International Herald Tribune - Published: August 6, 2008

“MAN ON A BENCH,” BY DUANE HANSON, 1977, POLYVINYL POLYCHROMED IN OIL, AND MIXED MEDIA WITH ACCESSORIES, PHOTOGRAPH COPYRIGHT THE SAATCHI GALLERY, LONDON ART COPYRIGHT ESTATE OF DUANE HANSON/LICENSED BY VEGA, NEW YORK

By Abha Bhattarai

Even if the U.S. economy continues to deteriorate, economists generally agree that the country is not heading for another Great Depression.

Not only are the conditions far less dire, eight economists said in interviews, but the government is also playing a heightened role in trying to cushion the impact of the housing downturn, losses at financial institutions and rising unemployment.

“The government is larger now, and it acts as an anchor,” said Richard Parker, senior fellow at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard.

“During the Great Depression, the government had neither the means nor the capability to serve as a backstop.”

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Retirement August 5, 2008, 9:36PM EST

JPMorganChase, Citi, Cerberus, and Morgan Stanley are among the firms lobbying Washington to let them take over and run corporate pension funds

by Matthew Goldstein

The folks who brought you the mortgage mess and the ensuing hedge fund blowups, busted buyouts, and credit market gridlock have another bold idea: buying up and running troubled corporate pension plans. And despite the subprime fiasco, some regulators may soon embrace Wall Street’s latest scheme.

In preparation for that moment, the world’s biggest big investment banks, insurers, hedge funds, and private equity shops have been quietly laying the groundwork for such deals over the past year. They would be a big prize for Wall Street. The $2.3 trillion pension honey pot has $500 billion in “frozen plans” that are closed to new employees and whose benefits are capped, including those at IBM IBM, Hewlett Packard (HPQ), Verizon (VZ), and Alcoa (AA). And that figure could triple by 2012, according to consulting firm McKinsey. By managing those troubled plans, Wall Street also gains entrée to an appealing set of customers to whom it can sell a broad array of fee-generating products. “We have identified several clients who would be willing to be first to sell a plan,” says Scott Macey, a senior vice-president at Aon Consulting. “But the question is, when is a good time for this?”

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InformationWeek August 5, 2008 04:36 PM

The software vendor plans to develop versions of its products with “basic functionality” to be sold at lower prices than its standard offerings.

By Paul McDougall

In response to rising competition from open source software that’s community developed and often given away for free, Microsoft said it plans to develop versions of its products with “basic functionality” to be sold at lower prices than its standard offerings.Once the sole domain of self-styled computer geeks, open source software, such as Linux, is now used in products offered by a growing number of large tech companies, such as Google, IBM, and Motorola. Those companies believe they can earn more revenue by selling add-ons and services around the software than they could by charging for the software itself.

Microsoft says it’s a growing threat to its commercial software business.

“Open source software vendors are devoting considerable efforts to developing software that mimics the features and functionality of our products,” Microsoft said in its annual report, filed last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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BUSINESSWEEK - GigaOm August 5, 2008, 11:01PM EST

It isn’t easy for online storage companies to break through and cash in. Winners will learn to layer storage with more valuable services

by Om Malik

Online storage companies pop up more frequently than mushrooms after a downpour in Southern France. And like the wild-growing fungus, not all of them are easily digested. Case in point: AOL’s Xdrive, which despite corporate backing recently joined the likes of Omnidrive and MediaMax on the proverbial technology garbage heap.

That doesn’t dissuade entrepreneurs and their backers from joining the fray. At last check, we counted more than two dozen startups trying to carve out a piece of the online storage pie in the hopes that they’ll get enough traction to one day make money. Along with clever and colorful names, each one claims a subtle twist—syncing, access from mobile, or whatever—on what is essentially a commodity offering: storage.

Sure there are some services that are clearly superior (SugarSync, for example) or have nifty features such as automatic syncing (DropBox), but when viewed as a group, it’s hard to tell which one is going to emerge as the winner over the long term. When you think about it, the online storage business is no different that selling denim jeans that have different shades of blue, rivets, fits, and flares.

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InformationWeek - August 5, 2008 02:15 PM

The Microsoft Exploitability Index aims to help IT administrators prioritize patches by rating the likelihood that vulnerabilities will be exploited.

By Thomas Claburn

At the Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Microsoft introduced new initiatives to help IT administrators evaluate vulnerabilities in Microsoft software and to share information with other security vendors.The Microsoft Exploitability Index aims to “provide customers with additional information to help business professionals prioritize patching,” explained Mike Reavey, security program manager for Microsoft Security Response Center.

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Sillicon Alley Insider - Dan Frommer | August 5, 2008 10:35 AM

Microsoft (MSFT) and Google may be bitter rivals, but sometimes a deal makes sense for both companies. Like today’s announcement: Google’s (GOOG) DoubleClick is now capable of serving video ads into Microsoft Silverlight 2 videos, which it’ll do for NBC Universal’s (GE) 2,500 hours of Silverlight-format Olympics videos.

Silverlight is tiny compared to other video streaming formats like Adobe’s (ADBE) Flash, RealNetworks’ (REAL) Real Media, and Microsoft’s own Windows Media. But that means its market share can pretty much only go up.

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