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NPR's Uri Berliner is taking $5,000 of his own savings and putting it to work. Though he's no financial whiz or guru, he's exploring different types of investments — alternatives that may fare better than staying in a savings account that's not keeping up with inflation.

If you go onto a site like Artnet or Saatchi Online, you can shop for art by price, style or even size. It's not that different from buying a mutual fund on the Web. This suits Cappy Price just fine. She's a former Wall Street portfolio manager who now consults with clients about art as an alternative asset. She loves art for its beauty, but she also says it's an investable asset — one that wasn't really accessible to ordinary people until recently.

"The Internet is driving the ability of the masses to do their own research, do their own due diligence just as they do with a stock — really enabling individuals to determine and place their own value on individual pieces of art," Price says.

Why invest in art? One reason, Price says, is that fine art has a proven track record as a good choice during hard times. "It outperforms in times of economic turmoil and trouble. It has outperformed during all of the wars of the 20th century. It's outperformed during the last 27 recessions."

Like any other asset, the market for art goes through ups and downs. Over the past 60 years, the total return on art has been very similar to the return on the S&P 500-stock index, says Mike Moses, a retired New York University business school professor who co-created the Mei Moses World All Art Index. The index tracks repeat auction sales of fine art.

"If you use the last 30 years, the S&P substantially outperforms art," Moses says. "If you look at the most recent eight [to] 10 years, art has outperformed the S&P."

For paintings in my price range — we're talking a few hundred dollars — there's no Mei Moses index, no record of auction sales to use as a guide. So I have no idea whether it's a smart move financially for me to buy art. But I do know this: Art is different than other investments. It's there in your house, part of your life.

"You are telling people something about yourself when you hang it," Moses says. "And therefore, I think that emotional investment gives you a certain tie to that work that you don't find in other objects that you buy."

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Faced with the threat of mutiny for what seems like the umpteenth time during his speakership, John Boehner moved to mollify fellow Republicans Tuesday, saying immigration legislation would need the support of a majority of the House GOP before it could be brought to a floor vote.

After emerging from a meeting with House Republicans, following days of warnings by conservatives that the Ohio Republican had better not try to pass an immigration bill with mostly Democratic votes, Boehner sought to calm the roiling Republican waters.

"I also suggested to our members today that any immigration reform bill that is going to go into law ought to have a majority of both parties' support if we're really serious about making that happen," he told reporters waiting outside the meeting room. "And so I don't see any way of bringing an immigration bill to the floor that doesn't have majority support of Republicans."

The practice of bringing to a floor vote only legislation supported by a majority of the party is known as the Hastert Rule. Denny Hastert, the Illinois Republican who was speaker from 1999 to 2007, mostly stuck to the practice of bringing to a vote only those bills with a "majority of the majority" supporting them. It was a good way to keep his political base in the House contented.

Boehner's words to the House GOP were meant to reassure Republicans opposed to provisions in the legislation the Senate is now considering - provisions that would create a citizenship pathway for people in the U.S. illegally.

In a clear shot across the bow of Boehner's speakership, on Monday Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California said in an interview that if the speaker let legislation reach the floor that a majority of House Republicans found objectionable, Boehner should be evicted from the speaker's office. Rohrabacher said:

"I would consider that a betrayal of the Republican members of the House and a betrayal of Republicans throughout the country. If Speaker Boehner moves forward and permits this to come to a vote even though a majority of Republicans in the House oppose whatever is coming to a vote, he should be removed as speaker."

That statement would be virtually impossible to spin, even in Washington, into anything less than a bald-faced threat.

In the past, Boehner has passed legislation most fellow House Republicans found odious, like the bill that averted the fiscal-cliff. It passed in January with just 85 of 241 Republicans voting for it, causing the speaker to rely on nearly unified Democratic support for passage.

Comments he made in a recent ABC News interview caused the latest bout of concern among Republicans. The speaker described revising the nation's immigration laws as his "top priority." That led some in the GOP to surmise that he would do anything to get a bill passed, even one most of them didn't like.

There were at least two other things worth noting about Boehner's Tuesday comments. One, he prepared the ground for the argument that Democrats would be to blame if immigration legislation should fail in the House.

Some Senate and House Republicans have argued that for any legislation to pass, it will have to have strong border enforcement measures whose positive results can be measured before any individuals now in the country illegally get the chance at citizenship. Democrats have generally balked at going as far on border-enforcement features.

Boehner said:

"... I just think the White House and Senate Democrats ought to get very serious. We know that border security is absolutely essential, that — if we're going to give people confidence that we can do the rest of what's being suggested. And I frankly think that the Senate bill is weak on border security. I think the internal enforcement mechanisms are weak and the triggers are almost laughable.

"And so if they're serious about getting an immigration bill finished, I think the president and Senate Democrats ought to reach out to their Democrat — Republican colleagues to build broad bipartisan support for the bill."

Whether it's a free upgrade on a hotel room or skipping ahead in the check-in line, many businesses give preferential treatment to some customers, hoping to make them more loyal. The practice often works — but a new study suggests that when we get perks we didn't earn, negative feelings can result. And they can make a surprise deal a little less sweet.

