City Lights
There is an old Wall Street adage that is apt for both 2008 and 2009: “When they raid the whorehouse, they take the charwoman and piano player too.” Translation: when the stock market panics, it …
Ten years ago, Elissa Davey received her vocation. She was a 50-year-old realtor, mother of two sons, and resident of San Marcos when the call came in the form of a story in the newspaper …
Who could have foreseen the housing bubble? And its malodorous bursting? Well, San Diegans, certainly, should have seen it, and some did: until late 2005, home prices had soared beyond anybody’s imagination as buyers grabbed …
Paul Sommers promised his mother, when she was dying in 2002, that he would wisely invest the money she was about to leave him. After she died, he began looking for land in East San …
Each day, Jim Grant drives from Shelter Island to his job at Hammond and Masing General Contractors in Mira Mesa. On Tuesday morning, December 11, as he approached Midway Drive on Rosecrans Street, he saw …
Chicago's Pritzker family is one of the world's richest. There are ten Pritzkers listed in the 2007 Forbes 400, the magazine's compilation of the nation's wealthiest people. Those ten Pritzkers are worth a collective $26.6 …
The definition of "easy to get to" changes depending on what side of the border you're on. In the United States, if you had to drive on a rutted dirt road to get to someplace, …
On November 14 of last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission, after probing the City of San Diego's deliberate concealment of ugly financial facts in its bond filings, concluded that "The City, through its officials, …
Charles Brandes, 64, and Warren Buffett, 77, have a lot in common. They both have made fortunes by following the "value" investing concept. It was taught to them by the same person: Benjamin Graham, along …
You decide to take the trolley to Tijuana. The day goes well, and you're ready to start homeward. Before boarding the Blue Line, a cup of coffee at the McDonald's Trolley Station in San Ysidro …
Back in June, a team of San Diego State mechanical engineering students and their professor placed 6th out of 17 universities in the exclusive Challenge X vehicle design competition, cosponsored by General Motors and the …
Some scholars say there is no way to tell if the economy or stock market is in a bubble. Wrong. The telltale signs are maniacal initial public offerings (IPOs) -- young companies taking their stocks …
Fires make David Hogan nervous. It's not because he's afraid his Pine Valley house will burn down. It's because after every fire in Southern California, politicians start clamoring for reduction of the "fuel" that covers …
Few fruits evoke the sunny blue skies of the Mediterranean and the balmy days of September quite so poignantly as the fig, but local farmers and advanced agricultural science may be turning that image inside …
For months, everything went wrong for Blackwater Worldwide (formerly Blackwater USA), the mercenary firm that wants to put a training camp in tiny Potrero, 45 miles east of San Diego and almost on the border. …
The same bureaucracy that created the Sunroad fiasco has now brought forth the Mount Soledad calamity, with the enthusiastic assistance of politicians. The names of the mayors and councilmembers have changed, but the money jingling …