Back in April, I wrote about the odd way in which investor concerns about potential defaults at Citigroup and Bank of America were boosting the banks’ earnings. I quoted commenter sulliclm‘s explanation: they have to mark their liabilities to fair value, and in the case of their own debt (or in this case liabilities on [...]
Fortune put on a breakfast with Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein this morning at Bobby Van’s Steakhouse a couple doors down from the Time & Life Building. First came coffee and pastries, and then a conversation between Blankfein and Fortune editor Andy Serwer. It was pretty entertaining, and Blankfein came across as more of a [...]
With the economy still somewhat slow, companies probably don’t want to be going hog-wild on the R&D spending. Yet at the same time, with consumer dollars tight, companies likely also want to have flashy new products to dangle in front of people, to tempt them to spend what little cash they are shelling out at [...]
James Dyson, the man who brought us the vacuum cleaner of the future, has a new device: the bladeless fan. It’s already getting rave reviews, despite its $300+ price tag. No one sent me one (I guess because all the freebies now go to people who only blog), so I can’t tell you how the [...]
First Goldman Sachs reports earnings of $3.2 billion for the quarter. But then, a few minutes later, Citigroup tells the world that it sort of made a little money but also sort of lost a lot of money (that is, it reported net income of $101 million, but said that, after dividends to preferred shareholders [...]
Yeah, I know, it’s morning in the rest of America—and in the rest of the Americas—too. But I’m in Buffalo. And this is what I saw when I went out for a morning walk around 7:30:
I had a somewhat disturbing conversation yesterday with Steve Fussell, the senior VP of human resources at pharmaceutical maker Abbott. His basic message, which I may pursue in a column down the road, was that Abbott is going to be hiring tons of people for high-paying jobs over the next decade, but not many of [...]
Ever since UBS agreed to hand over the names on thousands of undeclared offshore accounts, U.S. taxpayers (or non-taxpayers, as it were) have been rushing to the IRS to confess their sins. The deal: come clean of your own volition, and you’ll owe a significantly reduced penalty and you won’t have to go to jail. [...]
Well, we did it. Today we crossed Dow 10,000. Can Dow 36,000 be far behind?
This just arrived in the mailbox:
