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There’s More To Fixing Food Deserts Than Building Grocery Stores

There has been a lot of talk about what’s wrong with food deserts. First lady Michelle Obama, for one, says far too many people can’t access the fruits and vegetables they need to be healthy. Last year, she helped persuade several major retailers, foundations and small businesses to bring more healthful food to neighborhoods where [...]

Foreign Policy: Help Wanted

Byron Auguste is a director of McKinsey & Company based in Washington, D.C. Susan Lund is research director of the McKinsey Global Institute, based in Washington, D.C. James Manyika is a director of the McKinsey Global Institute based in San Francisco. Today, 40 million workers across advanced economies are unemployed. Yet businesses can’t fill job [...]

Flush With Cash, Apple’s Gains Show Few Signs Of Slowing

At the end of 2011, Apple had a very enviable problem. It’s not too many companies today that have more cash than they know what to do with, and for the electronics giant, that amounted to nearly $100 billion burning a hole it its pocket. So it certainly pleased current and potential investors when Apple [...]

Apple To Buy Back $10B In Shares; Pay Dividend Of $2.65 Per Share

The Associated Press just moved this alert: “Apple says it will use its cash to start paying dividend of $2.65, buy back $10B in shares.” Indeed, at Apple’s website the company says it “plans to initiate a quarterly dividend of $2.65 per share sometime in the fourth quarter of its fiscal 2012, which begins on [...]

‘This American Life’ Retracts Mike Daisey’s Apple Factory Story

A highly popular episode of This American Life in which monologuist Mike Daisey tells of the abuses at factories that make Apple products in China contained “significant fabrications,” the show said today. “We’re horrified to have let something like this onto public radio,” Ira Glass, the show’s executive producer and host said in a blog [...]

Chances Are Pink Slime Is In Grocery Store Beef, Too

If you’re trying to determine whether the ground chuck you buy in the grocery store contains so-called pink slime, or lean beef trimmings, you won’t find it on the ingredient list. “It’s not required to be labeled,” explains Don Schaffner, a food scientist at Rutgers University. But, chances are, it’s there. An estimated 70 percent [...]

How Fast Does Your State Foreclose?

Texas processes foreclosures fastest, with an average of 90 days. At the other end is New York, with an average of 1,019 days. Experts say there are pros and cons to getting through them both too fast and too slow. The national average is 348 days to complete a foreclosure. [Copyright 2012 National Public Radio]

The Nation: Mocking Clients As Muppets At Goldman

A (now) former Goldman Sachs executive penned a much-discussed opinion piece in the New York Times this morning explaining that he’s resigning from Goldman because the environment inside the company “is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.” Greg Smith, who spent twelve years at the firm, said it dramatically prioritizes profits [...]

Foreign Policy: What Narcissists Think But Don’t Say

Daniel W. Drezner is a writer for Foreign Policy. I think it’s safe to say that the vampire squid Goldman Sachs brand has taken a few hits in recent years. To add to the calumny, Greg Smith, an executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East [...]

I Quit! Four Standout ‘Take This Job And Shove It’ Moments In History

In a last-day-at-work New York Times column blasting his employer, Goldman Sachs, Greg Smith didn’t exactly quote Johnny Paycheck. But his message was pretty much the same as the one-hit wonder’s country song “Take This Job And Shove It.” So with a nod to Smith — and to David Allen Coe, who wrote the tune [...]