Since January, the U.S. economy has been hit by a series of external shocks that brought a modest recovery nearly to a halt. The slowdown, however, may have been under way even before the shocks took place.

As Latinos become a bigger segment of the U.S. population, the beer industry is trying more nuanced ways of influencing them. "We segment them by their attitudes as well as demographics," says marketer Jim Sabia, whose company distributes Corona and other Mexican beers.

Guy Raz talks to Chunka Mui, who co-wrote Billion Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years, about the successes and failures of companies that present to the public a product that changes from what people are used to. Netflix has withdrawn a plan to mail DVDs to people under a new name. Coke tried to market New Coke. What will the public accept? What won't they? And how do you know it's time to reverse course?

Netflix announced Monday it is reversing its highly controversial move to create two separate companies, one for its streaming service and another for mailing DVDs. The company now says customers will be able to keep just one account and one password.

Netflix has announced that it is reversing a decision to split its DVD-by mail and streaming video services after subscribers derided the idea, saying they didn't want to have to manage two accounts, two web sites and two passwords.

Americans Thomas Sargent of New York University and Christopher Sims of Princeton University have won the Nobel prize in economics. In awarding the $1.5 million prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited the researchers "for their empirical research on cause and effect in the macroeconomy."

A new employment agency is recruiting women of a certain age for a job many working families desperately need to fill: someone to care for their children. Rent-A-Grandma was profiled in this month's Entrepreneur Magazine. The company's founder was working as a tutor in Los Angeles when he first started hearing complaints from parents about the quality of their child care.