I once worked for a managing editor who felt it was his duty to pay for the majority of drinks when joining the charges after work.  Needless to say, he was well liked.

But leading a group of people — and yes, journalists are people, too — takes more than a few dollars in the pub to do well. A recent survey proves the point: A majority of U.S. workers do not think their bosses are truthful and one in four would fire their boss if they could.

It gets worse: The poll, conducted for a human resources and placement company, found 53 percent of workers did not think their boss was honest, a similar number did not think their boss was fair or patient and two-thirds did not think their boss was loyal.

On the plus side, two-thirds of workers would not change anything about their relationship with their boss, although I’m not certain what that means, or implies.

The poll is timely as National Boss Day falls on Friday, Oct 16, which gives us the perfect opportunity to ask, what do you think of your boss? Leave your comments below.

Nearly a year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, a failure that triggered the global economic crisis, the much-lambasted chief executive Richard Fuld seemed burdened — but not crushed — by the pressure of the upcoming annivesary.

“You know what, the anniversary’s coming up,” he told Reuters. “I’ve been pummeled, I’ve been dumped on, and it’s all going to happen again. I can handle it. You know what, let them line up.”

Fuld, a nearly 40-year veteran of the company, took Lehman’s reins in 1994 at one of its darkest hours and rebuilt it into the fourth-largest U.S. investment bank, a Wall Street powerhouse whose massively profitable mortgage banking machine inspired rivals’ envy.

But after filing the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history, Fuld was vilified and humiliated before a Congressional panel last October and named in nearly 40 different legal actions.

Opinions are still divided over his role in the disaster, but he doesn’t see the point of speaking out: “Nobody wants to hear it. The facts are out there. Nobody wants to hear it, especially not from me.”

Is he the scapegoat of a massive systemic failure on Wall Street, or does he deserve to be a central villain in the collapse?

Increasingly vocal calls for taxes on sugary drinks and junk food are fueling a behind- the-scenes battle that public health officials say is reminiscent of America’s war on cigarettes.

Fueling the debate are revenue-hungry federal, state and local governments officials who are eying a potential $50 billion windfall from taxes on over 10 years.

Take a look at the New York City Department of Health’s ad discouraging people from drinking sugary sodas, and let us know whether you think a junk food tax would be good public policy, or an intrusive step too far by the nanny state.

Listen up, true believers. Disney’s deal to buy Marvel for $4 billion opens up the possibility of Uncle Walt’s gang going head-to-head with the creations of Stan Lee.

Click here for four of our favorite smackdowns, and leave your own nominations in the comments section.

Is it anybody’s business how much money you make?

When it comes to Wall Street and the meltdown that whacked financial markets and emptied investors’ pockets, the normal rules of etiquette don’t seem to apply.

Wall Street salaries seem to be everybody’s business lately. Nevertheless, the Obama administration’s pay czar may try to keep a large portion of the compensation plans he is reviewing under wraps.

It’s Kenneth Feinberg’s job to review salaries at the biggest corporate recipients of government bailout funds.

How much of his report will become public is the multimillion dollar question.

Privacy laws and fears that highly compensated executives will become targets for an angry public argue for limiting disclosure.

“One of my clients makes $25 million a year and drives a Honda,” said Steven Eckhaus, of Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP. “He tries to lead a fairly modest life and he would be horrified if what he makes appeared in the paper. Not only would his neighbors know, but his kids would know, and it would affect his ability to raise his kids. These are people, not a circus sideshow.”

Congressman Alan Grayson told Reuters he is unsympathetic to that argument.

“If this is the same top talent that caused their firms to be destroyed and put the entire U.S. economy at risk, I wish they would leave the firms and leave the country,” he said.

What’s your view?

Should top earners keep their privacy, or does the public have a right to know? Leave your opinion in the comment section below.

More:

• U.S. pay czar says he can “claw back” exec compensation
• Wall Street ponders pay czar’s move on clawbacks
• Oil trader under scrutiny for phenomenal success
• AIG chief’s salary structured to reflect risk
• ‘Pay Czar’ Feinberg has tackled tough tasks before

Is there something faulty about the way Wall Street analysts look at the companies they cover?  Once again, with the latest quarterly earnings season about to end, the analysts have been wrong. This time, they have been way off the board wrong.

With 480 of the Standard & Poor's index of 500 leading companies having reported, Thomson Reuters research has found that some 73 percent came in better than expected. Only 9 percent of consensus projections were right and 19 percent came in worse than expected.

To a certain extent, this is not suprising. The consensus heading into the latest quarter was made gloomy by the state of the world economy and a lot of stock market losses over the past couple of years. You can be over-pessimistic just as easily as you can be over-optimistic.

But the longer-term track record for analysts is not that much better than the latest offerings. Over the past eight quarters, 63 percent of companies beat estimates, 11 percent matched and 26 percent missed estimates.

So, two questions. Why are they wrong? And if they are so wrong, should anyone pay attention to them?

Airlines are discovering that fuming passengers who have been stranded, delayed or just plain piqued are increasingly letting their undiluted rage fly around the Internet, often from the confines of their cramped airplane seat.

Twitter, which lets people broadcast 140-character instant text messages to countless readers, allows the venting to be loud, fast and public, and the technology has put carriers — used to bad publicity as part of daily operations — even more on the defensive as they race to tame Twitter furies every day.

Have you ever been stranded at an airport, stuck on the tarmac for hours, or lost your luggage? Share your airline horror stories here — we promise not to limit your frustrations to 140-characters.

Reuters has taken its monthly snapshot of the investment choices of leading fund management houses across the world. At the end of July, the picture painted was one of investors embracing risk and shutting down their safest holdings.

Equity holdings as a percentage of a typical balanced portfolio were at their highest since the end of August last year, just a couple of weeks before Lehman Brothers collapsed. Here is what has been happening to equity holdings this year: 

At the same time, cash holdings have been cut back drastically. They are now at a level last seen in May 2007.  Here's what that looks like:

Bonds offers a more mixed picture, but the latest month still shows a retreat that would be typical of roaring risk appetite:

Now the big question. Does all this add up to the start of a meaningful, long-term bull market? Or is it just overly optimistic exuberance?

Oxford SWF Project, a university think tank on sovereign wealth funds, is looking at reports that the latest entry in the field could be Scotland. The project has a new post about the Scottish government floating the idea of an oil stabilisation fund to use oil and gas revenues.  It cites Scottish cabinet secretary for finance John Swinney looking abroad gleefully:

“We want to harness the benefit of oil revenues now for future years. An oil fund can provide greater stability, protect our economy and support the transition to a low carbon economy. Norway’s oil fund is worth over £200 billion – despite the first instalment being made as recently as the mid 1990s – and Alaska’s oil fund even gives money back to its citizens every year.”

The SWF project reckons the idea is a good one, but wonders if something other than meets the eye is at play. It had two questions.

First, it wonders whether the plan might just be a political rebuke for the UK government from the ruling (and separatist) Scottish National Party over a perceived lack of savings over the years.  Second, it notes that the UK government floated the idea of a strategic investments fund back in April and questions whether "the Scottish SWF reflects a ‘whatever they have, we should have’ mentality".

Here's a third question. Is it not a bit late for an oil fund? UK oil and gas output, most of which is in Scottish waters, has more than halved since 1999.