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CNN IN THE MONEY

Significance Of Layoffs; Green Business Good For Profits; Drug Side Affects; Marketers Appeal To Young Adults During Spring Break; Apple Corps Sues Apple Computer

Aired April 1, 2006 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


SOPHIA CHOI, CNN ANCHOR: Former hostage Jill Carroll heading home two days after being set free in Iraq. The freelance journalist flew into Germany this morning and she is expected to arrive in Boston sometime tomorrow. She was abducted nearly three months ago.
The destruction in central Indiana says it all. An overnight storm might have produced as many as three tornadoes. At least 20 homes were damaged and several people suffered minor injuries.

New York's Hispanic community is rallying against proposed new laws that would crack down on illegal immigration. They're marching across the Brooklyn Bridge by the thousands right now. Organizers call it the great walk of solidarity with immigrants.

Well it is time to spring forward most of the country is switching to daylight saving time that officially begins at 2:00 a.m. Eastern tomorrow. It magically goes to 3:00 a.m., so don't forget to push your clocks ahead before going to bed tonight. That is your warning, of course that means you'll lose an hour of sleep too.

We'll bring you more top stories in about 30 minutes. "IN THE MONEY" begins right now.

ANNOUNCER: From New York City, America's financial capital, this is IN THE MONEY.

JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to the program. I'm Jack Cafferty. Coming up on today's edition of IN THE MONEY. Fire away. These days companies treat layoffs like they're business as usual. It wasn't always that way. Find out why a pink slip could hit you and the place that hands it to you harder than you think.

Plus, going green to get the -- whole climate change thing is hotter than a July afternoon without an ozone layer. See how turning eco-friendly can pay off for business.

Plus a little something on the side. Today's top drugs come with a short list of benefits and a long list of side effects. See if the fix is worth all the nausea, dizziness and fatigue.

Joining me today, a couple of IN THE MONEY veterans: "Headline News" correspondent Jennifer Westhoven, and "Fortune" Magazine editor at large Andy Serwer.

How ironic our that our beloved elected representatives are debating immigration reform in the nations capital. We have somewhere between 12 and 20 million illegal immigrants, indicating we haven't done much about controlling this problem since when 1986 when they gave out amnesty. A lot of people say this is much ado about nothing and at the end the bill will arrive on President Bush's desk. What do you think?

ANDY SEWER, EDITOR AT LARGE, "FORTUNE" MAGAZINE: Well you know what gets to me is that no one wants illegal aliens sneaking in the country. I think there's a certain amount of hysteria going on right now. I mean critics are saying they are driving up health care costs. Where's the evidence? They say they're taking jobs away from Americans. Where's the evidence? Unemployment rate is low. They say they are keeping wages low. Where's the evidence? Let's keep it real here, I think.

JENNIFER WESTHOVEN, "HEADLINE NEWS" CORRESPONDENT: I think there's been plenty of evidence in studies on terms of how much public benefits that illegal immigrants end up using. We've got this argument that we have lower labor costs but then there is also the strain on the taxpayer system. I think is really interesting about this, what are these kids doing in Los Angeles? Do they really care about this or do they just getting a free day off of school?

CAFFERTY: Well, I'm sure it's probably a little of each. I will tell you one thing on "THE SITUATION ROOM" which I appear on during the regular weekday, a lot of e-mail about all these Mexican flags being flown on the streets of America by people who may or may not be in this country legally.

There's an argument to be made. Our buddy Lou Dobbs makes it regularly. You either have borders that mean something or you don't. We have made no significant effort to enforce the borders of this nation. And now we're paying a price of it.

SERWER: I agree with that. I just think you got to have your facts lined up. I'm not sure that sometimes the truth is getting a little bit twisted right now. It's interesting how these issues come and go.

CAFFERTY: Plus there was some idiot school principal in Houston that actually raised the Mexican flag over the school building which got himself into a whole lot of trouble.

WESTHOVEN: Mexico, they don't want us there but they want us to allow everyone here. There is a lot of double standards when it comes to the Mexican government.

CAFFERTY: A bunch of nonsense.

The big corporate layoff was born as the last-ditch move in hard times, but it's become a great American tradition in the last 20 years. This week, General Motors announced it's wiping out 2,500 jobs this coming year. About 500 of those employees had to take a walk on Tuesday. Of course layoffs is much a part of working life in this country now as boring conversations in the office elevator. And the layoffs are a lot more harmful. Our next guest has been looking at their impact and it's now insignificant in a number of ways. Louis Uchitelle is an economics writer with the "The New York Times" and the author of the book "The Disposable American, Layoffs and Their Consequences." Lou, nice to have you back on the program.

