When it comes to making important changes in interest rates, the big-time bankers of New York, Chicago and San Francisco have recently taken a back seat to Philadelphia's John R. Bunting, the controversial chief of the First Pennsylvania Banking & Trust Co. On two occasions in 1968 and 1970, Bunting was the first to cut the prime rate, and other bankers quickly followed. Last week, ignoring pleas and pressure from the Nixon Administration, Bunting acted again. This time he hiked the prime, from 5% to 5%. ...

When Barack Obama traveled to Texas this month to talk immigration, David Plouffe, his top message guru, decided to stay home and watch Twitter instead. While Obama spoke, Plouffe sat before two flat-screen televisions in the White House complex. One showed live footage of Obama in El Paso. The other flickered with a lightning-quick vertical ticker tape of people tweeting with the #immigration hashtag, reacting line by line to the President in real time. "I find it useful," ...

The good news is that the American economy is back to its precrisis size. The U.S. GDP is now about $13.5 trillion, a bit above what it was in 2007, before the financial crisis. The bad news is that we are producing the same amount of goods and services as in 2007 with 7 million fewer workers. The number of Americans who are unemployed has roughly doubled, and though that number is declining, it is doing so ...

Bob Dylan is flipping through his own back pages. He has finally started writing an autobiography. It began as liner notes for rereleases of his back-catalog albums; he has finished about 200 pages, or perhaps 150--he's not exactly certain. "My retrievable memory, it goes blank on incidents and things that have happened," says Dylan. He has trouble, sometimes, remembering events from decades past, when he was conjuring up albums like Highway 61 Revisited and unleashing songs like Maggie's Farm. So ...

One of the most encouraging developments to come out of the TIME/ABC News Summit on Obesity earlier this month was an emerging consensus among nutrition experts about what constitutes a healthy diet. Here, one of America's most prominent diet gurus summarizes key points of agreement. As a veteran of the diet wars, I think it's time to call a truce. Rather than hear experts argue, most people want practical information they can use. Significant points ...

Anaheim, Dallas, Raleigh, Tampa: To the 34 million citizens of Canada, the country that invented the game of hockey, the Stanley Cup belongs in these cities about as much as tropical beaches belong in Saskatoon. Yet, in the almost two decades since the last time a Canadian team won the Cup — Montreal defeated Wayne Gretzky and the Los Angeles Kings in the 1993 Finals — these southern and western American cities have all hoisted the Cup ...

Correction Appended: May 29, 2010 Three years ago, James Lansberry faced the kind of health care crisis that has become all too common in the U.S. Less than two weeks after his wife Theresa gave birth to their sixth child, she had to rush back to the hospital to have her appendix removed before it burst. Her medical bills eventually totaled more than $23,000. It would have been a stressful time for any family — but especially for those who, like ...

A year after the poisonings, public confidence is restoredOne year ago last week, James Burke made a decision that will probably be studied in business schools for a long time to come. Going against the advice of Government agents and some of his own colleagues, the chairman of Johnson & Johnson decided to spend whatever millions it would cost to recall 31 million bottles of Tylenol capsules from store shelves across the U.S. Officials at the Food and Drug Administration feared that the recall would increase ...

What was your first reaction to the news? Relief. Nobody knew why the President was going to be addressing the country. You imagined maybe a possible terrorist attack. Then there was a sense of satisfaction, then a sense of revenge. So how much does revenge play into people's feelings about the killing of bin Laden? People are human. When you take away their loved ones in a brutal way like that, the person who did it is someone you want ...

Apple's long-awaited white iPhone 4, which hit stores April 28, is expected to be another smash for Steve Jobs. But how much will it benefit the American economy? Though invented in the U.S., the iPhone is manufactured in China, so, ironically, iPhones sold in the U.S. add to the trade deficit with the Middle Kingdom. Yet China contributes almost nothing to the value of an iPhone; it does little more than assemble parts from elsewhere. A host of other countries, ...