BRIEFS

The world's largest restaurant chain's stock might be making record highs but concerns about declining customer traffic continue at McDonalds, according to the WSJ.

Set to announce first quarter earnings this Friday, the Big Mac folks have switched to a value approach to counteract what the company sees as "lackluster consumer spending world-wide."

Cost-conscious spending and value are in and higher-priced menu items out at least for now, tempering the company's outlook for  2013 earnings. Investors often use Big Mac as an economic bellwether, a label once given many years ago to GM, to gauge the global economy.

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Department store chain JC Penny apparently started the penny-pinching the moment now ousted CEO Ron Johnson jumped aboard.  For years the firm employed around 150,000 full and part-time workers. Along came Johnson and after just one year, according one report, that number dropped to roughly 116,000. 

That's nearly a 25% reduction in the workforce. Some of those let go we're designers for a women's sales line that generated a billion dollars a year that was also axed. Sales dropped 25% during Johnson's and his former Apple compatriots' reign.

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Headline in today's WSJ:  "U.S. Expanding Limits of Insider-Trade Probes."

It's a story about the KMPG LLP partner who reportedly passed along inside data to an acquaintance who profited. Investigators photographed the two men supposedly exchanging the goodies. The story than references some so-called legal experts suggesting this is a sign of how far regulators will go to "crack down on illegal stock tips."

This guy at the largest is pocket change.

Such is for the public's benefit. Regulators and the MSM can then say: "See we're are doing something." The KMPG guy in question is in California. Most of the regulators are in Washington. 

With a short trip up the Hill to Congress they'll find a lot of insider tipping and they can save a lot of film and taxpayer bucks.

What this guy did members of Congress do all the time and on a much larger scale. He's probably going to jail. Congress people just get rich.

Level playing fields are like trash and beauty. 

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