What's Hot On TheStreet

Here's what Benzinga's reading on our friend,

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While a Nevada candidate's suggestion of bartering for medical care was the butt of jokes -- "In the olden days, our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor," Republican Sue Lowden said in April -- haggling over medical bills is starting to become an accepted strategy.

Microfinance is an economic concept that wins approval across party lines, whether you're a do-gooder type who wants to end Third World poverty or a free-marketer who believes in the transformative power of entrepreneurship. But it's a practice we associate with rural villages in Asia or Africa, where tiny loans help women produce local handcrafts or maybe open a small shop.

Is a bad U.S. economy good for stock ETFs? It depends on the type of stock ETFs -- large, small, growth, value, foreign, domestic. It also depends upon whom you ask.

Whirlpool

announced this week that there will be a new round of layoffs at its refrigerator plant in Fort Smith, Ark. -- although the company did not specify the number of jobs that will be eliminated.