LOUIS UCHITELLE, AUTHOR, "THE DISPOSABLE AMERICAN": Nice to be back.

CAFFERTY: How did layoffs become a regular part of the corporate landscape? There was a time in this country and it wasn't that long ago that there was some corporate loyalty to their employees and layoffs were kind of the court of last resort for companies that were one step out of bankruptcy. It's not that way anymore. How come?

UCHITELLE: No it isn't. In fact, management had a big hand in building job security in this country and then of course the global economy intervened, competition from other companies, and we began to deal with it with layoffs. And those layoffs essentially got out of hand. We took down the barriers. And what we -- and then we -- we lost sight of the costs. And, as I did this book, I came to realize the chief cost is you get laid off and you blame yourself. And there's a psychological damage there.

And our system reinforces that. We tell people, look, get yourself educated and retrained and there are good jobs out there at better pay, or good pay. That isn't the case. The supply of skilled workers in this country is greater than the demand for them.

WESTHOVEN: Do we have any areas on that where we know how to measure that kind of toll? I was talking about this with a colleague before the show. He said, this is the ultimate moment when you have just lost control of your life and you try to tell yourself this is good, that things can get better, but you're angry, you're really upset, and there's this huge human toll here that you've been talking about. Are there anyway right now that we have to try to measure that? All we hear is companies saying this is good. We don't hear about what it does to humans.

UCHITELLE: Well, as I was doing my reporting I found myself getting to know people who had been laid off, and I am not talking about poor people, I'm talking about the cream of the blue collar workforce, aviation mechanics, and white collar people earning high five and six-figure salaries. And in every case, I found myself in interviews that would last a couple of hours as people went back over and over again why they had been laid off, why it was their bad luck, what they had done wrong.

And I went to psychiatrist about it. And they said yes, we're running into this all the time. The American Psychiatric Association but they don't put a warning label on it like we put on cigarettes. It would be helpful if the major Psychiatric Associations -- and I -- they acknowledge they don't. If they said, look, you have to engage in layoffs for economic reasons, but please be aware of the human cost, the mental illness. We are undermining public health. SERWER: Lou, let me ask you, I mean, aren't we at a period of time where there's structural changes that actually mandate, require, if you will, that there are layoffs like this? I mean, you're talking about huge technological change, you are talking about competition from China and India that we've never had before. Maybe the executives at General Motors didn't have the foresight to see that but aren't these kinds of layoffs inevitable when you have this sort of sea change in economics?

UCHITELLE: There's no question that there's a sea change. There's no question that our companies are being affected by it. And there's no question that layoffs are inevitable. But I think many of them are just -- you're laying off ten people when three are enough.

I've run across any number of situations where a company comes to its employees and says -- not any number, but this happened at Boeing back in the mid-'90s. The company said, we have to get rid of "x" amount of labor costs before we get into layoffs. You find ways. You, the workers, find ways to cut those costs. A lot of them did. They found ways to move more quickly, use fewer materials, whatever.

CAFFERTY: Let me ask you about the decline of what we used to call the American dream. There's a school of thought that says the generation that will follow us will be the first one in our history that will have to endure a lower standard of living than any generation before it. One of the great things about this country has always been we've made it better for the people who have come after.

And that now, according to some economists, has simply become impossibility. Is that too harsh a reality for people who are looking at layoffs and globalization to have to come face-to-face with?

UCHITELLE: Well, this argument has come up, of course, before. It came up in the '80s when we had the shock of the rust belt. And now it's coming up again. I think it's sad. It's not harsh, it's sad. And it indicates that we aren't able to afford everything as we once did. One of the problems is unequal distribution of income. If we decide that we have $100 instead of $500 -- or, let me put it, $100 instead of $150, and we are still a very rich country, maybe we should start thinking about how to distribute that income better.

CAFFERTY: All right, we're going to have to leave it there, Lou. I appreciate you being on the program. Thank you for joining us again.

UCHITELLE: Thank you, I enjoyed being here.

CAFFERTY: Louis Uchitelle wrote "The Disposable American Layoffs and Their Consequences."

When we come back on IN THE MONEY, green change equals green cash. We'll look at why going eco-friendly isn't the big sacrifice some companies think it is.

