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You may be doing just the right thing during the stock-market meltdown and not even know it.

Whether by design or happenstance, many of America's individual investors are continuing to buy into the gyrating stock market by dollar-cost averaging -- investing a set number of dollars into a 401(k) plan with every paycheck.

BANGKOK -- Deposed Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra demonstrated his continuing powerful influence in this deeply divided nation, giving an impassioned speech by telephone to tens of thousands of his supporters here.

Associated Press

Supporters of ousted Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in Bangkok listen to him speak from overseas exile.

An estimated 50,000 people packed into a Bangkok sports stadium Saturday to hear Mr. Thaksin speak from an undisclosed location overseas. He urged his followers to do what they can to bring him back to Thailand, saying there's nothing that could allow him to return "except for the king's mercy or the power of the people."

The Federal Reserve brought the commercial-paper market back to life in recent days. Now comes the next test for this key market for short-term corporate borrowing: doing without that backstop.

That will require a pick-up in longer-term loans from institutional money-market investors -- specifically, the $3.4 trillion money-market fund industry.

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 1, 2008; D06

VeraSun Energy, one of the nation's biggest ethanol producers, filed for bankruptcy protection last night, after the credit crisis made it impossible for the company to recover from a bad bet it made on corn prices.

The filing marked an abrupt reversal for a company that had acquired a competitor last year and expanded, with the help of federal ethanol mandates and subsidies, to 16 production facilities in eight states. Experts on the industry said that its facilities were well-run.

Wall Street closed a poor October on Friday but the 16.9% drop in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index looked pretty good compared with the hit taken by Asia and some other nations.

October brought a mauling to markets from Brazil, down 24%, to China, down nearly 25%. The culprit was a word unfamiliar to many: "deleveraging," or Wall Street jargon for the practice of unloading stocks and bonds bought with borrowed money, usually under pressure.

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 31, 2008; D01

Exxon Mobil smashed its own U.S. record for quarterly profits yesterday, ringing up $14.83 billion in net income thanks to soaring summertime crude oil prices. But with crude oil prices now less than half their July peak and the economic outlook bleak, the record may stand for a while.

Exxon's third-quarter earnings rose 58 percent compared to the corresponding period in 2007, and its per-share earnings of $2.86 were higher than what analysts expected, capping a week of strong profit numbers from the world's premier oil companies, all of which benefited from the spike in oil prices in July.

LOS ANGELES -- Boeing Co. and its satellite operations were hit with $236.1 million in punitive damages, ending a protracted lawsuit in state court in Los Angeles that featured allegations of fraud and breach of contract by ICO Global Communications Holdings Ltd., a former Boeing customer.

The jury agreed on the damages less than two weeks after awarding ICO at least $370 million in compensatory damages. In all, Boeing faces potentially more than $700 million in total damages, depending on interest and other issues.

By Zachary A. Goldfarb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 1, 2008; D01

Several big insurance companies this week reported big losses on investments in the last quarter, raising fresh questions about the financial stability of the firms as the U.S. government considers investing in them.

Hartford Financial Services Group, a Connecticut insurer, lost $2.63 billion in the third quarter. Prudential Financial, the New Jersey insurer, lost $108 million. Assurant, a New York provider of specialty insurance, lost $111.4 million.

Erick Schonfeld
TechCrunch.com
Thursday, October 30, 2008; 2:55 PM

If you are one of the recipients of the 1,300 business method patents issued in the U.S. last year, or the thousands more that have been issued rampantly and indiscriminately over the past decade, you are probably out of luck. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. ruled today that business methods are not patentable unless they meet fairly narrow rules. What this means for Internet companies and patent trolls alike is that many of their existing patents may be invalid?at least until the case is heard by the Supreme Court, assuming it is appealed.

Mike Masnick at TechDirt has a good overview of the issues in the case and the stricter rules to be applied to these sorts of patents. He writes:

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke sketched out a blueprint for handling the mortgage-securitization crisis -- an issue both presidential candidates have cited as a priority.

Speaking to a mortgage-finance symposium in Berkeley, Calif., by videoconference Friday, Mr. Bernanke said policy makers may need to maintain a key role in mortgage securitization regardless of the fate determined for government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Among the options he outlined was creating a government bond insurer for mortgage funding.