Postcards

Saving sick companies

"How to find a job." That's the cover story in the new Fortune, out this week.

Here's one place to find a job: Workout firms that help companies in trouble. Fred Crawford, the CEO of AlixPartners, came by Fortune's offices late last week and talked about his buoyant business. "We have 850 people, and we've been growing 20% to 30% a year for the past decade. We think that's sustainable."

The elite MORE

Guest Post: Building value in the developing world

by Jacqueline Novogratz, founder and CEO of Acumen Fund and author of The Blue Sweater

As a 25-year old banker, I decided to leave my career and change the world. This sounds like a move that a 25-year-old banker might make today--to escape the chaos.

But this was 1986. I thought I might start my new life in Africa. I discovered soon enough, though, that most Africans didn't want saving, thank you 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

Power Point: It can always get worse

"The biggest lessons from the downturn have been that no matter how bad a position can get, it can get a lot worse. And never be too big in anything."

-- Bank analyst Meredith Whitney in an email to investors. In the note she recaps what she learned during a lunch this week with Goldman Sachs' (GS) president Gary Cohn and CFO David Viniar. Goldman has stayed strong, relatively, as rivals MORE

Power Point: Stop the speculation

"This is the greatest orgy of speculation we've ever had in our U.S. stock market."

--Vanguard Group founder John Bogle, from an interview with CNNMoney. On Tuesday, following Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's introduction of the Financial Stability Plan, the Dow dropped 382 points, or 4.6%, closing at its lowest level since Nov. 20. "We used to go for years with no 3% changes in the market," Bogle noted. "We've had 25 MORE

This week: Heroes fall, leaders flail

This was a week for fallen heroes and flailing leaders.

On Tuesday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner disappointed with too few details on the new bank bailout.

On Wednesday the bank CEOs got flogged in Washington - one more indignity after schlepping there on the Delta Shuttle or Amtrak's Acela.

President Obama scored with the $789 billion stimulus bill. But it emerged, after plenty of compromise, leaner than most economists had hoped for. Obama's MORE

Guidance, good riddance!

Guidance--the revenue and profit forecasts that companies divvy out to Wall Street analysts--is dying a slow death. Hooray for that!

As a slew of big names--Wal-Mart (WMT), Costco (COST), Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO), among them--announced in the past two weeks that they would suspend or limit guidance because of economic uncertainty, analysts who follow these companies have reacted skeptically. Not giving 2009 guidance "hardly instills confidence in the business," Sanford MORE

BlackRock's bright forecast for stocks

I stopped by BlackRock's (BLK) midtown Manhattan offices on my way to jury duty this morning. Bob Doll, the giant money management firm's vice chairman and chief investment officer for global equities, was giving his annual forecast. "I've been doing this for about 15 years," he told me before he stepped up to the podium.

"This must be your most dire forecast, Bob?" I asked.

"No," he said. "The headlines are going MORE