BusinessWeek

THE SLOW ROAD TO JOBS Could it take as long as five years for the economy to replace all of the 8 million jobs lost since the Great Recession began? The most bearish economists think so. Job creation is proving to be painfully slow, and Washington is starting to panic. With unemployment at a 26-year high of 10.2% and climbing, the Democrats are scrambling to rev up the economy before the midterm elections next November. The latest effort is a "Jobs Summit" set for Dec. 3 at the White... Read Full Story

LAND RUSH IN AFRICA Farmland in developing countries has become an unlikely object of investor fascination. Goldman Sachs (), and Morgan Stanley () are each raising hundreds of millions of dollars for agriculture funds aimed at Africa and Latin America. Agribusinesses in the U.S. are leasing vast tracts of African land from which they expect to export crops and glean healthy returns. Arab oil countries, meanwhile, are vying for fertile acreage for fear their homelands are running out of... Read Full Story

LOOK WHO'S STALKING WAL-MART At a Target store, the visual sizzle usually comes from the photos of all the fabulous-looking people wearing fabulous clothes and doing fabulous things. Of late, though, there's an entirely new vibe--supersize signs screaming dirt-cheap prices. Past the cashiers is something else unmistakably novel: a sleek Euro-style mart carrying fresh cuts of sirloin, cheery piles of fruit, and hormone-free dairy. The lowest prices on the planet! Plus a grocery store... Read Full Story

OBAMA'S BIG GOV SWAT TEAM The Obama Administration's huge ramp-up in spending has given rise to a national debate over the size and role of government. It has provoked fears the country will be buried in debt and fueled skepticism about government's ability to spend tax dollars wisely. So the pressure is on: If this is to be an era of bigger government, can Obama's people make it work better? Jeffrey D. Zients, a little-known ex-consultant, bears a big chunk of the responsibility. He... Read Full Story

Why Old Navy May Still Be at Sea Two years ago, Old Navy decided to try to recreate itself with a strategy that has become almost routine in modern retailing: hire a celebrity designer to confer new prominence on an uninspired brand. In September 2007, the giant apparel chain announced that Todd Oldham, who had already worked with Target (), would be Old Navy's design creative director and develop a collection under his own name. At first Oldham seemed like just the kind of designer to... Read Full Story

GETTING TO THE BOTTOM OF PLASTIC BOTTLE RISKS As founder and CEO of baby goods retailer Giggle, Ali Wing does her best to ensure that the strollers, toys, and other gear she sells are as safe as possible. From the time of Giggle's launch six years ago, she avoided baby bottles containing the controversial chemical bisphenol A (BPA). But other products she sells still contain BPA and scores of other chemicals, and she doesn't know what's really safe. "We can't guarantee everything is... Read Full Story

CAN ROCHE LEAVE GENENTECH ALONE? Pascal Soirot, a senior executive with Roche (), says he was wracked with anxiety while boarding a plane from Basel, Switzerland, to San Francisco last March. The Swiss pharmaceutical giant had just acquired its longtime drug development partner, Genentech, and Soirot was on his way to meet the company's CEO, Arthur D. Levinson, credited with building one of the world's most effective pipeline for cancer drugs. The Genentech products that Roche sold... Read Full Story

BEHIND THE GREAT STOCK RALLY OF 2009 The U.S. economy is coping with alarmingly high double-digit unemployment, a widening commercial real estate bust, and over-indebted consumers. Few think the economic recovery now under way will be a spectacular one in 2010. So why has the stock market surprised skeptics by powering higher in recent weeks? One explanation being bandied about by equity strategists and portfolio managers is that the stock market may be in the midst of a momentum... Read Full Story

JIM ROGERS ON WHY GOLD IS GLITTERING SO BRIGHTLY I was on assignment in Singapore on Nov. 24 when gold hit an all-time high of $1,174 an ounce. That was fortuitous because Singapore is the home base of commodities guru Jim Rogers, creator of the Rogers International Commodities Index. Meantime, back in the U.S., reports were surfacing about growing discontent in the halls of Congress over the performance of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the possibility he might be replaced by... Read Full Story

THE COMING FIGHT FOR EXECUTIVE TALENT Whether you can hear it or not, a time bomb is ticking in C-suites worldwide. Its shock waves will resonate for decades. The explosive: indisputable demographics. Surveys conducted by the firm I work for indicate that the number of managers in the right age bracket for leadership roles will drop by 30% in just six years. Factor in even modest growth rates, and the average corporation will be left with half the critical talent it needs by 2015... Read Full Story