Would shifting attitudes surprise Reagan? (Getty Images)

Government spending, in general, isn’t popular with the average American, but a new poll indicates that support for specific cuts for most programs is lower now than in 1980.
Harris Interactive’s latest flashback poll looks at views about government spending now, compared with 1980. The main question asked, “In [...]

Senior citizens have been hit pretty hard in recent months, as those invested in stocks feel the sharpest pain in retirement accounts and those living on fixed incomes have dealt with spiraling inflation costs, but today it looks like they may have gotten a small break.
 
Social Security lovers will getting a bigger cost of living [...]

If you want to know what is really worrying the wealthy these days, consider the case of Bruce Smith.
Mr. Smith, CEO of Tesoro Corp., an oil refiner based in San Antonio, recently was forced to sell 251,100 shares, or 14% of his holdings to meet a margin call from Goldman Sachs Group. Chesapeake Energy CEO [...]

There has been a heated debate over suspending mark-to-market accounting rules that require a bank to report financial instruments on its balance sheet at the price they would fetch on an open market. But is the whole debate just a waste of time?
SEC Chairman Cox has power to change mark-to-market rules, but should he? (Getty [...]

Over at the Economist, a blog item flags the eerie parallels between the current crisis and the one they described on November 23, 1929, excerpted below:
“A prolonged upward movement…has been built up over a series of years on the amazing and unexampled prosperity of America. But some two years ago the speculative movement seemed [...]

From Reuters:
Shanghai police will post photos and videos of jaywalkers in newspapers and on TV in a bid to shame them out of breaking traffic rules, local media reported on Thursday.
Offending pedestrians, moped riders and cyclists would be snapped at selected intersections and their images put in regular columns and on special television programmes set [...]

Photograph by labatata on Flickr

Gothamist went on the Wall Street roller coaster during a crazy week for financial institutions (bankruptcy, sale, bailout) and the county.
Phillyist analyzed the problem of hecklers at live performances.
Londonist eagerly anticipated the annual Open House Weekend, where for one weekend only, the public get to poke around some of the capital’s [...]

There’s no Olympic medal for sports apparel marketing, but the race this summer between the category’s top two brands is hotly contested. Ahead of the Beijing Olympics, Nike and Adidas are employing very different strategies to court the Chinese market.
One key difference is Adidas’ decision to invest in being an official sponsor of the [...]

In a critical post about a new search engine awkwardly-named Cuil, the folks at popular blog TechCrunch posted a screen grab of a Cuil search for “TechCrunch” and said: “And I have no idea who that person is next to the results for our ‘About’ section.” Why it is none other than Shanghai’s biggest R.E.M. [...]