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During her four years at Missouri State University, Rachel Kuenzler gravitated steadily toward the transition from college student to the full-time job that would signal her official entry into adulthood.

Her diligence paid off when, a week following graduation, Kuenzler found work.

And in a corporate environment - where colleagues the age of her parents outnumber twenty-somethings - Kuenzler was confronted with a dilemma that was left unaddressed by her college professors.

“I thought they wouldn’t take me seriously,” said Kuenzler, 25, an associate software engineer at MasterCard International operations center in O’Fallon, Mo.

The gap between neophytes and experienced employees has been around as long as people have been reporting to places of work.

Last year, MasterCard addressed with a “reverse mentoring” program that asks younger employees to, in effect, take older workers under their wings.

Peer-to-peer coaching is not unusual in corporate or even small business settings. But in most cases the programs call on seasoned employees to impart the wisdom of experience to younger colleagues.

MasterCard, in a concerted effort to retain and promote its younger workers, provided them with an opportunity to share their thoughts and observations on the workplace environment.

The coaching program at MasterCard may be reversed, but the strategy remains the same, said Rik Nemanick, an adjunct instructor at Washington University and a principal with The Leadership Effect, a St. Louis business consultancy. He has developed and facilitated coaching programs at Anheuser-Busch, Monsanto and other area corporations.

Mentoring programs help firms identify and develop existing talent, accelerate professional growth, nurture company loyalty and retain valuable employees, Nemanick said in a recent presentation to the St. Louis chapter of the Human Resource Management Association.

“When talented individuals reach the juncture when they might leave, it’s good that they have someone they can go to - someone they trust to discuss the situation,” he said.

At Monsanto, experienced technology division employees have tutored younger workers since 2003. The program began with 30 matches. This year, there are 70 selected from a pool of 150 applications.

“It has become part of the developmental culture within the organization,” Monsanto executive Maggie Morris told the human resources organization.

The reverse mentoring at MasterCard matched Kuenzler with Keith Martin, a 46-year-old team leader who joined MasterCard 20 years ago. The program placed 18 younger mentors with 11 supervisors.

Kuenzler saw the two-way conversation as an avenue to help Martin, and by extension other MasterCard supervisors, understand the conditions young employees seek in order to advance themselves along with the interests of the company.

“Younger employees like more openness, they are tech savvy and they don’t necessarily want to always be in meetings,” said senior human resources business partner Wanda Davega.

For example, Kuenzler and Generation Y prefer open work spaces that encourage collaboration.

Whereas Martin is admittedly more inclined to hole up in a cubicle.

Martin wasn’t exactly venturing into foreign territory when his monthly lunch meetings with Kuenzler began about a year ago - he has a daughter slightly older than his mentor.

But their meetings highlighted to him the difference between being a parent and being a colleague or supervisor.

He learned that the young people now moving into the workforce have little interest in easing into the corporate whirlwind.

“They like to move at a quick pace and effect change,” Martin said. “They basically want to jump right into the fire. They don’t want to hold back or want to hear, ‘Why don’t you wait three months to find your way around.’”

Nemanick traces the roots of the mentoring movement to a commitment to furthering the careers of minority employees at large and small businesses alike.

As the success of the programs became evident, many companies made the initiatives available to all workers.

In light of a Millennial Branding survey that this month revealed that young, recent hires comprise only 7 percent of the workforce at Fortune 500 companies, the opportunity to learn from a mentor is especially attractive to young people.

“It shrinks the big organizations,” Nemanick pointed out. “It crosses boundaries that (employees) wouldn’t normally cross.”

Its success in O’Fallon prompted MasterCard to offer reverse mentoring to employees at its global headquarters in Purchase, N.Y.

Eighteen months into her first job, Kuenzler already has a sense that her monthly meetings with Martin are making a difference.

She recently learned of plans to open her workspace by removing the wall of the over-sized cubicle she shares with several other young employees.

