Blog Posts by Morgan Korn

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Austerity may not be the solution to Europe's problems after all.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said the harsh austerity measures European officials are pushing could produce the opposite effect on struggling eurozone nations like Greece and Spain. Speaking in Tokyo at the annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank, Lagarde indicated that she had become concerned that government cutbacks were limiting growth and inadvertently exacerbating the region's debt crisis. The IMF warned that European governments had misjudged the severity of budget cuts and tax increases on their economies and that more austerity could lead to a deeper financial troubles.

"Risks for a serious global slowdown are alarmingly high," said the IMF's World Economic Outlook report.

The IMF expects the global economy to expand 3.3% this year and 3.6% in 2013, the slowest rate of growth since the 2009 recession.

Greece and Spain, the hardest hit nations in the eurozone,

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The soda industry has taken a new approach to the war on obesity. Starting early next year, Coca-Cola (KO) and PepsiCo (PEP) will begin posting calorie counts on select vending machines in Chicago and San Antonio.

The revamped vending machines will be rolled out as part of a competition between government workers in the two cities. (Municipal employees in San Antonio and Chicago are engaged in a "wellness challenge").

Dubbed "Calories Count" by the American Beverage Association, the machines will not only display the number of calories in a can or bottle of soda but also suggest a lower calorie beverage option to consumers. If successful, the retooled vending machines will be expanded nationwide. Health experts say consuming sugary beverages like soda increases obesity in adults and children.

Related: Obesity to Cost Taxpayers 'Billions of Dollars': Weight Watchers CEO

Several cities are weighing a tax on soda purchases and the City of New York

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Fast food burger chain Wendy's rules the drive-thru. The world's third-largest quick service hamburger joint completes drive-thru orders in 129.75 seconds on average, nearly 40 seconds less than the national average and 20 seconds faster than its closest competitor. This year Wendy's was able to shave off 16 seconds from its 2011 time but the company has yet to match its 2003 industry record of 116.2 seconds.

Related: How Wendy's Caught up to Burger King

An additional 20 to 30 seconds of wait time may not be noticeable to most consumers, but those extra seconds could greatly impact a company's bottom line. QSR magazine and Insula Research have studied the best and worst drive-thru operations at fast food restaurants for 14 years.

Fastest Drive-Thrus (according to the 2012 QSR Drive-Thru Performance Study)

1. Wendy's -- 129.75 seconds

2. Taco Bell --149.69 seconds

3. Bojangles' -- 171.61 seconds

4. Krystal -- 175.94 seconds

5. McDonald's -- 188.83

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Lawmakers are warning U.S. companies not to do business with two of the world's largest telecommunications equipment makers. The U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee released a report Monday after an 11-month investigation about the business practices of Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp, Chinese firms that develop and sell telecom communications equipment like routers, handsets and switches. The report recommends that Huawei and ZTE be excluded from expanding their businesses in the U.S. because of cyber espionage risk and connections to the Chinese government.

Committee members said neither Huawei nor ZTE provided ample documents or detailed information to "ameliorate the committee's concerns" about their formal relationships and interaction with Chinese authorities. The investigation determined that Huawei and ZTE present risks to critical U.S. infrastructure that "could undermine core U.S. national-security interests" and

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Facebook (FB) CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced this week that the social networking site he co-founded in February 2004 reached 1 billion users in September, more than double its user base in 2010 and a 400% increase in users in just six years. Zuckerberg broke the news on NBC's "Today" show and thanked Facebook users in an online letter:

"This morning, there are more than one billion people using Facebook actively each month.30790892

If you're reading this: thank you for giving me and my little team the honor of serving you.

Helping a billion people connect is amazing, humbling and by far the thing I am most proud of in my life.

I am committed to working every day to make Facebook better for you, and hopefully together one day we will be able to connect the rest of the world too."

Related: Facebook Hits a Milestone: 1 Billion Users

One in seven people around the globe have Facebook profiles and just two countries (India and China) have more citizens

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September same-store sales beat Wall Street expectations but the increase in purchases did little to quell concerns that consumers are cutting back on clothing and accessories. Research firm Retail Metrics said sales jumped 3.9 percent last month; the majority of analysts were forecasting a gain of 3.7 percent. Retail Metrics tracks 20 retailers, excluding drugstores. September sales trailed off mid-month as the annual back-to-school shopping season ended. Sales at department stores rose 1.4 percent last month compared to a 5.6 percent increase in specialty-apparel chains and a 4.3 percent rise at discount stores.

Sales at TJX Cos. (TJX) climbed 6 percent last month, Macy's (M) rose 2.5 percent, Kohl's (KSS) said sales fell 2.7 percent and Gap (GPS) sales rose 6 percent. High-end department store Saks (SKS) said in August that it would stop reporting monthly sales reports.

Veteran retail watcher Howard Davidowitz of Davidowitz & Associates says

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Most predictions flop and even highly skilled forecasters can fail to get it right more often than not.

That observation comes from Nate Silver, a statistical whiz and polling master who correctly called every state but one in the 2008 presidential election. In his new book "The Signal and the Noise" Silver says the most trusted prediction methods are far from flawless.

Related: Presidential Debate: Romney Must Score on the Economy Tonight to Win Race, Says Nate Silver

When it comes to prognosticating economic events, for example, individuals are especially unreliable.

"Economic forecasts are blunt instruments at best, rarely being able to anticipate economic turning points more than a few months in advance," he writes. "Economists' predictions have not just been overconfident but also quite poor in a real-world sense, often missing the actual GDP figure by a very large and economically meaningful margin."

Take the Obama Administration's prediction

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Stocks have surged to multi-year highs this year, bittersweet news to investors who have shifted a record amount of money out of stocks and into bonds and bond ETFs.

The last few years have not been kind to investors and many are still leery of risky assets like equities. Despite trading at 5-year highs, stocks are still relatively unchanged from where they were a decade ago, making this something of a lost generation for equity investors. The "stocks versus bonds" question may be ancient but it has never been more apropos.

Jeremy Siegel, a professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and author of the investing manual "Stocks for the Long Run" joined Fusion IQ's Barry Ritholtz to discuss this hotly contested subject.

The 30-year bull market in bonds hasn't changed Siegel's bullish stance on equities. He notes that bonds (referring specifically to the 20-year Treasury bill) beat the S&P 500 Index (GSPC) by a mere