That's the gist of a study to be published later this year in the Journal of Consumer Research, with the forthright title "Consumer Reaction to Unearned Preferential Treatment."

"The current research demonstrates that, although receiving unearned preferential treatment does generate positive reactions, it is not always an entirely pleasurable experience," write the study's authors, Lan Jiang, Joandrea Hoegg, and Darren W. Dahl.

The displeasing aspects of a treat tend to peak, they write, when the perks are given in public, in front of other customers who are no different than the recipient of the business's generosity.

"We propose that receiving something that others have just as much right to receive can activate concerns about negative evaluations, reducing the satisfaction with the preferential treatment," write the researchers, who teach marketing at business schools at the University of Oregon and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.

The study's authors found that "satisfaction with receiving preferential treatment can be restored if the observer who does not receive such treatment reacts positively to the recipient's good fortune or if the observer is of a higher status than the recipient."

That's right. The test subjects enjoyed "the positive experience of 'beating' a superior'" so much, the authors say, that it brought "increased overall satisfaction."

It also helps if nobody's looking. To test that theory, the researchers conducted experiments to test "feelings of social discomfort" and try to determine where they come from. They found that even in the most seemingly fair context — a random drawing — the winner felt best about it if they were alone.

All of the tests placed participants in situations in which one person received a surprise bonus. In one case, a booth that was dispensing free product samples suddenly gave one subject more than the others. That was welcomed — especially if no one else was around.

"It's like they wanted to get out of there," co-author JoAndrea Hoegg tells The Globe and Mail. "It's the fear of negative evaluation. If you're getting something you don't deserve, you're thrilled – as long as no one is watching you."

All of this isn't meant to imply that businesses should stop giving people free perks, the researchers say. The trick is to be sure all customers know the deal — and why they're not getting it. Other options include using scratch-off game tabs and loyalty emails, which can be kept private, to connect with customers.

Such steps, they say, "would minimize the potential for negative emotions."

Earlier this year, the U.S. government accused China's military of running a massive cyberspying campaign to steal business secrets from American companies.

"We've made it very clear to China and some other state actors that, you know, we expect them to follow international norms and abide by international rules," President Obama told ABC News in March.

Last week, Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked details of the agency's surveillance programs, told Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper that the NSA had hacked civilian computers in the Chinese territory and the mainland over a period of four years. After months of criticism from the U.S., China's government finally had a weapon of its own.

"It's Christmas in June in Beijing and Snowden is Santa Claus," says Bill Bishop, who writes Sinocism, a popular daily news digest on China. "If you look at the reactions of the Chinese government over the last few months or a year, specifically to all the allegations of hacking coming out of China, China will say, 'We're a victim, too. We are one of, if not the biggest victim of hacking in the world.' So, now, these revelations come out and they can say, 'See? We were telling the truth.'"

There is a distinction in the hacking allegations. China's government is accused of mass spying on U.S. companies for economic advantage. The U.S. is accused of hoovering up huge amounts of private information at home and abroad for what it says is an effort to find terrorists. China's state-run media has glossed over that nuance, and gone for the jugular.

Bishop cites two recent cartoons here.

"One depicted the Statue of Liberty, but her shadow was a secret agent with several eavesdropping devices," he says. "And another was a rat dressed as the Statue of Liberty, pulling off the cover of a computer and the cover was a Chinese flag."

Patrick Xu, an associate professor at Communication University of China in Beijing, says the U.S. has "damaged its reputation."

In a column for the government news portal China.org, he compared Snowden to Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and said China should grant him asylum. Xu says speeches by American officials criticizing China for Internet prying now ring hollow.

"It turns out this was a rather big lie," he says.

How much all of this resonates with ordinary Chinese is questionable. On Sina Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter, Snowden did not even make Tuesday top 10 topics. No. 1 was a Chinese movie star who recently put on a lot of weight. And when NPR spoke to 13 people in Shanghai on Tuesday, only three had even heard of Snowden.

One was a doctor who only gave his English name, "John," because he thinks the topic is sensitive to the government.

John thought Snowden was gutsy.

"At least he let the public know potential security risks," he said, speaking in Chinese. "Our privacy can be easily exposed by others. It feels like you are stripped naked."

John, who was sipping coffee at a Burger King, said the NSA revelations didn't change his view of the U.S. He thinks most countries do the same thing. John lives in far western China where ethnic Uighur people are at odds with the government in Beijing.

"I am from Xinjiang and we experienced big ethnic riots in 2009," he says. "Lots of information was blocked. The Internet was cut off" for 10 months.

As Chinese state media has criticized the U.S., Chinese officials have kept quiet.

Joseph Cheng, a political science professor at City University of Hong Kong, says that's smart.

"Now, that China has enjoyed this accidental publicity coup, certainly China has no intention to further embarrass the Obama administration, which may well lead to a deterioration in the bilateral relationship," he says.

The two countries held a presidential summit earlier this month in California to improve ties. Right now, it serves neither side to make them worse.