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.
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.

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.

Fort Hood on YouTube


By Chris Thompson
Posted Friday, November 6, 2009 - 11:25am

As Americans come to terms with yesterday's massacre at Fort Hood, they aren't just doing it privately. They're broadcasting their thoughts to the world via YouTube, and those thoughts range from the grief-stricken to the tasteless. First comes the shock, such as this gentleman's reaction:

 

 

 

 

  • Chris Thompson is a writer living in Brooklyn.

Google Gives in to Privacy Concerns


By Chris Thompson
Posted Thursday, November 5, 2009 - 3:09pm

Google's (GOOG) leaders have always had something of a tin ear when it comes to apprehending how afraid people are of its power and ubiquity. Ken Auletta's new book, Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, has a case in point.

  • Chris Thompson is a writer living in Brooklyn.

Why Eating Tainted Beef Is OK


By Dan Mitchell
Posted Wednesday, November 4, 2009 - 2:01pm
Photograph by Eising/Getty Images

Did you know that ground beef that has tested positive for E. coli is allowed to be sold after it has been cooked and processed?

I didn’t, until just now, and though the idea squicks me out a little, it turns out that it really isn't a big deal. After all, processing removes a lot of stuff that can't and shouldn't be sold to the public—that, in part, is what processing is.

  • Dan Mitchell has written for The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The MInneapolis Star-Tribune and Wired.
Photograph by Eising/Getty Images
After the Fad: The next act for popular stocks and trends.

By Marion Maneker
Posted Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - 4:00pm
Photo of Louis Vuitton bag by Scott Barbour/Getty Images

It is no surprise that the bursting of the credit bubble led to a global crash in consumer spending on luxury goods. The traditional markets for luxury goods in the West and Japan—where 80 percent of the world’s $228 billion luxury sales take place—have hit a wall. In the United States, where aspirational brands became everyday items, the luxury business has gone into hibernation.

  • Marion Maneker is a regular contributor to The Big Money.
Photo of Louis Vuitton bag by Scott Barbour/Getty Images

Revealed: Google Job Interview Questions!


By Chris Thompson
Posted Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - 3:21pm

The San Francisco Chronicle's tech blog has been stirring up life in the Valley lately, with a series of posts about Google's (GOOG) increasingly dull and conventional workplace culture. The vaunted sandbox and 20 percent time climate, Googlers complain, is giving into the inexorable pull of big organizations toward boring management arrogance and bureaucracy.

  • Chris Thompson is a writer living in Brooklyn.

GM’s Delphic Albatross


By Matthew DeBord
Posted Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - 1:20pm

At one time, Delphi was just another component of the vast vertically integrated manufacturing, management, and marketing colossus that was the Big Old General Motors. But in the early 1990s, GM decided to de-integrate and created the Automotive Components Group as a separate entity. About a decade later, this entity became Delphi. By 2005, Delphi was bankrupt. The bankruptcy gobbled up four years, with Delphi only emerging recently.

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