Capitalism has never been thought of as an Olympic sport before, so it is a little startling to look up and find that the flag under which the Games will be conducted all over Southern California next summer is the vest from a three-piece suit. In the most remarkable private business deal in the history of free enterprise, patriotism is seeing nationalism, and raising the bet outrageously. "It is akin to patriotism," says Dan Greenwood, a committeeman in the Olympic ...

For Net-a-Porter, a London-based e-tailer of luxury-brand women's wear, the Great Recession wasn't even a speed bump. "We actually outperformed our own business plan. Sales were exceptional," says Natalie Massenet, the company's American founder and executive chairman. Its sales soared 53% in 2008. That recession-be-damned kind of growth prompted Swiss luxury-goods conglomerate Richemont, which already owned a third of the company, to buy the rest in a deal last April that valued it at $568 million at the time. In ...

Recipe for a business boom: take the hip lifestyle, add a pinch of nostalgia and stir in generous helpings of Ralph Nader. That unlikely combination has created one of the nation's fastest-rising businesses, the merchandising of organic foods. Basically, these are the foods that great-grandma used to eat. They are grown without the aid of chemical fertilizers or pesticides, and processed without the use of emulsifiers, mold inhibitors, bleaches, preservatives, binders, buffers, drying agents or any other test-tube additives. A ...

Whiner. Before this year's NBA playoffs, that would have been one of the first words that came to mind, for many people, if someone mentioned Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. After all, this is the guy who has racked up around $1.7 million in fines over the last decade for criticizing the league and its referees. Go ahead and Google it. "Mark Cuban and Whiner." You'll only see 533,000 results. Another insult frequently directed at Cuban was baby. ...

In Hollywood, they say, any bureaucrat can give the thumbs-down to a film proposal, but the ones with real clout are those who can flash a thumbs-up and make it happen. That power used to be the exclusive preserve of the studio moguls. Not anymore. While studios still control the financing, today the man with the golden thumb is Michael Ovitz, an agent and martial-arts buff who works in quiet but irresistible ways. Nearly everyone in show business agrees that ...

The little town of Calipatria , a cluster of small stores and business buildings surrounded by the truck farms of California's broiling Imperial Valley, has always had one claim to fame: it is located 184 ft. below sea level, and fondly calls itself "the lowest-down city in the Western Hemisphere." Last week Calipatria got a raise in stature, if not elevation, as it demonstrated how far the Imperial Valley has come since the old days—and Pearl Harbor days—when inflamed feelings against Japanese settlers brought persecution and ...

On the Hawaiian island of Molokai, pregnant women who want a doctor in attendance when they give birth fly to neighboring Oahu or Maui. The five Molokai doctors who once delivered babies have stopped doing so because malpractice insurance would cost them more than the total of any obstetrical fees they could hope to collect. Will County, Ill., last week closed its forest preserves until it can get a new liability policy on them--if that can be done at all--and ...

The White House says Austan Goolsbee, a longtime adviser to President Barack Obama, will resign his post as the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers this summer to return to teaching at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. Goolsbee has been the face of the White House on economic news, and is a regular every first Friday of the month explaining the administration's take on the latest jobless numbers. Goolsbee served on the three-member economic council ...

Pardon the personal question, but have you ever had a sexual fantasy involving the use of a nonliving object--Anna Kournikova's tennis outfit, say, or Tom Cruise's Risky Business skivvies? Actually, don't answer that--we really don't want to know--and you should probably think twice before telling your therapist. She might diagnose you with fetishism, which is listed along with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in a curious but extremely influential book called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM ...

Somehow, it fell to the United States to censure an Israeli shipping company for doing business with Iran. Last month the State Department sanctioned the Ofer Brothers Group, a private company based in the tony beach city of Herzliya, for selling an $8.6 million tanker to Iran through a known Iranian front company based in Monaco. The May 24 order barred the Israeli firm, along with a subsidiary based in Singapore, from obtaining export licenses, private loans ...