The Dow is cruising at new highs, 236,000 jobs were created in February, consumer confidence is up, and Americans are feeling secure enough to take on new debt again. But if you're feeling somehow left out of the party, you aren't crazy. Things are still far from golden.
Shares of Dell climbed in premarket trading Tuesday on reports the personal computer maker is nearing a deal to go private worth up to $24 billion. The transaction is said to involve a group including Microsoft, private equity firm Silver Lake and CEO Michael Dell.
The U.S. government is expected to file civil charges against Standard & Poor's Ratings Services, alleging that it improperly gave high ratings to mortgage debt that later plunged in value and helped fuel the 2008 financial crisis.
Investment bank Morgan Stanley says it swung to a profit in the fourth quarter. Shares jumped in pre-market trading. The bank earned $867 million after stripping out an accounting charge. That's up from a loss of $374 million in the same period a year ago.
JPMorgan Chase reported a 55 percent jump in earnings for the fourth quarter as mortgage fees and other income surged. The bank also released its reviews of a $6 billion trading loss that drew sanctions from regulators, and said it would cut CEO Jamie Dimon's pay by more than half as a result.
You may not have heard about the CALM Act before, but when you witness the results of the law, which goes into effect today, you'll probably want to applaud loudly. At last, TV commercials can no longer be broadcast at a higher volume than the programs they accompany.
Apple is testing smart TV designs with major Asian component suppliers, The Wall Street Journal reports. And executives at some suppliers for the world's most valuable tech company are confirming that designs for a large-screen high-def television are in the works.
The problem with the newspaper business is simple: A subscription price barely pays for the paper your papers are printed on, and free media are siphoning off the ad revenues newspapers rely on. Warren Buffet thought he could buck the trend, but not even the Oracle of Omaha can fight math.
Newsflash: The United Nations and The Wall Street Journal just agreed on something: With this summer's brutal drought, America needs to stop using so much corn to produce ethanol for fuel, and start using it in the food chain.
Odd thing: Just being the beneficiary of a life insurance policy doesn't mean you'll get the money when the policyholder dies. Turns out, you have to ask for it. And people failing to ask has led to as much as $1 billion going, not to people's heirs, but to the states. Thankfully, that's changing.
Maybe if we called it "2B2F," it would have been more popular. But lacking the street cred of a cool nickname, the idea "too big to fail" is beginning to lose popularity in America -- even among some of the country's most famous bankers.
Sanford "Sandy" Weill, the tycoon most who built financial conglomerate Citigroup into a massive U.S. commercial and investment bank, said it is time to split up the biggest banks.
The media's response to recent retail sales numbers showing month-to-month declines has been to bemoan our faltering economy. But when you compare sales today to a year ago, things don't look grim at all. In some cases, in fact, they look downright fantastic.
Last week, word came out that Apple was removing its desktops, laptops and monitors from a green-electronics registry called EPEAT. The ensuing uproar caused it to reverse course in just seven days. But what was Apple thinking?
Merchants have long sought the right to charge customers more for paying with a credit card, which would help them defray the cost of accepting plastic. That's currently banned by Visa and MasterCard, but deal in the works could change that.