By next year, beer bought in the U.S. may be more likely to come from a single company than from all the rest combined. That could be bad news for America’s beer drinkers — potentially higher prices for some of the U.S.’s …
Smartphone Shoppers Actually Increase In-Store Sales
They call it “showrooming,” and to hear the nation’s retailers and other experts fret about consumers using smartphones to buy online while shopping in stores, it’s the worst thing to happen to brick-and-mortar sales since Jeff …
How Google’s Chief Innovator Sergey Brin Is Making Science Fiction Real
Who says innovation is dead in Silicon Valley? At a time when some pundits are questioning whether the region’s innovation engine is tapped out, Web-search titan Google offered a powerful display last week of why that’s not the …
How Exactly Do Cyber Criminals Steal $78 Million?
Let’s say you’re a cyberthief who just compromised hundreds of bank accounts worth millions of dollars. Congratulations! You’re now the scourge of the global community. Now, all you need to do is get your hands on that money. …
Selling Your Dream for Cash: The Unfortunate Mainstreaming of the Reverse Mortgage
A new report shows that the reverse mortgage remains a confusing product, but that it has gone mainstream nonetheless and represents an unnerving erosion of homeowners’ financial safety net.
European Stock Markets and the Flight from Reality
The economic news is going from bad to worse, so obviously this is a good time to stage a stock-market rally. That’s the contorted message coming out of Europe this week, on the heels of an E.U. crisis summit that was declared …
Why Business Plans Fail
Complacency and fear are two of the biggest obstacles to business success
Retail Therapy
For most Americans, choosing a health care plan or home loan–unlike picking peanut butter or shampoo off a supermarket shelf–can be an overwhelming chore. But consumer-friendly Costco, known for simple one-stop shopping at deep …
Risk Factor
Every so often we read of a star trader who lost so much money that he gave back all the profits he made over several years and shook his bank to its foundations. How does this happen? Were the bank’s risk managers mistaken about …
The Return of the McMansion?
When the real estate market imploded and ushered in the Great Recession, one of the biggest casualties was the size of our homes. For years, we’d been building increasingly large homes because, well, we could — and because we …
Honda’s New Electric Car Comes with a Nifty Perk: Free Insurance
The Honda Fit EV gets the equivalent of 118 mpg, a rating that leads all electric cars widely available to the public. Drivers who lease an electrified version of the award-winning Fit may be even more intrigued with another …
There’s One Upside For Unemployed Older Workers: Happiness
A recent study suggests that there’s at least one upside for the millions of beleaguered older Americans among the nation’s long-term unemployed: Unlike their working peers, retirement — officially calling it quits –actually …