Plus, hard to swallow. Find out whether all those drug side effects are a bigger deal than the benefits. And hot to trot, with that we find who is desperate to hook up at spring break. Oh this is getting seedy. See why they're chasing a bunch of poor college kids around the beaches. Back in a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WESTHOVEN: Northern California's been sloshing around in record rainfall territory this week. It's not exactly dry in the southern part of the state either. These days, that's the kind of crazy weather that gets people talking about global warming and as more people start to think about it, companies are suddenly making a big deal about going green. But here's the hopeful idea we'll be talking about next. What's good for the planet can also be good for profits.

Joining us to talk about that, David Gardiner, a senior adviser to CERES, a network of investment funds, environmental groups and public interest groups. Thank you for joining us. I've got a big question here. Why the change? Are these companies really just doing it to be fashionable, to get in with the green crowd or is this really serious? Is this driving profits at this point?

DAVID GARDINER, SR ADVISOR, CERES: I think it's all about profits. We looked at a 100 companies recently in the U.S. and Europe. The companies that I think are the leaders in this area are the ones that see this as a tremendous business opportunity. We are going to deal with climate change in the coming years and decades. And it's going to mean that new technologies, clean technologies in particular, are huge business opportunity.

Let's just take a look, for example, at the top scoring U.S. Company, Dupont. This is a company that in the last ten or 15 years has reduced its emissions by 72 percent. While saving $2 billion at the same time. They've cut their energy use and they cut their pollution.

At the same time, they're also looking ahead for the future, for these new products that they think they're going to sell. New products like things like their Tyvek home wrap, which you see on buildings being built all over the place. They've got a new version that is 13 percent more energy efficient.

It saves 15 tons of carbon dioxide for every house it gets wrapped in. I think Dupont sees this as a gigantic business opportunity. They think, as the world demands cleaner energy technologies to deal with climate change, that they'll be making money using these new technologies.

SERWER: David, I want to take a step back. Excuse me for jumping in here. And talk about this issue. Because obviously global warming, the issue has been around for quite a while now. Is the debate over? Does everyone now acknowledge that global warming exists except for, say, lunatic fringe elements out there?

GARDINER: Well, I think there's a scientific consensus that global warming exists today and is going to worsen in the future if we don't find ways to use and produce energy much more cleanly than we do now. About 75 to 85 percent of the pollution that causes global warming comes from the use of energy.

So in order to tackle this problem, we need to make pretty dramatic changes in how we use and produce energy in the next 10 to 50 years. And that's going to create business opportunities for companies that are smart about it. General Electric has started up a significant new effort to market these technologies. They think by 2010, they're going to be selling $20 billion a year in climate- friendly technologies. These are engines that are more efficient, pollution control equipment and other kinds of technologies that are the kinds of things that we need to put in place in order to solve this problem.

CAFFERTY: You know it occurs to me, we had a similar conversation 30 years ago during the first oil embargo. We've got to do something about oil and carbon fuel consumption. We've got to cut back. We've got to come up with alternative energy sources.

And 30 years later, we're still burning more oil than ever and with the political and lobbying muscle that the big energy companies have in Washington and with the sympathetic ear that exists, at least today, to some of their arguments about all of this, why is the debate any different now than it was 30 years ago? It seems to me all we do is talk about this stuff, we haven't made much progress.

GARDINER: Well, I think it's different in the sense that global warming is a relatively new problem. And it's beginning to drive governments around the world to act, to begin to reduce emissions. In Europe last year, the instituted a new emissions trading program to reduce emissions and clean companies sold $5 billion worth of air pollution credits to dirtier companies. We see California adopting new emission standards for automobiles. The northeast has done the same for power plants.

These are new rules that are being put in place that businesses are going to have to comply with and smart companies are anticipating that already. They're designing strategies to try to figure out how to deal with it. And they're developing the new technologies that the world is going to be demanding as we address climate change and energy issues going into the future.

WESTHOVEN: OK, I couldn't help but notice, I'll be quick about this, that there are a lot of investment groups like mutual funds that are behind your group. How important is that, if you want to be -- if you're someone out there and want to do more than just recycle, how much power do these kinds of groups have, socially responsible funds, vis-a-vis, the environment, when it comes to dealing with these companies and telling them to change their act?

GARDINER: I think investors have been remarkably effective in the last few years in raising climate change as a critical strategic business issue for companies. They've been filing shareholder resolutions, writing to companies, meeting with companies, and engaging companies, saying, this is a critical business issue and you've got to develop a strategy for going forward with it.

I think there's many ways in which investors can be active and move companies in a good direction and that's been positive in the last couple of years.

CAFFERTY: David Gardiner, thank you for joining us. Nice to have you on the program.

GARDINER: Thank you.

CAFFERTY: Senior advisor to CERES.

