BusinessWeek

CISCO RIDES AGAIN At the peak of tech fever in 2000, Cisco Systems (CSCO), the largest global provider of Web networking gear for transporting data, voice, and video, crested at 82 a share. After the bubble burst, Cisco stock drifted lower for almost a decade, to 13.62 this March. Now it's at 23.02, and some bulls believe the rebound will continue. Investors shouldn't ignore Cisco's big role in "riding the wireless-data wave--the surging demand for more data and devices by users everywhere," says Karl Mills, who heads top-ranked Counterpoint Select Fund. Mills believes the number of electronic devices that feed on data will continue ... Read Full Story

A SURPRISING THIRD-QUARTER PICKUP With most of the crucial data needed to estimate third-quarter economic growth now in hand, economists are coming up with a result considerably different from what they expected only a month or two ago. Not only is the projected gain in real gross domestic product stronger, but the composition of growth is also tilted much more toward a broad pickup in demand and away from output gains resulting from businesses adjusting their inventory levels. That mix is much more favorable for continued growth. The fear had been that the economy was embarking on a demandless recovery. That is, real GDP ... Read Full Story

A REVITALIZED PFIZER Pfizer (PFE), a big laggard last year, has mounted a robust recovery, rising to 17.41 a share on Oct. 21 from 11 in March. The steady progress is partly because the drugmaker is regarded as the "new" Pfizer by some pros who see it gaining from its recent purchase of Wyeth. The combination will revitalize Pfizer's revenues and bring $4 billion in cost synergies, says Herman Saftlas of Standard & Poor's, who rates Pfizer a buy. According to Bloomberg, 20 of 24 analysts who track Pfizer rate it a buy, and four tag it a hold. The Street's optimism, says Tim ... Read Full Story

NEW HOME, SHARED VALUES For 80 years, BusinessWeek has provided the business world with insightful, richly reported, and unbiased information and analysis. In our very first issue, on Sept. 7, 1929, we asserted that our ambition was "to become indispensable" to business people and to "write sanely and intelligently of business without being pompous or ponderous." Through times of war and peace, through booms and busts, we've made this our mission--and we have nearly 5 million magazine readers and more than 10 million online users to show for it. Now we get the chance to become even bigger and stronger, in collaboration with our ... Read Full Story

GUNNING FOR AN ELEPHANT IN SILICON VALLEY If you don't envy Andreas Bechtolsheim, you may not know enough about him. Even by the standards of Silicon Valley hotshots, his combination of talent and luck is rare. In 1982 the brainy young engineer co-founded Sun Microsystems and helped usher in a new era of computing by dreaming up a workstation that was cheaper and more versatile than the minicomputers popular with companies at the time. Then in 1998, at a friend's house in Palo Alto, Bechtolsheim had the good fortune to meet two young Stanford University grad students working on a new search engine. He ... Read Full Story

MR. CLEANUP Georgia's financial crisis is making accidental heroes out of people like Jim Edwards. The 44-year-old Edwards is CEO of United Bank, a small, family-controlled outfit based in Griffin, about an hour's drive south of Atlanta. Late last year he began to turn United's sleepy headquarters into a hotbed of dealmaking, at least by the standards of suburban Georgia. At the invitation of regulators, Edwards in December took control of First Georgia Community Bank in Jackson, one county to the east. Last month he acquired First Coweta Bank, 45 minutes to the west of Griffin, making United the only bank in the state ... Read Full Story

The GDP Mirage Here's a riddle: If a scientist or engineer is laid off, does it affect gross domestic product? As this story is being written, most economists expect the third-quarter GDP statistics, to be released on Oct. 29, will show a growing U.S. economy, breaking a string of four consecutive negative quarters. A Bloomberg survey pegs the anticipated annualized growth rate at 3.2%, a figure that would be the highest in two years. This number will likely be greeted as a sign the recession is over. What's more, a rise in GDP, combined with a sharp fall in employment in the third quarter, ... Read Full Story

It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Pork! President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates want to leave the Cold War in the past--finally--and reshape the U.S. military into more of a counterinsurgency force. They have made reforming weapons acquisition a major priority, saying that some hardware designed for battling Soviet armies or other massive foes in vast open-field clashes ought to be replaced by lighter, less expensive gear. The Administration has pared billions from the budget for the Lockheed Martin F-22 fighter, a super-sophisticated plane conceived in the 1980s for dogfights against Moscow's best. The Pentagon has also reined in a ... Read Full Story

COUNTRY CLUBS: STUCK IN THE ROUGH From the day it opened its gates in 1998, Superstition Mountain Golf and Country Club was one of the "it" clubs in the Phoenix area. Boasting a Spanish Colonial clubhouse and a pair of Jack Nicklaus-designed courses with majestic mountain views, the club exuded an air of wealth and success. And because Superstition Mountain was the host course for a popular Ladies Professional Golf Assn. tournament, its members got to hobnob with such stars as Annika Sorenstam--a perk that made writing a $100,000-plus initiation check a little easier. But as the economic downturn suddenly made a club membership ... Read Full Story

CREDIT CREAKS INTO GEAR Wall Street's great credit machine, which once provided more than $2.5 trillion to consumers and fueled a long economic expansion, stalled when Lehman Brothers failed in September 2008. But this giant financial engine, known as the shadow banking system, may be sputtering back into gear. With traditional bank lending contracting, any new money from private investors should help get the economy moving. The difference now is that the government is supplying much of the grease to get these markets running. That's not likely to change anytime soon: For the foreseeable future, the feds will be a fundamental part of the ... Read Full Story