Business Coverage

Fox Business Network anchor Alexis Glick is frustrated by the way the government's $700 billion financial bailout is being used, and suggested on "Money for Breakfast" Nov. 21 that it was contributing to market declines. "I mean, look, we are now at levels at least on the S&P that we haven't been since 1997. You know, people are pretty unhappy with how the TARP fund is going," Glick said…

Practically rubbing his hands in glee, Time magazine's Joe Klein exulted yesterday over Michigan Rep. John Dingell (D) losing out to the more liberal Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) for control of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee.Apparently Klein is happy that under Waxman the committee will succeed in decreasing both domestic energy and commerce with fresh, strict regulations on…

In other words, they would have to pay you to take what is rapidly becoming Manhattan's quaint little alternative newspaper off their hands.Yesterday, New York Times Company stock closed at $5.72. That is, by far, its lowest close in the 22 years presented in this chart at Yahoo!: Before today's opening bell, the company is worth $822 million,Using conservatively adjusted numbers from a…

Pulitzer-Prize winning author and professor of history at Stanford University David M. Kennedy told Bloomberg radio Nov. 18 that the current financial crisis bears no comparison to the Great Depression. "Well, we're not yet in anything remotely resembling the crisis, the scale of crisis of the Great Depression." When Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, 13 million Americans were unemployed…

Repent, all ye owners of Suburbans, thou drivers of Explorers.  Mend thy ways, ye Escalade-loving louts!  Take heed of the warning the prophet Mika has vouchsafed unto you: greedy thou art; verily, destroyers of the environment be thee!Oy.  Mika Brzezinski was on quite a roll this morning.  On the one hand, free-marketers would find much to agree with in Mika's arguments.  As noted here yesterday…

Victoria's Secret, the well-known lingerie retailer, is being sued by a woman who claims the company's bra had formaldehyde in it and made her "utterly sick." ABC's "Good Morning America" ran a segment Nov. 11 focusing on that 37-year-old Ohio woman, Roberta Ritter. "Victoria's Secret - certainly one of the world's most recognizable brands," anchor Diane Sawyer said. "And this morning, though,…

Well, I guess that settles it. We don't need any political discussion or economist's studies. The auto industry officially needs a bailout. It's just a fact. After all, MSNBC and BusinessWeek have just said it. The auto industry "needs" one or it cannot survive. Oh, yeah, and MSNBC is also informing the world that Republicans have told auto workers to "drop dead." I think this is what the Old…

Earlier today, in a story on falling oil prices, Mark Williams of the Associated Press bemoaned "evaporating" consumption, warned that the abrupt prices drop would cause a decline in exploration, and cited the need for trillions of dollars of investment to find more fossil fuels.Contrary to or not in what Williams wrote: Consumption has barely fallen.The American electorate has chosen a new…

So what exactly is the government doing with your money? Fox Business Network's Alexis Glick would like to know. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced Nov. 12 he would be redirecting the $700 billion bailout to focus on propping up financial institutions instead of buying troubled mortgage assets, which was the original intent of the rescue plan. Glick, the host of FBN's "Money for…

Can I have permission to utter the S-word ("socialism")? Ken Thomas's Associated Press report today (link is dynamic, subject to change, and will probably be gone in a week) on auto industry bailout ideas emanating from Washington includes these items, all of which expand soc- ... soc- ... socialism: Legislation proposed by Barney Frank involves the government taking ownership stakes in the…

Wednesday evening's dour Associated Press report by Tom Krisher and Ken Thomas on the proposed bailouts of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler acted as if their fates will determine the viability of the entire US auto industry, and waited until the 15th paragraph to name the primary reason why the companies are where they are financially. Beyond that, the AP report did not mention that United Auto…

It's not like Barack Obama is a socialist or anything. It's just that Thomas Friedman wants him to put a "government master" in charge of the country's biggest manufacturing sector. Friedman made his modest proposal in his New York Times column of today, and expanded on it during a Morning Joe appearance. [H/t reader Tom.]Video also available here.I've got three easy reasons why Friedman's idea…

Now that Barack Obama has won the presidency, the poll cookers at the Associated Press have dutifully generated a barely-disguised press release for him.A report this afternoon on the results of an AP GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media Poll is headlined "Most in AP poll confident Obama will fix economy " at Yahoo!, Google (shorter report), and the wire service's home site (all are dynamic links…

"The government is doing what it can. They've learned the lessons of the 30s. And the lesson of the 30s was to put ideology aside and do whatever you can to bail it out," New York Times Chief Financial Correspondent Floyd Norris said in an Oct. 8 video on the publication's Web site entitled "Echoes from a Dismal Past." "I agree with you," economics reporter Louis Uchitelle said, also…