The Boss: For Kathryn Giusti, Two Wars Against Multiple Myeloma

MY identical twin sister, Karen, and I have two older brothers. We were raised in Blue Bell, Pa., where my father was a family physician and my mother was a nurse. We spent summers on Long Beach Island, N.J., where both of us were waitresses at a busy seafood restaurant.

Kathryn E. Giusti is the C.E.O. and co-founder of the Multiple Myeloma Research Founda- tion in Norwalk, Conn.

AGE 54

LOVES TO Watch her son, who plays baseball, and her daughter, a cheerleader, at their events.

My sister and I have always been best friends. We even went to the same college, the University of Vermont. I was scientifically inclined and majored in biology. We graduated in 1980, and my sister later became a lawyer.

I was accepted to medical school, but my father was opposed to that. He thought I was too impatient to cope with medicine’s bureaucracy. Instead, I took a job in sales at Merck, the drug maker.

To my chagrin, the company sent me to its site in West Point, Pa., very close to home. After two years, I moved over to work in the company’s marketing and communications area, but I began to realize that I needed some formal business education.

In 1983, I entered Harvard Business School, specializing in marketing. I met my husband, Paul Giusti, there. After we earned our M.B.A.’s in 1985, he started a real estate development business in the Midwest, and I joined Gillette in Boston in its personal care division.

We married in 1990 and moved to Chicago, and I worked briefly at Brach’s, the candy manufacturer, in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill. I then joined G. D. Searle in Skokie, helping to develop new products like Ambien. Later, I was promoted to manage the company’s worldwide arthritis drugs division.

In late 1995, I was feeling tired and went in for a physical. Blood tests found that I had multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer. I was shocked because I was only 37. My grandfather had had the disease, but I wasn’t in the usual demographic or age group. The scariest part was that there were no drugs in the pipeline to combat the cancer.

Our first child, Nicole, was about 2 when I received the diagnosis. I was determined that I was going to have another child, which I did. Our son, David, was born in 1997.

At that point, I did not expect to live beyond a few years, so we moved to New Canaan, Conn., to be closer to our families. Paul sold his company, but the new owners who were based in McLean, Va., asked him to remain as chief operating officer, which he did, working from a New Canaan office.

After our move, my sister and I organized a fund-raiser, garnering $400,000. We used that to start the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, which initially made grants to speed development of cancer-fighting drugs. (Later, it also worked with academic and clinical centers and pharmaceutical companies on initiatives like a tissue bank.) Six years later, in 2004, I started the Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium to foster collaboration among cancer centers, to start a patient tissue bank for research and to encourage broader participation in clinical trials.

I was working full time and raising my family, but in 2005 my health began to deteriorate. In early 2006, I received a stem cell transplant. Karen donated the cells, and the operation was done at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. When I came home, I weighed 90 pounds and was bald and fragile.

It took several months to recover, but I returned to work later that year and kept building our network of 16 clinics and hospitals that participate in the clinical trials, tissue bank and genome research. We’ve raised $200 million since the foundation opened and are now focused on helping patients use individualized medicine to fight cancer.

I still get a huge knot in my stomach every two months, when I check in at Dana-Farber for my test results. But I believe we have made some real progress because I continue to work impatiently to cure this disease and other cancers as well.

As told to Elizabeth Olson.

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Settlement Expected With Banks Over Home Loans

Banking regulators are close to a $10 billion settlement with 14 banks that would end the government’s efforts to hold lenders responsible for foreclosure abuses like faulty paperwork and excessive fees that may have led to evictions, according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

Under the settlement, a significant amount of the money, $3.75 billion, would go to people who have already lost their homes, making it potentially more generous to former homeowners than a broad-reaching pact in February between state attorneys general and five large banks. That set aside $1.5 billion in cash relief for Americans.

Most of the relief in both agreements is meant for people who are struggling to stay in their homes and need the banks to reduce their payments or lower the amount of principal they owe.

The $10 billion pact would be the latest in a series of settlements that regulators and law enforcement officials have reached with banks to hold them accountable for their role in the 2008 financial crisis that sent the housing market into the deepest slump since the Great Depression. As of early 2012, four million Americans had been foreclosed upon since the beginning of 2007, and a huge amount of abandoned homes swamped many states, including California, Florida and Arizona.

