Unakite - named after the Unaka range on the Tennessee-North Carolina line where it was first identified - is a visual treat. Its color combination makes it irresistible to collectors who carve and polish it into beads, paperweights and bookends.

Updated: 2:50 p.m. “...We are making a number of difficult, but necessary, decisions to address the company’s financial situation as quickly as possible,“ said James A. Marcum, vice chairman and acting president and CEO of Circuit City.

Wall Street started November on a cautious note Monday, as stocks rose moderately after last week’s surge and ahead of readings on manufacturing activity, construction spending and auto sales.

A weekly listing of property transfers and building permits in and around Charlottesville.

Local business announcements

Local business announcements

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Free markets are under assault in America. We have seen much hyperbole and slander in these past two years of political polarization. But the idea of capitalism and free markets has received more negative campaigning and vicious attack than both candidates combined.

Beaten down and watching their wealth shrink, Americans are cutting back sharply on their spending, trimming it in September by the largest amount in four years.

Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, reported income Thursday that shattered its own record for the biggest profit from operations by a U.S. corporation, earning $14.83 billion in the third quarter.

A private research group said Tuesday that consumer confidence in the U.S. economy plunged in October to its lowest on record, as stock markets dropped sharply and companies laid off workers.

The Treasury Department will start doling out $125 billion to nine major banks this week to get credit flowing again, giving a lift to U.S. markets on rising confidence that the government’s moves would stave off a protracted recession.

“Every auto company in the world is developing all-electric or plug-in hybrids,” said Zan Dubin Scott, a spokeswoman for Plug In America, a nonprofit advocacy group for electric car owners. “The utilities, municipalities and smart business people are seeing that this is the future.”

A weekly listing of property transfers and building permits in and around Charlottesville.

Many investors are panicking. From its peak in March 2000, the major market indexes still show significant losses. Even looking back over the past 10 years provides little comfort. The news media is calling it “the lost decade.”

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Local business announcements

Local business announcements

Wall Street opened lower Monday after stock markets around the world tumbled further on worries about the global economy.

Local business announcements

Local business announcements

A weekly listing of property transfers and building permits in and around Charlottesville.

When the U.S. bailed out the agriculture sector in the early 1930s, it forever changed the business of farming. While today’s banking industry interventions are different in many ways, economists say it is worth noting that “emergency” Depression-era measures meant to protect farming families from short-term market swings have become near-permanent support at taxpayer expense

The proposal for privatizing Social Security is simple but elegant. Allow younger workers to deposit part of their Social Security taxes into a private account. If it produces a better retirement than Social Security, they can refuse Social Security and keep the private account. Otherwise they can take Social Security. Given my expected rates of return, putting just a tiny fraction of my withholding into a private account will do better than getting a negative rate of return in Social Security, even using the poor rate of return to where the market bottomed.

Local business announcements

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Wall Street headed for a higher open Monday as investors cheered signs that global credit markets are thawing even as they awaited a batch of quarterly earnings to see how companies are weathering the financial crisis.

Wall Street was gearing up for another surge following the Dow Jones industrial average’s historic 936-point jump, with investors encouraged by the U.S. government’s plans to spend $250 billion on buying stock in private banks.

Wall Street snapped back from last week’s devastating losses after major governments announced further steps to support the global banking system, including plans by the U.S. Treasury to buy stocks of some banks. All the major indexes rose well over 6 percent, and the Dow Jones industrials gained 500 points.

“With the economy what it is, people are looking for value and service,” Seminole Square Giant store manager Soumera Sayasithsena.. “Whoever provides that best, that’s where people are going to shop.”