

Under the settlement, Duke needs to either convert unit one and three at the plants to natural gas or shut them down. As for two additional units at the plant, the utility must install new pollution controls to reduce emission of sulfur dioxide.

Read the entire U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's press release here. Here's a snippet:

Duke Energy, one of the largest electric power companies in the nation, will spend approximately $85 million to significantly reduce harmful air pollution at an Indiana power plant and pay a $1.75 million civil penalty, under a settlement to resolve violations of federal clean air laws, the Justice Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today. The settlement also requires Duke to spend $6.25 million on environmental mitigation projects.

The settlement is anticipated to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions at the Gallagher Plant by almost 35,000 tons per year, an 86 percent reduction when compared to 2008 emissions. This is equivalent to the emissions from 500,000 heavy duty semi trucks, which is more than all of the trucks registered in Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, and Ohio combined. Sulfur dioxide harms the environment and human health.

We must have been a very good city this year. How do we know? Because Zenta, a big company right here in l'il 'ol Charlotte, along with Mayor Foxx and Governor Perdue, announced they're granting our Christmas wish: They're going to hire folks 1,000 in 2010 -- that's on top of the 500 the company hired this year.

So, all you real estate and finance-minded folks who've been living on the government dole, dust of your resume and have your suit cleaned, it's time to go back to work.

Zenta is investing $2 million in the expansion. The company will receive an N.C. job development grant worth $8.6 million.

In August, Zenta announced a 500-job expansion here in a Forest Point Boulevard office building. The company has an option for an additional 16,000 square feet in the building and could expand into a second building in the office park formerly occupied by defunct mortgage lender EquiFirst. Zenta also has about 100 employees at 200 S. Tryon St. And in a previous interview, Senior Vice President Henry Santos indicated it would ultimately make economic sense to consolidate the two Charlotte locations.

Read the rest of this Charlotte Business Journal article, by Adam O'Daniel, here.

I'm sure your new Zenta boss won't be anything like this. Whew.

City leaders are mobilizing to figure out how to re-frame our city.

Flush with big banks, big-league sports and big ambitions, Charlotte has basked in the steady flow of national headlines proclaiming its place as a leading New South city for years.

The headlines are still coming. The basking? Not so much. Because the storyline has taken a sharp negative turn.

The fawning of a September 2008 Time story — “Charlotte is soaring, with 28 construction cranes downtown...” — has been replaced in recent months with downbeat Queen City profiles in The Washington Post and Canada’s most-influential newspaper, The Globe and Mail of Toronto. Both ran extensive feature stories that focused on rising unemployment and housing busts here.

The Toronto account included a blaring headline that read, “Charlotte: The town that Bank of America took down.”

Now Charlotte is getting ready to fight back on the public-relations front.

Read the rest of this Charlotte Business Journal article, by Erik Spanberg, here.

Here's a goofy Charlotte YouTube video by FreewayJim:

Of course, as a freelance writer, this is a topic near and dear to my heart; however, this same sort of phenomenon can occur in any industry and affect any demographic.

Whether we're conscious of it, or not, we stereotype people constantly, for a variety of reasons. What's disturbing is we're not doing much of anything to correct our behavior and too many people aren't speaking up, demanding equal treatment when they should because, ultimately, not paying people the same rates for the same work — or treating people unequally in other ways — is a human rights issue. Period.

Today, Men with Pens blogger James Chartrand revealed that "he" is actually a lady with a laptop. After working under her real name for years, Chartrand was still struggling to make it as a freelance writer. Not only was her income negligible, but "I was treated like crap, too. Bossed around, degraded, condescended to, with jibes made about my having to work from home. I quickly learned not to mention I had kids. I quickly learned not to mention I worked from my kitchen table." Out of desperation, she started submitting work under a male pseudonym, just to see if it made a difference. And boy, did it ever.

Instantly, jobs became easier to get.

There was no haggling. There were compliments, there was respect. Clients hired me quickly, and when they received their work, they liked it just as quickly. There were fewer requests for revisions -- often none at all.

Customer satisfaction shot through the roof. So did my pay rate.

I think Mary Elizabeth Williams spoke for all of us at Broadsheet when she said in an e-mail, "Wow! That's so fucking Brontë sisters!" George Eliot and George Sand also leapt quickly to mind; when we think of women writers finding success under male pseudonyms, our thoughts naturally turn to the 19th century. But then, Chartrand also mentions Isak Dinesen, whose first book was published in 1934. And come to think of it, I've read that in the late 1990s, J.K. Rowling became known as such because her publishers feared that boys wouldn't read books written by someone named Joanne. Last spring, the website Divine Caroline made a list of seven famous female authors who used male names, including Alice Bradley Sheldon, who found it easier to break into science fiction writing in 1967 as James Tiptree, Jr., and Nora Roberts, who chose the name J.D. Robb in 1995 when she began writing detective fiction alongside her wildly successful romance novels. When much-admired political blogger Digby accepted an award in person in 2007, some of her biggest fans were shocked to learn that she's a woman.

Read the rest of this Salon.com post, by Kate Harding, here.

Read the writer out herself in her own words:

You know me as James Chartrand of Men with Pens, a regular Copyblogger contributor for just shy of two years.

And yet, I’m a woman.

This is not a joke or an angle or an analogy — I’m literally a woman.

This is my story.

Once upon a time, I found myself having to make some hard decisions.

The welfare application was on my kitchen table. It was filled out and signed, waiting for me to bring it to the people who would decide whether I’d be able to make rent next month or put food on the table.

I hated looking at it. I didn’t want to be in this situation. I’d thought that when you start over, make a clean break, life was supposed to get better, right?

But here I was, out of money and out of choices.

I had two young daughters to take care of. I was single and alone, having left an unhealthy relationship, and I was living in a crappy, tiny apartment.

I’d used up my savings trying to make ends meet, supplementing as best I could with the money I earned from a dangerous part-time job that gave me all of 4 hours pay a week at minimum wage. I had been looking for a better job, but there were none to be had in the low-income/high-unemployment area where I lived.

And I couldn’t get a full-time job anyway — I was still on the waiting list for a spot in daycare.

I landed clients and got work under both names. But it was much easier to do when I used my pen name.

Understand, I hadn’t advertised more effectively or used social media — I hadn’t figured that part out yet. I was applying in the same places. I was using the same methods. Even the work was the same.

In fact, everything was the same.

Except for the name.

Taking a man’s name opened up a new world. It helped me earn double and triple the income of my true name, with the same work and service.

No hassles. Higher acceptance. And gratifying respect for my talents and round-the-clock work ethic.

Business opportunities fell into my lap. People asked for my advice, and they thanked me for it, too.

Did I quit promoting my own name? Hell yeah.

I never wanted to be an activist, or to fight the world. I’m not interested in clawing my way up a ladder to a glass ceiling. Life’s too short for that.

I just want to earn a living and be respected for my skills. I want my kids to be happy and have access to what they need. I want them to go to university and have good opportunities in life.

Truth be told, if just a name and perception of gender creates such different levels of respect and income for a person, it says a lot more about the world than it does about me.

Read the rest of  at CopyBlogger.com.

In related news: 'Does it matter that she's a woman? With opinion writing still dominated by men, the answer is a loud yes.' (Salon.com, 2007)

What do you think? What can we do to shatter the glass ceiling once and for all? (This movie doesn't get going until 0:54, if you want to skip ahead.)