FORTUNE - Last Updated: July 30, 2008: 3:59 PM EDT

Add the prospect of retail job losses to an already sour economic picture.

By Colin Barr, senior writer

NEW YORK (Fortune) — The credit crunch isn’t just for Wall Street anymore.

Penny-pinching consumers are skipping the mall, as big bankruptcy filings this week attest.

While the failures of the Mervyn’s department store chain and Bennigan’s and Steak & Ale casual restaurants may seem mundane - there are other places to get a chicken pesto panini - they’re more evidence of a consumer pullback that poses still another threat to an economy hampered by a loss-soaked banking sector.

Despite the earlier predictions of economic policymakers and other Pollyannas, sliding housing prices and the surging cost of energy and food are clearly hitting the consumer. PNC’s Household Stress Index is above its levels of the 2001 recession and approaching its 1990 highs.

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BUSINESSWEEK - The Associated Press  August 3, 2008, 3:09PM ET

By IEVA M. AUGSTUMS

CHARLOTTE, N.C.

The first read on insurance companies’ second-quarter earnings shows they’re taking hits from the same kinds of mortgage-backed investments as other financial firms — but so far, most haven’t had the severe losses that banks and investment firms have seen.

The Travelers Cos., Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. and MetLife Inc. have all reported profit declines and Genworth Financial Inc. posted a quarterly loss driven by credit-related investments. This week, investors will get more clues about the damage insurers have suffered when American International Group Inc., Ambac Financial Group Inc. and Marsh & McLennan Cos. issue their reports.

AIG will be under particular scrutiny after the world’s largest insurer lost $7.8 billion in the first quarter due to mortgage-backed investments.

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MONEY CULTURE - Jul 18, 2008

What the FDIC is doing to stabilize troubled banks.

by Daniel Gross

In ordinary times, a public discussion on deposit insurance would hold all the frisson of a seminar on Canadian land use. But these are no ordinary times. Last Wednesday at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, a bank of television cameras, several reporters and about 100 people picking at their lunch—arugula salad, stuffed chicken, a strange fruit/cream confection—paid close attention when a 50-something woman with the mien of a professor took the podium. Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., stood under a large banner reading “CONFIDENCE AND STABILITY”—an unsubtle attempt to bolster flagging confidence in the nation’s financial sector. The panel discussion, featuring Terry Savage, the Suze Orman of the Windy City, was part of a $5 million public education campaign marking the FDIC’s 75th anniversary. As Bair told me before the excitement began: “We’re bringing in local experts, and banks, and talking about deposit insurance.” Par-TAY!

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International Herald Tribune - Published: August 3, 2008

By Brad Stone

Want to vet a baby sitter? Need to peek into the background of a prospective employee? Curious about the past of a potential date?

Last month, PeopleFinders, a 20-year-old company based in California, introduced CriminalSearches.com, a free service to satisfy those common impulses. The site, which is supported by advertising, lets people search by name through criminal archives of all 50 states and 3,500 counties in the United States. In the process, it just might upset a sensitive social balance once preserved by the difficulty of obtaining public documents like criminal records.

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InformationWeek  - August 2, 2008 12:00 AM (From the August 4, 2008 issue)

Its online services push requires a huge investment in new data center facilities.

By Richard Martin J. Nicholas Hoover

The corn grows taller in iowa–and the data centers, too. Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is investing $600 million in an under-construction data center in Council Bluffs that’s slated to go into operation next year. Now,Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) plans to build its own data center 130 miles to the east, in Des Moines.

Adding to the data center land grab, IBM last week said it’s spending $360 million on a new data center in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, aimed at delivering cloud-computing services to businesses and university researchers. IBM’s already partnering with Google on a major cloud-computing project for specific universities. And it’s opening a new center in Tokyo, its eighth, focused on helping businesses build and test online computing resources.

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Sillicon Alley Insider -  Michael Learmonth | August 3, 2008 8:00 AM

We’re usually wowed by Steve Jobs’ latest computer or gadget. But today we’re in awe of a different achievement: He’s gotten customers to pay for Web video that they could easily — and legally — get for free.

Check out the two most popular TV “seasons” on iTunes (AAPL) right now: “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” and Stephen King’s “N.”

That means people are opting to pay ($3.99 for a “season pass”, or $1.99 for each of three acts), for the convenience of being able to download “Dr. Horrible” to the iPods, iPhones and computers rather than surfing over to Hulu and watching the whole thing for free.

Similarly, they’re paying $3.99 for a “season pass”, or 99 cents for five episodes (there will be 25) of King’s “N,” an animated promo for his coming “Just After Sunset” short story collection, rather than watch it for free on the CBS “audience network,” which includes Veoh, Yahoo, MSN and AOL.

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