By KEVIN HELLIKER

KANSAS CITY, Mo.—When he was a titan of Wall Street, Thomas H. Bailey didn't even know how to mount a horse.

Yet since retiring as chief executive of Janus Capital Group Inc. in 2002, Mr. Bailey has become a rising star in the cowboy sport of cutting.

During a competition here last month, Mr. Bailey and his teammate—a gelding named Kits Lil Pepto—separated, or "cut," a steer from a small group of cattle, then dashed from side to side to prevent the animal from rejoining its herd. Throughout the wild ride, Mr. Bailey stayed balanced in the saddle, showing why he has earned nearly $90,000 in the sport.

"Tom's good," said Matt Gaines, a champion cutter with winnings of $5.7 million, as he watched Mr. Bailey perform.

Mr. Bailey, 73 years old, represents a new force in the corral: the urban cowboy who can't be laughed off.

Photos: Rodeo Drive

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Steve Hebert for The Wall Street Journal

Billionaire Tom Bailey competed in the American Royal Cutting Horse competition at Hale Arena in Kansas City.

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Long mocked as a fake, the would-be Westerner these days isn't riding mechanical bulls or visiting dude ranches. He's competing respectably in an Old West sport that measures the ability to handle horses and cows.

Traditionally the pastime of ranch hands, cutting is luring a growing number of urbanites, many of them former captains of finance and industry, who are debunking the notion that real cowboys exist only on the range.

"These business leaders are showing that if they work hard, they can succeed at a cowboy sport," says Glory Ann Kurtz, a cowgirl journalist who writes a blog called All About Cutting.

Many old timers find all this troubling. A common complaint is that technology has created a super breed of cutting horse so talented that cowboy skills matter less than the money needed to purchase such an animal.

"The average cowboy can't afford to play no more, horse prices rising so high," says Pat Jacobs, a 73-year-old Texas rancher and legend of the sport. "Pedigree, I wonder if it hasn't taken the cowboy almost out of it."

As evidence that success can be bought, some cowboys point to Jon Winkelried, who last year resigned as the 49-year-old co-president of Goldman Sachs, where he had earned as much as $53 million a year.

A native of suburban New Jersey, Mr. Winkelried early this year made news for adding to his cutting-horse stable a $460,000 stallion named I Sho Spensive. "Winkelried's 219 Wins Amateur Classic," a cutting-horse newsletter reported in July, after he nabbed first place in a competition with a score of 219. This year, Mr. Winkelried, who declined to return calls for this story, has more than doubled his total earnings as a rider, to nearly $50,000.

******Read the rest of the article here.

Write to Kevin Helliker at kevin.helliker@wsj.com

By Robert Frank

Carlos Slim has always had a complicated relationship with philanthropy.

Bloomberg News

The Mexican billionaire, who Forbes still lists as the world’s richest man, said in 2007 that he could do more to help fight poverty by building businesses than by “being a Santa Claus.”

Mr. Slim’s signature also has been noticeably absent from the Gates-Buffett Giving Pledge. At a conference in Syndey last month, Mr. Slim said that charity accomplishes little.

“The only way to fight poverty is with employment,” he said. “Trillions of dollars have been given to charity in the last 50 years, and they don’t solve anything.”

As for the Giving Pledge, he said: “To give 50%, 40%, that does nothing,” Slim said. “There is a saying that we should leave a better country to our children. But it’s more important to leave better children to our country.”

In a speech in Mexico City Thursday, he reiterated his point that the best way to fight poverty is to create jobs.

Now Mr. Slim isn’t un-charitable. He has contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to his foundation and has funded millions of dollars in joint-venture projects with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

So he clearly isn’t against charity entirely. His point seems to be that society would benefit more if the wealthy channeled their creative energies and talents toward building job-creating businesses rather than doling out cash. It is the 21st century billionaire version of the old adage, “give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach him to fish and he eats for a lifetime.”

In these populist times, some might argue that Mr. Slim is being a selfish billionaire who’s simply justifying his own wealth accumulation. But he raises two good questions–ones I have heard from an increasing number of wealthy entrepreneurs:

Would Bill Gates and Warren Buffett be doing more for society by putting their time and money into new businesses rather than funding philanthropy?

Has philanthropy solved any major social problems in the past 50 years?

By JUSTIN LAHART

Home sales plunged in December, raising fresh concerns over the housing market's ability to recover when government support winds down.

Existing-home sales plunge in December, dropping lower than expected after three straight increases that were fed by a fat government tax credit. Dow Jones Newswires' Dawn Wotapka and Kathleen Madigan discuss what the latest figures say about the state of the U.S. housing market.

Sales of previously owned homes fell 16.7% from November to a 5.45 million annual rate, the National Association of Realtors said Monday, after a looming tax-credit deadline pushed buying decisions into previous months. The drop brought the pace of sales down to the lowest level since August.

The government's first-time home-buyer tax credit was initially scheduled to end Nov. 30, and there was a race to finish deals before it expired. But the tax credit was eventually extended until spring, complemented by an additional tax break for repeat buyers.