Time now for this week's look ahead on Monday, the Congress department releases March auto sales and truck sales. Industry watchers taking a close look at those numbers to gauge consumer demand. The March employment report, a monthly big number out next Friday morning from the Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Wall Street always watches closely the employment report. And also on Friday, spring break on Capitol Hill. Mercifully, they're going away. Congress starts its recess. They will all be out of town, therefore, unable to do further damage to our Republic until April the 24th.

SERWER: Bye-bye.

CAFFERTY: Have a real nice time, yes bye-bye.

Coming up after the break as we continue, storm warning. Carnival cut its earning outlook after a major fire on one of its big ships. See if the company is cruising for a bruising.

And gigs versus gigabytes. Find out why the Beatles and Apple computer are in a nasty court showdown.

A whopper is no longer just a sandwich. We'll tell you about some tall tales of fast food as IN THE MONEY rolls on.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SERWER: It hasn't exactly been smooth sailing for Carnival Corporation this year. The cruise line owner announced Tuesday that a recent fire on its star princess ship will hurt the company's second quarter earnings. The stock sank about 5 percent on the news. Carnival shares are about 10 percent down already this year.

Just last week, the company reported a weak first quarter and a bleak outlook for earnings going forward. For bookings going forward, I should say. I guess you're supposed to buy stocks when they're down and cheap. This one is. You know this is a business that this is actually fared pretty well since 9/11 because of the downturn in the airline business. And it actually is a growing business where they're building bigger ships and more and more people are going on. So, you know, I think it's worth looking at.

WESTHOVEN: I can't figure out how much growth they can get if oil prices stay high. We got baby boomer, they're going to get old, want to go on ships. It's a nice quiet retirement. But how do you charge them and how do you get your margins up? CAFFERTY: The fire isn't t the only kind of head wind they're facing. They had this honeymoon couple, the guy disappeared over the side, and nobody knows what happened to him. And then all these ships trying to come back into port, everybody had those strange diseases ...

SERWER: Strange diseases.

CAFFERTY: Might make me think twice about jumping on one of these ships for extended period out there in the ocean with 3,000 people I don't know anything about.

SERWER: Some people like them and they got more and more stuff on them. Tennis courts, swimming pools, all kinds of stuff. Obviously way beyond that. There are two big players here; you know there is Carnival and Royal Caribbean. They're both out of Miami. If you look over the past five years, they're both up about 70 to 100 percent almost double.

So there's something there. You know, one is bigger. Carnival's bigger than Royal Caribbean. Carnival's bigger by about a factor of four. So -- but the smaller one, Royal Caribbean, is growing faster. I don't know, though. I mean, is this the kind of stock you would buy?

CAFFERTY: Got those pirates out there, too, remember, pirate ships attacking some cruises.

SERWER: So lets review here, pirates, strange diseases, fires, sexual assaults ...

CAFFERTY: Missing passengers, guy's going over the side, leaving little blood stains. I don't know.

SERWER: I think I'll buy an airline stock and I swore I'd never do that.

CAFFERTY: There you go.

SERWER: We will leave at that.

OK, coming up on IN THE MONEY, snooze control. We'll look at what Americans want from their drugs and what their drugs are actually delivering.

Plus, cheap dates. Kids in college are famous for being broke. See why marketers are chasing them anyway.

And discover how close you are to stardom. The "Fun Site of the Week" and this is a fun site, lets you get face-to-face with celebrities and find out how you match up. Ooh, glam. Her glamness. OK, delete. Delete. Delete.

CAFFERTY: A lot of hair.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) CHOI: Hello, I'm Sophia Choi. Here's what's making news now. A big smile from Jill Carroll today as she stepped off the plane at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. The 28-year-old freelance journalist was a hostage in Iraq for nearly three months. She's expected to get on a plane for Boston later today.

A U.S. military helicopter has crashed south of Baghdad. U.S. Officials say it was on a combat air patrol. There's no word yet on the status of the crew or what caused this chopper to go down.

At a rally in New Orleans today to protest city elections scheduled to take place in three weeks. Civil Rights activist Jesse Jackson and comedian Bill Cosby were among the speakers there. Critics say the process is unfair to Katrina refugees who are still scattered across the country.

Well coming at the top of the hour let the sunshine in. That's what people in Hawaii are saying after days of soaking rains. We'll talk to a weather expert to see what's in store next. And we'll also have your complete forecast.

I'm Sophia Choi. Now back to IN THE MONEY.

CAFFERTY: Well, if you believe those annoying ads we see on television all the time, there's a lot of drugs out there that can fix all your problems and a few you don't even have yet. What you might miss while those commercial characters are dancing through a field of flowers is the verbal fine print. That would be the side effects that these drugs can cause.

