Financial & Economic Blog

Barry Diller will be in a rare win-win situation Wednesday morning.

The market is eager to see Ben Bernanke heading for the sidelines. But with the U.S. economy softening, he may not stay there for long.

Back in 2001 when the International Olympic Committee chose Beijing as the site of this summer's games, the event was meant to mark China's debut as a player on the global economic stage. But a recent study by the economist Angus Maddison projects that China will become the world's dominant economic superpower much sooner than expected - not in 2050, but in 2015.

Stocks futures were range bound early Wednesday as investors awaited a rate decision from the Federal Reserve and more corporate earnings.

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This is indeed a concern and we will tackle it." That was SEC chairman Christopher Cox's handwritten note to a senator worried that companies were retaliating against analysts who produced research critical of them.

If the thought of opening up your mutual statement makes you squeamish or if you avert your eyes whenever CNBC comes on at the gym, it's understandable. This has been one ferocious stock market. Not only has Wall Street been flirting with a bear market - conventionally defined as a 20% decline in the major indexes - but we're now in "the second-worst eight-year period for stocks since the 1930s," says money manager Martha Ortiz of Aronson Johnson & Ortiz in Philadelphia.

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