Business - BusinessWeek Online

Houses in Sunnyvale, Calif., home to companies such as Juniper Network (NasdaqGS:JNPR - News), AMD , and Yahoo! (NasdaqGS:YHOO - News), are typically on the market for 66 days, making it the fastest-selling real estate market in the country. That's the good news. The bad news is that listings a year ago in the affluent Silicon Valley suburb normally sold after just 31 days on the market.

As career choices go, the hotel business isn't one that will put new college grads on the path to riches. With few exceptions, new employees can expect an annual salary of less than $40,000, a figure that has barely budged in recent years. So when Marriott International visited the University of Delaware campus on a recruiting trip, it didn't wave a big wad of cash in front of Claire Pignataro. It didn't have to. It had already hooked her with something she considered far more valuable: a chance to help run a hotel.

In her swank headquarters just blocks from some of Mumbai's worst slums, Swati Piramal is midway through an impassioned pitch about revolutionizing the world of drug discovery. Sanskrit passages of the Bhagavad Gita, the ancient Hindu text that guides her business philosophy, adorn the office walls of her company, Piramal Life Sciences. Its logo is gyan mudra, a finger gesture used in yoga meditation resembling the Western sign for "A-O.K."

Stacy Williams owns a three-bedroom house with a full basement and central air-conditioning in a quiet neighborhood on the upper west side of Youngstown, Ohio.

More evidence that American voters have the attention span of a hummingbird: The sudden drop in crude oil prices already appears to be reducing the potency of energy policy as a Presidential campaign issue. However, a somewhat lower profile for oil might not be such a bad thing when it comes to progress on crafting a serious energy policy, given that a free-for-all political campaign is hardly the best venue for hammering out an intelligent compromise.

With the economy front and center in the Presidential campaign, it's no surprise that attention is centering, at least in part, on key Midwestern states like Ohio and Michigan. There, concerns over jobs and the manufacturing economy have made for grueling battles but given neither party a lasting foothold. Conventional wisdom has it that the parties' positions were staked out long ago, with the Republicans favoring free trade as a boon to economic growth and Democrats favoring policies to keep, and expand, jobs at home.

Kerry Donnelly is a 21-year-old New Yorker, and she's thrilled about voting in her first Presidential election for John McCain. The college senior identifies more with the policies of the 72-year-old senator than with the change promised by his younger Democratic counterpart. And, despite all the excitement generated by the young followers of Obama Nation, she's not alone.

Watch out, would-be fibbers. In the wake of last year's cheating expulsions at Duke's Fuqua School of Business (BusinessWeek.com, 4/30/07) and May's scandal over alleged cheating on the GMAT (BusinessWeek.com, 7/1/08), business schools are scrutinizing applications harder than ever. And so-called resume puffing, or exaggerating your work experience and qualifications -- even slightly -- to appear more desirable, could cost you an acceptance letter.

The last time Washington tried to fix health care, powerful industry interests scuttled the Clinton Administration's initiative as Big Pharma, managed care, doctors, and employers all scrambled to protect their turf.

The stock prices of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have cratered. The bottom of the worst housing slump since the Great Depression hasn't been reached. Fears of inflation are mounting.

On a sunny day in June, a hundred Los Angeles brokers gathered for an open house at the LeFrak Organization's recent acquisition: a 12-story office building on Hollywood Boulevard. The LeFraks, big landlords from New York, gave each agent a crisp $100 bill. A handful of guests won free nights at the Malibu Beach Inn, a $500-a-night resort owned by entertainment mogul David Geffen. "Come bring us tenants," said Jamie LeFrak, managing director of the real estate firm. "We want to own several million square feet in your city."

When Senator John McCain takes the stage at the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis on Sept. 4, he will become the oldest candidate ever to accept his party's nomination for a first-term President. McCain, who will be 72 when he formally accepts the nod, has sought to turn his advanced years into an attribute (he is wise) and a counterpoint to the message being championed by his 47-year-old rival, Senator Barack Obama (he is for a fresh start). This election, at least on one level, is a national referendum on change vs. experience.