Doctor John Abramson is a clinic instructor at Harvard Medical School, and he is also author of "Overdosed America, the Broken Promise of American Medicine." Doc, nice to have you with us. Good to have you on IN THE MONEY.

DR. JOHN ABRAMSON, AUTHOR, "OVERDOSED AMERICA:" Great to be with you, Jack.

CAFFERTY: Is it that there are more bad side effects or is it that we're just more aware of the potential bad side effects because of these annoying TV commercials?

ABRAMSON: I think it's both, Jack. Drugs, really, they're being sold like widgets and what's driving so much of the drug use, it be sleeping pills or ADD drugs is marketing that's going on to the people, not documented medical necessity.

CAFFERTY: But the doctors are the court of last resort on this. If I go running in based on some TV commercial, say, you got to give me a box full of these watch a ma calls its, isn't it up to him to say, you don't need that, take two aspirin and come back tomorrow?

ABRAMSON: The doctor writes the prescriptions that are for sure. But we know that when a patient comes in and requests a specific prescription, they get it 45 to 80 percent of the time, so doctors can't put up much of a fight. The real problem Jack is that the best information that is available to the doctors is coming from the drug companies, and it is coming mostly through their most respected journals, through the research that the drug companies have sponsored.

SERWER: But wait a minute John; I mean forget about the journals. Isn't this really an FDA problem? They're not picking up side effects of drugs, and then what is their whole testing program all about?

ABRAMSON: That's a good question, Andy. The FDA is supposed to pick up side effects when they approve new drugs and after drugs are marketed. The problem is that the FDA is structurally incapable of doing that now because more than half of the budget of the division of the FDA that does those two functions is now paid for directly by the drug companies.

WESTHOVEN: John, I was just really surprised by one of the examples that I saw that you have, which is about the National Sleep Foundation. Purporting to give doctors and patients all this information about sleep, what's best used. You essentially say this is a pill-pushing machine that's 70 percent funded by the pharmaceutical company. How pervasive is that?

ABRAMSON: That's enormously pervasive, Jennifer. We see so many of the nonprofit organizations that advertise as -- or present their information as if they're there to benefit the public. Really, funded by the drug and medical industries. And their real function is to represent the economic interests of their main contributors.

CAFFERTY: But whose fault is that that they are taking advantage of the rules that govern the playing field that they're on? I mean these policies originate in the nations capital and the permissiveness for medical companies to drive prescription drug information and oil companies to make energy policy, that's all set in Washington, D.C., you can't blame the corporations for just playing by the rules they're given, can you?

ABRAMSON: Jack, I agree with you 100 percent. I think the drug companies are magnificent at fulfilling their primary responsibility, which is to maximize the return on investment to their shareholders. And they do it very well, sometimes there's fraud, sometimes they cross the line. I agree with you 100 percent that it's the regulatory environment that they conduct their activities in that's the problem.

Teddy Roosevelt dealt with this a 100 years ago when he stood up to the railroad, coal and steel industries when they had amassed so much wealth and power that they could distort markets and make money without providing social value. Now we're at the same problem with the drug and medical industries.

SERWER: All right, Doctor what if I made you America's drug czar? What exactly would you do right now?

ABRAMSON: There's one thing we could do that would really help to straighten things out. If we simply had -- when research was done, commercially sponsored research, drug company sponsored research was done, before an article was accepted by a medical journal, if we simply had the results audited by independent statisticians and researchers who could go over all the data.

Because right now peer review doesn't work because the peer reviewers and the editors in the medical journals don't get to see all the data. The authors of the articles, the authors who write those articles, even our best journals, often don't get to see their own data.

CAFFERTY: We talked about one of these side effects here in the studio a few moments ago. Can you really take one of these sleeping pills and get up in the middle of the night and eat a roast beef sandwich and some potato salad and have a glass of Pepsi and go back to bed and wake up the next day and not have any idea you've done that? Is that a real deal?

ABRAMSON: Evidently, Jack, you can do that and you can drive down to the corner store, buy it and eat it down there and come back. I think those are rare side effects.

CAFFERTY: Let's hope so.

ABRAMSON: I think the real issue here is the economic side effects. So the best data is that we're wasting about $600 billion a year on health care that's either unnecessary or harmful to Americans' health, $600 billion that is an enormous amount. That's what the defense department spends each year.

CAFFERTY: I was just going to say, we've got midterm elections coming up in a few months. If the public watching this program is serious about wanting to change the status quo, there's a chance to do it. Why do I think nothing will be any different the day after the election than it is right now? I guess it is the way we are.