More important, to Kuenzler, are the chats with Martin that have brought about the removal of a more symbolic wall.

“Being able to share our thoughts with supervisors, getting their take and seeing that they are taking notes and listening, I’m already seeing a difference,” she said.

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It’s been three months since MF Global became the eighth-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Did anyone see this coming?

Well, a few people had some idea, and a congressional subcommittee heard from them on Capitol Hill Thursday.

Michael Roseman, MF Global’s former chief risk officer, warned early of the dangers in the firm’s massive bets on troubled European debt. He clashed with ex-CEO Jon Corzine over the strategy before being replaced early last year by Michael Stockman, who also appeared at the hearing.

"I discussed my concerns about the positions and the risk scenarios with Mr. Corzine and others," Roseman told the subcommittee. "However, the risk scenarios I presented were challenged as being implausible."

Under questioning, Roseman said he believed his views on risk "certainly played a factor" in the firm’s decision to dismiss him.

MF Global () filed for bankruptcy on Halloween following a frantic week in which executives including Corzine, the former CEO and an ex-governor and senator from New Jersey, attempted to offload assets and sell the business.

The firm had come under intense pressure in the previous days after its $6.3 billion investment in European debt came to public notice. Trading partners called for increased margin payments and clients took their business elsewhere, leaving the firm scrambling for cash to meet its obligations.

"It almost looks like that they took Mr. Roseman out and replaced Mr. Roseman with a ‘yes man,’" Rep. Stephen Fincher said.

Stockman responded that he had initially signed off on the European bets, but later raised concerns and recommended bringing the firm’s risk down in July of last year.

Corzine, for his part, has acknowledged pushing the aggressive European strategy after arriving at MF Global in 2010, anxious to take it to the ranks of Wall Street’s elite.

The investments themselves didn’t actually lose money, as Corzine noted in Congressional testimony in December. None of the bonds MF Global held came from countries that have defaulted and all were set to mature before 2013. But Europe’s precarious finances and the massive leverage MF Global took on spooked investors and ultimately helped doom the firm need a personal loan with bad credit.

While an examination of MF Global’s risk management may have been the main focus of Thursday’s hearing, for the firm’s former customers, the bigger question is what happened to their money.

Customer funds at futures brokers like MF Global are supposed to be protected even in the event of a bankruptcy. In MF Global’s case, however, staffers were unable to account for roughly $1.2 billion in customer money that is now suspected to have been unlawfully appropriated for the firm’s own purposes.

Ratings agencies under fire: Others facing scrutiny Thursday were rating agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, which waited until just days before MF Global’s bankruptcy to flag its European exposure even though the firm had disclosed it back in May.

By the time the rating agencies acted, the bets were already sparking concern among MF Global’s trading partners. The downgrades then sharply acclerated the firm’s downward spiral.

"[T]he abruptness of the downgrades and the suddenness of MF Global’s collapse raise questions about why the credit rating agencies did not consider MF Global’s exposure to European sovereign debt until late October," the House committee said in a memo last week.

Also appearing Thursday was James Gellert, head of the smaller ratings agency Rapid Ratings International, which maintained a grim outlook on MF Global long before its larger counterparts did. Gellert noted in his testimony that MF Global’s business model had been deteriorating for several years prior to its failure, and that the new risks in the European strategy only made its situation more precarious.

"Had MF Global offered a lower risk foundation, MF Global might have been able to withstand the failure of the new business strategy," Gellert said. "As it was, Mr. Corzine inherited an unhealthy company and made it worse by some high-stakes gambles." 

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The Federal Reserve’s announcement that it is unlikely to raise its benchmark interest rate until late 2014 is simply its “best guess,” Ben Bernanke said Wednesday.

The Fed chairman made clear during a news conference Wednesday that the decision to leave interest rates unchanged for three more years was not ironclad.

