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RE:Do you think these levels of pay are justified?
Nope.
by RR

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01 September 2010 07:17

The Iraq war is over

But Obama says US needs to deal with economic troubles at home.

On Tuesday, US president Barack Obama and his administration announced the official end of America's combat mission in Iraq. After seven and a half long years, 4400 troop deaths, and almost a trillion dollars, the war in Iraq is now officially over.

To mark the end of the war, America formally handed over military control of Iraq to Iraqi forces at a ceremony in Baghdad. Since Obama took office, 100000 US troops have been withdrawn from combat in Iraq; the 50000 troops that remain in the country will be focusing on training and supporting Iraqi troops and all 50000 are scheduled to leave by the end of the year.

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26 August 2010 01:21

M&A: The new black

Deals are back in style; what does it mean?

After a long post-crisis lull, merger-and-acquisition (M&A) activity has skyrocketed over the last couple of months, hitting highs around the world.

In the UK, for example, July and August saw some £94bn-worth of corporate activity according to Reuters, making it the country's busiest summer M&A season since record-keeping began in 1987. In the US, last week alone saw deals worth close to $90bn, while in Canada, investment bank Crosbie & Co reported that M&A activity for the second quarter was up 44% compared to the first quarter (and that's excluding the BHP/Potash Corp bid, see below). Even South Africa saw some major corporate action with the announcement that Old Mutual is in talks to sell its Nedbank stake to HSBC in a deal that could be worth nearly $7bn.

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18 August 2010 05:19

The next market meltdown

What's going to happen to the US housing market?

The American housing market isn't looking too hot right now. A number of indicators, including new housing permits, new home sales, and existing home resales, have been coming in either below expectations or outright negative.

Homes just aren't selling, and numbers from the Commerce Department show that the home ownership rate in the US fell to 66.9% in the second quarter of this year, its lowest level since 1999 and down from a peak of 69.2% in 2004.

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11 August 2010 06:27

That old deflation bogeyman

Should deflation fears be keeping us up at night?

 Today's American economy is like a sickly infant, there's always something new to worry about; today's fear du jour is deflation, a debilitating condition that can cause an economy to stutter to a halt.

Deflation is basically the opposite of inflation. Under inflation, the prices of things go up, but when an economy falls into deflation, prices go down, all of them, including consumer prices of goods in stores, asset prices, and the price of labour (that is, wages).

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28 July 2010 07:24

Cha-ching: Oracle boss earns $1.8bn

Wall Street Journal list puts Larry Ellison at the top of the CEO pay pile.

The Wall Street Journal's Decade's Top 25 Earners list, released on Tuesday, is a comprehensive look at the earnings of top executives of publicly traded US companies. The top earners' pay runs from Oracle founder and CEO Larry Ellison's $1.835bn to Chesapeake Energy boss Aubrey K. McClendon's more-modest $332m.

Playing with the digital list is a lot of fun, and highly recommended. The most interesting aspect of the list, however, is the column showing how much money a shareholder who invested $100 in the company would have made over the period for which the compensation was paid.

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