Huge discounts offered to consumers in early November may have hurt Black Friday sales, and the trouble may not be over. Research from ShopperTrak shows that Black Friday retail sales at the store level…
Online spending rose much more than expected on Black Friday. Should the trend continue, holiday 2010 sales may be stronger than expected, especially if e-commerce is a proxy for overall retail activity. comScore expected…
nationsonline.orgInvestors may have begun to aggressively sell off the bonds of Portugal and Spain. They will try to convince international investors that the Portugal and Spain sovereign debt yields are too high to allow…
The Kindle was not the Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) flagship product much of Black Friday. Perhaps that is because of suspicions that the world’s largest e-commerce site makes little or no money on the device.…
Last week the Chicago Climate Exchange, which is owned by Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (NYSE: ICE), announced that it would no longer operate the voluntary carbon-trading program it has run since 2003. The CCX, as it was…
Updated throughout the day. The EU may have begun to pressure Portugal to accept a bailout (various) Ireland will try to set terms for the bailout of its largest banks (Bloomberg) The EU will…
Tobacco companies like Philip Morris (NYSE: PM) and Altria (NYSE: MO) have already been pushed into corners as more and more countries prohibit smoking indoors. The firms have been able to largely offset the…
Sheila C. Bair, the head of the FDIC, believes there is a brew of US debt which will cause the global capital markets to lose faith in American paper. The case has been made…
Short sellers have made a broad range of gambles that many large stocks will lose value before the end of the year, which indicates that they believe that markets will tumble in December. A…
The closer the heart of the holiday shopping comes, the more it appears that it will be a good one and will help erase the memory of an awful 2008 and a 2009 which…
nationsonline.orgA argument has arisen about whether the facility put together last spring to help finance Greece and to cover future bailouts of eurozone nations if they need it is large enough. The package put…
Eurozone leaders have pressed Portugal to take financial aid. (Financial Times Deutschland) KKR and other private equity interests will by Del Monte for $4 billion. (Reuters) Genzyme (NASDAQ: GENZ) may be open to a…
GM (NYSE: GM) says the miles-per-gallon equivalent that its new Chevy Volt will get depends on how it is driven. The No.1 US car company says “The Volt is a complex vehicle that is…
Most American who will pass through airports this weekend don’t care if they are closely examined, screened, or even touched. Perhaps the bomb scare on a Detroit bound plane last year has caused this…
For a country seeking a bailout of at least $137 billion, Ireland is in no place to be dictating terms. But that’s exactly what Dublin is trying to do to save its controversial corporate…
Twitter has, by most estimates, 145 million members, which makes it one of the largest social networks in the world. All major media companies are on Twitter and some have more than one million…
Credit rating agencies often downgrade debt after some disaster. That is certainly the case with Ireland, which appears to have gotten a rescue package from the EU and IMF in exchange for a three-year…
nationsonline.orgIt may turn out that the great barrier to austerity and spending cuts in debt-ridden European nations may not be politicians. People who fear a cut in their standard of living are taking to…
Use of mobile devices for internet access accelerated last month. It is unlikely that total online activity rose by 100% year-over-year last month, so PC activity must have lost momentum A study by Opera…
Researchers at the University of Texas claim they have conducted a survey that finds that “Facebook is making us more social, albeit in ways unique to the digital age.” Online socialization, however, may come…