Matt Phillips

After reading the Wall Street’s Journal’s page-one piece on life at Pimco under Bill Gross, Felix Salmon has decided that Gross has no choice but to retire and walk away from the bond-trading behemoth that he built. “Neither Gross nor Pimco will ever be seen the same way again, and indeed, if Gross cares at all about the long-term fortunes of the company he built, the best thing he can do right now is simply retire,” Salmon wrote on Reuters.

The shrinking of Americans’ credit card debt is one of the least-appreciated changes set in motion by the global financial crisis.

Germany is continuing to rely a lot on its export sector for growth.

The death yesterday of Harold Ramis, the co-writer and co-star of Ghostbusters, has prompted encomiums for the iconic 1980s film.

It seems rather hard to explain.

You’re probably putting a good chunk of money into one of the best-performing financial assets of the year—coffee.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. At the end of last year, some well-known emerging market investors made big bets on a Russian bailout for Ukraine.

Today, the Federal Reserve released the transcripts of 2008 meetings held by its key monetary policy board. Released after a customary five-year delay, the transcripts offer a remarkably detailed glimpse into the thinking of some of the world’s most important financial policymakers as they struggled to stabilize a wobbling banking system and assess economic damage that, even then, looked incredibly severe. We’ll be updating this post and highlighting some of the most interesting moments from the documents.

Poor Americans are under even more extreme financial pressure lately, and that’s showing up in US companies’ sales.

Facebook is buying fast-growing messaging service WhatsApp for what was initially reported as $16 billion in cash and stock. Including restricted stock units to be granted to founders and employees, the total price tag works out to $19 billion (paywall).

We know it’s hard. But please avert your gaze from the $1.9 trillion pile of cash that US corporations control.

Although it should be noted that the UK’s unemployment rate is produced on a rolling three-month basis. Officials at the the Office of National Statistics argue that the 7.2% rate for the period from October through December should be compared to the 7.6% rate notched between July and September, which would be a decline in unemployment, not an increase. There’s a good explanation here.

The great American de-leveraging is over.

A seasoned observer of financial markets might say they have a certain flavor right now.

It should be no surprise that there are increasingly few real players in the US wireless business. Goldman Sachs makes the point clearly in this chart, which it recently published as part of a note on trends in mergers and acquisitions.

It’s still rising. Greece’s official unemployment rate climbed to 28% in November, up from 27.7% in October.

Time to buy?

It’s getting ridiculous.

Nearly half of Indian consumers say the most important attribute they’re looking for in skin creams is the ability to lighten their skin, according to a recent Morgan Stanley report on consumer trends in the country.

Newly-installed Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen is sitting down before US Congress today to offer her first semiannual update on monetary policy. (She’ll reprise the performance tomorrow for the Senate.)

Maybe it’s the flooding. Or perhaps the prospect that Scotland might go its own way, but Brits are feeling quite anxious. At, least that’s what their doctors are saying.

Yes, oats!

Sure, it seems laughable.

Strange but true. South Korea runs a kimchi deficit. And it’s getting bigger.