Federal agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department are continuing to pursue the banks for their packaging and sale of troubled mortgage securities that imploded during the financial crisis.

Housing advocates were largely unaware of the latest rounds of secret talks, which have been occurring for roughly a month. But some have criticized the government for not dealing more harshly with bankers in light of their lax standards for making loans and packaging them as investments, as well as their problems with modifying troubled loans and processing foreclosures.

A deal could be reached by the end of the week between the 14 banks and the nation’s top banking regulators, led by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, four people with knowledge of the negotiations said. It was unclear how many current and former homeowners would receive money or when it would be distributed.

Told on Sunday night of the imminent settlement, Lynn Drysdale, a lawyer at Jacksonville Area Legal Aid and a former co-chairwoman of the National Association of Consumer Advocates, said: “It’s certainly a victory for consumers and could help entire neighborhoods. But the devil, as they say, is in the details, and for those people who have had to totally uproot their lives because of eviction it may still not be enough.”

In recent weeks within the upper echelons of the comptroller’s office, pressure was mounting to negotiate a banner settlement with the banks, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The reason was that some within the agency had started to realize that a mandatory review of millions of bank loans was not yielding meaningful examples of the banks’ wrongfully evicting homeowners who were current on their payments or making partial payments, according to the people.

Representative of banking regulators did not return calls for comment on Sunday.

The biggest action against the banks for foreclosure-related abuses has been the $26 billion settlement between the five largest mortgage servicers and the state attorneys general, Justice Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development after allegations arose in 2010 that bank employees were churning daily through hundreds of documents used in foreclosure proceedings without properly reviewing them for accuracy.

The same banks in that settlement — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Ally Financial — are included in the current negotiations.

Under the terms of the settlement being negotiated, $6 billion would come from banks to be used for relief for homeowners, including reducing their principal, helping them refinance and donating abandoned homes, the people said.

The proposed settlement would also halt a separate sweeping review of more than four million loan files that the comptroller’s office and the Federal Reserve required the banks undertake as part of a consent order in April 2011.

Under the terms of the order, the 14 banks had to hire independent consultants to pore through the loan records to determine whether the banks illegally charged fees, forced homeowners to take out costly insurance or miscalculated loan payment amounts. Consultants initially estimated that each loan would take about eight hours, at a cost of up to $250 an hour, to go through.

The costs of the reviews have ballooned, though, according to people with knowledge of the reviews, in part because each loan file is taking up to 20 hours to review. Since its inception, the reviews have cost the banks about $1.5 billion, according to those people.

Pressure to reach a settlement with the banks has been building, particularly within the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, amid widespread frustration that the banks’ mandatory review of loan files was arduous and expensive, and would not yield promised relief to homeowners, according to five former and current banking regulators.

In private meetings with top bank executives, these people said, regulators have admitted that the reviews had gone awry. At one point this month, an official from the comptroller’s office said the agency had “miscalculated” the scope and requirements of the reviews, according to the people with knowledge of the negotiations.

When the settlement discussions heated up this month, some banking executives said they felt they would be vindicated by the regulators. These executives said that they had raised objections to the reviews early on, but those concerns were largely dismissed by regulatory officials, according to the people with knowledge of the negotiations.

Instead, officials from the comptroller’s office, these people said, have used the loan reviews as a negotiating tool, telling banks that they can either sign on to a large settlement or be forced to pay billions over several more years until the consultants finish the reviews.

When regulators approached the banks to broach a settlement this month, they met first with Wells Fargo and proposed that the banks pay $15 billion, according to the people familiar with the discussions. After negotiations, though, the regulators agreed to $10 billion.

All of the 14 banks are expected to sign on.

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Obama blames GOP for 'fiscal cliff' brinksmanship

WASHINGTON -- President Obama blamed Republican leaders for the latest round of brinkmanship in Washington and said it was now up to lawmakers to find a way back from the so-called fiscal cliff.

In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” aired Sunday, Obama said he had reached out to Republicans for weeks, but their refusal to raise taxes had blocked progress.

