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2012
01/20/2012
Google 2011 Results Show Growth, But Can Tech Giant Thrive in Long Run?
‘Tis the season for large technology companies to announce their results for the end of 2011, and last night it was Google’s turn, along with other behemoths Microsoft, Intel and IBM. With expectations lofty, Google’s performance was found lacking by investors, who sent the stock down nearly 10 percent after the company reported that while revenues grew, the prices it was able to charge for advertising had declined about 8 percent.
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01/06/2012
Unemployment Rate Drops, But Numbers Don’t Tell the Whole Story
Today’s monthly jobs report from the federal government is undoubtedly good news for the White House, the Obama administration and for the Democrats in general this election year. It may also good news for American financial markets, which have for now reversed last year’s late trend and are clinging to whatever good news they can. But whether the report represents good news for tens of millions struggling workers is more open to question.
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01/26/2012
Obama Extols Warren Buffett as Hero, But to Wall Street He’s No Angel
One of the pillars of President Obama’s State of the Union address was the invocation of Warren Buffett as a voice of reason crying out in the wilderness of tax insanity. Obama echoed Buffett in saying that no billionaire should pay a lower tax rate than a secretary and demanded that a form of the “Buffett Rule” be passed by Congress that raises the tax rate to at least 30 percent on anyone earning more than $1 million a year
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01/11/2012
Standard & Poor’s and Other Ratings Agencies Must End Their Power Trip
In early December, the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s placed all 15 Eurozone countries under what it calls “negative credit watch.” Typically, that means there is an even possibility that it will downgrade the credit of these countries within 90 days. Nearly half that time has elapsed, which means that there is a considerable chance that within days, S&P will do for Europe what it did for the United States last summer and cut ratings.
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01/05/2012
Onetime Internet Darling Yahoo Now on a Deathwatch
The communications technologies of the past two decades are widely and rightly celebrated. The Internet, email, the proliferation of free or inexpensive software programs and apps that allow countless millions to access and organize their lives, and now the Androids and iPhones that are turning handheld devices into portable computers—all have captured attention, imagination, and sales.
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