ABRAMSON: Yes because there's so much commercial money in the electoral process. What we need is for the American public to stand up for their rights. Democracy isn't given to us; it's got to be earned. If the American people start to educate themselves about how our medical care is commercially driven, then I think candidates will emerge that really represent the American people's interest and not just the medical industry's interest.

CAFFERTY: Oh that would be nice. Overdosed America, the broken promise of American medicine. Dr. John Abramson of the Harvard Medical School. Thank you, nice to have you with us.

ABRAMSON: It's a pleasure to be with you, thanks so much.

CAFFERTY: All right. Plenty more ahead here on IN THE MONEY, coming up next looking for love. Some big companies are trying to win over the spring break crowd. See why marketing the college kids can mean reaching the rest of us as well.

And the guy who says he's living the life you want. Find out how he got it, on our "Life After Work" segment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SERWER: If you think spring break is all about tequila shots and wet T-shirt contests -- and I know you do -- guess again. For marketers, it's about cashing in on the most desired demographic around: young adults. For more on this, let's talk to Sharon Lee, co-founder of Look-Look, a youth culture research and marketing firm. Welcome to the program. Can you tell us exactly how Madison Avenue is reaching out to these young folks?

SHARON LEE, CO-FOUNDER, LOOK-LOOK: Well, they're reaching out in a number of different ways. Let's talk about the sheer body count. There are over 80 million twenty to thirty something's in the United States.

So this is a huge population that is bigger than the entire general population of the U.K. They're reaching out in every way they can. Spring break happens to be one of those times when they want to get all of them. They think they can get all them in one place. So there's an onslaught of marketing.

CAFFERTY: There are a lot of people in China and India, too, but they don't have any money. There's a conventional wisdom that college kids are terminally busted, scraping around on day-old pizza and warm beer and not doing the laundry until they can find change for a dollar. Now, why is Madison Avenue intent on chasing kids who the conventional wisdom has it are borderline poverty cases?

LEE: Well, I think that that conventional wisdom might be a little off because they do have quite a bit of spending power and not only their own dollars, but they have quite a bit of influence over what their parents spend, as well as, I think, the culture at large is influenced by what young people are buying. So young people are influencing really young teenagers, as well as baby boomers are looking to youth culture to get cues on what to buy.

WESTHOVEN: And do you think that's a shift in our culture? What's going on with that? We just had a big cover story in a New York magazine recently that said people up until their 40s now are trying to act like they're young, they are listening to young bands, they are dressing like their young. What happened here?

CAFFERTY: Look at Andy.

SERWER: Oh, yes, baby.

LEE: Well I think the baby boomers are the first generation that was schooled by the same media culture that young people are. So we all watch the same movies, watch the TV shows, are interested in the same brands. And I think it's the first adult generation that's really saying, hey, you know what, I may be getting older, but I really love this music and really interested in this fashion. And I want to hang on to that.

SERWER: But, Sharon, the way that advertisers are going to get these people, though, is very different, isn't it? I mean, the strategies. There's these viral marketing campaigns. I love that phrase, what does that mean, viral marketing campaigns? Internet with these little video clips, they send people into bars to drink things and pretend like they're just innocent college students, if you can imagine. Can you talk about how marketing is changing?

LEE: Marketing has changed quite a bit. It's because there has been kind of a decline of relevance of traditional media. You don't have the audience kind of captured with three networks and a handful of ...

CAFFERTY: Are you talk about us here?

SERWER: Not cable TV.

LEE: Not cable, you're part of what they're into.

SERWER: Yes.

LEE: Yes, but no, so there is -- media's very fractured. And because the Internet is so empowering for young people, they really don't have to listen to a couple of sources.

CAFFERTY: How are they making this big push for spring break specifically? What are they doing to snare all those scantily clad kids on the beaches?

LEE: Well, I think marketers look at spring break as kind of this big boon opportunity. They think, a-ha, I've got them all in one place at the same time and I want to, you know, just get as many messages out there as I can.

Now, that's not just one marketer. There are thousands of marketers who have that same idea. And so, you know it just creates a lot of noise for the consumers and I would say more than, you know, 80 percent of the marketing done at spring break is not meaningful marketing. I mean, it's essentially a one-night stand with the consumer. You're ...

SERWER: So to speak.

LEE: Yes so you show up, you're not invited, you know, you're free and easy. So will they respect you in the morning? I don't think so.

SERWER: Such a metaphor here.

CAFFERTY: Maybe they'll lose your number if you're lucky and they won't bother you anymore.

