Have you gotten a “Dear Subscriber” letter from your health insurer lately? If you haven’t, you probably will.It’s the season for notifying individual customers that their mon

The life of a screenwriter or novelist is a wretched series of false starts, incessant rejection, and caffeine. Next week's food budget dependent on a silent cell phone and an empty inbox. Blank docu

There's trouble coming for wheat. Last week, both the US and Canadian crop forecasts were released. Both countries are predicting the wheat crop for 2009 will be 18-20% below the 2008 harvest. Howeve

In this morning’s New York Times, I read with great interest about the success of the local teams’ young, unheralded backup catchers. Their achievements led columnist George Vecsey to ask

Netflix (NFLX) was a star in today’s gloomy session. Shares of the largest US mail-order movie rental company jumped after it revealed plans to raise fees of Blu-Ray rentals by about 20% as con

With too few financial job openings drawing too many applicants, some laid-off traders, bankers and analysts have started looking to their next greatest obsession to add meaning to their lives: sport

I posted an article a few days ago entitled Will Year of the Ox Bring China Better Days? and concluded as follows: “Will China’s command economy come to the Western world’

China’s manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) strengthened for a third consecutive month in February, climbing to 49.0% from 45.3% the previous month. Li & Fung Research Cent

Battle-weary investors remained skeptical of a banking quick-fix, and endured more grim economic fodder during the past week, causing US stocks to hit their lowest level since 1997. After the worst J

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