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...While Walmart, the largest company in the world, has always dwarfed rival Target ($406 billion in annual revenues vs. Target's $65 billion), until recently Target had been decisively winning the growth game. From 2003 to 2007, Target's annual same-store sales growth averaged 4.6%, while Walmart's clocked in at 2.9%. Over the same period, Target's annual profit growth averaged 16%, while Walmart lagged behind at 10.3%. "Target was frying Walmart's brains out," says Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a national retail investment-banking and consulting firm...
From March 13-22, more than 1,800 acts will descend upon Austin, Texas, for South by Southwest, one of the largest music, film and arts festivals in America. From seasoned veterans like PJ Harvey to unknown bands hoping to make it big, the weeklong festival is a mecca for hipster PBR-drinking music nuts. But amid all the unwashed dye jobs and American Apparel outfits will be Margaret Cho, the stand-up comedian who will appear at SXSW - as a musician? Cho talked to TIME about her sudden career switch. (See pictures from South by Southwest...
...that would legalize pot and allow the state to regulate and tax its sale - a move that could mean billions of dollars for the cash-strapped state. Pot is, after all, California's biggest cash crop, responsible for $14 billion a year in sales, dwarfing the state's second largest agricultural commodity - milk and cream - which brings in $7.3 billion a year, according to the most recent USDA statistics. The state's tax collectors estimate the bill would bring in about $1.3 billion a year in much needed revenue, offsetting some of the billions of dollars in service cuts...
...Above all, Japan has to cope with the fact that the economic model on which it built both its postwar prosperity and social stability is broken. Japan's spectacularly successful export-oriented industries were responsible for creating the world's second largest economy, and their lifetime-employment policies, with generous benefits, obviated the need for a comprehensive social safety net of the sort familiar to Western Europeans. Then came the bubble. After financial markets were liberalized in the 1980s, Japan went on a debt-fueled binge that made modern Americans look as thrifty as Amish farmers. The stock market soared...
...hammered out last November. That deal sought to stem the enormous losses studios and their stars suffer to online piracy. But critics claim ISPs have been coerced into the drive by the organization representing French copyright holders. The pact was negotiated by the head of one of France's largest music and video retailing chains. Detractors of that move include opposition politicians, consumer groups and even France's ethics watchdog on new technologies and communication. They claim that ISPs have been forced into a heavy-handed alliance of industry forces that want to protect the interests of Sarkozy's celebrity...