Business - BusinessWeek

Santiago - Valeria Garcia has come a long way in the past two decades. As a high school dropout, she lived in a wooden shack with a dirt-floor kitchen and a tin roof in San Ramn, one of the Chilean capital's roughest neighborhoods. But at age 33 she went back to high school and then earned a degree in psychology from a local university. For seven years she commuted an hour each day by bus to classes, all the while taking in washing to make ends meet. Full Story »

From the marbled corridors of Congress to the tony salons of Georgetown, liberal lawmakers are abuzz with ideas on how to rein in U.S. corporations. Yet over in the courts, two conservative lawyers are mounting a serious challenge to a law, enacted earlier in the decade, that imposed tough restrictions on American businesses. A ruling in their favor could deal a serious blow to the pro-regulatory movement in Washington. Full Story »

One silver lining in the current economic cloud is that job-seekers are answering President Obama's call to service: Applications to Teach for America are up 42% from last year; AmeriCorps applications have nearly tripled. Full Story »

In July you may have heard that the recession was over. If so, you were probably in Canada. Full Story »

To many, October 19, 1987 is a fateful date. To some it represents Black Monday, the day where a tidal wave of financial destruction swept across the globe. Relentlessly this wave traveled from Hong Kong to London to New York, destroying any assets in its path. Young college graduates were forced to sell their first cars, young families lost their first homes, and young entrepreneurs lost their first businesses. However, Black Monday doesn't mean the same thing to all people. Full Story »

Pressure, stress, and anxiety were common feelings among a group of soon-to-be MBAs from the Said Business School (Said Full-Time MBA School Profile) of Oxford University one short year ago. A few felt the pressure of the empty recession and abysmal wasteland of job opportunities. Some had the stress of moving their families across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. Others felt anxiety swimming toward a completely new industry and the steep learning curve that was soon to follow. ... Full Story »

Seven hundred billion dollars. That's a ballpark estimate of how much money is wasted in the U.S. medical system every single year, according to a new Thomson Reuters report. A sum equal to roughly one-third of the nation's total health-care spending is flushed away on unnecessary treatments, redundant tests, fraud, errors, and myriad other monetary sinkholes that do nothing to improve the nation's health. Cut that figure by half, and there would be more than enough money to offer top-notch care to every one of America's 46 million uninsured. Full Story »

The news about U.S. commercial real estate is grim ("Deep Trouble," Nov. 16, 2009). But distress can lead to opportunity. Michael Winer, manager of Third Avenue Real Estate Value Fund (NASDAQ:TAREX - News) since its 1998 inception, has proved particularly adept at navigating chaotic environments and profiting from messy restructurings or bankruptcies. Associate Editor Amy Feldman spoke with Winer about strategies for capitalizing on battered real estate. Full Story »

New York entrepreneur Charles B. Wang, who made his mark in software, is busy reinventing himself as a real estate tycoon. He's pushing a mammoth $3.8 billion mixed-use development in suburban Hempstead, Long Island, surrounding the Nassau Coliseum, where his New York Islanders hockey team plays. Full Story »

When insurer AIA moved back into its gray stone colonial headquarters on Shanghai's waterfront Bund in 1998, it marked the return of foreign insurance companies to China after their ejection nearly five decades earlier. Since then the floodgates have opened as Cigna , AXA , Allianz (Toronto:AZ.TO - News), and dozens more have set up shop on the mainland, aiming to tap a market of 1.3 billion people with few options for life insurance. Full Story »