YOUR FRIENDS' ACTIVITY

    • Best-selling author and Food Network personality Sandra Lee is the exemplar of the ‘American Dream’: she grew up in poverty, helped raise her four younger siblings and now manages a lifestyle empire that includes 25 books, a magazine that bears her name, four highly-rated culinary TV programs and a housewares line that’s sold in Kmart/Sears. She says unequivocally that her meager upbringing was the reason why she’s so successful today.

      “My childhood was a complete blessing,” she says in an interview with The Daily Ticker. “It was a challenging way to live, a challenging way to grow up… but it benefitted me so much.”

      Related: The 'American Dream' Is a Myth: Joseph Stiglitz

      By age 12 Lee was cooking, cleaning and checking her siblings’ homework assignments after her stepfather moved out of the family’s Washington home and her mother became bedridden. Welfare and food stamps paid the bills.

      In Made From Scratch, Lee’s 2007 memoir, she writes, “If we had extra expenses, or even if we were

      Read More »from From Food Stamps to Food Network Star: Sandra Lee
    • Netflix (NFLX) is on top of its game. With 29.17 million paid subscribers in the U.S., popular original programming and new licensing deals, the company seems unstoppable.

      There is one large problem that stands in Netflix’s way. According to Bloomberg, up to 10 million users could be streaming Netflix’s video service without paying.

      This is a problem for them, says The Daily Ticker's Henry Blodget, but also an opportunity.

      “What it means is that people love the service," he notes. "If at some point they want to capture those people and say ‘you know what, we’re not so cool with you doing this anymore,’ the technology is very simple.”

      Instead of banning viewers who use other people’s login information, Netflix is attempting to embrace them -- for a small additional fee. Right now, two simultaneous streams per account are allowed for $7.99 a month. Netflix has announced a new pricing option that allows four concurrent video streams per account for $11.99 a month.

      Netflix CEO Reed

      Read More »from Netflix Introduces New Pricing Plan: Another Qwikster Disaster or the Right Move?
    • In his previous best-sellers such as The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food and Food Rules, Michael Pollan examined America’s diet and summed up a very complicated issue in seven words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

      In his latest work, Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, Pollan turns the focus from what we’re eating to how it’s prepared and concludes that cooking at home may be the most important part of our diet...and potentially a solution to America’s obesity epidemic.

      “The most important thing about your diet is not any particular nutrient but that activity,” he says of cooking.

      And, yes, this is very much an economic story when you consider rising health care costs are the number one driver of America’s long-term deficit -- and rising obesity rates are the biggest contributor to the overall increase in health care spending.

      Since the Great Recession of 2008, Pollan notes that more Americans are cooking at home, bulk food sales are up and obesity rates have

      Read More »from Michael Pollan: Home Cooking Will Solve America’s Obesity Epidemic
    • The Next Big U.S. IPO? It May Be Chrysler

      Fiat, Italy’s biggest manufacturer, is reportedly considering buying the 41.5% of Chrysler that it doesn’t already own, then taking the combined company public in a new IPO.

      According to a The Wall Street Journal article citing “people familiar with the matter,” Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne has wanted to combine the two companies since Fiat bought Chrysler in 2009 following a U.S.-government bailout. Since then, Chrysler has returned to profitability and provided parent company Fiat with much-needed cash. Chrysler accounted for 75% of Fiat’s 2012 operating profit.

      Related: Jeep CEO Responds to Criticism of New Cherokee: "They'll Love It"

      “Hats off to Chrysler and Jeep in particular,” says The Daily Ticker’s Henry Blodget. “People love Jeep. It’s such a success story.”

      Jeep led U.S. Chrysler sales for years but they fell in March, reportedly due to a restructuring of the brand. Chrysler is ending the Jeep Liberty and relaunching the Grand Cherokee. Fiat sales have also been doing well,

      Read More »from The Next Big U.S. IPO? It May Be Chrysler

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