Word of the Week

Posted Friday, October 30, 2009 - 11:03am

In his written testimony to the House financial services committee yesterday, Timothy Geithner discussed how the government plans to prevent, or at least deal with, the failure of big financial institutions in the future.

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

Google Music Search Debuts


Posted Friday, October 30, 2009 - 10:43am

So the rumors were true. On Wednesday, Google (GOOG) launched its new music search service, Google Discover Music.

  • Chris Thompson is a writer living in Brooklyn.

NYT Blogger's 100 Waiter Don'ts


Posted Thursday, October 29, 2009 - 3:15pm

(Note: Since the word "waiter" does not in any way connote gender, I'm going to use it here to refer to both male and female waiters. I think everyone should do this, and the word "waitress"—like "stewardess" and "actress"—should be expunged from our collective vocabulary. And I don't even want to talk about "waitron." Who's with me?)

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

Farthest Distance From a McDonald's: 107 Miles


Posted Thursday, October 29, 2009 - 10:02am
Stephen Von Worley, Weather Sealed

Picking up on, and quickly dismissing, all the "McDonald's is pulling out of Iceland" media hype of a few days ago, Katherine Glover, Bnet's food-industry blogger, grew curious about how ubiquitous McDonald's really is.

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  • Dan Mitchell has written for The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The MInneapolis Star-Tribune and Wired.
Stephen Von Worley, Weather Sealed

Posted Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - 2:59pm

Eighty years ago this week, the United States experienced the worst meltdown of the stock market in the nation's history. As the effects of the crash rippled through the broader economy, banks began shutting their doors in record numbers.

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Posted Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - 2:58pm
Photograph courtesy of Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.

Eighty years ago today on “Black Tuesday,” the stock market collapsed, ushering in the worst economic slump in American history. The 1930s were a national nightmare—an era of great suffering, smashed dreams, and wasted opportunities.

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  • James Ledbetter is editor of The Big Money, and of The Great Depression: A Diary, published this month by Public Affairs.
Photograph courtesy of Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.

The Future of Cars: China and India


Posted Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - 12:25pm

Ford (F) has officially gotten behind a bid from Chinese automaker Geely to buy Volvo, the last holdout in what was once Ford’s Premium Automotive Group. Some may remember that Ford offloaded two other PAG members, Jaguar and Land Rover, to India’s Tata Motors in 2008.

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

Former Exec: Busch HQ Is Like a "Frat Party"


Posted Wednesday, October 28, 2009 - 12:10pm

It turns out that the beer company that recently ran an ad campaign about how great it is to "get it in the can," and that has for decades relied on hot babes in bikinis to peddle its gassy brews might—get this—allow a "locker room and frat-party atmosphere" to pervade its corporate headquarters.

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

Posted Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - 9:30pm

Almost everybody has had the experience of wondering if the problem with one's car is really as serious as the auto mechanic says—or if the mechanic is blowing it up to charge more. In our dealings with the body shop, as in many other situations, we are at what the experts would call a humongous informational disadvantage. We are always conscious of the possibility of getting charged way too much. And we sometimes are—but rarely do we run into the perfectly unscrupulous tradesman who rips us off as badly as we fear he can.

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Huh? Google's Censoring China?


Posted Tuesday, October 27, 2009 - 1:56pm

The controversy between China and Google Book Search over copyright infringement just keeps getting richer. When the Chinese Written Works Copyright Society first began complaining that Google Book Search had copied 17,000 books without permission from the authors, we were tickled to note how seriously the Chinese authorities suddenly took issue with piracy.

  • Chris Thompson is a writer living in Brooklyn.