The central bank’s ability to forecast that far out is limited, Bernanke says, and the Fed could adjust the time frame for when it will raise rates if economic conditions change.

Still, he said the U.S. economy remains weak and that all signs suggest the Fed won’t change its record-low rate for another three years.

“Unless there is a substantial strengthening of the economy in the near term, it’s a pretty good guess we will be keeping rates low for some time,” Bernanke said after the Fed concluded its two-day policy meeting.

The central bank has kept its key rate at a record low near zero for about three years.

Bernanke also said the Fed has not ruled out bolder steps to boost economic growth, such as a third round of bond purchases.

“If inflation is going to remain below target for an extended period and unemployment progress is very slow … there is a case for additional policy action,” he said.

“I would not say we are out of ammunition no teletrack payday loan. We still have tools.”

Prior to the news conference, the Fed downgraded its outlook for U.S. economic growth this year. It forecasts the economy to grow between 2.2 percent and 2.7 percent in 2012, according to its updated economic forecasts. That’s down from November’s forecast of between 2.5 percent and 2.9 percent.

Many economists expect Europe will suffer a recession this year, which will slow U.S. growth.

Still, the Fed said it expects unemployment to fall low as 8.2 percent. That’s an improvement from November’s bottom rate of 8.5 percent.

In December, the unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent _ the lowest level in nearly three years _ after the sixth straight month of solid hiring.

Inflation has been relatively tame and the Fed doesn’t see that changing over the next three years.

Bernanke refused to answer a question asking whether he would resign if one of his Republican critics is elected president.

“As long as I have a job to do, I’m going to do everything to help the Federal Reserve. That’s my answer,” he said.

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Kia has announced the recall of nearly 146,000 vehicles with faulty airbag systems.

The models affected are the 2006-2008 Kia Optima and the 2007-2008 Kia Rondo. Due to a flawed spring system that may become damaged over time, the driver’s side airbag in these cars may not deploy properly in the event of a crash, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a recall alert.

Kia reported the problem last week, and the recall is expected to begin in March, NHTSA said. Customers affected can have the problem fixed at dealerships free of charge.

Kia said in a statement that it was not aware of any injuries or airbag non-deployments associated with the problem to date payday loans. The issue was discovered "as a result of the regular monitoring of field data to ensure product quality," the company said.

For more information, car owners can contact NHTSA’s vehicle safety hotline at 1-888-327-4236 or visit www.safecar.gov. They can also call Kia’s Consumer Assistance Center at 1-800-333-4542 

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PC sales didn’t have a happy holiday sales season, but you wouldn’t know it from the strong earnings posted by Microsoft and Intel.

The PC is struggling — last quarter, shipments fell 6% from the year-ago period, according to research firm Gartner — as tablets and smartphones grab market share.

But both computing giants reported earnings that beat Wall Street estimates. They chalked up softness in PC sales not to obsolescence, but to a worldwide hard drive shortage caused by massive floods in Thailand in November.

The good news on earnings boosted shares of both companies early Friday. Microsoft’s stock rose 2.6% in premarket trading, while shares of Intel edged up 0.7%.

Microsoft earned a record 78 cents per share on record sales of $20.89 billion for the second quarter of its fiscal year.

Despite the strong overall showing, Microsoft (, Fortune 500) felt the pain of the lackluster PC market in its Windows division. Its sales fell 6% over the year to $4.74 billion.

"It’s difficult to say with any sort of certainty" whether PC sales will pick back up when the hard drive supply recovers, said Lisa Nelson, Microsoft’s investor relations director. "But the market should benefit from it."

On a conference call after the earnings release, Microsoft executives said the hard drive shortage will affect sales at least through the current quarter.

The call also revealed that netbooks — essentially small, low-powered laptops — now represent just 2% of the PC market. A year ago, they comprised 8%.

Executives dodged most questions about the upcoming, tablet-optimized Windows 8. The company revealed at a trade show earlier this month that a beta version will be released in late February.

