As Europe confronts another act in its Greek drama, many are watching and wondering, Is the U.S. next? Could our debt-ceiling debate be the beginning of a crisis that makes the world lose faith in American credit? Anything could happen, but it's worth noting the big differences between Greece and the U.S. Greece faces three problems. First, it has an uncompetitive economy that cannot generate growth. Its labor is too expensive, it exports few products, and its ...

When Apple unveiled the iPad in January of 2010, it left a gaggle of other consumer-electronics companies suddenly anxious to get into the tablet game. Very, very anxious. So anxious, in fact, that some of them set deadlines for themselves that made it impossible to ship fully-baked products. That was certainly true of Samsung's original Galaxy Tab, which ran an operating system designed for phones, not tablets. And Motorola's Xoom, which debuted without several of its key features ...

When you hear the word intern, you probably don't think of people like Kristina Shands. For starters, she's 38. And she had notched 10 years of experience as a fundraiser at a nonprofit in Tennessee before she was laid off last year. But now that Shands is considering moving into sports management, she's interning with the Knoxville Ice Bears hockey team, writing game summaries and handing out stats on game day. She devotes about 10 hours a week to the ...

On May 25, U.S. businessman Charles Hubbs made the short trek to Hong Kong from his office just outside Guangzhou, a city in Guangdong province in southeastern China that is known for good reason as the manufacturing workshop of the world. For the 64-year-old native of Louisiana, it was a trip that may have marked the beginning of the end of his successful 22-year run as a China-based exporter of medical supplies. Hubbs was going to listen to a pitch ...

It was another routine night for Shawn Carpenter. After a long day analyzing computer-network security for Sandia National Laboratories, where much of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is designed, Carpenter, 36, retreated to his ranch house in the hills overlooking Albuquerque, N.M., for a quick dinner and an early bedtime. He set his alarm for 2 a.m. Waking in the dark, he took a thermos of coffee and a pack of Nicorette gum to the cluster of computer terminals in his home ...

Peru is a mining country. Mining accounts for far more than half of the country's exports; taxes paid by mining companies equal more than 10% of the government's annual budget. Peru is the world's top silver producer, second in copper and in the top six of a long list of other metals, including gold. So, when someone tinkers with mining — or even talks about tinkering with it — the country's economic drivers go haywire. President-elect Ollanta Humala, ...

"I'm very, very sorry to say that my business is skyrocketing," the personal-finance guru Suze Orman said one late January afternoon. The Dow was down almost 200 points, and Orman was lounging on the terrace of her San Francisco town house, wearing a leopard-print tunic and cowboy boots. She looked up and popped a grape into her mouth. "This is happening because of the lies and deceit and greed of Wall Street, the mortgage companies, the SEC, the Administration," she ...

After a 15-year economic eclipse, a stream of good news is finally brightening the outlook for Japan. Banks have started to lend again, companies to hire and invest, and consumers to spend. Things are so good, in fact, that the Bank of Japan has just declared victory in its epic battle with deflation. The country has the world's second largest economy; its recovery will have implications around the globe. It's worth remembering how Japan got to where it is now. The ...

Thirty years ago, Vietnamese soldiers waged a final, furious battle in the hills of Lang Son near the country's northern border to push back enemy troops. Both sides suffered horrific losses, but Vietnam eventually proclaimed victory. Decades later, diplomatic relations have been restored and the two nations, at least in public, call each other friend. Vietnam's former foe is a major investor in the country, bilateral trade is at an all-time high, and tourists, not troops, are ...

For farmers hoping for a healthy harvest, the best place to turn for help these days is the Monsanto Corp. One of the world's leading biotechnology companies--and lately a pioneer in genetically engineered seeds--Monsanto has been incorporating flashy traits like herbicide and pest resistance into everything from canola to corn. But such supercrops don't come cheap. Farmers pay a premium for Monsanto seeds, and to make sure they keep paying, the company requires them to sign an agreement promising not ...