The bottom line

In the 36 years that In the 36 years that Merrill Lynch has been a publicly traded company, it has racked up cumulative profits of $56 billion. In the past 18 months, the financial services firm has lost about $14 billion, or about 25 percent of those profits.
Financial Times

Hispanics, who make up about 14 percent of the U.S. labor force, represent a third of the people involuntarily shifted from full-time to part-time work in the past 12 months, the Labor Department reported.
The Washington Post

Twenty-nine percent of people in their late 60s were working in 2006, up from 18 percent in 1985, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly 6 million workers last year were 65 or older.
USA Today

Kid Rock’s new album, Rock ’n’ Roll Jesus, has sold 1.7 million copies, despite being unavailable on Apple’s iTunes. A growing number of artists and record companies are backing away from iTunes, complaining that the online music service favors sales of single songs rather than more profitable albums.
The Wall Street Journal

Despite soaring housing foreclosures and turmoil in financial markets linked to easy credit, banks mailed 1.54 billion solicitations for new credit cards from April to June. The total represents a 14 percent decline from the same period last year.
The New York Times