James Glassman

Researching an article on outsourcing a week ago, I came across a remarkable list on the website of CNN's Lou Dobbs. It was a sort of rogues' gallery, touted nightly on the show. "These are companies," says the Dobbs site, "either sending American jobs overseas, or...

As Martha Stewart's trial moves into a third week, an important question remains unasked: Why are the feds prosecuting someone for receiving inside information, anyway? Isn't the criminal the corporate official who acts on knowledge that the public doesn't have?The...

Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary, is back -- and he's everywhere. He's written a book. He's delivered a paper before the prestigious American Economic Association. He's giving loads of TV interviews. Among Democratic candidates who realize the election...

Paul Atkins this month became the first SEC commissioner to criticize openly a proposal to require companies to treat employee stock options as current expenses. Atkins began by questioning whether the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which has aggressively...

Today's bold and surprising announcement that six New York Stock Exchange companies would also list their shares on the NASDAQ Stock Market is a clear sign that more competition is coming to the vast markets where stocks are bought and sold. The decision by the six...

Byron Wien, the veteran Morgan Stanley strategist, is one of my favorite market seers. Annually since 1986 he has sent clients a list of "ten surprises" he expects for the year ahead. The list for 2004, released this morning, is wonderfully optimistic, and it includes...

Last month, The Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation severely repudiated a board which, a year ago, had judged The Skeptical Environmentalist, the best-selling book by Bjorn Lomborg, "objectively dishonest" and "clearly contrary to the standards of...

The problem with investing is that, done right, it's not all that much fun. It requires virtues for which you will probably be rewarded in heaven but that won't provide you and your friends with much entertainment on earth: equanimity, restraint, moderation,...

The cover of the latest Business 2.0, one of the few surviving techie-financial magazines of the go-go 1990s, issues a dire warning: "Why This Tech Bubble Is About to Blow," screams the headline. And the subhead: "Wall Street Is Doing It Again . . . Save Yourself!"...

The late Benjamin Graham -- erudite classicist, mentor to Warren Buffett, highly successful investor and probably the greatest financial mind of the 20th century -- said it best: "The investor's chief problem -- and even his worst enemy -- is likely to be himself."...

Time, as I exhort young investors, is the single most important factor in stock market success. But you can own a stock for 100 years and, if it doesn't increase its profits at a nice annual clip, you've got a depleting asset on your hands. The winning formula is time...

A month ago, Eliot L. Spitzer, New York's attorney general and the scourge of Wall Street, announced that his office had "obtained evidence of widespread illegal trading schemes that potentially cost mutual fund shareholders billions of dollars annually." The...

Earlier this year, Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), which is roughly tied with General Electric (GE) as the most valuable company measured by market cap in the world, declared the first dividend in its 28-year history. On Sept. 12, it doubled that dividend from 8 cents a year...

If you're skeptical of what businesses report as "earnings" -- their official profits -- you have a right to be. Earnings are an artifice of what are called generally accepted accounting principles, and, while GAAP earnings are universally admired, almost worshiped,...

CANCUN, Mexico - As the "extremely dangerous" Hurricane Isabel advances toward the Yucatan from the Western Atlantic, delegates from 146 countries are racing to finish work at this resort town on a once-in-a-generation opportunity to slash subsidies and open up the...

Poland, the fifth-largest country in Europe, is not one of the first places most investors look for opportunities. But maybe it should be. I returned full of enthusiasm a few weeks ago from my first trip to Poland in 40 years. Poland's stock market is small -- a...

To invest is to defer. When you buy a company's stock or a government agency's bonds, you decide not to consume your cash today but to entrust it to an institution that, you hope, will produce rewards for you in the future. History shows that, if you make your choices...

Is high tech really back, or are we headed for Dubble Bubble? Whitney Tilson, venerable and circumspect columnist for the Motley Fool, has no doubts: "Times like these make me sigh, hold my head in my hands, and groan, 'How is it possible that, in less than three...