Many people in Las Vegas wish that they had enough savings to go in for a property especially when the property values have come down so drastically. No one expected this negative spell on the US real estate sector. One of the most affected allied sectors is the banking industry that was getting richer and richer with the booming real estate markets.

Top MBA programs don't have a monopoly on advanced business knowledge: you can teach yourself everything you need to know to succeed in life and at work. The Personal MBA Recommended Reading List features only the very best business books available, based on thousands of hours of research. So skip b-school and the $100,000 loan: you can get a world-class business education simply by reading these books.

28 new books. This update reflects a year of intensive research to make the PMBA as comprehensive and complete as possible. I’m confident that the 77 books featured on this list are the very best business books currently available.

MomGrind is a personal blog. It chronicles my thoughts and struggles. It is where I share a laugh with my readers, ask for their advice, post an occasional feminist rant, and wonder about the meaning of it all.

Last week, however, I picked up Good to Great by Jim Collins. This book is an absolute phenomenon in the publishing world. Since it came out in 2001, it has sold millions of copies. It still sells over 300,000 copies a year. It has been so successful that seven years later the book is still in hardcover. I’ve been hearing about it for years and never looked at it. People are always asking me about it. I figured it was about time I took a look.

In October 2005, Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott started talking about sustainable development. In September 2006, he agreed with Al Gore and stated that a conflict between the environment and the economy is unnecessary. Now, he's even hired green activist Adam Werbach to shepherd the plan. But there are still plenty of skeptics. Is Scott merely greenwashing -- using sustainability to promote his company's interests -- or has Wal-Mart really become a force for environmental good?

Research shows that enterprises fail at execution because they go straight to structural reorganization and neglect the most powerful drivers of effectiveness—decision rights and information flow.

One key to creating value is understanding how to manage the subtle balance between growth and returns on invested capital. Empirical evidence suggests that companies enjoying strong ROIC can afford to let it decline over the short term to pursue growth—and that companies with low returns are better off improving ROIC than emphasizing growth.