What's Hot On TheStreet?

Here's what Benzinga's reading on our friend, TheStreet.com.
What's Hot On TheStreet

Did S&P Just Downgrade Itself? By now everyone knows the news. Last Friday evening, Standard & Poor's downgraded the U.S. credit rating from the highest "AAA" rating down to "AA+". It was the first time in history that U.S. municipal debt did not garner the top credit rating from all three major ratings services. Additionally, S&P assigned a "negative" outlook to the rating, indicating that yet another downgrade is possible within the next 12-18 months.

What al-Qaeda Has to Do With Debt Downgrade With every day of market decline and economic pain, we need to face a terribly unpalatable question, and it's not whether Standard & Poor's is credible or if the downgrades will send the economy into a tailspin (or, perhaps, if we are already in a tailspin).

Loose Lips Sink Companies -- or Employment I have an increasing concern that meeting in public places is leading to carelessness when it comes to confidential information. At this moment, I'm sitting in a restaurant waiting for a meeting. In the past five minutes the conversation in the next booth has become impossible to ignore. They just mentioned a company that I do business with (they are the IT provider for that company). In 10 minutes, sitting 10 feet away, I know how to log into the company's server, the ID and password -- every character and number, what's in caps, what's lowercase. Not only have I learned the password, but I know it's the same password they typically use for clients too. Wow!

Retirees Face Social Security Tax on 'Earnings' If you are nearing retirement and haven't paid much thought to "line 8a," you need to -- or risk losing thousands of dollars of income for years to come.