Newsbook: Do Your Taxes. Then, Read These Books

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Supported by Books Do Your Taxes. Then, Read These Books As you gather your receipts and W-2s this tax season, you may be inspired to tackle your overall financial well-being. Here are three books that can help.
Photo YOU ARE A BADASS AT MAKING MONEY
Master the Mindset of Wealth
By Jen Sincero
269 pp. Viking. (2017)
According to this book, if you want to make more money, it starts with changing how you think about your finances. This book is aimed at changing readers’ mentality. In Sincero’s view, pursuing wealth gets a bad rap — that it is greedy, gross or will prevent you from spending time with your family — and those negative associations hold people back from achieving their desired or deserved income level. She argues that money can be a conduit to living a richer life and guides readers through thought exercises and mantras to change how readers talk to themselves about money and unleash their ability to attain it.
Photo THIS IS THE YEAR I PUT MY FINANCIAL LIFE IN ORDER
B..

C.F.P.B.’s Chief Gives Big Raises, Even as He Criticizes Spending

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C.F.P.B.’s Chief Gives Big Raises, Even as He Criticizes Spending Photo Mick Mulvaney, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has recently approved high salaries for top appointees while using its cash reserves to fund its budget. Credit Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters Mick Mulvaney, the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has complained that the regulator engages in “wasteful spending” and needs to be slimmed down. To underscore the point, he submitted a quarterly budget request recently that was a nice round number: $0.
That attitude, though, apparently didn’t apply to two of his recent hires.
Mr. Mulvaney appointed two senior staff members who are paid salaries of more than $230,000, amounts that are far above what they had been earning in their previous government jobs in Washington, according to agency documents obtained by The New York Times through a public records request.
The consumer bureau, as well as fellow financial regulators like..

Amsale Aberra, Trendsetting Bridal Gown Designer, Is Dead at 64

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Supported by Business Day Amsale Aberra, Trendsetting Bridal Gown Designer, Is Dead at 64 Photo Amsale Aberra, an Ethiopian-American fashion designer and entrepreneur who is credited with shaping the modern American wedding dress. Credit Courtesy of Amsale Amsale Aberra, an Ethiopian-born fashion designer whose simple, minimalist aesthetic transformed the modern American wedding dress, died on Sunday in Manhattan. She was 64.
Her death, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, was caused by uterine cancer, her husband, Neil Brown, said.
While most wedding dress designers in the 1980s were making elaborate, tulle-and-lace affairs with long trains and decorative appliqués, Ms. Aberra pared everything down. Her dresses had little fluff or flounce and were often strapless with sheer illusion necklines.
Describing Ms. Aberra’s wildly modern styles in 1997, Constance C. R. White wrote in The New York Times, “To be sure, the leg-of-mutton dress, the traditional, high-neck, puff-sleeve ..

Target Agrees to Review Screening of Job Applicants Amid Claims of Bias

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Supported by Business Day Target Agrees to Review Screening of Job Applicants Amid Claims of Bias Photo A Target store in Dallas. The retailer said Thursday that it would revise how it used criminal background checks in its hiring process. Credit LM Otero/Associated Press Target agreed on Thursday to revise guidelines for how it screens people seeking jobs at its stores, a step meant to quell complaints that the retailer discriminates against black and Hispanic applicants with criminal records that can include offenses too minor or old to affect their performance as employees.
The move comes in a labor market so tight that companies are hiring applicants they would not have considered before, including people who have criminal records or, in some cases, are still incarcerated.
Those pressing the complaints against Target said the agreement announced on Thursday would create even more opportunities for fresh starts.
“Target’s background check policy was out of step with best practi..

The Paris Review Names a New Editor: Emily Nemens of The Southern Review

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Supported by Media The Paris Review Names a New Editor: Emily Nemens of The Southern Review Photo Emily Nemens’s eclectic taste and creative ambitions proved to be a draw for the Paris Review board, which chose her over a pool of candidates better known in New York’s literary circles. Credit Jeremiah Ariaz Emily Nemens, a co-editor of The Southern Review, seems agnostic and omnivorous when it comes to narrative mediums. In addition to publishing poetry, fiction and essays, she is a prolific illustrator who has amassed a large following on Tumblr for her watercolor portraits of women serving in Congress.
She will now take on a more prominent role in American letters. On Thursday, she was named the new editor of The Paris Review, one of the most prestigious literary magazines in the United States.
Ms. Nemens, who lives in Baton Rouge, La., and has been a co-editor of The Southern Review since 2013, is a surprising choice for a publication so closely tied to the New York literary wor..

