Business and Finance news

"Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get," Forrest Gump said in the classic 1994 film.
The same goes for buying a computer. It’s a box hiding items of varying quality inside.
I recently helped two frustrated HP buyers get replacements and another HP buyer get a repair for computers […]

Creditor protection for your registered retirement savings plan has been delayed again by political posturing over Ontario’s plan to adopt a harmonized sales tax.
The HST, a combined federal and provincial sales tax totalling 13 per cent on most goods and services as of next July, would also whittle away your retirement savings.
But it would do […]

The Hawaii Medical Service Association lost $32 million in the third quarter — a result of continued hits from rising health-care costs and declining investment income.
It lost approximately $19 million during the same period last year.
The state’s largest health plan collected $411.1 million in premiums in the third quarter and paid out $403.9 million in […]

Home buyers in much of the United States paid thousands of dollars below asking prices in September, but had slightly less negotiating power than in August, real estate website Zillow.com said on Wednesday.
According to the September Zillow Real Estate Market Reports, buyers paid 2.9 percent less, or a median of $6,161, below the listing […]

Russia’s economy may contract by a “very serious” 7.5 percent this year as dependence on energy exports left the country more vulnerable to the global financial crisis than expected, President Dmitry Medvedev said.
“I must admit that we sunk below our lowest expectations,” Medvedev said in an interview to be broadcast today at 9 […]

Ashoka Mody, an assistant director of the International Monetary Fund’s European department, was in critical condition today after he was shot in the garage of his Bethesda, Maryland home last night, police said.
Mody, an economist originally from India, has worked at the IMF for eight years and is mission chief to Germany and […]

Japan’s broadest indicator of economic health rose for a fifth month in August as global stimulus spending helped the country emerge from its worst postwar recession.
The coincident index, a composite of 11 indicators including factory production and retail sales, climbed to 91.4 in August, the highest since November, from a revised 89.8 a […]

An Australian court has ruled that local governments can pursue financial claims against collapsed U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in Australia and elsewhere, a firm that is funding the litigation said on Monday.
IMF (Australia) Ltd said the Federal Court ruled on Friday in favor of town councils and others which had lost money in […]

The U.K. housing market may have stabilized after more surveyors reported a gain in home values than a drop for the first time in two years, a report by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors showed.
The number of respondents surveyed saying prices rose in August exceeded those reporting declines by 11 percentage points, […]

Can hundreds of stock-selling insiders be wrong?
The stock market has mounted an historic rally since it hit a low in March. The S&P 500 is up 55%, as U.S. job losses have slowed and credit markets have stabilized.
But against that improving backdrop, one indicator has turned distinctly bearish: Corporate officers and directors […]