Terry J. Fitzgerald of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank is the latest economist to study Wal-Mart’s effect on small towns, and his findings won’t be welcomed by the Wal-Mart bashers out there. According to an article  in the bank’s Fedgazette, Fitzgerald’s…

A commenter on a previous post  asks whether the jobs being created these days are quality ones, adding that “for an increasing number of average folks, it takes two or three of these ‘new jobs’ to equal what we used to…

A lot of readers disagreed with my criticism of corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards, and most didn’t like my proposed alternative: higher gasoline taxes. Several of them said they  disliked the gasoline tax because it is regressive — that is,…

CPI Corp., whose mysterious stock-price runup was mentioned in a previous post, announced today that it is buying Portrait Centers of America, which operates portrait studios in Wal-Mart stores, for $100 million. CPI is in the same business in Sears stores.…

Hmm. Some people think bank fees are too high in the U.S. Some people think bank feees are too high in Mexico, too. Mexican authorities think they have a solution: Let Wal-Mart enter the banking business, allowing branches inside the retailer’s 576…

The Talk of the Day blog features a lively conversation about the minimum-wage ballot proposal, and I continue to get a lot of email about my columns on the subject. (Read them here  and here  and here.) One correspondent, Harold, takes issue with…