A couple of seemingly innocuous press releases out of PepsiCo yesterday -- "Eric J. Foss Announces Plans to Retire from PepsiCo Unit" followed by "PepsiCo Names Al Carey CEO of PepsiCo Americas Beverages" -- didn't slip gently into the small type at Reuters.

Cheap chic has its price and, in Target's case yesterday, it was the viability of its website, which sputtered, wheezed and went on life support for most of the day as cybershoppers turned out in droves to purchase items from the Missoni for Target limited-edition collection of fashion and home décor items. The 400-piece line features merchandise ranging between $2.99 for stationery and $599.99 for patio furniture.

Christopher J. "CJ" Fraleigh, the 47-year-old marketing and management veteran of General Motors and PepsiCo who was the anointed CEO at MeatCo, the interim name for one of the two forthcoming spinoffs of Sara Lee, has been sliced from the company like a piece of sausage, although the official announcement says that he has "resigned."

If you grew up in a certain time, there are few consumer products that carry as much baggage, if you'll pardon the oxymoron, as a Volkswagen Beetle. Casey Williams, writing in The Indianapolis Star Saturday, opens by recalling the day in 1998 when Ferdinand Piech, chairman of Volkswagen, unveiled the "New" Beetle in Detroit's Cobo Hall.

As optimistic as it appeared that retailers might be about the holiday shopping season on Tuesday, it turns out that the behemoth of them all, Wal-Mart, is not so optimistic that it isn't resorting to some old-fashioned allure: the layaway plan.

Depending on whom you read, Kraft Foods chairman and CEO Irene Rosenfeld yesterday either "defended" or "highlighted the benefits" of her plan to split up the company into two separate entities in a 45-minute presentation at the Barclays Capital Back-to-School Consumer Conference in Boston.

Sprint has filed suit to block AT&T's proposed acquisition of T-Mobile, adding yet another barrier to the deal getting done. The suit was brought in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., where the Justice Dept. last week also sued AT&T and T-Mobile, a unit of Deutsche Telekom AG, saying that their union would "substantially lessen competition," as Bloomberg reported.

The headlines this morning tell the tale of some very different states of mind. Additional economic woes in Europe have the U.S. stock market in a tizzy before it opens. And while President Obama has given us a hint of what he has in mind for creating jobs, who thinks this is going to amount to much more than the kickoff of the political football season? But then, just in the nick of Times, we have some good news on the retail front.