“They have had trouble saying yes to a number of repeated offers,” Obama said. In Friday’s meeting with congressional leaders at the White House, “I suggested to them if they can't do a comprehensive package of smart deficit reductions, let's at minimum make sure that people's taxes don't go up and that 2 million people don't lose their unemployment insurance.

“And I was modestly optimistic yesterday,” he added in the interview taped Saturday, referring to the aftermath of that meeting, “but we don't yet see an agreement. And now the pressure's on Congress to produce.”

PHOTOS: Notable moments of the 2012 presidential election

Senate leaders and their aides spent Saturday working on a deal that would protect most taxpayers from seeing their incomes taxes rise Jan. 1. The deal may also set new estate tax rates, prevent an expansion of the alternative minimum tax and extend unemployment insurance.

If the effort is successful, a final proposal is expected later Sunday, when senators are set to meet in party caucuses.

A spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell responded to the president's criticism:

"While the president was taping those discordant remarks yesterday, Sen. McConnell was in the office working to bring Republicans and Democrats together on a solution," Don Stewart said. "Discussions continue today."

In the interview, Obama said he expected an “adverse reaction in the markets” and depressed consumer spending if lawmakers allow the tax increase to take effect as scheduled -- and he tried to lay the blame on Republicans. Economists have suggested the combination of the tax increases, along with nearly $65 billion in spending cuts, could knock the economy back into a recession.

Obama did not offer a clear strategy for avoiding those spending cuts, which Congress and the president agreed to in 2011 as a way to force themselves to act on a larger deficit reduction deal. That deal has remained elusive, and Obama said in the interview that Republicans have had trouble saying yes to his offers.

QUIZ: How much do you know about the fiscal cliff?

Pressed by host David Gregory on why that is, Obama answered:

“That's something you're probably going to have to ask them, because, David, you follow this stuff pretty carefully. The offers that I’ve made to them have been so fair that a lot of Democrats get mad at me. I mean, I offered to make some significant changes to our entitlement programs in order to reduce the deficit,” he said, referring specifically to a change in the way Social Security cost of living increases are calculated, which many liberal groups opposed.

“They say that their biggest priority is making sure that we deal with the deficit in a serious way, but the way they're behaving is that their only priority is making sure that tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are protected. That seems to be their only overriding, unifying theme.”

Obama has tried to frame the debate as a battle over taxes. One Republican acknowledged Sunday that the president appears poised to win the political battle on that front. If lawmakers agree on allowing taxes to rise on top earners, “it will accomplish a political victory for the president,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina

“Hats off to the president. He stood his ground; he’s going to get tax rate increases … on upper income Americans. And the sad news for the country is we’ve accomplished very little in terms of not becoming Greece or getting out of debt.… Hats off to the president -- he won.”

[For the Record, 8:05 a.m. PST  Dec. 30: This post has been updated to include reactions to Obama's comments from McConnell's office.]

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NASA Sets Record with Ion Thrusters Test

NASA has completed a 43,000 hour stress test — a record for ion thrusters — on a new rocket propulsion system that could extend future space travel to farther reaches of the solar system.

Developed by NASA’s Evolutionary Xenon Thruster Project, the 7-kilowatt ion thruster can burn 10-12 times longer than the conventional chemical thrusters used today. Though not practical for manned-spaceflight, the system could power exploratory rockets that reach outer planets and their moons.

[More from Mashable: NASA Unveils E-books on Hubble, Webb Space Telescopes]

To find out more, watch the video above and let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Photo courtesy of NASA

[More from Mashable: First ‘Alien Earth’ Will Be Found in 2013]

BONUS: 15 Twitter Accounts Every Space Lover Should Follow

Sunita Williams

Captain Williams is a NASA astronaut who recently completed the first triathlon in space.

Click here to view this gallery.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Hot spots draw believers, but not doomsday

As the sun rose from time zone to time zone across the world on Friday, there was still no sign of the world’s end — but that didn’t stop those convinced that a 5,125-year Mayan calendar predicts the apocalypse from gathering at some of the world’s purported survival hot spots.

Many of the esoterically inclined expected a new age of consciousness — others wanted a party. But, in some places said to offer salvation from the end, fewer people showed up than officials had predicted — much to the disappointment of vendors hoping to sell souvenirs.

