Business Pundit

Like a Vegas casino, many of this week’s jobs are hard to navigate. Most–like a Vegas casino–are also located in Vegas. See how many of the first four gigs from this list you can actually comprehend: 1. Las Vegas: I need a animal to market… Read more

Print media has been crumbling for a while, but a few recent events appear to have triggered a tipping point. The LA Times, Time Warner, Gannett, the Tribune Company and others have axed significant numbers of staff. A steaming heap of money-wasting… Read more

The Harvard Business Review’s John Kotter details the difference between hyperactivity, complacence, and true urgency. When companies face economic peril, he says that two things happen: Finger-pointing: …an astonishingly large number of… Read more

From CNN Money: Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) set a quarterly profit record for a U.S. company Thursday, surging past analyst estimates. Exxon Mobil (XOM, Fortune 500), the leading U.S. oil company, said its third-quarter net profit was $14.83… Read more

Mine won’t be one of the three million mortgages expected to get a new deal via The Bailout. A little over five years ago my husband was transferred to a new city. We traveled to the new location to find a house, found a nice place in a good… Read more

I heard an irksome argument on MSNBC’s Morning Joe earlier today. It went something like this: The Obama campaign’s excessive advertising is akin to nabbing an election on shallow terms. It’s cheating by running a ludicrous amount of ads in… Read more

While hunting for expensive Halloween costumes, I figured there was a boutique or two that sold ridiculously pricey get-ups. There were–but they did not remotely measure up to the cornucopia of wallet-killing disguises on eBay. These designer… Read more

The LA Times reports on the correlation between bad US economies and good, if nihilistic, Hollywood movies: Great Hollywood movies and total economic collapse have a long and symbiotic history. The films of the 1930s were just as… Read more

When something–anything–beats expectations these days, it’s big news. This morning, the Commerce Department reported that durable goods orders had risen 0.8%, instead of dropping 1.2%, as expected. What does that mean? A durable good is… Read more

The future of financial transparency is XBRL, the international language for the electronic communication of business and financial data.  In development by an international non-profit consortium with the cooperation of approximately 450… Read more

While reading Phil Baumann’s blog, I came across a suggestion for readers to get a professional reputation management service. I have heard of large companies using these kinds of services, but am less familiar with the idea of small… Read more

From NPR: Credit card companies are trying to cut the credit lines of many customers. And they’re looking well beyond payment history — to who holds their mortgage, even where they shop. Customers are outraged, but card issuers say they are… Read more

Nobody is immune from the bad market. The Wall Street Journal reports the severity with with T. Boone Pickens, energy investor par excellence, was hit: In the latest sign of how the financial crisis and steep drop in commodity prices since… Read more

The BBC today has a good article on how beermakers are hoping to combat falling sales through innovative products. Though the article targets Great Britain, similar strategies could be used in the US: Overall UK beer sales are falling, with… Read more