ABCDE
BUSINESS
sunday, april 11, 2010
DON’T FORGET!
The last dash to Tax Day
Your 2009 federal and state tax returns must be postmarked or e-filed by April 15.
CAR PAGES
The payoff from GM
The Buick Lacrosse CXS, with HiPer Strut suspension, reflects the work of a company worth believing in again.
Plus, ads for thousands of vehicles. Starting on the back page.
IN OUTLOOK
Leave less to chance on Wall St.
Tax big banks that take risks that could bring down the system. B1
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ROB PEGORARO
Fast Forward
With iPad, Apple aims for sweet spot
T
he price of Apple’s new iPad, starting at $499, fits into more people’s budgets than any of its computers. But that doesn’t mean it will fit all of their needs. The iPad can’t quite be your only computer, because you need a machine running Mac OS X or Windows to set it up and install software updates. And yet this device’s size, weight and inability to make phone calls preclude it from replacing a smartphone. Instead, you need an opening between those gadgets, a vacancy that might otherwise be occupied by a netbook or electronic-book reader. Many other attempts to fill that gap
have flopped; who now remembers Microsoft’s “Smart Displays” and “Ultra-Mobile PC”, for instance? The iPad is light-years better than those doomed devices, but it’s not “magical and revolutionary,” either (to quote Apple’s ad copy). A week with a $699, 64-gigabyte model lent by the Cupertino, Calif., company had both “ha!” and “huh?” moments. No doubt, the iPad will dislodge some laptops from coffee tables and boot some e-book readers out of carry-on
pegoraro continued on G2
Myths about China’s economic power and the challenges it poses. B3
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AX FN FS LF PW DC BD PG AA FD HO MN MS SM
MARKETS
Long rally reaches a key peak
Positive job and retail sales reports helped to briefly carry the Dow past 11,000. G5
YTD: Dow
NASDAQ S&P 500
+5.5% +8.1% +7.1%
by Ylan Q. Mui
MARIANNE SEREGI/THE WASHINGTON POST
Could an Apple (iPad) a day revive health care? The industry is aflutter. G3
MICHELLE SINGLETARY
The Color of Money
It’s a home, not an ATM
hroughout my childhood, my grandmother Big Mama extolled the virtues of owning a home. When I dared to move out of her house and get a one-bedroom apartment a year after graduating from college, Big Mama harassed me about renting. When my lease was coming to an end, she declared that I had two choices: Move back in with her or buy my own home. I bought my first home — a
T
LORENZO PETRANTONI FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
two-bedroom, one-bath condominium. Even though I was in my early 20s, I was ready for ownership. I had no debt. I could easily afford the monthly mortgage payment, which was well below 36 percent of my net monthly pay. My grandmother pushed
homeownership, but not as an almighty way to increase my net worth. She taught me to view my home as a place to live and a way to stabilize my monthly housing expense. If your home appreciated in value, that was an added bonus.
When I sold my condo, it hadn’t appreciated in value. But I was okay with this. I lived in a great place for more than 10 years. How do you view owning a home? It’s a question that was put to people
in a survey by Fannie Mae, the beleaguered government-sponsored
color continued on G4
ackstage at the opera, the latest tragedy is the fi- nancial crisis. The Minnesota Opera’s $10 million annual
budget got hammered during the low notes of the recession. Ticket sales slumped as people saved money and stayed home, corporations cut back on donations and the stock market wrecked havoc on the opera’s endowment. That forced it to do some painful cost-cutting last year — namely, suspending a 3 percent contri- bution to employee retirement plans regardless of whether workers put money in. The contribution was a well-loved perk for
artists facing curtain call, and Opera chief exec- utive Kevin Smith said he was determined to bring it back. Now, a new state sales tax to help
pay for the arts and solid ticket sales have re- stored Smith’s confidence in the future. Starting in January, the opera plans to begin contribut- ing 1.5 percent with the hopes of restoring the full 3 percent by July 2011. “Things have improved to the point where we feel we can reinvest in employees the way we al- ways wanted to,” he said. The opera is part of a wave of firms restoring contributions to employee retirement plans af- ter suspending them in the wake of the crisis, a sign of growing confidence in the country’s eco- nomic recovery. In a recent study, Fidelity In- vestments, the nation’s largest provider of work-
401(k) plan continued on G4
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