The World Economic Forum, the winter gathering of the powerful, kicks off today in the Alpine town of Davos, Switzerland. A Bloomberg survey finds that 59 percent of international investors think the global economy’s improving. That’s the highest level of optimism in five years, and the mood is up strikingly from the previous survey in November.

College courses with a 95 percent dropout rate would trigger alarm bells at most universities, but researchers at Harvard University and MIT says that’s potentially fine, at least in the case of some massive open online courses, or MOOCs.

A recent study shows one in 10 job applicants have been rejected because something turned up in their credit history. And last month Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced a bill that would, among other things, bar the use of credit reports in hiring.