Beauty in the Details The only way to teach economics in a semester or 2 is to simplify it beyond recognition. But the beauty of life is often in the details. Bennet Sedacca used to say that und

It's true not all rappers can rap - but a surprising number can act. Remember Ice-T's tour-de-force performance in Surviving the Game? Or Ice Cube's wrenching portrayal of a young gangbanger in Boyz

In general, we consider saving money a good thing. But what happens when a debt-happy society wakes up and decides that saving is a good for everybody? What happens when banks and hedge funds decide

So you're on a date with that girl you picked up at Dave & Buster's last week. You know, the one whose errant skee-ball shots sent hordes of yuppies scurrying for cover under a hail of wooden orb

The Holy Grail de jour of financial market prognostication is predicting the bottom in housing. It's a fool's errand, however. Investing based on a perceived end to declining property values has&

According to Bloomberg, the New York Times Company (NYT) said today that advertising revenue at its newspapers and Web sites fell 13% in May. It was the biggest monthly decline this year for the third

To drill or not to drill? What's good for offshore drillers such as Transocean (RIG), Noble Corporation (NE) and ENSCO (ESV) isn't necessarily good for consumers. Even a major oil discovery off the co

South Africa’s electricity provider, Eskom, was given permission to raise prices another 13.3 percent (starting in July) after already being given permission to raise prices 14.2 percent, for a

Social networking is moving from infancy to adolescence, as the market landscape evolves and competing business models vie for superiority.Venture capitalists are betting LinkedIn can thrive in an inc

Hello from New York where, whatever "life-related" challenges I might be presented with today, at least I'm not FedEx (FDX). In addition to FDX's much publicized earnings warning this mornin