Graphic > A short history of U.S. monopolies

Research by Scores.org

Whatza a Goolsbee? The last line may explain it all.

Breaking news from Politico

President Barack Obama will announce Austan Goolsbee as the new chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers at an East Room news conference on Friday, providing continuity in the face of a political storm. A senior administration official said Goolsbee, 41, will succeed Christina Romer. Goolsbee is a member of the CEA, and staff director and chief economist on the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. As a University of Chicago economics professor, he advised Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign and 2008 presidential campaign. Last year, he won a “D.C.'s Funniest Celebrity” contest.

NPR > What do a Saudi Prince, Fox News & the New York mosque have in common?

The proposed construction of an Islamic center and mosque close to ground zero in New York City has inspired intense scrutiny from news outlets this month — and few have outstripped the Fox News Channel in their interest.

That's especially true on Fox's opinion-driven shows in the morning and evening hours. Familiar figures including Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham have repeatedly asked where the money for the center will come from. Yet the parent company of Fox News shares a financial backer with the imam who is at the center of the firestorm. The second-largest holder of voting stock in News Corp. is Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, a nephew of the Saudi king. And through his philanthropies, Waleed has given generously to initiatives pursued by the imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf. But that connection has not been spelled out by Fox to viewers. 

[...] according to the latest filings with the SEC, Waleed now holds 7 percent of the voting stock in News Corp., more than any other person not named Rupert Murdoch .....

Read the rest of the story here.

The 10 highest paid CEOs who laid off the most workers

From Huffington Post

A grim fact of the recession is that it pays to lay people off.

The CEOs who laid off the most employees during the recession are also the CEOs who took home the biggest pay checks, according to a study released last week. 

Attention winos > The fine wine market has recovered

From Financial Times: Bouyed by an increasingly feverish Bordeaux en primeur campaign, there is now no doubt that the fine wine market has [...] recovered from the doldrums at the end of 2008 when it plunged by 25%.  After small but steady incremental growth last year, the Liv-ex 100 Index has begun to accelerate. Since, January it is up by nearly 24 per cent and in April it sailed past its previous peak of June 2008.  Read the rest here.

Scary: 24/7 Wall Street > 11 Brands That Will Disappear In 2011