Here are some key places being marked by the fascination over doomsday rumors:

MEXICO

In an area of Mexico that was once the ancient Mayan heartland, spiritualists gathered in the darkness before dawn on Friday to prepare white clothes, drums, conch shells and incense. They believed the sunrise would herald the birth of a new and better age as a vast cycle in the Mayan calendar comes to an end.

Many people who came to Yucatan for the occasion were already calling it “a new sun” and “a new era.”

FRANCE

According to one rumor, a rocky mountain in the French Pyrenees will be the sole place on Earth to escape destruction. A giant UFO and aliens are said to be waiting under the mountain, ready to burst through and spirit those nearby to safety. But there is bad news for those seeking salvation: French gendarmes, some on horseback, blocked outsiders from reaching the Bugarach peak and its village of some 200 people.

Eric Freysselinard, head of local government, said the security forces had “partially stopped the new age enthusiasts as well as curious people from coming to the area.”

Meanwhile, some Bugarach residents dressed up like aliens, with tinfoil costumes and funnels and fake antenna on their heads, strolling around their village Friday to make light of the rumored UFO prophecy.

RUSSIA

Doomsday rumors have prompted some people across Russia to stock up on candles, water, canned foods and other non-perishable foods. The apocalypse has proven a good business, with some shops selling survival aid packages that include soap and vodka.

In Moscow, salvation has also been promised in the underground bunker for the former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin — with a 50 percent refund if nothing happens. An underground stay was originally priced at 50,000 rubles ($ 1,625) but dropped to 15,000 ($ 490) a week ahead of the feared end.

The bunker, located 65 meters (210 feet) below ground, was designed to withstand a nuclear attack. Now home to a small museum, it has an independent electricity supply, water and food — but no more room, because the museum has already sold out all 1,000 tickets.

BRITAIN

Hundreds of people have converged on Stonehenge for an “End of the World” party that coincides with the Winter Solstice.

Arthur Uther Pendragon, Britain’s best-known druid, said he was anticipating a much larger crowd than usual at Stonehenge this year. But he doesn’t agree that the world is ending, noting that he and fellow druids believe that things happen in cycles.

“We’re looking at it more as a new beginning than an end,” he said. “We’re looking at new hope.”

Meanwhile, end-of-days parties will be held across London on Friday. One event billed as a “last supper club” is offering a three-course meal served inside an “ark.”

SERBIA

Some Serbs are saying to forget that sacred mountain in the French Pyrenees. The place to be Friday is Mount Rtanj, a pyramid-shaped peak in Serbia already drawing cultists.

According to legend, the mountain once swallowed an evil sorcerer who will be released on doomsday in a ball of fire that will hit the mountain top. The inside of the mountain will then open up, becoming a safe place to hide as the sorcerer goes on to destroy the rest of the world. In the meantime, some old coal mine shafts have been opened up as safe rooms.

On Friday a New Age group called “The Spirit of Rtanj” was holding a conference there. Participants, however, said they expect not the end of time but the start of a new time cycle. Locals turned out to sell brandy and herbs.

“There will be no tragedy, no doomsday,” said resident Dalibor Jovic. “It was supposed to happen at 12:12 and I think that time has passed. So, we can now go on with our lives and be happy to be alive.”

TURKEY

A small Turkish village known for its wines, Sirince, has also been touted as the only place after Bugarach that would escape the world’s end. But on Friday journalists and security officials outnumbered cultists. This outcome disappointed local business people who had prepared a range of doomsday products to sell, including a specially labeled Doomsday wine and Turkish delight candy whose “best before” date was Dec. 21, 2012. One restaurant prepared a special “last meal” menu that included a “heaven kebab” and “forbidden fruit dessert.”

ITALY

Another spot said to be spared: Cisternino, a beautiful small town in southern Italy in an area of trulli, traditional dry stone huts with conical roofs. The notion that Cisternino could be a safe haven at world’s end derives from an Indian guru, Babaji, who said “Cisternino will become an island” at world’s end. His followers built a community in Cisternino centered on an ashram built in 1979. Hotel bookings are up this weekend.

Mayor Donato Baccaro told the AP that the beauty of the place has inspired many foreigners to live there. “This confirms that this place has a special energy,” he said.