Strength in Microsoft’s other sectors made up for PC weakness.

The Microsoft unit with the strongest sales remains the business software division, which includes Microsoft Office and other software. The sector accounted for $6.28 billion of the company’s revenue, though it gained only 3% over the year.

Office 2010 has sold more than 200 million licenses in the 18 months since its launch easy payday loans.

Gaming systems were also a bright spot, as Microsoft’s "entertainment and devices" sales jumped 15% over the year to $4.24 billion. To date, Microsoft has sold about 66 million Xbox 360 consoles and 18 million sensors for its motion-controlled Kinect system.

Nelson said Xbox now commands 46% of market share for gaming consoles.

But Microsoft said on the conference call that the overall console market "is softer than previously expected."

The "server and tools" area also did well, posting a sales increase of 11% to $4.77 billion. That’s the seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, Nelson said.

Intel beats the street: Intel beat Wall Street estimates with fourth-quarter earnings of 68 cents on sales of $13.9 billion — in line with its own downgraded forecast.

Intel (, Fortune 500) sharply cut its sales forecast last month because of the hard drive shortage. Left without that supply, PC makers scaled back their inventories — which meant they were buying fewer semiconductors from Intel.

But sales at Intel’s "PC client group" were strong, rising 17% over the year to $9 billion. Growth in emerging markets was the main driver.

CEO Paul Otellini cited ultrabooks as one of the company’s biggest opportunities for growth in a press release. Ultrabooks are extremely light-weight notebook PCs that have long battery life and almost as much power as a full-sized laptop.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, Intel showcased several upcoming ultrabooks that will run on its "Ivy Bridge" 22-nanometer chips.

In other tech earnings news on Thursday, Google (, Fortune 500) announced profit and sales that rose from year-ago results but badly missed Wall Street’s forecasts. IBM (, Fortune 500) posted earnings that topped estimates. 

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European Central Bank President Mario Draghi

The Greek government resumed stalled talks with its private creditors in Athens on Wednesday in the hope of sealing a euro100 billion ($128 billion) debt relief deal needed to avoid a disastrous default this spring.

Charles Dallara, a top official at the Institute of International Finance, a global banking association, returned to Greece after negotiations stalled last week, and held a nearly three-hour meeting with Prime Minister Lucas Papademos and Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos.

“A very crucial meeting, that lasted several hours, has just finished at the prime minister’s office,” Venizelos told Parliament shortly afterward. “The meetings between the Greek government and the IIF have resumed and they will continue (Thursday).”

Earlier, he said the talks “are without a doubt at a very sensitive stage.”

The so-called private sector involvement, or PSI, deal is meant to write off half of the debt Greece owes private bondholders. Creditors would get most of the remaining debt in new bonds with extended repayment periods, as well as a cash payment.

“We want this (deal) to happen in a way that is safe for Greece _ with Greece in the eurozone _ and safe for the real economy and the financial system,” Venizelos said.

Since May 2010, Greece has kept solvent with rescue loans from its European partners and the International Monetary Fund. In the event of bankruptcy, Greece would likely have to abandon the euro and revert to a devalued currency. Since the country imports more than it exports, the costs of fuel and basic consumer goods would skyrocket, further frustrating a population angered by two years of harsh austerity.

The PSI talks have mainly been held up by a disagreement on interest rates for the new bonds.

“The interest rate on the new loans is a key issue here,” Dallara told CNN before Wednesday’s meeting. “Some seem to have a view that we should actually extend the loans at interest rates even lower than what the IMF and (the Europeans) extend their loans at, and there’s not much logic in that in our viewpoint.”

Dallara urged the EU to make clear that a similar deal would not apply to other troubled eurozone countries. “Greece really is a unique situation,” he said.

A Greek government official said Athens is still considering whether to impose so-called collective action clauses on its bonds. Such clauses could force private debt holders resisting a settlement to fall in line with the majority if an agreement is reached. The official asked not to be identified, citing the sensitive nature of the talks Payday advance.

