It is a devilishly clever way for a company with flagging revenue to raise sales. Cheat customers by double charging them. According to several media outlets, as many as one million Starbucks customers were charged twice…
New data from TechCrunch indicates that Google’s (GOOG) YouTube has reached one billion streams served per day. The numbers probably mean that the service is losing much more than analysts figure, a number that…
Maybe the initial “stress tests” of America’s 19 largest banks were flawed. Or, perhaps taking a single snapshot is not an adequate way to measure the ever-changing financial system. The Congressional Oversight Panel which monitors…
One of the first rules students are taught at The Harvard Business School is that it is a bad practice to sell products at a loss and hope to make up the deficit on…
The Treasury Department is likely to allow 10 banks which owe in money from TARP funds to pay it back a total of $50 billion. The money will probably burn a hole in the…
Reuters: China must balance growth and reducing greenhouse gases. Reuters: The Supreme Court has delayed Chrysler’s Chapter 11. Reuters: The US will allow 10 banks to repay TARP funds. Reuters: The Boston Globe (NYT)…
Markets in Asia were narrowly mixed. The Nikkei fell .6% to 9,786. The Hang Seng was off .4% to 18,183. The Shanghai Composite was up .7% to 2,788. At the open in Europe, the…
It may only be dawning on the media and economists that high oil prices have pushed gasoline over $3.00 per gallon in some states. A prolonged period of high fuel prices will deaden whatever…
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg reviewed a lawsuit by several Indiana pension funds to block the sale of some Chrysler assets to a group led by Fiat and indicated that there was some chance the…
Texas Instruments Inc. (NYSE: TXN) has just given its second quarter update, one of the first seen by major chip companies. The chip giant sees $2.3 billion to $2.5 billion in revenues, above a…
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is having more than its share of free press from the World Wide Developers Conference this week. The big new push here seems to be on revamping the iPhone and…
Jim Cramer is loved and hated by many on both sides, but despite the hype he makes and gets accused of he rarely calls for a stock to double. That is what we just…
President Obama says that he plans to accelerate portions of the stimulus bill in an attempt to add jobs to the economy more quickly. The new goal is to create 600,000 positions over the…
Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) is still watched by just about every trader under the sun. This morning we have two analyst research calls that differ greatly. There is a raised price target and a…
McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD) is trading lower after the fast food giant posted some mixed same store sales data for the month of May. The golden arches posted +5.1% same store sales, above the…
John Tamny of RealClearMarkets Inflation’s decline in the ’80s thanks to a resurgent dollar seemingly proved once and for all that it is always monetary in nature–specifically the result of debased money. From post-World…
These are the top ten analyst calls for research upgrades, downgrades, and initiations which we have seen from Wall Street early this Monday morning: Airgas (ARG) Started as Buy at Piper Jaffray. AT&T (T)…
The Administration is looking at further pay caps for executives on Wall St. and the auto industry. The reasoning is that if a company takes government money, the government should have a say in…
Microsoft (MSFT) may price Windows 7 as low as $100 to offset the effects of the recession on PC operating system sales and the public’s rejection of Vista, the current version of Windows. The…
Shell is the largest oil company in Europe and one of the biggest in the world. Its assessment of the industry and the direction of the price of oil is probably as accurate as any.…