IRS officials estimate some $290 billion dollars that should have come into federal coffers in 2001 never made it into Uncle Sam's pockets. But, take heart. The IRS has a seven-component strategy for bringing in the bucks.

The meltdown of the subprime mortgage industry, often associated with the lower end of the U.S. housing market, continues to spread upward, bringing uncertainty into the jumbo mortgage loan market (loans above $417,000).

According to IRS estimates, there is a $345 billion gross "tax gap" for 2001. The tax gap is the difference between taxes the IRS thinks should have been paid and taxes that actually were paid.

Reaction to Rupert Murdoch's $5.6 billion takeover of the Dow Jones Co. and The Wall Street Journal is a reminder of how highly businesspeople value the venerable news organization.

The collapse of the subprime market has hit hedge funds hard. According to Anthony Sanders, professor of finance and real estate at the W. P. Carey School of Business, many hedge funds forgot due diligence when the real estate market was hottest, and are now stuck with bad paper.

Paralleling the boom in private equity deals in recent years has been a growing sense of alarm about these multibillion dollar transactions.

Too often, Chinese customers buy wealth management products without a real understanding of what they're getting into, according to Xiaoling Wu, deputy governor of the People's Bank of China.

A company's financial statements play a critical part in how its share prices fare in the markets. But financial statements aren't the only sources of information markets use to determine the valuation of a company.

Social responsibility is not just about handing out money, or establishing a charity or a fund, said Huaqing Wang, assistant chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission and director-general of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), Shanghai office.

Managers, markets, and the many players who must contract with a firm: all three groups need credible information about companies. The financial statement — which includes the income statement, balance sheet and statement of cash flows — tells a compelling story when read as a whole.