common sense

With all the focus on tax rates, a business columnist for The New York Times sat down with his 2010 returns, calculator in hand.

He is still reeling from the results.

Mark V. Hurd was fired by the board at Hewlett-Packard, but the veracity of a racy lawsuit raises some questions about his ouster at a time when the company was thriving.

A columnist talks again with some of the people and companies he wrote about during the year to find out how they’ve fared.

It is up to Silvio Berlusconi to keep Italy from becoming another Greece and plunging the world into an even more devastating financial crisis.

Hewlett-Packard’s trouble with its chief executive lies with its board, which is rife with animosities, suspicion, distrust and personal ambition.

Ben Bernanke has become a favorite target of criticism, but many of the missives about him are without substance.

At Hewlett-Packard, a new chief executive has taken the company in a different direction, and not everyone is pleased.

Recent events bear an intriguing resemblance to 1937-38, and the recession within a Depression, which galvanized policy makers who had grown complacent about the recovery.

The House Appropriations Committee is seeking to starve the S.E.C. while putting over $200 million back into the pockets of Wall Street.

Disney appears to focus on lucrative franchises while Pixar maintains it is devoted to the story. In “Cars 2,” Disney won.