Updated throughout the day. Facebook and Skype may form a partnership (AllThingsDigital) McDonald’s (NYSE: MCD) may drop its healthcare plan. (WSJ). The Journal story on the McDonald’s healthcare plan is wrong (Bloomberg) Douglas A.…
There are rumors that Skype, the Voice over Internet Protocol service, and social network Facebook may join forces. Each has hundreds of millions of members. In Facebook’s case, the number is over 500 million.…
Ireland announced that its budget deficit will rise to 32% of GDP, a number which is nearly unimaginable. It would be the equivalent to a $5 trillion annual deficit in the US. The major…
Foreclosed home sales were 24% of all transactions in the second quarter of 2010. The average price of a foreclosed home that was sold was 26% below comparable homes not in foreclosure. These data…
Spain lost its precious Aaa rating as Moody’s downgraded its sovereign debt one notch to Aa1. The agency said the outlook for the new rating is stable. Moody’s gave three reasons for the downgrade.…
Reuters: China said legislation aimed at a devaluation of the yuan violated WTO regulations. Reuters: IPOs do poorly in the People’s Republic now but can raise money from overseas investors. Reuters: The new consumer…
It is broadly assumed that American workers with access to computers spend some portion of their day using them for personal communication, gain, or pleasure. The actual wasted time and productivity turns out to…
BP Plc.’s incoming CEO (NYSE: BP) Bob Dudley knows that the public is skeptical about his company’s plans to create a Safety Division. After all, the oil company has made these promises in the…
Twitter has, by most estimates, 100 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…
Updated throughout the day. Sanofi-Aventis may raise its bid for Genzyme (NASDAQ: GENZ). The Administration has begun to pressure American International Group (NYSE: AIG) to find a way to lessen the government’s ownership in…
Bill Gross of Pimco may be the most widely-admired fixed income investor in the world. He is also a first rate pessimist in a pessimistic time. His most recent monthly letter says that the…
The president of PAR, which owns 7.7% of the shares in Dollar Thrifty (NYSE: DTR), told The Wall Street Journal that his fund will vote against a Hertz offer to buy the smaller company.…
A temporary job is better than no job, until the person who has it is fired. Toys “R” Us said yesterday that it would add 45,000 workers for the holidays. Presumably, unless holiday sales…
American’s do not trust the media, and this mistrust hit an all-time high in 2010, the fourth year the figure has gone higher. Fifty-seven percent of US adults have little or no trust in…
The Bank of Japan’s TANKAN Survey of the nation’s large businesses for the month of September showed that the management at the companies polled like things as they are now, but dislike what they…
The media is full of stories about American International Group’s (NYSE: AIG) plan to bring the Treasury’s ownership in the company below 50%. The trustees of the firm and several federal agencies would need…
Reuters: The panel that will give advice to Obama about the deficit met but experts were concerned that it will offer few concrete answers. Reuters: The House may approve a bill aimed that the…
Democrats in the U.S. Senate were dead wrong to try and punish U.S. companies for shipping jobs overseas. The effort was thwarted by the Republican minority but is not going away in an election…
New reports say that AOL (AOL) bought TechCrunch for between $25 million and $40 million. Most estimates are that the initial payment for the tech blog will be $25 million and there will be…
Billionaire Sam Zell has a simple idea for how his fellow Chicagoan President Barack Obama can best help the economy: do nothing. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. “The economic malaise is the…