No, this is nothing to worry about:

Corn prices jumped to a record $6 a bushel Thursday, driven up by an expected supply shortfall that will only add to Americans' growing grocery bill and further squeeze struggling ethanol producers ( Read more... )

The Fed bails out Bear Stearns and hands a mighty big welfare check to the man who helped run the investment banker into virtual bankruptcy (HT: Marc Andreessen):

The US taxpayer is loaning Bear Stearns and JP Morgan Chase, Bear Stearns' acquirer, $29 billion -- just revised from $30 billion, simultaneous with JP Morgan Chase raising its ( Read more... )

Bill Gates delivers his last keynote speech at CES as the head of Microsoft, and leaves with a hilarious and celebrity-packed video speculating on what his last day at the office might be like.  Apparently these films are a hallmark of his CES appearances, but not having attended one, I can tell you this is a side of Gates I haven't seen before.  ( ( Read more... )

Fortune is out with its annual Dumbest Moments in Business, and predictably, China leads the way:

During 2007, the Year of the Pig, Mattel is forced to recall almost 20 million items made in China because of lead paint on toy cars and tiny magnets that could be deadly if swallowed. Lead paint problems are also found in 844,000 Chinese-made Barbie ( Read more... )

From Marginal Revolution:

BasePoint Analytics LLC, a recognized fraud analytics and consulting firm, analyzed over 3 million loans originated between 1997 and 2006 (the majority being 2005-2006 vintage), including 16,000 examples of non-performing loans that had evidence of fraudulent misrepresentation in the original applications. Their research ( Read more... )

I starred so many Autoblog entries in Google Reader today that I decided to roll them up here:

UPS is optimizing its "Package Flow" route-mapping software to minimize left turns, which could save it millions of dollars in fuel costs every year by reducing the amount of time trucks sit waiting to make left-hand turns.  (Hopefully they reverse the ( Read more... )

Skype explains why its VOIP network imploded last week:

The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users' computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update ( Read more... )

Rolling Stone, that noted bastion of conservatism, has published a scathing indictment of the ethanol scam:

This is not just hype-it's dangerous, delusional bullshit. Ethanol doesn't burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption-yet it consumes twenty percent ( Read more... )

Seminole Tribe to buy Hard Rock propertiesThe nearly $1 billion deal includes the restaurant chain, hotels and casinos, not to mention the world's largest collection of rock 'n' roll memorabilia ( Read more... )

Mark Cuban, September 28: "Only a moron would buy YouTube."

Google, October 9: "Who's the moron now?  And damn, Mark, get a haircut from this century ( Read more... )