A second government official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said Athens estimates there could be an agreement by the end of the week.

Greece needs to clinch the deal quickly to qualify for more bailout loans before it faces a euro14.5 billion ($18.6 billion) bond repayment on March 20. The bond swap is a key part a new euro130 billion ($166 billion) bailout package in loans and bank support from international rescue creditors.

Recession-bound Greece needs to write off some of its borrowings, if it is to have a fighting chance of emerging from its debt hole.

It has so far relied on austerity measures, which were a condition for it to receive the emergency loans. The Greek government has cut pensions and salaries, raised taxes and sold some state property.

Yanis Varoufakis, a professor of economics at the University of Athens, argued that even with a debt deal Greece could do little to eventually avoid default.

“Let the truth be revealed. Let’s have a default because Greece is insolvent and insolvent entities have to default. It’s a law of nature and of society and of reason, and we should simply succumb to that,” Varoufakis told AP Television.

“If European leaders are worried about the effect this will have on banks, they might as well recapitalize them, not continue to drip-feed the Greek state,” he said.

Dallara, the Institute of International Finance official, said that if Greece is forced to default, it will be messy. “I personally believe that there is no such thing as an orderly default for Greece,” he told CNN. “If there is a default, it is likely to be very disorderly.”

As austerity measures have cut deeply into incomes and unemployment has risen, unions have held frequent strikes and protests over the past two years.

Unions and employers were to start talks on Wednesday on reducing labors costs, but the negotiations were disrupted when protesters from a Communist-backed labor union occupied the central building where the meetings were to take place.

EU-IMF debt inspectors are back in Athens this week to monitor progress of those reforms aimed at slashing the country’s high budget deficits.

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Derek Gatopoulos and Theodora Tongas in Athens contributed to this report.

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A handful of large websites will go dark on Wednesday to protest an anti-piracy bill that critics say will wreck the Internet as we know it.

Wikipedia, user-submitted news site Reddit, the blog Boing Boing and the Cheezburger network of comedy sites all plan to participate in the blackout. The protest is their response to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill, a piece of proposed legislation that is working its way through Congress.

Introduced in the House of Representatives in late October, the bill aims to crack down on copyright infringement by restricting access to sites that fuel it. Its targets include "rogue" overseas sites like torrent hub The Pirate Bay, which essentially operates as a trading ground for illegal downloads of movies and other digital content.

A similar bill called the Protect IP Act was approved by a Senate committee in May and is now pending before the full Senate.

The controversial legislation has turned into an all-out war between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Media companies have united in favor of it, while tech’s power players are throwing their might into opposing it.

If SOPA passes, copyright holders would be able to complain to law enforcement officials and get websites shut down. Search engines and other providers would have to block rogue sites when ordered to do so by a judge. Sites could be punished for hosting pirated content in the first place — and Internet companies are worried that they could be held liable for users’ actions.

As BoingBoing wrote: "Making one link would require checking millions (even tens of millions) of pages, just to be sure that we weren’t in some way impinging on the ability of five Hollywood studios, four multinational record labels, and six global publishers to maximize their profits."

White House jumps in: The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform was supposed to hold a hearing with industry experts on Wednesday, which is why sites targeted that day for a blackout.

But Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from California who opposes SOPA, postponed the hearing on Friday after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said the bill won’t move in its current form.

Cantor’s comments sparked some news reports claiming that SOPA is dead, but an aide in Issa’s office said "that’s probably a little premature."

Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian was slated to testify in Washington, but he said he will now instead attend a protest rally in New York City organized by the group NY Tech Meetup. They plan to assemble outside the offices of New York senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand.

The White House released its first statement about the bill on Saturday. The Obama administration wrote that it would not support legislation that mandates "tamper[ing] with the technical architecture of the Internet through manipulation of the Domain Name System (DNS) bad credit payday advance."

