One bidder recently offered up an astounding $610,000 for the chance to have a half-hour coffee meeting with the chief executive officer of Apple.

The  auction was hosted on the web in order to benefit the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. The host of the auction, Charitybuzz.com, received 86 bids for the chance to pick Tim Cook’s brain for 30 minutes.

The website originally estimated that they would only raise around US$50,000 in the auction for a little of Cook’s time. Not that that’s something to sneeze at.

Don’t be surprised if other such auctions for the time of bigwig business leaders grabs future headlines. The Apple CEO is following in the footsteps of other prominent heads of major corporations. Famous businessman Warren Buffett publicly encouraged other business leaders to donate their time in this manner to charity. Buffett himself raised US$3.46 million last year for his charity of choice, the Glide Foundation.

If you had the chance to ask the CEO of a Fortune 500 company any question, what would you ask?

• In 2012 Alberta Tourism Minister Christine Cusanelli was forced to repay $10k in expenses that she had used to fly her mother and daughter to the London Olympics.

• In 2010 dodgy doings came to light in the Nova Scotia Parliament, where MLAs were doing everything from trying to sell their office furniture to creating forged documents.

• In 2006 and 2007 Conservative MP Bev Oda paid back over $20,000 in limousine rides she had improperly charged. She again came under fire in 2012 after it was revealed she had improperly charged taxpayers for lavish hotel stays in London.

• In 2006, the In and Out scandal saw Conservative fundraisers use slippery tactics to get around campaign election spending limits. They later repaid $230,000.

• Think these are bad? Hilarious attempts to expense just about anything are pervasive everywhere an elected (and unelected) official has an expense account. In the UK one politician had the gall to attempt to expense a hot pink rocking chair. She later repaid the cost of that, and the matching pink footstool.

As Ms. Middleton’s July due date quickly approaches, she’ll likely be seen more around the streets of London finding the top-notch nursery items to ready the royal couple for the impending birth. Obviously the duchess has exclusive access to the most-coveted (and pricey) newborn swag around. So what items is she choosing for her little one?

If you’re looking to dress up your nursery like a royal, here are some of the key items Kate has made it clear she can’t live without:

Moses bassinet

Cost: $500

Kate was recently seen with her mother scooping up this beautiful Moses bassinet from the upscale Almonds store in the heart of the upmarket of the South Kensington neighbourhood. The white wicker basket spells nothing but simple elegance for the imminently arriving royal newborn. And according to various sources, sales of the simple white bassinet have skyrocketed since the duchess was seen making her purchase.

Bugaboo stroller

Cost: $1,200

Prince William and Kate recently joined the ranks of countless other baby-toting celebrities when they purchased a stroller from the upscale Bugaboo brand. After buying the pricey pushchair in a light blue colour, the online world erupted into speculation that the colour indicated that the royal couple are having a boy.

Generally, boomer parents invest some of their savings, while their children contribute sweat equity. While franchises are still risky business, they represent a certain out-of-the-box business model that can be good for a parent and child looking for a roadmap to employment. While they reap a share of the profits, franchise operations also provide training and security. Other benefits include:

• Getting to spend time with your family.
• Creating a business that you can easily transition to your children when you retire.
• Opportunities for scalable growth if you have multiple children.

Of course, working with family also comes with attendant hazards. It can be hard to fire a child or parent, and the financial pain can be doubly debilitating if the franchise fails. Despite these possible pitfalls, the parent-child franchise partnership represents a large part of the new franchise market, with such entrepreneurs representing approximately 10-2o% of one franchise organizer’s customer base.

Even as franchising requires a generous cash outlay and occasional blood, sweat and tears, it’s easy to see why kids and their downsized parents are gravitating towards opening sub sandwich outlets. It beats unemployment. And you’ll never lack for meatball grinders.

One of China’s top directors, Zhang Yimou, is under investigation by the Chinese government for potentially violating its one-child policy — several times over.

Zhang reportedly has fathered not one, but seven children, which could earn him a fine of 160 million yuan (around $26 million). That’s a fine of more than $3.7 million he could pay per child from two marriages and two other relationships, all for the government coffers.

He is best known for directing the recent movie “The Flowers of War” starring Christian Bale and for being the creative architect behind the opening ceremony in the recent Beijing Olympics.

According to China’s familial policies, urban couples are allowed to have one child per couple and rural families are allowed up to three children if their firstborn is a girl.

The allegations stem from online rumours. And a number of Chinese residents took to social media to both criticize Zhang and shine a light on the disparity between how the rules are strictly enforced on regular citizens whereas the wealthy elite seemingly evade punishment for not following the laws.

According to the 2013 Mother’s Day Survey from the Bank of Montreal, Canadians will spend an average of $107 this year on Mother’s Day gifts. And the survey pointed out that families in Alberta and Ontario will be the big spenders for this Sunday, with amounts averaging $120 and $122 respectively.

Those totals are up from just $84 back in 2012, and are high in spite of the fact that most moms will end up with the predictable flowers, card and candy.