LEE: Yes.

WESTHOVEN: All right. Sharon Lee, co-founder of Look-Look, thank you so much.

Switching gears, Tom Patty says he lives on the island side of life. The retired ad executive spends most of his time biking, sailing, playing music. He also helps others live the good life. He's a small business counselor for the Orange County Service Corps of Retired Executives. His story is this week's "Life after Work" segment.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TOM PATTY: Living on the island side of life.

WESTHOVEN (voice-over): Tom Patty is living his dream. Retired in southern California.

PATTY: It's a place where I feel so alive.

I was never one of these people who lived to work and I always had a great time every weekend and I figured if every day can be a weekend that would be a good life.

WESTHOVEN: Tom used to be an ad agency president. But he was always actively planning to just bike, sail, and play his guitar in retirement.

PATTY: Once I stopped working, I got more into music and somebody taught me how to write a song. I liked that. It was really neat. I wrote 15 or so songs. Whittled it down to 10 and decided they weren't awful and then I got a guy from the Beach Boys to help me produce a CD. It was a wonderful experience, it was really terrific.

WESTHOVEN: Tom's album didn't hit the charts but he got to do something that he loves, writing songs that capture his laid back lifestyle.

PATTY: It's a place where I feel so alive

WESTHOVEN: Living in the O.C., Tom proves life after work can be one long weekend.

PATTY: This is my 2,365th day of being on retirement. Very good friend of mine had a great idea, start a journey when you retire and I've done it every day. At the end of every day, I write, another great day in Dana Point.

This is where I belong living on the island side of life

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WESTHOVEN: Coming up on IN THE MONEY, Apple jacked. Why two global brands went to court over a little old logo. "Brainstorm" is just ahead.

And if you want to sound off about the show this week, about us, about our guests, send us an e-mail. We want to hear from you, INTHEMONEY@CNN.com.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SERWER: It was a tale of two apples in London this week as the legends of the music world went head to head with the legends of the computer world. Apple Corps, owned by the Beatles, is suing Apple Computer over its iTunes service. Two previous suits led to Apple Computer making promises to steer clear of certain parts of the music business. The Beatles say iTunes violates that agreement. Jim Boulden sorts it all out for us.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM BOULDEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It has been a long and winding road for Apple Corps and Apple Computers. The two have been in and out of court for a quarter of a century. Fighting over the use of the Apple name and hashing out agreements on how each Apple could use its trademark.

In a London court Wednesday, the Beatles' record label alleged Apple Computer has become a de facto music company, via its iTunes service. And says using the Apple brand on iTunes is in direct violation of a 1991 agreements.

DAVID ROSE, S.J. BERWIN: What we now have, because of technological advance, is we have this clash that was not clearly contemplated in the early 1990s when the early settlement was done.

BOULDEN: iTunes has boasted 1 billion songs downloads, some 75 percent of all legal downloads. So increasingly, its grip on the market has annoyed music makers. Some say the judge who admits to owning an iPod should side with the Beatles, who use the Apple name to sell music long before Apple Computer was born.

MARK STEPHENS, FINER STEPHENS INNOCENT: I think this should be a slam-dunk case for Apple Corp, the Beatles company. The Apple Computer Company seemed to have strayed beyond the bounds of where they should be. They should be in the bounds of selling computers.

BOULDEN: But others say the Beatles brand cannot be heard by iTunes.

HUGH DAVIES: It used to be all you need is love in 1967 and now it's purely money. Which is a shame.

BOULDEN: But Apple Computer and its supporters say it isn't in the business of making music.

JONNY EVANS, MACWORLD: You can buy music and you can listen to muse being but they're not saying this is music we have made. Neither is they saying that these are things publishing somebody else's music. They're distributing music for other distributors.

BOULDEN: The star witness for the Beatles is the group's former road manager and now the head of Apple Corp, Neil Aspenwall. His company is asking for unspecified amount of money for damages from Apple Computer, Apple Computer has already paid more than $26 million to the Beatles to settle the previous trademark suits.

If the judge sides with the Beatles and Apple Corp, then Apple Computer could be forced to remove the Apple brand from all iTunes services. Or, indeed, it could be forced to spin iTunes off completely from Apple.

Jim Boulden, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SERWER: Coming up next on IN THE MONEY, look back in laughter. Allen Wastler of Money.com is going to remind us how much fun Google used to be before it got all serious on us.