As originally written, SOPA would have required Internet access providers and other companies to block access to targeted sites in ways that were rife with potential unintended consequences. The White House said its analysis of the original legislation’s technical provisions "suggests that they pose a real risk to cybersecurity."

The White House’s statement came shortly after one of SOPA’s lead sponsors, Texas Republican Lamar Smith, agreed to remove SOPA’s DNS blocking provisions.

Issa’s aide says that isn’t enough: "Merely taking out the DNS-blocking provisions doesn’t not rectify a bill that’s fundamentally flawed."

The controversial bill, once expected to sail quickly through committee approval in the House, is now being extensively reworked before it comes up for a commitee vote.

Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of News Corp. (), voiced his frustration with the White House’s stance in a series of tweets over the weekend.

"Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery," Murdoch wrote on Twitter.

In addition to Murdoch, SOPA has drawn support from groups including the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, which say that online piracy leads to U.S. job losses by depriving content creators of income. Time Warner, the parent company of CNNMoney, is among the industry supporters of the legislation.

Proponents of the bill dismiss accusations of censorship, saying that the legislation is meant to revamp a broken system that doesn’t adequately prevent criminal behavior.

But SOPA’s critics say that say that the bill’s backers don’t understand the Internet, and therefore don’t appreciate the implications of the legislation they’re considering.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of House members has proposed an alternative bill, the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (OPEN).

This legislation would allow rights holders to ask the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) to enforce current laws by targeting the actual content pirates. OPEN’s backers have posted the draft legislation online and invited the Web community to comment on and revise the proposal.

SOPA supporters counter that the ITC doesn’t have the resources for such enforcement, and that giving it those resources would be too expensive. 

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Spain’s Parliament approved the new conservative government’s first austerity measures Wednesday, which aim to rein in the country’s swollen deficit with euro8.9 billion ($11.5 billion) in spending cuts.

The measures, which also include income and property tax hikes, were approved by 197 deputies in the 350-seat lower house, where the ruling Popular Party has an absolute majority of 185 seats after a landslide election win in November.

Finance Minister Cristobal Montoro said the measures were severe but necessary, owing to what he called the mismanagement of the economy by the former Socialist government.

“The economy is stopped, we’re on the verge of a recession and the accounts are unbalanced as a consequence, among other things, of the deplorable decisions taken by the former government, which only made the situation worse,” Montoro told lawmakers.

Spain is battling to avert being dragged further into a debt crisis that has already forced Greece, Ireland and Portugal to seek financial bailouts.

In 2010, Spain began to emerge from a near two-year recession triggered by the collapse of a property and construction bubble that had fueled growth for nearly a decade. The country now has a 21.5 percent unemployment rate _ the highest in the eurozone _ and Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said recently the economy would slide back into recession early this year with the last quarter of 2011 and the first of 2012 both registering negative growth.

Montoro accused the former Socialist government of deliberately hiding figures that showed that Spain’s deficit for 2011 would be 8 percent of national income, and not 6 percent as the Socialists had claimed easy to get unsecured personal loans. He said the deviation represented an estimated euro20 billion ($25.4 billion) “black hole.”

However, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has acknowledged that the deficit of regional governments, most of which are run by his own conservative party, was responsible for 75 percent of the deviation.

Other measures in the austerity package include a freeze on civil servants’ salaries and on practically all government hiring. Pensions, however, are to be increased by 1 percent, the only area of spending to rise. Taxes on income and property will also be raised but only for two years.

Treasury Minister Cristobal Montoro said the tax increases will be progressive, with the wealthiest paying more and that the impact on lower-income earners will be minimal.

The government projects that the tax increases will bring in euro6.2 billion ($7.9 billion) on top of the euro8.9 billion saved on the spending cuts.

The package was part of an extension of the 2011 budget because the last government did not pass one for 2012. More austerity measures are expected when the government presents its 2012 budget by the end of March.

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