25 years to bounce back? Try 4½

It took the Dow Jones index more than 25 years to recover from the bottom of the Great Depression. But Mark Hulbert, editor of The Hulbert Financial Digest, says it took stocks as a whole much less time to bounce back. How? One, the Depression was a deflationary period, and the Dow fails to account for "real" returns, net of deflation. Two, dividends played a big role in total returns, but are not included in the Dow. And three, many of the companies that were excluded from the Depression-era Dow-including IBMsignificantly outperformed the index. So when did the overall stock market really make it back to its pre-crash peak? From its mid-1932 low, Hulbert says it took only four years and five months.

Straight to the hoosegow

Bernie Madoff's 150-year prison sentence is just as outsized as his $65 billion fraud. It dwarfs the sentences handed down to some of his most notorious peers.

Canadians love online video

A recent study found that 21 million Canadians viewed more than 3.1 billion videos online in February. Google sites (mainly YouTube.com) attracted the most viewers, with 18.2 million watching an average of 89 videos per viewer during the month. Microsoft sites drew 7.1 million viewers, while Facebook ranked third with 5.8 million viewers. The average Canadian viewer watched 605 minutes of video in the month. That’s up 53% from last year, and significantly more than the other countries studied (UK 540 minutes, Germany 466 minutes, France 390 minutes, US 312 minutes).