CHINA

A fringe Christian group has been spreading rumors about the world’s impending end, prompting Chinese authorities to detain more than 500 people this week and seize leaflets, video discs, books and other material.

Those detained are reported to be members of the group Almighty God, also called Eastern Lightning, which preaches that Jesus has reappeared as a woman in central China. Authorities in the province of Qinghai say they are waging a “severe crackdown” on the group, accusing it of attacking the Communist Party and the government.

U.S.

Dozens of Michigan schools canceled classes for thousands of students to cool off rumored threats of violence and problems related to doomsday. The fears were exacerbated by the recent shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, which “changed all of us,” the school system in Genesee County said. “Canceling school is the right thing to do.”

___

Associated Press writers Florent Bajrami in Bugarach, France; Mansur Mirovalev in Moscow; Peppino Ciraci in Cisternino, Italy; Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey; Paisley Dodds in London; and Dejan Mladenovic in Mount Rtanj, Serbia, contributed to this report.

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Senate Leaders Racing to Beat Fiscal Deadline

WASHINGTON — Senate leaders and their aides spent Saturday searching for a formula to extend tax cuts for most Americans that could win bipartisan support in the Senate and final approval in the fractious House by the new year, hoping to prevent large tax increases and budget cuts that could threaten the fragile economy.

As part of the last-minute negotiations, the lawmakers were haggling over unemployment benefits, cuts in Medicare payments to doctors, taxes on large inheritances and how to limit the impact of the alternative minimum tax, a parallel income tax system that is intended to ensure the rich pay a fair share but that is increasingly encroaching on the middle class.

President Obama said that if talks between the Senate leaders broke down, he wanted the Senate to schedule an up-or-down vote on a narrower measure that would extend only the middle-class tax breaks and unemployment benefits. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said he would schedule such a vote on Monday absent a deal.

If Congress is unable to act before the new year, Washington will effectively usher in a series of automatic tax increases and a program of drastic spending cuts that economists say could pitch the country back into recession.

The president and lawmakers put those spending cuts in place this year as draconian incentives that would force them to confront the nation’s growing debt. Now, lawmakers are trying to keep them from happening, though it seemed most likely on Saturday that the cuts, known as sequestration, would be left for the next Congress, to be sworn in this week.

“We just can’t afford a politically self-inflicted wound to our economy,” Mr. Obama said Saturday in his weekly address. “The housing market is healing, but that could stall if folks are seeing smaller paychecks. The unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been since 2008, but already families and businesses are starting to hold back because of the dysfunction they see in Washington.”

The fear of another painful economic slowdown appears to have accelerated deal-making on Capitol Hill with just 48 hours left before the so-called fiscal cliff arrives. Weeks of public sniping between Mr. Reid, the Democratic leader, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, ebbed on Friday evening with pledges of cooperation and optimism from both.

On Saturday, though, that sentiment was put to the test as 98 senators waited for word whether their leaders had come up with a proposal that might pass muster with members of both parties. The first votes in the Senate, if needed, are scheduled for Sunday afternoon.

“It’s a little like playing Russian roulette with the economy,” said Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia. “The consequences could be enormous.”

Members of Congress were mostly absent from the Capitol on Saturday, after two days of Senate votes on other matters and a day before both chambers were to reconvene. However, senior aides were working on proposals in their offices or at their homes.

Speaker John A. Boehner stopped by the Capitol briefly to see his chief of staff on Saturday afternoon. Mr. McConnell spent much of the day in his office.

Aides to Mr. Reid were expecting to receive offers from Mr. McConnell’s staff, but no progress was reported by midday. Even if the talks took a positive turn, Senate aides said, no announcement was expected before the leaders briefed their caucuses on Sunday.

The chief sticking point among lawmakers and the president continued to be how to set tax rates for the next decade and beyond. With the Bush-era tax cuts expiring, Mr. Obama and Democrats have said they want tax rates to rise on income over $250,000 a year, while Republicans want a higher threshold, perhaps at $400,000.

Democrats and Republicans are also divided on the tax on inherited estates, which currently hits inheritances over $5 million at 35 percent. On Jan. 1, it is scheduled to rise to 55 percent beginning with inheritances exceeding $1 million.

