It costs the Old Town Bike Shop in Colorado Springs about $24,000 a year to provide health insurance for four employees, according to owner John Crandall. Meanwhile, his largest competitors, Walmart and Target, foist much of their health care costs onto taxpayers, according to new data released by Massachusetts, Missouri,...

Walmart has been generating some impressive-sounding headlines on the environment lately. After making a heavily publicized announcement on energy use earlier this month, the giant retailer garnered headlines such as "Walmart Will Increase Use of Renewables 600%" and "Walmart Targets Ambitious Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency Standards." ...

Cross-posted with Grist.

Walmart has staked the lion's share of its sustainability program on greening its supply chain. Instead of changing its own business practices -- selling flimsy, landfill-bound products and building sprawling stores that can only be reached by car, for example -- Walmart has said that it...

I recently gave a TEDx talk that looks at one of the more pressing challenges of our time: How do we wrest control of our economy back from giant corporations?

The statistics are stunning: Four big banks dominate our banking system. Agribusiness giants monopolize food production. Walmart...

Walmart now captures $1 of every $4 Americans spend on groceries. It's on track to claim one-third of food sales within five years. Here's a look at how Walmart has dramatically altered the food system -- triggering massive consolidation, driving down prices to farmers, and leaving more families struggling to afford...

A number of critical small business issues are at stake in next month's federal and state elections. Here are six of the most important.

1. Restructuring the Banking System

Nearly half of all small businesses have been unable to secure adequate financing, according to recent surveys. Even as the...

Two years ago, Bank of America announced it would "hire more than 1,000 small business bankers." It's been using the hiring to gin up a steady stream of positive press ever since.

But what exactly these "small business bankers" have been doing is anyone's guess. Small business...

Sam Walton opened the first Walmart store in Rogers, Arkansas, 50 years ago this month. Sprawled along a major thoroughfare outside the city's downtown, that inaugural store embodied many of the hallmarks that have since come to define the Walmart way of doing business. Walton scoured the country for the...

The Waltons currently own 49 percent of Walmart stock.

That's right. The six Waltons, heirs to Walmart founder Sam Walton, not only have a net worth equal to the combined wealth of the bottom 30 percent of Americans, as we learned this week from University of California...

Two things seem particularly noteworthy about the approval Wal-Mart won yesterday to acquire Massmart, a Johannesburg-based chain that operates across 13 African countries.

One is that, despite the ample publicity Wal-Mart has engineered for its "buy local" efforts, the company in fact has zero interest...

Stepping up their attacks on Elizabeth Warren and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week, House Republicans painted a picture of an all-powerful agency -- Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus called it "the most powerful agency that's ever been created in Washington"-- whose director will rule the banking industry...

In the summer of 2008, business partners Jessica Stockton Bagnulo and Rebecca Fitting were making plans to open a bookstore in Brooklyn. Their chosen neighborhood, Fort Greene, was over the moon at the prospect. For years, residents had been clamoring for a bookstore, repeatedly citing it as their top need...

With the now-expected passage of the financial reform bill, giant banks see a golden opportunity to finally put the financial crisis, along with their culpability for wrecking our economy, in the rearview mirror.

"We are very pleased to have this certainty and closure," declared Steve Bartlett when the House-Senate...

The New Rules Project, in partnership with HuffPost's Move Your Money campaign, is using its Community Banking Initiative to get out the word that banking locally can put the power back in the hands of individuals and communities, rather than Wall Street's CEOs.

In the perilous aftermath of...

One of the more menacing amendments circling the financial reform bill is a proposal by Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) that would bar states from enforcing consumer protection laws against national banks and would make it easier for banks to claim immunity from state laws they don't like.

This dangerous...

Across the country, independent business groups that have been urging people to "buy local" are now making "bank local" an increasingly prominent part of their message, bringing new grassroots visibility and organizational infrastructure to the Move Your Money movement.

"The message that big banks don't have our...

At stake in the financial reform debate is an issue that has received far less attention than the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, but is at least as important: whether Congress will restore the authority of states to oversee national banks.

If you don't believe me, then take it from U.S....

Not one to let a good crisis go to waste, Bank of America managed, in the dark days of 2008, to parlay its own insolvency and near collapse into attaining something it had long dreamed of: federal approval to bypass a national law that says that no bank may acquire...

The New Rules Project, in partnership with HuffPost's Move Your Money campaign, is using its Community Banking Initiative to get out the word that banking locally can put the power back in the hands of individuals and communities, rather than Wall Street's CEOs.

Those who wonder whether public...

What journalists and even environmentalists so often fail to do in reporting on Wal-Mart's sustainability announcements is to provide some context.

Context is everything. Consider Wal-Mart's latest announcement: It will push some of the factories that supply its stores to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. That's a good thing in...