Matthew Philips

In the hierarchy of Wall Street, Goldman Sachs has become the top dog: the cool, smart kid who finance geeks want to be. And, although Goldman's top brass gets dragged down to Washington, D.C., the bank still reigns, at least financially.

After years of mounting customer outrage over its clogged network, AT&T has finally scrapped its unlimited-data plan and raised the price on heavy data users.

Online shoe retailer Zappos made a name for itself with topnotch customer service. It paid off: Amazon bought it for $1.2 billion last fall. In his new book, Delivering Happiness, CEO Tony Hsieh talks about Zappos's unique business approach and giving customers that "wow" feeling.

Apparently we should all be buying BP stock right now. At least that's the recommendation of the people paid to know these things: financial analysts who follow the company.

High-frequency traders, who have maintained a low profile, say that because their frenzied trading provides liquidity, they help markets run smoother, improving the environment for all investors. But combine the speed at which they operate, the outsourcing of decision making to computer codes, and an almost complete lack of regulation, and this shadow market can fuel and exaggerate volatility.

As BP makes its latest attempt to plug its gushing oil well, news photographers are complaining that their efforts to document the slow-motion disaster in the gulf are being blocked from the sites where the effects of the spill are most visible.

On Tuesday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar cut the Minerals Management Service in half, separating its duties of regulating the offshore oil and gas industry and of collecting billions in revenue from it.

Ever wonder how the pope would do as a stock picker? We might find out. Last month the first Vatican-approved equity index launched. The Stoxx Europe Christian Index is a compilation of 533 European companies that adhere to Catholic values.

The year 2030 sounds far off. In a way, the number itself conjures images of silver unitards and hovercrafts, just as 2010 probably did to people back in 1990. A lot's changed since then, but more has stayed exactly the same, which is part of the problem.

 So this is what high-frequency trading looks like. Just before 3 p.m. today, the Dow Jones industrial average went from being down about 180 points, mostly off continuing fears over the Greek debt crisis, to falling off a 900-point cliff, to then rallying back another several hundred points.

How the Deep Horizon accident seriously hampers offshore drilling.

The practices at the center of the current controversy didn't begin with Goldman—and they didn't end there, either.

A year into the stock-market recovery, there's a lot of uncertainty about how long the boom will last. We may be able to learn something from the market's performance during the mid-1970s, as the similarities so far are striking.

It's been a busy week for the SEC. On Wednesday, the regulatory agency took a small, but important first step toward shining light on the very dark, very unregulated world of high frequency trading.

Obama's decision to open the Atlantic Ocean to drilling may not yield the results everyone imagines.

Investment banks may have wrecked the world economy in 2008, but they sure made money picking up the pieces. In 2009, the global investment-banking industry took in $311 billion in net revenue, a 50 percent jump from 2008 and only $17 billion off its 2007 peak.

Two summers ago, I interviewed Tiger Woods in the lobby of a hotel in midtown Manhattan. It was purely a publicity thing: a 10-minute sit-down to promote his new videogame.

President Obama's decision to open up vast tracts of ocean off the Atlantic coast and eastern Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling is making big waves.

The U.S. Postal Service is on track to lose $23 billion a year for the next decade. Can reducing delivery to five days a week really save the system?

As President Obama champions alternative energy, a vexing problem remains: there's no way to share wind and solar surpluses nationally—whisking, say, a percentage of the Midwest's abundant turbine power to cities on the Eastern Seaboard.

Miles below the ocean floor lies enough oil to power the U.S. for more than a decade—and perhaps our best shot at energy independence.

Businesses make terrible mistakes. It's how they react that can determine whether they thrive—or even survive. Toyota was slow to acknowledge its problems, but ultimately recalled 8 million vehicles and apologized.

After two days of testimony, have we really learned more about what's wrong with Toyota?

Toyota enters this week's congressional hearings reeling from news of a criminal investigation and claims that it withheld evidence.

Whenever an airplane crashes, investigators focus on the black-box data, which may explain why the plane went down. Though most drivers don't realize it, two thirds of new U.S. automobiles have black boxes, too.

Just how long will it take the automaker to recover? Ask Audi.

It's been a strange week for Tiger Woods. Just as rumors and photos of him attending rehab for sex addiction at a Mississippi clinic surfaced, one of his few remaining corporate sponsors, video game publisher Electronic Arts, demonstrated it wasn't just sticking by Tiger, it was doubling its bet on him.

Criticism has dogged the Treasury secretary for months. Now newly uncovered e-mails indicate how the New York Fed, under his tenure, directed AIG to keep quiet about its disbursement of $62 billion in bailout funds.

Cap-and-trade opponents have tried to portray the legislation working its way through Congress as bad for business. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says it would set off a "catastrophic cascade" of lawsuits and "choke off growth"—and some economists say that the House bill, if enacted, would shave 1 percent off GDP growth in the near term.

Despite a five-year losing streak, the defection of its most important Beltway fans, and a key management shake-up, the Skins generate more revenue than the Yankees. How is that possible?