Yesterday’s NYTimes had a good article on the city of Pittsburgh and its surprising resurgence.

A generation ago, the steel industry that built Pittsburgh and still dominated its economy entered its death throes. In the early 1980s, the city was being talked about the way Detroit is now. Its very survival was in question.

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Entrepreneurship bloomed in computer software and biotechnology. Two of the biggest sectors are education and health care, among the most resistant to downturns. Prominent companies are doing well. Westinghouse Electric,…

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Apple's 1984 "Big Brother" ad

An article over at Ad Age brings up an angle on the whole auto industry bailout probably not considered much before.  The fact that a yet-to-be-appointed “car czar” will have control over a multibillion dollar advertising budget for the big three.  Under the guise of “oversight,” this would effectively “Create World’s Most Powerful Marketing Exec[utive].”  

The draft rescue plan for Detroit sent to the White House by Congress yesterday calls for the appointment of a “car czar”…

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It’s been called a ticking time bomb by Investor’s Business Daily. CNNMoney asks if this will be the next disaster. Yet the Feds are delaying one key in bringing stability to our financial markets.

As a $62 trillion dollar over the counter market, CDSs need an exchange or central clearinghouse to provide transparency and collateral requirements. CME (formed from the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange) and the Clearing Corp (formed from 17 financial players including UBS and Goldman…

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Time magazine contributors Andy Serwer and Allan Sloan give us an article in the latest issue meant to explain what is going own with the current financial crisis (better explained here).    Serwer and Sloan, for all their “combined 65 years of writing about business” can’t seem to produce any coherent or unbiased reporting on this crisis and the reasons for it.  They just fall back lazily on an argument that has been circulating the last few days, placing the blame at the…

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Right now, the federal government, at a huge cost to taxpayers of perhaps $100 billion, is bailing out the two government-backed mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — the so-called GSEs.  “GSE” stands for Government-Sponsored Enterprise.  But some reporters are financially-illiterate, because if you point out the obvious — that the GSEs are going to cost taxpayers billions — reporters will condescendingly “correct” what you said, by insisting that they are completely “private sector” entities (false) that have yet to cost taxpayers a dime (false).   (Back in July, the predicted cost to…

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