The political drama in Washington over the weekend was given greater urgency by the fear that the economic gains of the past two years could be lost if no deal is reached.

Some of the consequences of Congressional inaction would be felt almost at once on Tuesday, in employee paychecks, doctors’ offices and financial markets. Analysts said the effect would be cumulative, building over time.

An early barometer would probably be the financial markets, where skittish investors, as they have during previous Congressional cliffhangers, could send the stock market lower on fears of another prolonged period of economic distress.

In 2011, the political battles over whether to raise the nation’s borrowing limit prompted Standard & Poor’s to downgrade its rating of American debt, suggesting a higher risk of default. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 635 points in a volatile day of trading after the downgrade.

This month, traders have again nervously watched the political maneuvering in Washington, and the markets have jumped or dropped at tidbits of news from the negotiations. Two weeks ago, Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, predicted that if lawmakers failed to reach a deal, “the economy will, I think, go off the cliff.”

Immediately — regardless of whether a deal is reached — every working American’s taxes will go up because neither party is fighting to extend a Social Security payroll tax cut that has been in place for two years.

Robert Pear and Jennifer Steinhauer contributed reporting.

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Suspect in homeless woman's burning is mentally ill, police say

By Ashley Powers, Bob Pool and Richard Winton

December 28, 2012, 8:36 a.m.

A man arrested on suspicion of setting a homeless woman on fire while she slept on a Van Nuys bus bench is believed to be mentally ill, police said.

There was no rhyme or reason for Thursday's attack that left the woman known as Flo in critical condition after she was allegedly doused with rubbing alcohol and set on fire by Dennis Petillo, 24, said Los Angeles Police Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese.

“There was no incident or dispute or clear motivation for this horrific attack. He did not know his victim. It defies explanation,” Albanese said. “He is not of sound mind.... The motive is mental illness.”

Police have not released the woman's name, but residents said she was Flo Parker. She was also known as Violet: a 5-foot-tall woman with dirty blond hair and a time-worn face that made her look older than her 67 years. She remained in critical condition Friday.

“This is a hate crime as far as I’m concerned. All this woman did was try to sit out here and get warm,” said Barbara Weiss, 57, who works for a company that provides transportation to the handicapped.

In Thursday’s early hours, witness Erickson Ipina told reporters, he watched in horror as the attack unfolded. A man walked out of the Walgreens with what appeared to be rubbing alcohol, he said.

“He just poured it all over the old lady,” Ipina said. “Then he threw the match on her and started running.”

Ipina said he gave chase. “Hey, stop right there!” he said he yelled. “Stop right there!” But the man kept running.

“I pulled out my cellphone and called 911 and then he just turned back on me and pulled out a knife,” said Ipina, whose account was confirmed by the LAPD.

Police arrested Petillo on suspicion of attempted murder. Since 2008, he has pleaded guilty twice to charges related to vehicle theft. The second time, he was sentenced to two years in prison.

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Piano maker Steinway takes down “for sale” sign

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Steinway Musical Instruments Inc, the famous manufacturer of pianos, saxophones and trumpets, said on Wednesday it had decided not to sell itself following a 17-month-long exploration of strategic alternatives.

An American icon synonymous with handmade grand pianos, Steinway has struggled to keep its production margins competitive amid stagnant sales, and has seen its shares plunge 10 percent year-to-date. Still, its third-quarter earnings last month offered signs that cost-cutting was paying off.

In a statement on Wednesday, Steinway said it had received several non-binding indications of interest in buying the company, following talks with other companies in the sector as well as private equity, yet these did not offer more value than its own strategic plan.

“We will continue to focus management’s efforts on execution of that plan and we look forward to a prosperous 2013,” Steinway CEO Michael Sweeney said in the statement.

An in-principle agreement to sell its band instrument division to an investor group led by two of its board members, Dana Messina and John Stoner, was also scrapped in light of the current operating performance of the band division, Steinway said.

In July 2011, Messina, Stoner and other members of management made an offer for Steinway’s band instrument and online music divisions, prompting the company to set up a special committee in order to assess it.

