Best Business Commentary

A return to thrift

It’s time to rediscover “the old-fashioned virtue called thrift,” say Ray Boshara and Phillip Longman in Newsday. Thrift didn’t used to mean “cheap or stingy,” but rather “the wise use of resources” and “an abhorrence of waste.” Those virtues are in short supply today, and “reviving the American thrift ethos won’t be easy.” But we can do it with “one of the most powerful forces in human nature: inertia.” Employers and government officials should help “make saving easy, automatic, and frequent” through default 401k or IRA deductions, savings-oriented cash incentives, and British-style from-birth savings accounts. “The American dream” depends on it.

The Fox-CNBC title match

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If the Fox Business News channel wants to topple the champ, CNBC, it “has to win by a knockout, pure and simple,” says Jon Friedman in Jon Friedman in MarketWatch. It can’t just “trade punches” in the looming “street fight in pinstripes.” FBN has muscle in its corner—its corporate affiliation with Dow Jones and “aces Neil Cavuto and Alexis Glick,” for example—but “CNBC won’t exactly drop to the canvas.” For FBN to triumph, it needs to show “the trademark swagger of the Fox News Channel,” to “look and act like a winner on day one.” So stay tuned. “Ding! Ding! Ding!” Round one begins on Monday.