Every financial bubble has its popular phrases, initialisms and acronyms. In the 1980s they were junk bonds and LBOs. The most recent bubble offered CDOs, Option ARMS, Structured Notes and a virtual lexicon of complex and convoluted financing. Though it all started to fray early in 2008, the Sept. 15 bankruptcy filing by Lehman Brothers [...]

A year ago today, the venerable investment-banking firm Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection after the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department pointedly refused to bail the company out, and no other Wall Street outfit was willing to step into the breach. It was the largest bankruptcy ever in the U.S., but the really big [...]

For the past decade, the people of Trokavec, Czech Republic, have been convinced that America was positioning their quiet town of around 100, an hour south of Prague, as the center of a giant bullseye. So when news was confirmed that the U.S. had scrapped plans to place part of a missile defense shield in a [...]

A planned deal that would place Microsoft Corp.’s Bing search tool on Yahoo Inc. search pages is being eyed by European antitrust regulators, according to a report Thursday. Reuters reported that Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) is having informal talks with regulators in Europe about the deal. The deal with Microsoft and Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) is already [...]

Who Was There: Blizzard Entertainment cofounder and executive vice president of product development Frank Pearce and production director J. Allen Brack opened Thursday’s schedule of panels with a keynote address titled “The Universe of World of Warcraft.” What They Talked About: In the GDC Austin schedule, Pearce and Brack’s keynote address is described as offering “an [...]

This summer’s melt of Arctic sea ice has not been as profound as in the last two years, scientists said as the ice began its annual Autumn recovery. At its smallest extent this summer, on 12 September, the ice covered 5.10 million sq km (1.97 million sq miles). This was larger than the minima seen in the [...]