It's time to hear from you as read some of your emails from the past week. You can send us an e-mail right now too. We are at INTHEMONEY@CNN.com.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAFFERTY: A lot of workers across the country may have missed out on some office pranks being that April Fools' Day fell over the weekend this year. But don't worry we can still laugh at others expense; Allen Wastler is here with some of the biggest corporate pranks in history. In this weeks "Inside Out."

ALLEN WASTLER, MONEY.COM: You know, April fools', we have the weekend going. Actually there have been some pretty clever things, corporations have done. The latest thing has been Google. In 2002, they did a press release; remember this one, saying that they were going to reveal the secret behind their searching technology. Pigeons specially trained.

Then the next year they followed it up, they put out a jobs want ad for people to land their new lunar station. And then the next year they had a for real announcement on April fools' about their new mail service but nobody believed it because it was on April fools day.

WESTHOVEN: I bet they thought that was funny.

WASTLER: Some are still trying. Loaduscars (ph) is going to come out this weekend with its new pickup truck version.

SERWER: $180,000 truck.

WASTLER: But we went and looked at some of the greatest ones that were around. I sort of voted for Burger King when they took out a full-page ad and they came out with the left-handed whopper. Same as the original whopper, but just -- they put condiment on 180 degrees.

SERWER: Oh, yes.

WASTLER: And then Taco Bell saying that it bought the rights to the Liberty Bell and from now on it would be the Taco Liberty Bell.

That's a good one.

It's always the media that comes up with the best one. And the grand daddy of them, there was "Sports Illustrated" ...

SERWER: Yes, loved that. WASTLER: But BBC began. Got to tip the hat to BBC, in 1957, when they came out and they did a package on the great Swiss spaghetti harvest.

CAFFERTY: A 1,000 years ago, I was the news director at a television station at Des Moines, Iowa. I also did the 6:00 and 10:00 news. This was a legitimate idea that I tried to get sold to the -- there were three stations in the market. My idea for April Fools' Day was to switch all the anchor crews but never say a word. Have the Channel 4 guys show up on Channel 8, Channel 8 guys show up -- of two the three stations agreed to do it and the one I was working for was the humorless outfit that canceled the whole thing. It might be kind of fun.

WASTLER: It would be tremendous. Oh, well.

CAFFERTY: What is the "Fun Site of the Week?"

WASTLER: We found an interesting little site. It's a little complicated. But you upload your photo and it will do an analysis, run it through a database and tell you what celebrity your facial structure represents. I was Bruce Willis. I was also Rosanna Arquette.

I happen to keep photos of all of you handy. We ran you through. You actually are similar to Jennifer Anniston, Cameron Diaz. Also Andy Warhol.

WESTHOVEN: Ooh.

WASTLER: So. Andy ...

WESTHOVEN: That's not bad.

WASTLER: We uploaded you, too, dude.

SERWER: Oh, no.

WASTLER: Neil diamond.

WESTHOVEN: Yes, I am, I said.

WASTLER: Patrick Swayze, you dog, you. And also Yogi Bear.

SERWER: I think, therefore I'm not.

WASTLER: And of course Jack. We ran you through. Actually, Bill Clinton. John Goodman.

CAFFERTY: Oh, no.

WASTLER: And of course that's the best one, John Wayne, baby.

CAFFERTY: There you go.

WASTLER: Anyway, it's lots of fun. CAFFERTY: Plenty of fun. All right, time now to read your answers to our question of the week about what ordinary American consumers can do to help win the war on terror.

Jeff wrote this, "I think ordinary Americans can do a lot to help by keeping our eyes and ears open for suspicious activity in public places. The trouble is, most of us don't know what to look for. CNN should do more stories that inform the public about this." Get real.

Patricia in South Carolina wrote, "We can buy products that help reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources. We can also put pressure on our politicians to create more sound foreign policies." That won't work because they don't -- they're not capable.

SERWER: Yes.

CAFFERTY: And Aaron wrote, "There's really nothing we can do. But I do suggest that we all hire a skilled mental health expert to help us realize that the mass media is really feeding us false hope over ever winning this war."

Here is next week's e-mail question of the week, "How can the U.S. government inspire American corporations to hire more American workers?" Send your answers to INTHEMONEY@CNN.com. You should also visit our show page at CNN.com/inthemoney, which is where you will find the address of our "Fun Site of the Week."

Thank you for joining us for this week's edition of IN THE MONEY. My thanks to "Headline News" correspondent Jennifer Westhoven. "Fortune" Magazine editor at large Andy Serwer and Money.com managing editor Allen Wastler.

We hope to see you back here next time, Saturdays at 1:00 p.m., Sundays at 3:00 p.m. Until then, enjoy the rest of your weekend.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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