Welcome to the 60th installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

In this Wal-Mart Weekly, I'll continue my column from last week and take a look at another of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.'s (NYSE: WMT) annual shareholder meeting proposals.

Last year, I covered Wal-Mart's annual shareholder's meeting live from the show floor last year, where all 11 shareholder proposals were easily and soundly defeated. Will it be the same this year? We'll find out in about three weeks. Last week I covered something very pertinent to the season -- political contributions. This week, it'll be something more close to the heart of many individual -- and institutional -- shareholders: executive compensation.

Welcome to the 59th installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

In this week's Wal-Mart Weekly, I'll begin a multi-part column that takes a look inside some of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.'s (NYSE: WMT) annual shareholder meeting proposals. As many of you may know, Wal-Mart's annual shareholder's meeting happens in early June, about a month from now.

I covered it live from the show floor last year, where all 11 shareholder proposals were easily and soundly defeated. Nothing new here, as Wal-Mart's board has a habit of glossing past many proposals that would give its shareholders a glimpse into its internal operations.

So, let's start off by looking at a shareholder proposal that asks for more public visibility into Wal-Mart's political donations. This is a great question for the retailer, and one would think that if Wal-Mart has nothing to hide, it would open the transparency book to answer this proposal. We'll only know in a month when the meeting actually happens, but we'll consider what the retailer could do in this column. Visit this link to get a rundown on Wal-Mart's SEC Form 14A for its upcoming shareholder's meeting, and then join me after the break.

Welcome to the 58th installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

This week's Wal-Mart Weekly looks at the moves the world's largest retailer is making to actually slow its growth. When one thinks of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) -- or any other retailer -- the term growth always seems to come to mind. That's what Wall Street's short-sighted investors fret about every day, although by its nature this kind of focus keeps most public companies trying to plan for the future while appeasing the market makers.

How about actually trying to slow down growth? There is a lot to be said for "disciplined growth" and growing at a rate that fits the general retail landscape and economy of the countries in which you're operating. Would -- gasp -- Wal-Mart ever want to temper its growth and actually slow things down a bit? Perhaps.

Welcome to the 57th installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes down to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

This week's Wal-Mart Weekly looks at the lighter, good-natured side of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT). Isn't that refreshing? All too often, the world's largest retailer is bashed up one side and down the other for its actions. There are things, though, that the retailer should be lauded on to balance the consistent negativity it generally receives from standard media channels.

Remember -- although some commenters/readers just don't get it -- the purpose of this column is to give Wal-Mart a fair shake. I call them as I see them from a consumer's standpoint, not from an agenda standpoint. So with that, let's talk about some good that muscles its way out from all the bad when it comes to Wal-Mart.

Welcome to the 56th installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes down to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

This week's Wal-Mart Weekly will be focusing in one a rather high-stakes claim Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) is now advertising into the mainstream media. The claim? The retailer saves the average American family $2,500 per year. To coin a phrase, them's fightin' words, yes?

Either Wal-Mart likes abuse from the media or it has substantiated facts to back up such a claim. In fact, there's so many variables that could conclude (or disprove) the retailer's claim that it could boggle all our minds collectively. So with that, let's start boggling.

Every economic problem or setback seeks a scapegoat -- someone decision makers, pundits, and others can blame (unjustifiably) for a turn of events that's preferred by virtually no one.

The criticism is parsimonious, unfair, and injurious -- but that hasn't seemed to stop practitioners from venturing forth with charges that are often tenuous, if not absurd.

Scapegoat-of-the-moment

The ever-incisive FT columnist Martin Wolf points out that former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is being cast as 'the villain' for the housing bubble, its bursting, and consequent impact on credit/bond markets and credit availability. All of it is unfair, Wolf notes, and he provides ample evidence to support his point.

Chiefly: Greenspan did not create low, long-term interest rates. The low, long-term rates were caused primarily by a global savings glut, Wolf said. (See: China's savings rate.) The Fed had little control over this -- Greenspan even creatively and accurately referred to the Fed's inability to force long-term rates higher despite the Fed's best effort: he called it "a conundrum." Given the surplus savings sloshing around in global markets at that time, among other factors, those low rates would have occurred regardless of who was Fed chairman.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says yesterday didn't deliver a giant down close, just profit-taking. It may signal a new bullish pattern to watch.

You just want it to close down, get clocked, remove the water torture. But what's really happening is we are working off the overbought condition in a fine fashion.

It's a natural thing in this market, after a big move, to give it all back and then some. However, that has not happened this time. We have had a series of small declines, nothing monumental and we may have to recognize that we are in a new pattern where we have profit-taking but no more.

I was over at Stockpickr.com yesterday -- I try to check in a couple of times a day -- and was not surprised to see questions in the Answers section about what is wrong with the steel stocks. To me, the steels are exhibiting classic bullish behavior, a great run followed by a small pullback -- true bull market behavior.

Now, here's the test: the comp sales. We had some bad numbers, especially from outfits like Target (NYSE: TGT) (Cramer's Take) and Kohl's (NYSE: KSS) (Cramer's Take), and I don't think it will matter! Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) (Cramer's Take) guided up, and I think it could power over $55.

I have been negative on this market, but I like the way it bounces off when it is down big. Have to recognize a new, more bullish pattern when you see one.

