Postcards

Power Point: Use the crisis as a defining event

"You have to say that we will be in this for a long time and we will turn this into a defining event, a big catalyst to make ourselves a much stronger enterprise. Our characters are being forged in a burning, searing crucible."

– Jim Collins, management guru and author of Built to Last and Good to Great, in a Q&A with Fortune's Jennifer Reingold. The crucible Collins refers to got 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

Power Point: Restore faith

"Our challenge is much greater today because the American people have lost faith in the leaders of our financial institutions and are skeptical that their government has – to this point – used taxpayers' money in ways that will benefit them. This has to change."

-- Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner in a speech introducing the Financial Stability Plan. Geithner said that the government will "require banking institutions to go through a 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

Power Point: Don't dig a bigger hole

"We have a bunch of idiots on Wall Street that are kicking sand in the face of the American taxpayer."

-- Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, on the floor of the Senate Friday. McCaskill introduced legislation stipulating that no employee of any company that accepts federal bailout money be allowed to earn more than the President of the United States. Obama's annual salary is $400,000. The bill came a day after Obama MORE

Meredith Whitney gathers the power

I was with 25 powerful women and one man last evening. We agreed: The worst is yet to come, but if something good comes out of these crises, it might be because we're all questioning our higher calling.

The setting was the Manhattan home of Meredith Whitney, the Oppenheimer bank-industry analyst whose early calls on Citigroup (C) and Bank of America (BAC), among other teetering giants, earned her a Fortune cover MORE

You lost your shirt? CEOs did worse!

You think you lost a bundle in the market? The CEOs who lead the companies in the upper decks of the Fortune 500 have fared even worse: Their stock holdings in their own companies declined in value by $54 billion last year.

A just-released study by executive compensation consultancy Steven Hall & Partners sums up the damage. For CEOs who head 175 of the top 200 corporations in the Fortune 500, MORE

Power Point: Don't wait for the worst-case scenario

"You identify areas where you think you can be more efficient by assuming the worst-case scenario. Then you end up saying, Why don't we just do that anyhow?"

--Intuit (INTU) CEO Brad Smith, from the article "How to manage your business in a recesssion," in the current issue of Fortune. The article may be helpful reading for bosses reporting fourth-quarter earnings.

Alcoa (AA), one of the 30 companies that makes up the 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

Powerful women bet their careers

I'm on vacation this week -- or I'm supposed to be! The blog world never sleeps, I guess, nor does learning while away. So I'll share with you a few things I'm learning here in Allentown, Pa.

Aside from plowing snow, I've been plowing through the invite list for next year's Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. This, as you may know, is the annual powwow that accompanies the release of what MORE