Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons gave nearly $3 million to the American Issues Project so it can run a TV ad linking Barack Obama to 1960s anti-war radical William Ayers and the Weather Underground.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat from California, defended her investment in T. Boone Pickens’ Clean Energy Fuels Corp. during an appearance Sunday on Meet the Press by saying she is investing in something she believes in.

While Bill Allen waits patiently to testify against Sen. Ted Stevens and others in ongoing corruption cases, the Alaska businessman and his children have set up several new companies that deal in energy, construction, real estate, tourism and aviation.

Larry McMurtry’s latest book, titled simply Books, is a memoir of his many decades as a book dealer. One of his favorite activities, he writes, has always been buying books. Lots of books.

It’s not clear what impact SemGroup LP’s bankruptcy ultimately will have on its publicly traded subsidiary, SemGroup Energy Partners. What is clear, though, is how closely the companies share executives.

T. Boone Pickens is spending $58 million on his national marketing campaign to promote alternative energy sources like wind for electricity and natural gas for cars. In the two weeks since he announced his effort, the stock market value of his company that supplies natural gas for vehicles has increased by about twice that amount.

Short-term results “can and will be lumpy,” Fortress Investment Group CEO Wesley Edens told investors after the firm announced first-quarter results earlier this year. When does “lumpy” become something more serious?

Four years later, many of the wealthy donors who funded the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry are still very active in molding public opinion.

If he is successful in acquiring the Pittsburgh Steelers, what kind of owner will money-managing whiz Stanley Druckenmiller be?

Federal regulators closed IndyMac Bank Friday afternoon and transferred operation to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.