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21 Apr 2009 23:54

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Biz, U.S.: Great! The bailout program could be a huge target for fraud.

  • The sheer size of the program … is so large and the leverage being provided to the private equity participants so beneficial, that the taxpayer risk is many times that of the private parties, thereby potentially skewing the economic incentives.
  • Inspector General Neil Barofksy • In a massive quarterly report on the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Sound like fun? It totally is. We hope, if the banks defraud us taxpayers, they do it in really cool ways, like buying themselves gold houses and rocket cars. • source

21 Apr 2009 20:21

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Biz: Yahoo’s employees aren’t saying “Yahooooo!!!” about layoffs

  • 5% of its employees are getting escorted off the premises source

21 Apr 2009 20:15

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Biz: Kellogg’s Mini-Wheats will not, in fact, make you smuharter

  • 20% Kellogg’s claim of the increased attentiveness their wheat/frosting cereal gave you. source

21 Apr 2009 10:48

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Biz, U.S.: Chrysler, GM get a little help from their friends at the White House

  • $500 million Amount Chrysler will get to see through their merger with Fiat source

20 Apr 2009 09:40

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Biz, Tech: Maybe it was a good thing IBM didn’t get Sun, and Oracle did

  • $7
    billion
    amount IBM was willing to pay for the technology company source

19 Apr 2009 21:23

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Biz: The Fortune 500 is worth a lot less than they were before

  • 85% decline in the Fortune 500’s profits from 2007 to 2008 source

19 Apr 2009 21:10

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Biz: The Fortune 500’s top five and how they got to the top

  • ExxonMobil: Making money off of the world’s addiction to oil, their massive profits were up 19% in 2008. source
  • Wal-Mart: Making money off of the world’s addiction to cheap crap, their profits were up 7% in 2008. source
  • Chevron: People like putting gas in their cars, and indirectly, money in Chevron’s cash-lined pockets. source
  • ConocoPhillips: see all the stuff we just said about ExxonMobil and Chevron, then apply it here. source
  • General Electric: Nobody watches NBC, so we’ll assume it’s because of all the other stuff they make. source
 

18 Apr 2009 18:47

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Biz, Music: Go in a record store today and buy a cool physical disc

  • Independent record stores may be in declining in influence and popularity, but they’re still institutions worth supporting. Which is why Record Store Day which started in 2007, came about. source
  • Numerous bands – big and small – are chipping in to support the institutions, both via live performances and special record-store-only releases. So what are you waiting for? source

18 Apr 2009 14:51

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Biz, U.S.: Know those giant fitness balls? They’re getting recalled en masse

  • The “burst-resistant” balls apparently burst. If you go to a gym where someone’s stretching on a big plastic ball, or are in an office where someone at their desk is sitting on a giant ball claiming it helps their back, you’ve seen ’em. Apparently, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (along with manufacturer EB Brands) is voluntarily recalling 3 million of the balls, saying that they can burst when overinflated, causing the person sitting on them to fall. The company, which manufactures them under such brand names as Everlast and and Valeo, received 47 reports of just that sort of thing happening. Yikes. source

18 Apr 2009 13:26

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Biz: Newsrooms are looking like ghost towns nowadays

  • -5,900 number of newsroom jobs that disappeared in 2008; 46,700 staffers managed to avoid losing their jobs in the process source