Despite the fact that we’re willing to shell out a pretty penny on our parents, $107 on average isn’t anything close to what our moms are actually worth. According to another recent survey conducted by Leger Marketing for Walmart Canada showed that moms are technically worth more than one thousand times the amount we’ll likely spend on showing her we care.

The survey shows that apparently, if we paid our mommas for her roles, they’d earn an average of $161,287. That’s just a drop in the proverbial salary bucket for all the hard work they put in on a daily basis.

But is that really a surprise considering moms play nurse, psychologist, grocer, admin, driver, stylist and dozens of other roles everday?

What’s more, while the company sells extra large clothes for men (who can be football players and therefore still cool. Really, this is Abercrombie’s logic), it does not sell women’s clothing above a size 10. This news has sparked outrage across the Internet, with many arguing that such policy is not only obnoxious but bad for business, considering that 67 per cent of America’s clothing-purchasing populace is considered plus-size. But then, this is precisely the exclusionary cachet that Jeffries has long considered necessary for maintaining Abercrombie’s status. What’s amazing is that all this hasn’t long been common knowledge.

The strange thing is that Abercrombie hasn’t been “cool” for ages. After finding huge success with its sexy catalogues of hunky co-eds in the early ’80s, the retailer quickly lost market share and public interest. But after years of middling growth, a handful of analysts have upgraded the company in past weeks, causing a rise in A&F’s stock price earlier this week and some tentatively positive notices about the company’s growth. Strange timing to be sure.

While it’s company prerogative to choose what and how to market their products, such blatantly exclusionary tactics seem bizarre. Even luxe retailers tend to offer lower-end product lines or affordable branded trinkets to allow anyone who wants to shop to find something in their price range. Middle America owning a few Coach keychains hasn’t stopped the luxury handbag purveyor from continued growth, but fueled it.

Whether outrage over these recently revived quotes stokes anger, interest or change remains to be seen. In the meantime, anyone looking for size 12 skinny jeans will have to shop elsewhere.

A new report from the Conference Board of Canada shows that we Canadians may be on more shaky fiscal ground than we thought. While most of the country’s population resides in big cities, which have mostly recovered from the financial collapse, many mid-sized cities throughout Canada are still suffering.

And not just a few — according to the analysis, about half of Canada’s mid-sized cities have failed to replace the jobs they lost following the financial crisis that officially came to a close in 2009. Of the 46 cities analyzed, 21 of them hadn’t returned to pre-recession job levels, which is a disturbing trend for Canadians in more rural areas looking for work.

So why does this matter if much of the nation’s population works in big cities anyway? Mid-sized cities also play an important role, often serving as the primary economic driver of their respective regions.

The new report shows that perhaps the monthly labour numbers released by Statistics Canada aren’t necessarily telling the whole story. With all the workforce numbers lately saying that the economy has added thousands of jobs repeatedly, it would seem the recession is long since behind us as a country. Obviously that isn’t truly the case.

We’re seeing an upsetting new trend popping up across the country. Canadian employers are shifting their hiring priorities — rather than hiring Canadians for permanent positions, companies are focusing on hiring more workers for temporary gigs.

Statistics Canada tells us that as of last year, Canada hit two million temporary jobs. That’s quite high for a country with a population of around 35 million — that means temporary gigs constitute a whopping 13.6 per cent of the country’s workforce. That’s compared to just 11.3 per cent back in 1997, according to The Globe and Mail. And that growth is nothing to sneeze at.

What’s worse is that the growth of temp positions has steadily outpaced the number of new permanent positions. Temp work is growing at triple the rate, and sectors such as education, food services and culture are the worst offenders for creating more temp gigs.

Obviously this isn’t great news for the average Canadian worker. While the shift in employer priorities has disproportionately affected younger workers, that means the youngest members of the workforce are having a terrible time gaining a strong employment foothold. Rather than being able to settle into a long-term gig where they can hone their abilities and gain new expertise and skill sets, some young workers have no choice but to flit from one temporary gig to another. That kind of uncertainty can be extremely stressful, both emotionally and financially.

While temporary work does create flexibility for employers, it seems some are simply try to avoid the cost of bringing on full-time, permanent workers. But in the end, you’ll get what you pay for.

Of course, the two studies are not mutually exclusive – mom can be intimidated by the state of the family’s finances while struggling nonetheless to handle them – but the surveys seem intent on presenting opposing views of moms’ ability to handle money.

Previous surveys, like this 2012 TD Women Investor Poll,  have indicated that while women run the day to day finances, it’s men who feel more comfortable handling investing. Women are also likely to feel less financially successful or on track to meet their goals than men, which perhaps correlates to the findings of the first study.

But what does it all mean as you pick out gifts for the mum this weekend? Do you buy her a leather-bound Suze Orman collection or praise her financial acumen? Like most things, it’s personal. If anything, these surveys indicate a huge range in the way we see our moms and their money and the way our mothers actually engage with their finances. If mom seems anxious about her finances, by all means, get her a planner, a book, a subscription to your favourite money mag. But if she’s perfectly comfortable balancing the checkbooks, might we suggest…flowers?