Sam Walton

For Katie Essing, transitioning from one Columbia to another has been quite the shift. Essing, 33, began work as The Mall in Columbia's senior general manager June 30, leaving her post as general manager of Columbia Mall in Columbia, Mo. She was hired in May to fill the spot left open by Karen Geary, who resigned in April. "It's a beautiful property. It's got fantastic retailers and restaurants, and it's just an exciting opportunity," Essing said of the Howard County mall, which is owned by General Growth Properties Inc. The Chicago-based company also owns Columbia Mall and Capital Mall, two shopping centers in Missouri that Essing managed since 2005.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, will buy back as much as $15 billion of shares and reduce the number of new stores as Chief Executive Officer H. Lee Scott responds to investor demands to boost returns. The plan to repurchase as much as 7.4 percent of its stock sent shares to their biggest gain in 19 months. Wal-Mart also said yesterday that it will open no more than 200 supercenters this year, a reduction from the 270 it previously planned to create. "Wal-Mart has taken a major step in attempting to improve returns on investment," Neil Currie, an analyst with UBS Securities LLC, wrote in a research note after the company's annual shareholders' meeting.

As President Barack Obama said in his inaugural address, America "cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. " Not even the very wealthy can continue to succeed without a broader-based prosperity. That's because 70 percent of economic activity in America is consumer spending. When most Americans are becoming poorer, they're less able to spend. Without their spending, the economy can't get out of first gear. That's a big reason why the recovery continues to be anemic.

At 6:30 a.m., April 8, 1861, an obscure young man named John Wanamaker opened the doors to a modest clothing shop tucked in downtown Philadelphia, 94 hours before the first gunshot echo of the Civil War.More than a century later, the fabled Wanamaker name, graced on a 12-story granite and steel department store, will vanish from the retailing universe before a parade of lawyers in Room 627 of U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York City at 10 a.m. Aug. 8.There goes...

Hundreds of corporate bosses have confronted monstrous change agendas in the past 10 years; but only a few have made a genuine about-face. To wit: Jack Welch at General Electric, Mike Walsh at the Union Pacific Railroad (and now Tenneco) and Percy Barnevik at ABB Asea Brown Boveri. What do the three dynamos have in common?* Frighteningly smart. Most CEOs I've met are very bright. But Welch, Walsh and Barnevik are almost in a league of their own. I, for one, am intimidated by each member of the trio.

Last week, I was doing some holiday shopping in a popular retail establishment; let's just call it "Wharf Uno." Wharf Uno is a pretty smelly store -- there is always some sort of enigmatic scent wafting through the aisles, emanating from a new scent-delivery system called "reed diffusers." These reeds look surprisingly like incense sticks, but they are cleverly incapable of igniting your draperies and burning your house down because you do not light them. Instead, you stand them up in a jar of fragrant oil, and they soak it up. Through some sort of magical transference system, the air starts smelling.

It's Kafkaesque. The shrill voices of Michael Crichton (author of the crude "Rising Sun") and presidential hopefuls Pat Buchanan and Bob Kerrey claim we're on the ropes. Raise high the walls around Fortress America. And all this just one year after the Persian Gulf war, three months after the Soviet Union disintegrated.The recession lingers. The K-12 educational system shows few signs of life. Our infrastructure crumbles. Etc.Still, our grocery store shelves groan with an average of 30,000 items, up from 9,000 in 1976.

About 140 people showed up last week to tell the County Council theydon't want Wal-Mart at U.S. 29 and U.S. 40.And some of them threatened to make it a ballot-box issue."

Paris. -- Buried in the small print of newspapers here last Monday was a report of an explosion in the boiler room of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Seoul, South Korea. Three workmen were injured, but what made the (apparent) accident news was the fact that President Clinton was scheduled to be in the hotel in 10 days and 140 White House personnel were evacuated along with other guests.Wait a minute. One hundred and forty people! Who? What were they doing? There must be some mistake.There was. The next day's papers reported that the White House advance team was moving out of the Hyatt Regency and taking 250 rooms at the Shilla Hotel.

AMONG THE LARGEST 500 companies, more than 300 - and eight of the top 10 - have had policies against discrimination based on sexual orientation. But when one more firm recently adopted such a policy, it was front-page national news. That's because when Wal-Mart speaks - for better or worse - America pays attention. World-conquering size does that. The 41-year-old firm is now the world's largest corporation and private employer, with more workers in uniform (1.3 million worldwide) than the U.S. Army.