HSBC tax evasion whistleblower released after being detained on Swiss extradition request

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German MEP says Hervé Falciani should be given a medal not put in jail for being 'pioneer in fight against tax fraud'
An HSBC whistleblower who leaked data that led to a tax evasion scandal has been released by a Spanish judge after being arrested on an extradition request from Switzerland.
Hervé Falciani, a former IT worker at HSBC’s secretive Swiss bank, faces a five-year prison sentence in Switzerland after being convicted in absentia for industrial sabotage in 2015.
Police arrested Mr Falciani in Madrid on Wednesday on his way to speak at a conference on whistleblowing. Swiss authorities had requested that he be remanded in custody but he was released without bail on Thursday and ordered to surrender his passport while Spanish authorities consider whether to extradite him.
Read more HSBC accused of 'criminal complicity' in money-laundering scandal In 2008, Mr Falciani fled Switzerland, having stolen data on 130,000 HSBC clients, many of whom he suspected..

Trump's Twitter war with Amazon is about more than preserving the Post Office

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The President's tweets have previously had a dramatic impact on the retailer's share value
It’s no secret that Donald Trump has become a bit of a problem for Amazon lately.
His gripe with the retail giant is, according to his Twitter account, due to the firm’s tax practices and failure to support the US postal service – he alleges that the company is costing the US Post Office billions of dollars each year.
Read more Kimmel on why Trump hates Amazon: “Bezos is actually a billionaire' However, commentators have long linked the US President’s anti-Amazon agenda with Jeff Bezos’ ownership of the Washington Post, not least because Mr Trump has made that link publicly several times.
He has previously accused the newspaper of being little more than a vehicle through which Mr Bezos can lobby on behalf of his business interests, using the hashtag #AmazonWashingtonPost on more than one occasion. On Thursday, in his fifth tweet targeting Amazon this week, Mr Trump called..

Why China Is Confident It Can Beat Trump in a Trade War

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Supported by Asia Pacific Why China Is Confident It Can Beat Trump in a Trade War Photo Imported soybeans at a port in Nantong, China. The latest Chinese tariffs were intended to deliver a warning that American producers and consumers would pay in a trade war. Credit Chinatopix, via Associated Press BEIJING — China’s leaders sound supremely confident that they can win a trade war with President Trump.
The state news media has depicted him as a reckless bully intent on undermining the global trading system, while presenting the Chinese government as a fair-minded champion of free trade. And China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has used the standoff to reinforce the Communist Party’s message that the United States is determined to stop China’s rise — but that it no longer can. China is already too strong, its economy too big.
“China is not afraid of a trade war,” the vice minister of finance, Zhu Guangyao, declared at a news conference to discuss possible countermeasures. More than once, he ..

A Worker Shortage Is Forcing Restaurants to Get Creative

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Supported by Food A Worker Shortage Is Forcing Restaurants to Get Creative Photo Employees at work at Taco Bamba Taqueria in Falls Church, Va., where business is robust and staff is in short supply. Credit Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times WASHINGTON — The owner of Taco Bamba Taqueria peered out from the kitchen at the line of customers snaking around the corner at his latest spot in a suburban Virginia strip mall, and felt terror. Who was going to cook, serve and clean up for all these people?
“The cooks had left,” overwhelmed by the crowds, said Victor Albisu, who owns four Taco Bambas in the region, with a new upscale Mexican place on the horizon. “The wait staff had left. The chef and sous-chef had walked out because of the amount of business. It doesn’t stop.”
A tight labor market and an explosion of new restaurants have made finding and keeping help ever more difficult across the country.
In 2017, the National Restaurant Association reports, 37 percent of its members ..