RELATED LINKS:

• Retail Sales Cool at Many Chains
• Cramer: Why We Need a Pullback

Jim Cramer is a director and co-founder of TheStreet.com. He contributes daily market commentary for TheStreet.com's sites and serves as an adviser to the company's CEO. At the time of publication, Cramer had no positions in the stocks mentioned.

Welcome to the 55th installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes down to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

In this week's Wal-Mart Weekly, I'll be looking at the entry (although indirect) of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) into the consumer banking industry. While it may seem a stretch to think that Wal-Mart's new debit card program is anything but a way to help consumers, it could be positioning the retailer as a new banking partner for many consumers as well as adding handsomely to the retailer's bottom line.

Welcome to the 55th installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes down to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

In this week's Wal-Mart Weekly, I'll be looking at what seems to be second nature to many Americans in this day and age -- hating Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT). Like many divisive issues these days (think Democratic candidates), many Americans I have met either love or hate Wal-Mart. There seems to be little to no middle ground. I can very much understand the love many customers have over Wal-Mart. But the hatred?

Who is to blame for all the hatred towards Wal-Mart? The retailer itself? How about the customers who keep it at the top? These are questions that constantly see emotion overtaking logic when the questions arise. Let's take a look at them a little more closely today.

Financial eras, like social periods, are often defined by moments or epiphanies when decision makers and/or citizens realized that a serious flaw/mistake/problem was occurring through time, and across space, and needed to be corrected.

The ever-incisive FT columnist and economist Martin Wolf describes one contemporary concern that's likely to be addressed: the failure to align the interests of managers with those of investors.

My BloggingStocks colleagues Peter Cohan and Zac Bissonnette have also written on the subject on several occasions in this space, and now the FT's Wolf has assembled additional data that may very well lead to public policy changes, both in Wolf's United Kingdom and in the United States.

Welcome to the 54th installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes down to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

In this week's Wal-Mart Weekly, I'll be looking at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) merchandising of some of its consumer electronics products. Namely: the personal computer.

Last week, I reported on some of the awesome steps the world's largest retailer has taken to merchandise its flat-screen televisions. In fact, the TV area in a few local Wal-Mart locations reminded me of a specialty consumer electronics retailer rather than a big-box discount retailer. But TVs were only the start -- the chain needs to get with the program when it comes to other consumer electronics items. Here's how.

Welcome to the 53rd installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes down to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

In this week's Wal-Mart Weekly, I'll be looking at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) positioning in the consumer electronics category. Wal-Mart has always served customers looking for the latest television sets to iPods to home theater systems, but generally has not focused in on the 'ministore' concept for merchandising these products.

When visiting a local Wal-Mart Supercenter this week, I was rather stunned to find a Best Buy Inc. (NYSE: BBY) type of appearance in Wal-Mart's consumer electronics department. In fact, the new planogram and merchandising arrangement reminded me of -- Best Buy itself.

Welcome to the 52nd installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes down to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

In this week's Wal-Mart Weekly, I'll be looking at the retailer's entrance into the world of open and frank communication with the world at all levels. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) appears to be allowing some of its purchasing and merchandising employees to blog openly about products in the categories they procure for all Wal-Mart's store locations.

It would seem this is a touchy area, since allowing unfiltered blogging (bad and good) about products sitting on Wal-Mart shelves would not only get some vendors and suppliers charged up, but turn away sales to some potential customers as well.

Forbes columnists M. Todd Henderson and Anup Malani make a compelling case for corporate philanthropy:

There is a tax efficiency to corporate giving. Both Pfizer and its shareholders lower their taxable income when the company donates Diflucan to Africa. If Pfizer instead maximized its profits, paid corporate income tax and then let shareholders make charitable donations to treat AIDS-related diseases out of their dividend checks, the money available for charity would be reduced, given the current 35% corporate income tax.

That's certainly true. The tax code is, I would argue, one of the few compelling arguments for charitable giving on the part of public companies. Without the tax benefits, I would argue that companies should stick to their income-earning knitting, delivering strong returns to shareholders who can then use the money to support the causes important to them.

Until 2003, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) had an innovative giving program that I think was a model of good corporate governance: the company designated a chunk of earnings for philanthropy each year, and then allowed each shareholder to designate a charity for their prorated share.

I'm just concerned about companies donating money to causes that are objectionable to some of their shareholders. For instance, Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) is a leading supporter of the Salvation Army, which has a long track record of discriminatory treatment of the gay community.

The government should amend the tax code to make it more efficient for companies to give their shareholders a say in corporate philanthropy.

Welcome to the 51st installment of The Wal-Mart Weekly, a column dedicated to bringing you insight, wit, facts, results, opinions, and just a bit of everything else when it comes down to a very hot topic these days: Wal-Mart.

In this week's Wal-Mart Weekly, I'll be looking at the retailer's categorization of its food products. Specifically, how Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) merchandises its organic food products alongside its mainstream food products. There's an opportunity for Wal-Mart to really seize a new market niche that wants all organic products in one area.

In order to do this, a change in thinking would be required of the world's largest retailer. Could it possibly think "outside the box" and try to create smaller mini-stores inside its huge Supercenter locations? That's what this week's Wal-Mart Weekly will explore. Read on.