Articles

  • Profit Not Satanic, Says Wealthy Banker


    By Paul Smalera
    Posted Saturday, November 7, 2009 - 3:22am

    The moment everyone expected but no one was waiting for has arrived: Unemployment is in the double-digits. The New York Times says that 10.2 percent is a 26-year high in the 60-year history of government record-keeping. Only 1982, when 10.8 percent of workers were sidelined, was worse. Dampening the bad news, President Obama signed an extension of unemployment benefits for the jobless, allowing them to spend nearly two full years on the dole.

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    • Paul Smalera has written for Condé Nast Portfolio, The New York Times and The New York Observer among others. He blogs at true/slant.

  • No Goodwill for Hummers


    By Matthew DeBord
    Posted Friday, November 6, 2009 - 6:52pm

    Over at the New York Times Magazine, “Consumed” columnist Rob Walker has seen a Hummer— the large and often derided, military-derived General Motors SUV that will soon be sold as a brand to the Chinese—in the parking lot of a Goodwill and “smirked.” The implication is that the Hummer owner painted himself (and it’s probably a him) into a financial corner through his purchase of a pricey, gas-

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

  • Wonk Watch 11.06.09

    By Matthew McKnight
    Posted Friday, November 6, 2009 - 5:16pm

    Felix Salmon came back earlier this week and has dived right back into parsing the turmoil. Today he addressed the rising unemployment rate—which, as we've learned, is at 10.2 percent, its peak since 1983. Salmon takes the time to draw out the implications of such high unemployment and comes to a rather depressing conclusion.

    • Matthew McKnight is an intern at The Big Money.

  • Word of the Week

    By Caitlin McDevitt
    Posted Friday, November 6, 2009 - 5:09pm

    The Securities and Exchange Commission has been busy recently looking into all sorts of sneaky-sounding market practices that may be giving some traders unfair advantages over others. This week, SEC Commissioner Elisse Walter told Reuters that she’s increasingly concerned about "sponsored naked access."

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

  • Eric Schmidt's Burning Question


    By Chris Thompson
    Posted Friday, November 6, 2009 - 3:52pm

    More goodies from Ken Auletta's new book Googled. When Eric Schmidt applied for the CEO gig, Larry Page and Sergey Brin weren't exactly thrilled to see him.

    • Chris Thompson is a writer living in Brooklyn.
  • Money Trail: Where markets meet ideas.

    By Mark Gimein
    Posted Friday, November 6, 2009 - 2:32pm

    For several years now, two very smart people—Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker and polymath jurist Richard Posner—have written a blog together in which they debate the economic and legal issues of the day.

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  • The Doughnut That Dare Not Speak Its Name


    By Dan Mitchell
    Posted Friday, November 6, 2009 - 1:23pm

    It's a bad sign when the product you're selling is so awful that you can't bring yourself to name it.

    • Dan Mitchell has written for The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The MInneapolis Star-Tribune and Wired.

  • Toyota Weeps


    By Matthew DeBord
    Posted Friday, November 6, 2009 - 12:48pm

    A number of commentators have wondered why Tadashi Yamashina, who runs the Formula One racing effort for Toyota, became so emotional a few days ago when he announced that Toyota would be pulling out of the world’s premier racing organization. Obviously, this was a blow to Toyota’s high-performance pretenses, coming awkwardly on the heels of its debut of a $400,000 Lexus supercar at the Tokyo Motor Show.

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

    By Daniel Gross
    Posted Friday, November 6, 2009 - 11:47am

    from SlateA once-endangered species is staging a robust comeback: the deficit hawk. Hunted nearly to death during the Bush years, many varieties not seen in Washington in a decade are now perching on branches and dropping their wisdom. Look, there's the puff-chested congressional peacock hawk, frequently seen strutting about Sunday-morning-TV-show sets complaining about pork while emitting loud honks on the receipt of stimulus funds.

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  • More States Raise Beer's Strength


    By Dan Mitchell
    Posted Friday, November 6, 2009 - 11:46am

    State laws boosting the maximum allowance of alcohol in beer are becoming a trend. Alabama and West Virginia have raised the cap to 13.9 percent from 6 percent, according to USA Today. Mississippi and Iowa are considering similar measures.

    It's not totally clear what's behind the trend, but it seems to have particular momentum in the Southern states.

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    • Dan Mitchell has written for The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The MInneapolis Star-Tribune and Wired.