The Administration said last week in its mid-year report to Congress that unemployment would remain above 9% until the beginning of 2012. That goal may be a struggle, as there is growing evidence that…
Consumer confidence will go to zero soon if it keeps falling at the current rate. The Conference Board reports that in July the figure hit 50.4 down from 54.3 in June. Two other data…
The latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices showed some very modest improvement in home prices for May, but the data is old now and it likely to represent only a brief pause in the decline…
Updated throughout the day. Genzyme (NASDAQ: GENZ) is considering an offer from Sanofi-Aventis (Reuters) Clayton Dubilier & Rice and Goldman Sachs’s private-equity unit are negotiating to buy Harrington Holdings (Bloomberg) Douglas A. McIntyre
By John Tamny of Forbes Money creation isn’t the driver of economic energy as quantity theorists presume, instead it increases when money values are stable, trade free, and taxes/regulations light. Production itself is 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…
There is a fiction mostly written by executive outplacement firms such as Challenger Gray & Christmas that corporate layoffs are falling sharply. Its survey may be incomplete, or at the very least misleading. Job…
The Commerce Department announced an improvement in new home sales for June. The figure seemed impressive compared to May, but it was still the second worst number on record. The National Conference of State…
Short sellers pushed back into banks and other financial firms during the period that ended on July 15. It may be that they sensed earnings would be weak. Or, that the recent financial reform…
Yahoo! Japan will use the Google Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG) search engine technology. Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) has a stake in the Japan operation, but is not the controlling shareholder. The decision is a slap in…
Reuters: UBS (NYSE: UBS) and Deutsche Bank (NYSE: DB) posted good earnings. Reuters: The EU opened antitrust investigations into IBM (NYSE: IBM) Reuters: Ask.com, owned by IACI (NASDAQ: IACI), will use humans to screen…
BP plc (NYSE: BP) shares gained as the company reported a loss for last quarter and appointed Bob Dudley as CEO. The UK-based firm reported a $17.2 billion loss and took $32.2 billion in…
The BP plc problem will not go away any more than the global sovereign debt one will. Gulf storms are the least of the UK oil company’s problems Read more…
By Tom Bower, The Daily Beast Tony Hayward sunk himself with his media gaffes and poor political performances. Can Bob Dudley do better? Read more at The Daily Beast…
Larry Ellison, founder and CEO of Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) probably deserves a huge pay package as much as anyone else. His company has become wildly successful and has been a steady producer of strong…
Under section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, commercial renewable power projects were allowed to get direct federal grant instead of taking either a production tax credit or an investment…
The AP reports that Tony Hayward, BP plc (NYSE: BP) CEO, will leave in October and will join the firm’s joint venture in Russia–TNK-BP Douglas A. McIntyre
The media’s first reaction to the Commerce Department’s new home sales number was, in almost every case, positive. That was a mistake. New home sales rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 330,000…
Struggling oil and gas producer Delta Petroleum Corp. (NASDAQ: DPTR) has agreed to sell $130 million in “non-core assets” to privately held Wapiti Oil & Gas L.L.C. The company plans to use the funds…
The economy contracted in June, at least according to The Chicago Federal Reserve. The Chicago Fed National Activity Index was down .63% in June compared with an increase of .31% in May. The consumption…