Financial Outlook

SAVE The Atrium Fashion Hotel offers reasonably priced, stylish rooms in an excellent location near the Blaha Lujza square and metro station.

We’re being taken for a ride.

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the prime minister of Spain, faces a failing economy with an 18 percent unemployment rate, the highest in the euro zone.

Frugal Networker Ken Hess and I discuss the Release to Manufacturing of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, Hyper-V virtualization, the current CentOS developer imbroglio, and interview Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier at Novell’s openSUSE distribution. Click Here to listen to the Frugal Friday Podcast

Frugal consumers change road map to recovery

The S&P 500 ended its best five-month streak since 1938 with a slight gain on Friday as government data showed softness in consumer spending but reinforced expectations that the economic slump is abating.

Treasury prices bounced higher Friday, capping a tumultuous week that saw a record amount of debt issuance, as a government report pointed to slow growth ahead for the economy.

The S&P 500 ended its best five-month streak since 1938 with a slight gain on Friday as government data showed softness in consumer spending but reinforced expectations that the economic slump is abating.

Cuba clicked into crisis mode Friday, postponing a key Communist Party congress aimed at charting a post-Castro future and announcing that its woeful economy is even worse than expected.

While the Cash for Clunkers program is being hailed as a success, having apparently burned much or all its of its billion dollar budget in a matter of days, some analysts doubt the program will amount to much in the long run.