| | | Net worth is no trival matter, as it is ultimately the only meaningful measure of personal wealth. There are many good ways to build individual net worth, including earning more, saving more and improving the return on savings and investments, but it's equally important to play a good defense. |  | | The North Pole operation, sometimes called Santa, Inc., has quite a large operating budget. Account firm ParenteBeard put some numbers together about Santa's overall costs. It estimated that the whole operation costs $42 billion per year. | | As one of the strongest retailers in the United States (not to mention one of the best-liked), Costco already has a lot going for it. Not only is Costco already an exceptionally efficient retailer in terms of generating sales per square foot, the company still has ample organic expansion potential in the U.S. and abroad. | | Oil and gas shales in North America have been known for decades, but most don't know it exists, or what is produced. | | When considering the question of the upcoming "fiscal cliff" (the expiration of various tax cuts and the simultaneous automatic cuts across a variety of federal budget items), I'm reminded of a famous quote from Winston Churchill, "Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing … after they have exhausted all other possibilities." | | CNBC is backing off claims made earlier this week by capital markets editor Gary Kaminsky that Warren Buffett is a hypocrite, after the Oracle of Omaha refuted Kaminsky's argument in an email to the network, the New York Post reports. | | Warren Buffett is mulling the prospect of owning at least one of Tribune Co's newspapers. Buffett told The Morning Call in Allentown, Pennsylvania that "Allentown is our kind of place," in response to a question of whether his conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway was interested in the 84,000 daily circulation paper. | | Shares of General Motors rallied over eight percent on Wednesday, after the U.S. Treasury said it would sell off its entire stake in the auto giant over the next 15 months. | | |
