Comcast

Waiting for the cable guy, the Internet guy, or the air conditioner guy are tedious life necessities, like doing laundry or visiting the in-laws. But they are vastly more expensive. According to a new poll, American workers lost a total of $37.7 billion waiting around for in-house appointments in 2011.

Noticed that your local movie theater is a little quieter than usual lately? Don't go thinking that moviegoers have just gotten more considerate. The reason phones aren't ringing, babies aren't wailing, and know-it-alls aren't giving away plot twists before they happen is simple: People just aren't there.

It's been awfully quiet on the earnings front in recent weeks, and there's a reason: This is the time of year when accountants are nailing down the financials for the fiscal quarters that ended in September. Later this week, the conference calls will begin trickling in, and then it will be a deluge of quarterly reports until early November.

There's never a shortage of silliness when it comes to Wall Street. Some of last week's biggest surprises and head-shaking blunders included a farcical mistake on the AP's list of same-store sales for September, Apple's failure to deliver the iPhone 5, Comcast's plan to charge $60 for a movie, and Best Buy's music streaming surrender.

Behind conference-room doors and at kitchen tables, corporate big shots and heads of households grapple with the same question: How can we pinch more pennies to boost our bottom line? However, while consumers are cutting back to save their nickels and dimes, many companies are doing just the...

Plenty of big names are set to report their earnings in August, including the country's largest cable and satellite television providers, several of China's leading dot-coms, radio giant Sirius XM, car rental companies Zipcar and Avis, and the two biggest video game developers.

There's trouble brewing at Redbox: President Mitch Lowe has announced his resignation, and parent company Coinstar revised its second-quarter revenue outlook downward last week. Here are some key signs consumers and investors should watch to see if the Redbox business model (i.e. kiosk rental machines) is obsolete.