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It's now easier for shareholders to get new people onto corporate boards -- but some companies say they want that to change.

The changes come from a close vote this week at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Now, when companies mail ballots before shareholder meetings, they must include the names of all board nominees on them, the Wall Street Journal reports.

In the past, shareholders who wanted a new candidate had to pay for mailing separate ballots. They also had to do their own campaigning. Those barriers were a huge roadblock to getting anyone elected that wasn't hand-picked by the existing board. 

Pop quiz: How many new homes priced over $750,000 sold in July?

The answer is zero -- for the second month in a row. At least, according to David Rosenberg, chief economist at investment firm Gluskin Sheff.

That figure seems hard to believe, but keep in mind that Rosenberg is talking about new homes, not existing ones. If he's right, that's a shocking statistic. For the housing market, trauma has set in, he says.

Things are unbelievably horrific in housing now, Rosenberg writes (as reported by Zero Hedge).  

Wendy's (WEN) is taking the slogan "Quality is Our Recipe" to a new level with all-natural fries in test markets. 

 

Interestingly, the new recipe comes as Wendy's fries are already popular. A recent Zagat survey ranked Wendy's fries fourth-best, behind those of McDonald's (MCD), Five Guys and In-N-Out Burger. 

• Related Article: What In-N-Out can teach bigger fast-food chains

So why would Wendy's make the change to an already successful snack? Simple: The move comes amid a flurry of other menu changes at fast-food restaurants that push for higher-quality, healthful and natural ingredients to boost sales. Here are the details on Wendy's latest menu item and where you can buy the skin-on fries:

 

By Jim Cramer, TheStreet

 

Technology makes a run off of oil's rally but not the oil stocks. Health care rallies on oil but not oil stocks. Retail rallies on oil. But not the oil stocks. Food stocks leap on a turn in oil. But not the oil stocks. That's how things played out all Wednesday afternoon. Will it play out that way today?

 

Excuse me for sounding like Dr. Seuss, but what a joke this market has become. Food and retail, both incredibly sensitive to rising oil prices, rally on oil getting better because oil's upturn is a sign that the consumer is feeling better? What hogwash. Rising oil prices hurt the food companies because it is their biggest expense, more than the food commodities they package.

 

Retail? Rising oil prices are demonstrably bad for them. Tech? There is no correlation in real life whatsoever. However, we are not in real life. We are in some sort of bizarre world where the only correlations we can find are the wrong ones.

 

It's tempting to say that the 6% drop in Ctrip.com International's (CTRP) shares on Aug. 10th -- a day after its second-quarter earnings report -- was just the usual selling on the news by momentum investors unhappy the company only beat estimates by 2 cents a share and didn't raise guidance.  

But when you're looking at a stock trading at 43.5x projected 2010 earnings per share, I'm not sure there's any "just" about an earnings report that didn't shoot out the lights. 

There's just enough in the numbers to concern any investor counting on the company to keep growing earnings by 30% -- at a minimum. 

Here's what the company reported. 

 

Who’s the bitch now? Taking a page from her reign at Us Weekly, Janice Min has been making her presence felt on the Hollywood Reporter website.

Many inside the industry were shocked at a lead story on Tuesday that felt like a broadside against the generally liked Jennifer Aniston:

"'Switch' a Bitch for Jennifer Aniston," read the headline, above a story that criticized the movie’s underperformance, but then backtracked to say it "wasn’t necessarily a setback" to her career.

 

Updated at 6:12 p.m. ET

 

By James Rogers, TheStreet

 

Amazon (AMZN) clearly wants to reassure investors that its Kindle e-book reader is coping with the threat posed by Apple's (AAPL) iPad, but actual Kindle sales numbers are still hard to come by.

 

In a statement released today, Amazon said the latest versions of the Kindle, launched in late July, are the fastest-selling Kindles ever. The Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk websites have sold more of the new Kindle and Kindle 3G than any other products during the last four weeks, according to the online retail giant.

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Amazon's true Kindle performance, however, remains clouded in secrecy. Despite plenty of hype over the last few years, the retailer has not released any actual sales figures for its e-book device, although a company spokeswoman told TheStreet in an e-mail today that Amazon has sold "millions of Kindles overall."

 

Pretty soon you'll see bright red phone booths at airports and universities. Inside, people will be able to make free long-distance domestic and international calls.

Google (GOOG) is installing the phone booths to introduce people to Google Voice. The company is also making a splash this week by offering free voice calls through Gmail.

For the rest of the year, calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free. Calls to other countries start at 2 cents a minute.

Here's how it works: 

To be sure, American stocks have been in the doghouse. The Russell 2000 small-cap index is within a hair of its July and February lows and is trading at levels first reached last September. Over the past few months, there has been absolutely no progress.

 

Not so with emerging-market stocks. The iShares Emerging Markets (EEM) is up 12.9% from its May low and has outpaced the Russell 2000 by a whopping 16.7%. Widening the scope, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index has outperformed the MSCI Developed World Index by 6.7% year to date and by 10.7% since the May 25 low.

 

Foreign equities, along with defensive utility names, have been one of the few refuges for stock market investors over the past few months. But can the performance continue? Sakthi Siva, who heads the global emerging-markets team for Credit Suisse, believes they can and gives four important reasons.

 

Starbucks (SBUX) knows more about the real-estate downturn than most chains.

A few years ago, the company's real-estate moves were brazen bordering on reckless. It opened stores within blocks of each other and expanded too quickly in underperforming areas. The economic crisis forced Starbucks to shut down 600 stores in 2008, leaving the battered company to rethink its strategy.

Now, Starbucks has seized upon a new expansion idea, one that removes much of its real-estate risk. Forget the responsibility from a stand-alone location. Why not plant more mini-cafes in Safeway(SWY) and Target (TGT) stores? 

By Jeff Reeves, InvestorPlace.com

Almost everyone feels a bit overwhelmed when experiencing a Costco (COST) store for the first time. The size, the crush of people, the bizarre variety of items.

And that's just the view from the parking lot.

Well, if Costco has its way, the mob scene taking place at its cavernous stores will soon be on the move -- to the oversized mall spaces known as "anchor" positions, which have long been the turf of big-box retailers and department stores.

 

By Jim Cramer, TheStreet

 

Thank you, Bob Toll, for once again telling the truth.

 

The executive chairman of homebuilder Toll Brothers (TOL) has been spot on during this housing crisis, being the first to tell you the good and the bad. He basically told you to sell housing stocks a couple of months ago when he didn't like the trends he saw. He is a straight shooter, and sometimes it can be painful.

 

His comments this morning really say it all for the part of the market that wasn't dominated by the tax credit, which basically gave buyers a free year of interest payments (the average price of a home's mortgage interest in year one is what buyers got with the credit).

 

 

The bond market is so hot that some bankers are betting people will snap up 100-year bonds.

These ultra-long-term bonds are risky because the investor must believe that the companies issuing them will still exist in 100 years, according to The Wall Street Journal. But they're attractive because companies pay investors a premium for them.

"Such bonds won't pay off their principal until 2110, a date so far that the people doing today's buying and selling will all be dead," writes Katy Burne. 

Apple (AAPL) is finally getting a toehold in the corporate world, thanks to the iPad.

Companies that have historically resisted Apple products are snapping up iPads, The Wall Street Journal reports. Half of the companies in the Fortune 100 are buying or testing them, and at least 500 iPad applications are specifically for use by businesses.

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"Everyone in IT is jumping on this one," an analyst told the Journal. "Rather than wait for people to start complaining, they're saying, 'Why don't we get a few of them in and see what they are good for?'"