Later that month, Steinway asked investment bank Allen & Company LLC to a assist the special committee on exploring strategic alternatives that could also include selling the whole company outright to other interested parties.

By October 2011, Messina had stepped down as CEO of the company after 15 years at the helm to pursue his bid, yet he remained a board member. He was replaced by Sweeney, a chairman of the board of Star Tribune Media Holdings and a former president of Starbucks Coffee Company (UK) Ltd.

Steinway said on Wednesday that it was continuing a separate process to sell its leasehold interest in New York’s Steinway Hall building, situated on Manhattan’s 57th Street, and was in talks with several parties.

According to its website, Steinway & Sons, the company’s piano unit, opened the first Steinway Hall on 14th Street in Manhattan in 1866.

With a main auditorium of 2,000 seats, it became New York City’s artistic and cultural center, housing the New York Philharmonic until Carnegie Hall opened in 1891. These days, Steinway Hall is a showroom for the company’s instruments.

The Waltham, Massachusetts-based company’s pianos have been used by legendary artists such as Cole Porter and Sergei Rachmaninoff and by contemporary ones like Chinese concert pianist Lang Lang.

(Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Editing by M.D. Golan)

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Well: Spinach Recipes for Health

Spinach goes well with all kinds of foods. It’s also a green that is easy to find year-round. As Martha Rose Shulman writes in this week’s Recipes for Health:

Spinach has remained a part of my holiday ritual. I love the convenience of bagged spinach, but I prefer the richness of the lush bunches I get at the farmers’ market. I don’t mind stemming and washing it, but if you are pressed for time the bagged spinach is a godsend, especially if you live in a cold climate and don’t have access to farmers’ market spinach in December.

Below are five new ways to add spinach to your meal. And for more spinach recipes, see “Making Spinach the Star of the Meal.”

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Spinach and Millet Timbale With Tomato Sauce
A timbale is a molded custard, somewhat similar to a quiche without a crust.

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Garlic Soup With Spinach
A quick and easy soup that is a great way to use any leftover turkey stock from Thanksgiving.

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Penne With Mushroom Ragout and Spinach
This is a delicious meal no matter what variety of mushrooms you have on hand.

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Spinach Gnocchi
A considerably lighter version of the classic gnocchi made with spinach and ricotta.

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Spinach, Sardine and Rice Gratin
This classic Provençal gratin is a good way to work fish that is high in omega-3s into your diet.

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Amid Fiscal Stalemate, How to Handle Tax Rate Uncertainty

So we’re left with no idea how much we’ll be paying in federal income taxes in 2013, and a wide range of possibilities for taxes on investments and estates and tax deductions for mortgage interest and charitable contributions. Plenty of people will spend the next several days feeling helpless, with one eye on the stock market and the other on Washington.

For all the uncertainty, though, there are a few things we do know about how things will change next year. For example, new taxes, some of which will help pay for Medicare, will affect a few million affluent households.

We also know that in all likelihood, whatever happens in Washington in the coming days or weeks won’t come close to solving the problem that tends to clear the room when you say it aloud: We are not collecting enough money to pay for the promises we’ve made to one another. It isn’t just Medicare, either. Many states have steadfastly refused to set aside the trillions of dollars they will need to cover benefits for public workers once they retire.

As for what you should do about all of this, the answer, for now, is probably nothing. In the short term, stock prices may decline and the economy may get the hiccups, but it’s foolish for amateurs to try to alter their investment portfolios to take advantage of the situation. Leave that to the hedge funds, and watch how many of them get it wrong.

In the long term, however, prepare to make the kind of attitude adjustment that can take a while to embrace. A decade or two from now, most of us will probably be paying more in taxes or getting fewer services from the government than we do now. Once that happens, you’ll need to earn more, save more, live on less or take better advantage of legal tax avoidance strategies.

In fact, you may want to try to do all of these things in the next couple of years, just to see which ones you can accomplish with the least amount of pain.

Here is what we do know will happen in 2013. First, there is a new tax of 0.9 percent on wages, other compensation and self-employment income above $200,000, if you’re single, or $250,000, if you’re married and filing your taxes jointly. This is on top of the existing Medicare tax.

