Author: Tom Silva

With home sales increasing in six of the last nine months and prices still 30 percent below the peak, the housing market is quite confounding.  That’s the opinion of Jafer Hasnain, Principal and co-founder of Lifeline Assets, a private equity firm that invests in single-family homes. In a recent interview for the Alter NOW Podcasts, […]

Within 24 hours of pop songstress’ Whitney Houston’s death, the Nielsen SoundScan retail sales monitoring service reported that 91,000 digital albums and another 10,000 physical albums, as well as with 887,000 digital tracks had been sold.  The top-selling album that day was her 2000 compilation “Whitney Houston — Greatest Hits,” which sold 64,000 copies, enough […]

“They’re going to pry it out of my hands…” That was President-Elect Obama protesting the idea of giving up his beloved BlackBerry. At one point, Obama suggested that retaining his BlackBerry was one way to stay connected to the real world.  “I’ve got to look for every opportunity to do that – ways that aren’t […]

Although the economy has improved in the past year, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told lawmakers that they still must cut the growing budget deficit.  “We still have a long way to go before the labor market can be said to be operating normally,” Bernanke said in testimony to the Senate Budget Committee.  “Particularly troubling […]

Sears is trading at its lowest level levels since John Kerry won the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire Primary in 2004 — and that’s not good news for one of America’s oldest retailers. The retailer, which owns Kmart as well as the Kenmore, Craftsman and Lands’ End brands, announced  after Christmas that it would close […]

When we say that a company “went bankrupt,” we imply that it had no other choice. But American Airlines deliberately filed for bankruptcy. The airline had four billion dollars in the bank and was in a position to pay its bills. American has been losing money for some time and its board decided that it […]

As the stock market moved between negative and positive territory on the last day of January, 2012, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was nevertheless poised to close with their biggest January gain in 15 years – despite closing down a few points for the day.  In fact, it could be the best January for Standard […]

A rare glimpse of bi-partisanship was seen today in the House of Representatives as Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) officially resigned, slightly one year after being shot in the head at a “Congress on Your Corner” session in her native Tucson.  Giffords, who resigned to devote her time to undergoing intensive rehabilitation, walked with a limp.  […]

The global apartment sharing startup AirBnB has raised $112 million at a $1.3 billion valuation, confirming rumors about the fast-growing company which books rooms, apartments and houses in destinations from New York to San Francisco to Hawaii to London to Paris to Barcelona to Buenos Aires.  The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (AH).  Reports […]

The Obama administration plans to work closely with federal regulators, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to start a pilot program to sell government-owned foreclosures in bulk to investors as rentals, according to administration officials. There currently are approximately 250,000 foreclosed properties on the books of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), […]