The family finance website, FiLife is sponsoring a contest called "Fix U.S. Healthcare In Just Three Words." Never mind that FiLife uses seven words to let us know about it! To enter the contest, you can submit a phrase via your Twitter account such as "Impeach Barack Obama"...

The SEC received scathing criticism for its failure to follow the scent of massive fraud leading to Bernard Madoff. In the aftermath, Mary Schapiro announced on February 6 that the SEC would unleash the Commission's enforcement staff to more aggressively pursue instances of financial fraud.

Using the SEC...

I just finished reading Nixonland, by Rick Perlstein, and need to take a nap. Have you ever been lashed to a barnacle-encrusted pier and smashed by salty waves for days on end? You'd need a nap, too.

The reviewers have fallen over themselves to praise Nixonland, calling it the best...

Legal research -- once the province of desks, books, and binders -- is now online, data-driven, and real-time. These attributes pose new challenges to old practices and habits, and to old publishing stalwarts such as Westlaw and LexisNexis. Here are a few of the new research and business realities that...

Steve Jobs returned from exile on September 16, 1997. Since then, Apple Inc.'s stock price has risen nearly 2,500 percent. Revenues have jumped from $7.1 billion to $32.5 billion. In 1997, Apple lost $1 billion. In 2008, the company netted profits of nearly $5 billion. Today, Apple is the most...

British political philosopher Isaiah Berlin immortalized the distinction in politics and literature between the hedgehog and the fox. The hedgehog knows one thing, and is bold, direct, and uncompromising. The fox knows many things, and is crafty, subtle, and nuanced.

Joe Nocera and others have criticized President Obama...

Okay, so after months of inflamed hype, Wolfram Alpha launched a week or so ago and nearly everyone agrees it is terrible. The question is not how it could be so terrible; it is why everyone didn't know from the start that it would be terrible. Stephen Wolfram...

Excuse me for not joining the bandwagon, but the recent hair-on-fire frenzy about Twitter needs a bucket of cold water. Let's leave aside for the moment, Ashton Kutcher's inane race with CNN to be the first Twitter account with one million followers (trailed closely by Britney Spears). Let's ignore for...

I haven't posted in more than five weeks, having submitted myself to an alternative form of torture - the "wayward son college application ordeal".

I applied to colleges in the 1970s. And wow. I am not in Kansas any longer.

Talk about a meat grinder, a cellulose processor, a proctology...

It is safe now to say that "Web 2.0" is dead. The evidence is irrefutable and it exposes the twin fallacies the concept of Web 2.0 has depended upon: 1) that people can build their worlds around - indeed, will want to build their worlds around - social networking; and...

Comptroller of the Currency John C. Dugan spoke before the 3rd Annual National Housing Forum of the Treasury's Office of Thrift Supervision today. He didn't waste any time getting to the point.

Dugan provided the bad news first. The third quarter OCC Mortgage Metrics report -...

Wall Street's troubles have not only filtered down to Main Street. They have crushed Main Street. With cash flow and credit lines drier than a cracked creek bed in Nevada, nearly every small business we know is simply...

Eric de Place published a fabulous post in Sightline on November 20 entitled "My Keyboard Versus the Climate". In the spirit of Think Globally, Act Locally, Eric points out that the handy little air blasters from Office Depot that we use to clean our keyboards and...

Serial entrepreneur Penny Hersher worries about a talent-retention challenge if Wall Street eschews bonuses this year. In response to a Bloomberg article on public objections to mega-bonus payouts to Wall Street executives, Hersher says that "talent" follows money, and if the money goes, then the "talent" that financial...

Actually, I do like economists. One of my long-time friends is Jeff Frankel, who teaches economics at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and who served on President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers. I rented a room at Jeff's house in Berkeley 25 years ago, when he was...

I run a small technology company in Seattle, and will normally focus my HuffPosts on business, culture, and technology. As we absorb the meaning of Barack Obama's election, however, I will launch my inaugural post with some thoughts on his biggest challenge as president: which will be facing down...