Postcards

Meg Whitman bids to save California

Check out my cover story, out today!

Folks here at Fortune say it's a rip-roaring read, fun and full of access. I had a blast doing it. I spent three intense days with Whitman, whom I've known for a decade, in Silicon Valley and Orange County. I was with her for the first campaign speeches of her life. She's a neophyte, learning fast.

I learned about California politics (rough and tumble!) and MORE

Takin' a break!

Hi--I'm on vacation, and Jessica Shambora, my Postcards colleague, is too. Much needed!

We're taking a short break from blogging. But this is Postcards, after all--so you may hear peeps from our retreats. (Not the same spots, Jess and me, but both warm and sunny, we hope.)

You will definitely hear from me on Monday. I have a fabulous (!) cover story out that day. I'll send you the link.

We wish you MORE

Power Point: Rebuild the system strong and fast

"Our system was not designed to sustain a shock, a crisis of this magnitude. It's the tragic failure of financial regulation in this country."

Tim Geithner, U.S. Treasury Secretary, on Charlie Rose Tuesday night. The financial system, largely designed 90 years ago, simply hasn't adapted, he expained. How will the chaos resolve? The system "will emerge stronger," Geithner said, as bad practices get forced out. So he hopes, and so do MORE

Guest Post: How to lead through the crisis

Photo courtesy of Elena Seibert

by Ben Sherwood

What does it take to survive the shock of losing a job or a home?

I've spent the last few years interviewing some of the world's best survivors – those who got slammed by life and overcame almost every imaginable adversity. They were left for dead after brutal beatings, ravaged by cancer or broken by collisions with 20-ton trucks. Yet, each managed to recover, MORE

Power Point: Send the right memo

"Our stock price is not an indication of our financial strength."

-- Citigroup (C) CEO Vikram Pandit in a memo to employees sent Monday night. How ironic that Citigroup shares jumped 38% on Tuesday. Citi's stock is so low that it took a gain of just 40 cents to rise so much, percentage-wise, and close at $1.45.  Citi's pop was part of a overall surge in the market that had the MORE

Meredith Whitney on credit, Buffett, and paper routes

Bank-industry analyst Meredith Whitney, one of FORTUNE's Most Powerful Women and the subject of our cover story last summer, is all over the place this week. An op-ed, "Credit Cards are the Next Credit Crunch," in today's Wall Street Journal presents a dreadful outlook for consumer spending. She says that she's upped her estimate for how much banks will yank credit lines to consumers--by $2 trillion this year and a MORE

Power Point: Focus the war plan, Buffett says

Warren Buffett hosted CNBC's Squawk Box this morning and had this to say about the notion, held by many Democrats, that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste:

"I don't think anybody on December 7 [1941] would have said, 'A war is a terrible thing to waste, and therefore we're going to ram through a whole bunch of things and expect the other party to unite behind us on the MORE

Why P&G's president quit

by Patricia Sellers

Procter & Gamble (PG) lost its president today: Susan Arnold, a 29-year veteran who drove the company's high-margin beauty business to $20 billion in sales and went on to oversee all of P&G's brands, stepped down one day after her 55th birthday.

"My dad retired at 62," Arnold said, phoning this afternoon on her way to a Walt Disney (DIS) board meeting. "Then he got really sick. You know MORE

Power Point: We're getting desperate!

"We're all about finding ways of raising discretionary revenue."

-- Michael O'Leary, CEO of low-cost Ryanair (RYAAY), floating the idea of charging passengers to use his planes' restrooms. While we understand that CEOs need to find creative ways to make money, it's getting ridiculous! And just in case you thought he was joking, O'Leary told the Dublin press, "Eventually it's going to happen. It's just that we can't do it at MORE

We will survive!

Barack Obama's hair is turning gray. The New York Times reported the other day that a President typically ages two years for every year in the job. Thank goodness our new President is only 47 years old. The way things are going right now, I suspect he'll age twice as fast as other Presidents.

We learned this week that things are worse than we thought. General Electric (GE) CEO Jeff Immelt, MORE