Articles from 07/27/08 to 08/02/08

When you add it up, today’s report on employment in July plus yesterday’s report on economic activity in the second quarter, you get a depressing picture of an economy which isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Most people believe a recession means at least two back-to-back quarters of contraction. But in fact a recession is anything the National Bureau of Economic Research says it is. And the NBER uses a much broader definition, “a significant decline in economic activity, spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months….”

But however you define it, most of the economists I talked to today think we’re in one. And we will remain in one until next year.

It seems being honest doesn’t come naturally. I have two young children, so "not me" is frequently heard in my household. Their confession doesn’t come until after they are caught in a lie.

That's what happened with Comcast. The company got caught in a lie. When Comcast was first confronted with claims it slowed customers' Internet traffic, it denied the allegations. Only after tests were conducted did Comcast change its story and admit it did interfere. Then the company said it only acted to relieve traffic congestion at peak times. The Federal Communications Commission (F-C-C) found that wasn’t the case. F-C-C Chairman Kevin Martin said what was worse than Comcast blocking and delaying internet traffic was that it was hiding the fact.

If the firm was simply “managing its network,” what’s the big secret? Seems the majority at the F-C-C wasn’t buying Comcast’s “not me” plea.

A college degree used to be a ticket to lifetime employment, but, increasingly these days, that's not always the case. New technologies, changes in the U.S. economy, and longer life spans are requiring workers to update skills and sometimes switch careers.

Many of us are likely to be working past the age of 65. That means the careers we trained for in our late teens and early twenties might not be viable or in demand 30 or 40 years down the road. So, educators and job experts say it is important for workers to keep improving skills or learning new ones long after they graduate from college.

But, that can be difficult for workers who keep long hours, travel, have families, and have other financial obligations. These are issues that United Airlines pilot Todd Coomans faces. Coomans fears he'll lose his job at United and will need to find work elsewhere. The divorced father would like to go back to school, but he's not sure how he can afford to do that and support his kids at the same time.

One thing I did not talk about in today’s oil story is the companies’ strong stock buybacks.

According to Bloomberg’s analysis, Exxon, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips are spending $125 million A DAY buying back their own shares.

Analysts say they are resorting to such aggressive buybacks because they are having a hard time finding good, strategic production investments.

According to one estimate, more than 3/4 of the world’s untapped reserves are controlled by countries that restrict or ban access to their reserves. In other words, drilling opportunities are not as plentiful as you might think.

Hello everyone, I’m Morgan Manousos, an intern working with The Nightly Business Report in Miami.

With food prices on the rise, college students are struggling more than ever to fend for themselves in the "real world." When a new semester begins students raid the local Whole Foods or Farmer's Market in an attempt to eat healthier. However, students can only buy so much from these expensive health food stores. Usually, these grocery store runs only last a maximum of two weeks; then as funds dwindle and the hustle and bustle of the semester kicks in, students turn to cheaper and less nutritious options.

January 22nd, 2009. Nightly Business Report's 30th anniversary will be here before you know it, and we're gearing up for it with a special project, "The Top 30 Innovations of the Last 30 Years." A group of professors from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania will judge the nominations you submit via the Knowledge@Wharton website.

You've got lots of innovations choose from. Just think about it! There's the World Wide Web, hybrid cars, medical breakthroughs... heck even Paul Kangas and the Nightly Business Report team are an innovation. The program was a pioneer in business journalism, bringing economic and market coverage off the page and on to television screens in 1979.

We invite you to post your comments about this project and about the innovations you are considering at the bottom of this blog entry. Let's discuss those innovations and think about just how they've changed the world.

Frankly, I’m tired of covering the credit crisis in the mortgage market. It was supposed to be over by now, and I wish it was. Personally, I’m ready for stability in home prices and a return to a normal market. (Yes, that’s true, even though the crisis does provide a lot to write about.) But, unfortunately, the poor underwriting standards that got us into this mess still have some time to play out. Analysts say the “peak” month for subprime loan resets isn’t until October. And it’s not just subprime loans that are troubled. Higher quality 100% LTV loans and interest-only loans are also going bad. And that doesn’t even count the “normal” increase in defaults and foreclosures that occur when the economy turns down.

If this blog entry seems a little late, you're right. We had technical issues with our blog database late last week, and we haven't been able to post any entries since early Thursday morning. I'm told those tech issues have been resolved, so I wanted to jump in and post this blog entry I wrote last week. Enjoy!

My latest "Bill of Health" report is actually a follow-up story to a piece I did on the same subject - medical tourism - two years ago. At the time, in 2006, medical tourism was just starting to be recognized as a real trend. Now, in 2008, that trend so established that we're starting to see large companies like Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG), Aetna and New England's Hannaford Brothers supermarket chain embrace the idea of medical tourism in their own ways.

For IHG, the idea is to seek some profits from medical tourists who may venture to foreign hospitals such as the Johns Hopkins-affiliated Punta Pacifica facility in San Jose, Costa Rica, by selling those travelers hotel rooms and other services. And some insurors are recognizing a fertile marketplace of small and large companies which want to provide decent healthcare plans for employees, but find healthcare insurance costs inordinately high. Aetna and Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina have started tailoring their plans to allow these companies to give their employees the opportunity to head to India and elsewhere in quest of knee and hip surgeries and other expensive procedures.