Filed under: Management, Politics, Recession Electrolux CEO Hans Straberg is taking a hard line against bailouts, telling CNBC that failing companies should not receive any more help from governments around the world. "Let the businesses that are not fully functional, let the weaklings go in this, d...

Filed under: Scandals Bernard Madoff has become one of the most infamous non-violent people in the history of the world for operating the largest Ponzi scheme ever, widely quoted at something like $50 billion. But some experts say that the number is exaggerated, and suggest that the actual figure co...

Filed under: Magazines, Marketing and advertising With so many magazines folding, this might seem like a strange time to go ahead and start three new ones. Especially when you have an enormous debt load that is rated as junk by Standard & Poor's and Moody's. But Reader's Digest is launching thre...

Filed under: Competitive strategy, Citigroup Inc. (C), Wells Fargo (WFC) While most banks are slashing dividends and looking to raise capital, Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) actually raised its dividend in the third quarter of 2008. That's been a boon to the company's stock price. Sure, it's trading at les...

Filed under: Politics Rick Santelli's impassioned diatribe against Obama's plan to help struggling homeowners sparked a prickly and sarcastic response from White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. Santelli fired back in a CNBC interview with Larry Kudlow (see below). In a statement on the CNBC webs...

Filed under: Management, Bank of America (BAC), Financial Crisis In a memorandum sent to employees on Friday, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) CEO Ken Lewis dismissed rumors of nationalization and said that the company would not need any more government assistance: "Bank of America does not need any furt...

Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) is making an aggressive move into the breakfast business, including a planned budget breakfast launch that looks to capitalize on the same recession that is hurting the company's overpriced coffee sales. That has some analysts concerned that McDonald's (NYSE: MCD) could face...

Filed under: General Motors (GM) General Motors (NYSE: GM) has presented its turnaround plan to the Treasury Department, and claims that it can return to profitability. But those projections may well be a classic case of garbage in, garbage out. If GM's sales estimates are more optimistic than the r...

Filed under: Columns, Recession, Financial Crisis Most experts now believe that in order to recover, banks need to find a way to move their "toxic assets" off their balance sheets to stop the bleeding of quarterly writedowns. The idea of establishing a "bad bank" to buy all that crap is gaining some...

Filed under: Bad news, Housing A recent ruling allowed real estate investment trusts (REITs) to take a one-year break from paying out 90% of their pretax income to shareholders in the form of dividend. Instead, some cash-strapped REITs are paying out their dividends with 10% cash and 90% stock. Here...