Automobile-finance companies pushed hard to get in on the government’s $700 billion financial rescue plan. Now, with the industry’s troubles expected to deepen, they are exploring further moves, including help from the Federal Reserve.
The plan outlined by the U.S. central bank Tuesday to effectively lend to companies to fund day-to-day operations will likely not include [...]

A roundup of economic news from around the Web.
Economist Debate: The Economist is hosting a debate on how best to re-regulate the system after the credit crisis. The participants are Myron Scholes advocating a light touch, and Joseph Stiglitz arguing for stronger regulation. Scholes writes: There is now a rising chorus among regulators, politicians and [...]

It is not all that long ago that the big credit crunch banks were being lambasted in some quarters for their plans to invest heavily in Chinese banks, and that at least one pundit was predicting “The Coming Collapse of China”. How things change! Now it is the titans of Wall Street and the City [...]

For the past year, I have been predicting (wrongly) that the art market will correct. It defied the financial odds in part because the crisis hadn’t reached the super-rich and because a fresh wave of oligarchs and Middle Eastern sheiks hoisted their bidding paddles to save the day.

Gerhard Richter’s “Claudius” displayed at Christie’s auction house [...]

The world of global sourcing is even flatter and growing smaller by the day thanks to the advent of online marketplaces.
Since the global economic downturn set in, people have been asking me about its impact on e-commerce and Alibaba.com. While it is true that some businesses have become wary and have held back from international [...]

One issue that should rise to the top of the corporate agenda in 2008 is diversity — or, more specifically, how managers and leaders deal with it. Diversity has been on the agenda for decades — differences of class, gender, ethnicity, faith, culture, education and sexual orientation are well understood — but diversity has taken [...]

The signs of an imminent recession are all around us. The spillover from the subprime mortgage crisis is weakening both consumer confidence and the consumer spending–much of it on credit–that has been buoying the US economy.
Companies should bear eight factors in mind when making their marketing plans for 2008 and 2009:
1. Research the customer. [...]