Author: Albert Bozzo

Every year, 2,500 of the globe’s biggest thinkers and doers – ranging from finance to politics – gather in the small Swiss alpine resort of Davos for the World Economic Forum to take on the problems of humankind. It’s a major media event, worthy of a CNBC.com quiz.

Our special report focuses on the  financial decisions that will pay off throughout the year — saving, preserving, allocating and investing money.

The services sector—long the engine of the U.S. economic growth—is finally showing signs of sustained strength, from job creation to overall output.

For the first time in our survey, not one newsmaker emerged a winner. See how President Obama, Bernanke, Brian Moynihan and others fared.

“Part of the problem is people think we’re not back to where we were before the crisis," says one economist. "I think we’re working through this. There’s no pushing us off the recovery track.”

As we seek your votes on this year's candidates, you’ll note that we have few repeats from 2010 and only one person who  also made our inaugural list of 2009.

After years of withering sales and slumping prices, there are strong and diverse signs that the single-family housing market is poised for a rebound.  In some metropolitan areas, the market has clearly bottomed, with sales and prices rising and foreclosures declining.

If you're weary of focusing on holiday gifts and company parties, you may want to give some attention to another end-of-year ritual: tax-planning.

To mark our annual November "Green Is Universal" week, we've assembled a "Green Winners & Losers 2011" special report, looking at six  industries whose fortunes either rose or fell this year.

Alternative investing may not be for everyone, but there's an entry point for almost anyone—and as popular cable TV programs illustrate every week, small fortunes can be found in attics, basements and, yes, storage rooms.