Articles

  • Posted Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 1:06pm
    Photo of a smile by Getty Creative Images.

    If you’re going to be the market leader, you might as well lead by example. Google (GOOG) has long dominated the online ad industry, fueled by its popularity in search and its auction-based approach. Ads on the Web, meanwhile, have been overrun by shady offers of teeth whiteners and stomach flatteners.

    TAP Tagline: 

    Google Does Non-Evil Thing: Bans White-Teeth, Flat-Stomach Scams

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    Photo of a smile by Getty Creative Images.

  • Car of the Future Boardroom Melodrama


    Posted Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 12:45pm

    You may never have heard of Aptera, but its exotic, three-wheeled car is widely viewed as the most daring of the new generation of vehicles to come out of California automotive startup culture. Sculpted from composites, aerodynamically designed to have a preposterous low coefficient of drag, it was at one time rumored to get 300 mpg. However, all is potentially not well with its management. Maybe. Possibly.

    • Matthew DeBord has written about the auto industry for the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, and Car Design News.

  • The Pink Gadget Hall of Shame


    Posted Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 12:17pm

    Marketing to women, it seems, is all too often pursued under one simple scheme. Double X's Victoria Bosch walks us through the pink gadget wall of shame:

  • Posted Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 11:58am
    Photograph by Comstock/Getty Images.

    Hong Kong’s chief executive Donald Tsang blasted U.S. monetary policy at an Asian economic conference on Friday, saying that the Fed’s loose policies have created a “carry trade” in U.S. dollars that mirrors that of the Japanese yen earlier this decade, creating asset bubbles across emerging Asia-Pacific economies.

    TAP Tagline: 

    Why Do Economists Fret About the Buying and Reselling of Currencies?

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    • Martha C. White is a freelance writer in New York.
    Photograph by Comstock/Getty Images.

  • Posted Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 11:56am

    from SlateEconomists, politicians, and shoppers focus so much on the massive flood of Chinese imports that we end up paying too little attention to the products, services, and business concepts exported from the United States to China. The vast differential in income between the United States and China has precluded a rampant growth in U.S. exports to China.

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  • The Loanly Planet Guide

    Posted Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 10:40am

    The federal government’s bailout of the banking system appears to have succeeded in its primary goal—preventing the collapse of the financial system. But the key mechanism of the bailout has been to pump virtually free money into the banks, and the banks have every incentive to hoard that cash and make only the safest of loans. So the credit environment for small businesses remains quite poor, with bank loans, lines of credit, and even credit-card loans all very hard to come by.

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    • Jonathan Weber is the founder, publisher, and CEO of New West, a media company covering life and business in the Rocky Mountain West.

  • Side Effects May Include …


    Posted Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 9:21am

    from SlateBig Pharma spends big bucks on advertising. Because of the proliferation and increasing creativity of these marketing departments, The Clio Healthcare Awards have been developed to recognize the best pharmaceutical ads:

    • Seth Stevenson is a frequent contributor to Slate.

  • Posted Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 7:05am
    Photograph of Aztek by GM/Newscom.

    ’Tis the season for new car models. Fall is when the automakers start rolling out their offerings for the next year. All-new models arrive, redesigns hit the dealerships, and updates to existing cars appear. But obviously, there’s a wrinkle this time round: Both General Motors and Chrysler are fresh off bankruptcy. And you’d be right to assume there’s extra pressure on their new wheels.

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    • Matthew DeBord has written about the auto industry for the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, and Car Design News.
    Photograph of Aztek by GM/Newscom.

  • Was the AIG Bailout Botched?


    Posted Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - 5:55am

    The New York Fed succumbed during “high-pressure negotiations” during last year’s bailout of the American International Group (AIG), according to a government report detailed in today’s New York Times. The paper says that the New York Fed seemed to have “little leverage” during the discussions, largely because it had already spent $85 billion to keep the insurer alive.

    • Caitlin McDevitt is an editorial assistant at The Big Money.

  • Live-blogging GM


    Posted Monday, November 16, 2009 - 6:27pm

    Now that we have Twitter, I don’t much see the point in live-blogging events if your goal is simply to tell people what’s happening, rather than why or what it means. The New York Times’ Micheline Maynard live-blogged GM’s third-quarter financial report today, but besides telling us what CEO Fritz Henderson said, or how he responded to this or that reporter’s question, there isn’t much that tells us the significance of the information dispensed.

    • Matthew DeBord has written about the auto industry for the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, and Car Design News.