Editor's note: For a CBS Evening News report on balance billing that was made in collaboration with BusinessWeek, go to: www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/29/eveningnews

It may still be good to be king, but increasingly the job is coming with fewer perks. In its third annual study of fringe benefits for chief executives, compensation research firm Equilar found that the median values of seven of the nine major CEO perquisites that it tracks -- from personal aircraft use to country club memberships -- were down or remained flat from 2006 to 2007. The prevalence of such swanky extras fell too, with most categories showing lower rates of occurrence this year.

After the publication of one of my recent articles (BusinessWeek, 8/14/08 ), I received many passionate e-mails from parents and educators thanking me for writing the piece and sharing their beliefs in the importance of instilling the entrepreneurial spirit in young people.

Each night during a recent sales trip to Rio de Janeiro, Black & Veatch Senior Vice-President Michael Perry would review the day's progress over dinner with several junior staffers accompanying him. After watching Perry in action, they had plenty of questions: Why had he worked toward a compromise when the Brazilian client clearly wasn't going to budge? How was he accounting for the different cultural perspectives of the British, Japanese, and South Korean businessmen who were potential partners in the deal?

David Giantomasi says he vigilantly paid his credit-card bills each month. Even if he could only make the minimum payment, he made sure to get all his monthly payments squared away. So he was shocked when the interest rate on his Chase credit card suddenly jumped to 19.99% from 7.99%. When Giantomasi called the card issuer to demand an explanation, he was enraged. He was told that overall turmoil in the credit markets meant higher rates for a number of customers.

Robert Curet, the owner of Little Wonder Studio in Burbank, Calif., has all the high-powered software you'd expect a modern toy developer to use: Rhino 4.0 for industrial modeling, Autodesk 3ds Max for animation, ZBrush for digital sculpting, and Maxon Cinema 4D for graphics, for starters. But one of his most recent creations didn't require any of them. Instead, Curet turned to the free tools available in the virtual world called Second Life, sketching out a model and mechanisms for a windup toy and making a rough estimate of the size of the parts. ...

Four days before Senator Hillary Clinton conceded the Democratic nomination to Senator Barack Obama, she made a final, thinly veiled appeal to her supporters for cash. "I hope you'll go to my Web site," she said. "Share your thoughts with me, and help in any way you can."

On Wall Street, the yearlong credit crunch continues to hog headlines. For example, the future is still in question for investment banks like Lehman Brothers and mortgage financiers (BusinessWeek.com, 8/22/08) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac .

Upscale brands like BMW , Saab, and others are cutting back on leasing for some of the same reasons Chrysler quit leasing outright, effective Aug. 1. Ford Motor and General Motors have also said they are taking incentive money out of leasing and putting it toward cut-rate loans and cash rebates.

House hunting? Forget the listing agents and classified ads. Now you can find homes for sale with a few taps on a smartphone.

From Standard & Poor's weekly investing newsletter The Outlook

An entire industry has been built up around the pursuit of happiness. A stroll past any bookstore window demonstrates the explosive popularity of the feel-good, self-help movements of recent years. And whether these products are genuine paths to ultimate happiness or just pleasure-peddling scams, the trend seems likely to hold.

Happiness hunters have done it again. They've used an army of pollsters and a mountain of data to uncover the world's happiest countries. But this year, there are some unexpected winners -- for unexpected reasons.

Shortly after graduating from Harvard University in 1988, Lydia Icke dived into a high-powered career as an investment banker at Citibank . An ambitious undergraduate, she snapped up one of the hardest jobs she could find, she said.

My avatar -- a bronzed brunette in jeans and a purple sweater -- recently visited an island in the virtual world where INSEAD, an international business school with real-world classes in France and Singapore, is building a virtual campus. Although she nearly drowned on a guided tour of the still-under-construction island, it was an eye-opening experience.

Sitting in his new office overlooking Austin's bustling 6th Street, Spacial Audio Solutions CEO Bryan Payne can't help but see a silver lining to the topsy-turvy economy: cheap rent. Last year, Payne hunted for office space in this same area and came up empty-handed.