Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy mortgages from banks and other lenders, providing those financial institutions with capital to make new loans.

Even though it's hard to learn how to back your car out the driveway at first, once it becomes a habit, you can do it almost automatically and think about something else, like the meeting that you need to go to today or what's on the radio.

In surveys, many borrowers say reverse mortgages have improved their lives and provided money they needed for retirement.

America is the Saudi Arabia of coal.

Merrill Lynch is this hugely prestigious brand.

Public employee unions are hardly the only group involved in bare-knuckles politics. Businesses lobby fiercely, and executives make hefty campaign donations.

When the mortgage giant Fannie Mae recruited Daniel H. Mudd, he told a friend he wanted to work for an altruistic business. Already a decorated marine and a successful executive, he wanted to be a role model to his four children - just as his father, the television journalist Roger Mudd, had been to him.

Around New York City, samples collected at dozens of beaches or piers have detected the types of bacteria and other pollutants tied to sewage overflows. Though the city's drinking water comes from upstate reservoirs, environmentalists say untreated excrement and other waste in the city's waterways pose serious health risks.

As homeowners see the value of their homes decline, they become more likely to delay purchases of the big items - like automobiles, electronics and home appliances - that are ballasts of the American economy. When those purchases decline, large manufacturing firms, suddenly short on funds, could begin laying off employees.

Credit default swap is basically just an agreement that I have with you, where I sell you insurance on some bond you own. If the bond goes belly up, I promise to pay you. And as long as the bond doesn't go belly up, you pay me for selling you insurance.

For years, many public health campaigns that aimed at changing habits have been failures.

Someone once described Ken Lewis to me as the most competitive person in the history of the United States, including the Union Army.

The waste from power plants is essentially what is left over when you burn coal. And as we all know, coal is a relatively dirty mineral.

Fannie Mae has traditionally only bought and sold mortgages. But when a loan held by the company goes into foreclosure, Fannie Mae gains ownership of the underlying property until it is resold to new investors.

Lawmakers in both political parties have often acceded to unions' requests to avoid political confrontations or to curry favor. They have pushed difficult choices into the future.

Many environmental advocates argue that agricultural pollution will be reduced only through stronger federal laws.

It almost goes without saying that when you are a startup, one of the first things you do is you start setting aside money to defend yourself from patent lawsuits, because any successful company, even moderately successful, is going to get hit by a patent lawsuit from someone who's just trying to look for a payout.

Some say because music is as much about personal expression as listening pleasure, sharing is integral to why songs have value in the first place.

The cooperation of NASCAR - or any other system, it turns out - persists only when everyone believes he has the opportunity to win.

Hank Paulson, the happy capitalist warrior who spent his life pursuing and defending free markets, is now the biggest interventionist Treasury secretary we've had since the Great Depression.

For decades, activist shareholders were an entertaining, but largely ignored, Wall Street sideshow. Disgruntled investors would attend annual meetings to harangue executives, criticize strategies - and protest that their complaints were being ignored.

In California, up to 15 percent of wells in agricultural areas exceed a federal contaminant threshold, according to studies.

Some officials overseeing local water systems have tried to go above and beyond what is legally required. But they have encountered resistance, sometimes from the very residents they are trying to protect, who say that if their water is legal, it must be safe.

Companies are very, very good - better than consumers themselves - at knowing what consumers are actually craving.