The startup rate is high, but most of those enterprises are sole proprietorships.

That's according to research from the Kauffman Foundation. (For more on the topic of no-employee businesses, see today's post by my colleague Steve Taub.)  It found that more Americans have launched their own business than any time in the past 15 years. But many of them are flying solo. Specifically the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity found that .34 percent of American adults started a business each month in 2010-565,000 firms. At the same time, the quarterly employer firm rate dropped from .13 percent in 2007 to .10 percent in 2010.

Let's face it. Seemingly every day another piece of data is reported that suggest the economy is on the road to recovery...except for jobs.

Sure the unemployment rate is down to 8.9 percent, the lowest level since April of 2009 as 192,000 jobs were added last month. Also, the December and January new jobs numbers were revised upward by a total of 58,000 jobs.

The surging stock market rally not only is repairing personal balance sheets and 401(k) accounts. It is also defusing the corporate pension crisis.

The funded status of the typical US corporate pension plan in February rose 0.4 percentage points to 88 percent, according to monthly statistics published by BNY Mellon Asset Management.    

Here is yet another reminder that job growth will continue to be slow for a period of time.

A new survey by Robert Half found that an equal percentage of chief financial officers expect to boost hiring full-time accounting and finance professionals as those who plan to reduce their job ranks.

A number of companies this week have disclosed in regulatory filings billions of dollars of potential losses from legal proceedings. 

Goldman Sachs Group, for example, said it could suffer "reasonably possible" losses of $3.4 billion from legal claims against the company.

Broader health insurance coverage did not initially lead to significant overuse of the system or increases in hospital costs in Massachusetts.

That's according to research from Wharton School of Business and Yale University professors, findings that, of course, have significance for the Obama administration's healthcare reform. The research was written up in a recent issue of Knowledge@Wharton.

A civil war has broken out in the US and the main weapon being deployed is envy.

The war is over Other People's Money. It has been raging for more than two years now and is threatening to escalate.

Weatherford International shook investors and Wall Street when it reported after the market's Tuesday close that it would delay the filing of its 2010 annual report after discovering a material weakness in its internal control over financial reporting for income taxes.

The energy equipment and services provider said errors for the periods from 2007 to 2010 totaled about $500 million.

This just in: 401(k) plan providers might not be all that impartial about the investment choices they recommend. In fact, these plans are teeming with conflicts of interest.

That's according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. Called Improved Regulation Could Better Protect Participants from Conflicts of Interest, it looks at what conflicts exist and what the Labor and Treasury Departments should do about it.

A cover story on data privacy appearing in the latest issue of Wired magazine has a two-fold message for corporate executives-both within the finance function and outside the finance department.

Not only does it remind us that it is critical to always keep an eye on corporate and customer data security, but it also demonstrates the power of readily-available online information and how it can be harnessed to more effectively market products to customers and consequently build revenue.