For all of 2009, there were 5.16 million home sales, up 4.9% from 4.91 million in 2008. It was the first annual sales gain since 2005.

Although economists expected Monday's report to show declining December home sales, few thought they would fall so sharply. The decline called into question the sector's ability to bounce back.

"We have a very fragile housing system," said Michael Carey, an economist with Calyon Securities in New York. He worried that as the government withdraws support from the housing market, prices could begin slipping again. That would put more homeowners into the position of owing more on their mortgage than their home is worth and could lead to another wave of foreclosures.

Related

• Housing: Hardly a 'Shock'
• EconTracker: Home Sales

 

Home Prices Not Rising Anytime Soon

5:13

Expiring tax credit for home buyers pressured home sales in December and then the credit was extended, so we're in uncharted territory in terms of volatility, according to Trulia CEO Peter Flint, who says prices aren't going up over the next six to 12 months. Stacey Delo reports.

It will be difficult to gauge how dependent on government support the housing market has become until the second half of the year. The current round of tax credits are for sales signed by the end of April and completed by the end of June. The looming expiration of those programs will likely create another sales surge in the spring.

The median price for a home sold in December was $178,300, up 4.9% from $170,000 in November and the largest monthly percentage price increase since 2005.

But the jump likely occurred because higher-end homes made up a larger share of total sales with the drop in first-time home buyers.

Regionally, December sales fell 19.5% in the Northeast, 25.8% in the Midwest, 16.3% in the South and 4.8% in the West.

Write to Justin Lahart at justin.lahart@wsj.com

Important article (click link below the video). P.S. Find a true expert in short sales, not a self-proclaimed expert.

By STEPHANIE SIMON

BUDA, Texas -- The state constitution doesn't say, in so many words, that Carl Mitz has the absolute right to pry open a horse's mouth, grab hold of the tongue, and commence sawing away at the back molars with a power tool.

But Mr. Mitz and his attorneys are pretty sure that's implied.

For a quarter-century, Mr. Mitz has practiced the obscure art of horse-teeth floating. Using instruments roughened with diamond grit, he has filed down hundreds of thousands of equine teeth so that they don't grow into sharp points that can cut the horses' cheeks or throw off their chewing rhythms.

It's a fairly mechanical job: Open equine mouth, insert hand, feel for trouble, file rough spots. Not glamorous, but potentially lucrative. Veteran floaters say they can make $300,000 a year. And it suits the laconic Mr. Mitz.

"This is what I know," he says. "This is what I do."

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Eli Meir Kaplan for The Wall Street Journal

Carl Mitz, who has practiced the obscure art of horse-teeth floating for a quarter-century, held Little America Feather's Evenstar's tongue while he inspected the horse's teeth.

But not, perhaps, for long.

Veterinary oversight boards in Texas and several other states have moved aggressively in recent years to rein in unlicensed floaters, ordering them to stop practicing or to work only under supervision of a licensed vet.

Read the rest of the article here.

Write to Stephanie Simon at stephanie.simon@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A29

By Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg

Gary Vaynerchuk’s new self-help book “Crush It!” is a national best-seller, with 95,000 copies in print after seven printings.

HarperStudio

Gary Vaynerchuk

The book, which explains how to transform personal passion into a successful business using the free tools of the Internet, is No. 5 on the Wall Street Journal business best-seller list.

And yes, he practices what he preaches. Mr. Vaynerchuk has 851,000 followers on Twitter and 33,000 fans on Facebook. “Crush It!” is published by HarperStudio, an imprint of News Corp.’s HarperCollins Publishers. News Corp. also publishes The Wall Street Journal.

Gary V’s Five Commandments of Social Networking

1. Treat it like a cocktail party.

You have to get involved in different conversations. We don’t start selling the minute we meet people. It’s not a coupon outlet. It’s a real opportunity to connect with consumers.

HarperCollins

2. Don’t draw lines in the sand.

Way too many business people say Twitter is stupid. Any product like Facebook is something you need to pay attention to in the business world. Some people don’t like to change. Instead, they feel they’re right, and say something is silly. Also, there are people who have vested interests in having these platforms fail because their understudies understand it so much better than they do. They are afraid they’ll be pushed out the door.

3. Humanize yourself or your brand.

It is OK to say, going to a soccer game. Or, having a hot dog. Humanization is quite powerful in this space. To be successful, this is the kind of thing you say 2% of the time.

4. Understand the authenticity.

Each consumer’s voice is dramatically more powerful today. This is word of mouth on steroids. The individual consumer has much more weight with corporate America. Most corporate brands will be wrapping their heads around the power of the individual consumer next year.

5. Interacting with potential clients and becoming part of the community is a real job.

You can’t spend ten minutes a day on this and think the social genie will save you. Most of all, you have to care. And you have to listen. That’s my overall arching thesis on this entire space. People think it’s about talking. What you say is irrelevant. The friend that listens is better than the friend who talks.