More than a few seasoned financial observers say Bank of America is in desperate financial shape and its problems are worsening. Its acquisition of Countrywide was disastrous and left them with hundreds of billions of toxic glop on their books. In addition, they are getting hammered by a multitude of lawsuits and investigations over their allegedly dicey business practices.

A long-awaited trio of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) were passed by both congressional chambers last week in a bipartisan effort to open up duty-free export channels to Colombia, Panama and South Korea.

Occupy Wall Street, the nationwide protest movement inspired by the ongoing demonstration in downtown Manhattan, invites comparison with the Tea Party movement, which took the nation by storm in early 2009.  The question is, what can Occupy Wall Street learn from the Tea Party movement? 

As mechanized as our food industry has become, the retail price of food is still at the mercy of two unpredictable forces: mother nature and international market speculation. Two crops that have shaped the American diet since the latter half of the 20^th Century were recently shocked by one or both of these forces.

The Arizona Meth Project is trying hard, and succeeding at, reducing first-time meth usage by young people "through public service messaging, public policy, and community outreach."  It does so primarily by using modern advertising techniques to create extremely hard-hitting 30 second TV ads with a core message of "Not Even Once."

As Texas Congressman Ron Paul gears up for a vital turn in his presidential campaign this week, a study from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) lends credence to what many followers have long suspected: Even with a strong presence in several polls, Dr. Paul is being marginialized by the mainstream media at large.