The late housing boom, in which borrowers largely forgot that prices can go down as well as up, attracted some unsavory brokers and left many consumers facing foreclosure. The Fed is under great pressure to triangulate between Congressional Democrats' desire for New Deal-style regulation and the...

In February, the European Competition Commission fined Microsoft $1.35 billion in what was just the latest in a long line of antitrust cases against the company. Ironically, though, whatever market power Microsoft possessed was already ebbing by the time the company became mired in legal battles...