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To finance deficits, the government must sell bonds to investors, competing for capital that could otherwise be used to invest in stocks or corporate bonds. Government borrowings raise long-term interest rates, stifling economic growth.
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Higher productivity enables companies to increase sales without adding workers. Even if job markets tighten and wages rise, corporate profits can continue to climb as long as worker productivity is growing faster than overall wages.
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Financial news services and other media organizations get press releases 15 minutes before they are distributed to the general public, fueling a furious competition among the news services to rewrite them for their subscribers during their window of exclusivity.
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For years, critics of Fannie Mae have warned that it does not give them enough information to judge its risks.
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African runners regularly work out in the United States and Europe, and the International Olympic Committee sends some of the cash from the Games to Olympic committees in poor nations, which use the money to finance their own programs.
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I know it's a cliche, but trust me on this. I once dated a Canadian. Canada = boring.
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The credit quality of junk bonds varies widely.
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Hedge funds try to produce above-average investment returns using tactics ranging from traditional stock-picking to complex derivative and arbitrage plays. High minimum investments, redemption restrictions and aggressive strategies make them suitable mainly for more sophisticated and well-heeled investors.
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Enron Field in Houston, the Trans World Dome in St. Louis and PSINet Stadium in Baltimore are just three of the modern-day coliseums named for companies that have found new homes in bankruptcy court.
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Even technology companies get good news sometimes.
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Studies show that Avastin can prolong the lives of patients with late-stage breast and lung cancer by several months when the drug is combined with existing therapies.
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Fannie Mae is owned by shareholders but operates under a federal charter that exempts it from paying state or local taxes. As a result, many professional investors think the government would repay the debt that Fannie Mae had issued if the company could not, although Fannie Mae explicitly says that its bonds do not carry a federal guarantee.
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Trust the Canadians to produce a game about mutual funds that is actually more boring than the real thing.
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Downhill track sports like luge are technology battles, as exciting as a NASCAR qualifying day.
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Good spectator sports share certain fundamentals. Their competitors battle head-to-head. Their winners are determined objectively: fastest runner, most points. They are refereed, not judged.
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With 950 reporters and 79 bureaus, Bloomberg competes to break news with Dow Jones, Reuters and Bridge News along with newspaper Web sites, dozens of smaller Internet sites, and even gossipy chat rooms.
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After a generation of misrule under Mr. Hussein, who built a huge military infrastructure while neglecting civilian investment, and a dozen years of United Nations sanctions, Iraq's unemployment rate tops 50 percent.
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Electronic communications networks match trades between investors directly, without using a market maker or specialist as an intermediary.
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Rising interest rates are considered bad for stocks because they raise the cost of doing business and depress corporate earnings and because higher yields make bonds relatively more attractive than stocks to investors.
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The details of the personal expenses that executives put on the company tab often are not known because loopholes in federal disclosure rules let publicly traded companies generally avoid disclosing the perks they give executives along with pay and stock options.
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As a public servant, William H. Webster has an impeccable resume.
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Corporate executives often buy or sell shares in their companies, and stocks rarely rise or fall significantly when those transactions are reported.
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For more than two decades, Barry Diller has been among the most respected - and feared - figures in the entertainment industry.
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Big fund companies have many ways to increase the returns of young funds that they want to promote. And at least one of those games involves popular offerings.