Second, there is a new tax of 3.8 percent on investment earnings, including interest, dividends and capital gains, in addition to whatever the capital gains tax ends up being. It applies to single people with modified adjusted gross income of $200,000, or $250,000 for married couples filing jointly.

There is still some time to maneuver around the second tax. If you have winning investments you were planning to sell soon anyway, say for a down payment on a house, you might as well do it by Monday. That way, you can avoid the new tax if you’re certain you’ll be in the qualifying income category next year.

A few other changes: For now, you can generally take a tax deduction only for unreimbursed medical expenses that exceed 7.5 percent of your adjusted gross income. That floor will rise to 10 percent next year, except for people 65 and over, who won’t be subject to it until 2017.

Also, if you save money in a flexible spending account for health care expenses, 2013 will bring a $2,500 cap on what you can set aside each year while avoiding income taxes. Many people routinely saved $5,000 in the past.

Sometime in the next few weeks, we’ll presumably learn more about the new tax rates on income, capital gains, dividends and estates. A solution may come in stages, with a temporary patch now and the promise of a longer-term deal later.

But this is only the beginning, and if you want to read the Stephen King version of our collective fiscal story, there are a few sources to consult. You could start with the radical centrists at Third Way, a research group, who are the best splashers of cold water that I’ve read on the topic of the federal budget. They present some truly scary data while attempting to persuade Democrats to accept cuts to Medicare and other programs.

In 2010, for instance, 11,712 people turned 25 each day, while just 6,670 turned 65. By 2030, 12,499 people will be turning 25 each day, but the number turning 65 will jump to 10,948. The 65-year-olds in 2030 will probably live longer than the people who turned 65 in 2010, and keeping them alive could cost a lot more.

The Pew Center on the States, using the states’ own actuarial data, estimates that there is a $1.38 trillion dollar gap between what governments have set aside to pay for public employees’ pensions and retiree health care costs and their actual obligations. Robert Novy-Marx, an assistant professor at the University of Rochester’s Simon Graduate School of Business, and Joshua D. Rauh, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, believe the shortfall in pension financing alone is actually $3 trillion to $4 trillion.

If states were to try to fill the gap solely by raising taxes, Mr. Novy-Marx and Mr. Rauh estimate that the cost per household in 2011 would have been $2,250 in New York, $2,000 in New Jersey and $1,994 in California — and we’d need to pay that amount every year for 30 years, with adjustments for inflation. Happy New Year!

These numbers boggle the mind, which is why you’re not seeing them in the newsletters that state legislators send to your home. Instead, lawmakers are trying to change the benefits promised to public employees. But even minor changes have led to lawsuits that could take a decade to resolve. By then, the obligations will probably have grown much larger.

Read enough of these reality checks, and a hazy sort of reckoning starts to take shape. It’s not clear how high taxes will go or how many services — from retiree health care to garbage removal — we may someday need to pay more for, or cover ourselves. But it’s going to cost you more money one way or the other, unless you’re in a truly low tax bracket.

That brings us to those legal tax avoidance maneuvers, which often benefit people who can save. Flexible spending accounts for medical costs will still save you hundreds of dollars in taxes each year, even with a $2,500 cap. A health savings account, the kind that pairs up with a high-deductible health insurance policy, can grow into a sizable pile if you save the money and use it in retirement instead of to pay out-of-pocket medical expenses now. And the fact that the affluent can still avoid capital gains taxes, and get an income tax break in many states, on hundreds of thousands of dollars of college savings via 529 plans is a minor miracle.

There is also the Roth individual retirement account, where even the low-six-figure set can put away money on which they’ve already paid income taxes, leave it there for decades in stocks and bonds, and pull it out without paying a dime of capital gains or other taxes.

That’s the story — for now, at least. In 30 or 40 years, if things are really grim, might the federal government try to tax withdrawals from Roth accounts with enormous balances? As we’re learning now, most great tax deals, like the mortgage interest deduction for beach houses and the tax-free health insurance benefits that many of us get from our employers, may not last forever.

We don’t have much control over what will happen in Washington or our state capitals next year, or 10 years from now. But most of us can probably find ways to earn a little more, save a little extra or spend a little less. Pick just one of those options, make it your New Year’s resolution and see if it helps you feel more in control of your financial destiny by this time next year.

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