Fidelity Investments released some reassuring statistics about 401k plans today, noting that the average account balance is $60,700, up 13 percent in the third quarter and up 28 percent from the low point in January. Part of the increase comes from…
[...]Fitch Ratings has taken a fresh look at some bonds issued in 2006 by the Chesterfield Valley Transportation Development District, and the credit-rating agency doesn’t like what it sees. Fitch downgraded the district’s bonds five notches today, from an investment-grade…
[...]James Bullard is worried about “medium term” inflation and agitating for a subtle change in monetary policy, he said this morning at Commerce Bank’s annual economic breakfast. But Bullard, president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, saved his strongest…
[...]Judging from some of the news coming out of Washington, civil discourse seems to be in extremely short supply. Perhaps Americans would be more civil if they used an ancient Japanese poetry form to discuss the major issues of the day.
As…
[...]John Reed, one of Vikram Pandit’s predecessors as chief executive of Citigroup, has been saying recently that Congress made a mistake in repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated the banking and investment industries. Pandit, however, doesn’t think reinstating the Depression-era law…
[...]As the previous post mentions, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit was in town yesterday to speak at Washington University. He also visited with employees of the CitiMortgage division in O’Fallon, Mo., and announced some updated results for the [...]
Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit spent an hour today with students at Washington University’s Olin School of Business, fielding questions on everything from bankers’ pay to the MBA job market.
Regarding the recent actions of federal pay czar Kenneth Feinberg, who…
[...]Benjamin F. Edwards & Co., the brokerage firm founded last year by Benjamin F. “Tad” Edwards IV, has lured eight more employees away from Edwards’ old firm, which is now known as Wells Fargo Advisors. They’re creating a Peoria, Ill.,…
[...]Gateway Bank of St. Louis, which was closed by regulators on Friday, was tiny in banking terms, with only $27 million of assets. Its historical significance, however, was much larger. Gateway was founded in 1965 as an black-owned bank, at…
[...]Caterpillar has agreed to pay $16.5 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that its 401k plans charged excessive fees to employees. Cat’s news release says the money, minus attorneys’ fees and costs, will go into the accounts of employees and former…
[...]We’ve written recently about St. Louis’ lack of small-business job growth, and today a new Kauffman Foundation study reminds us why this issue is so important. Analyzing' [...]
A few years ago, an MBA degree seemed like an instant ticket to riches. The typical graduating MBA would deluged with job offers, complete with signing bonuses and other nice perks. That, however, was before the Wall Street meltdown. Now,…
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St. Louis banker David Kemper doesn’t like some of the rhetoric he’s hearing about bank bailouts. In particular, he said this morning in a speech at Washington University’s Olin School of Business, he doeesn’t like the fact that banks have…
[...]Bloomberg, picking up on heavy options trading, reports that takeover rumors are once again swirling around MEMC Electronic Materials. The story notes that current-month call options, giving investors the right to buy MEMC shares for $13 on or before Nov. 20,…
[...]NuVox Inc., the last telecommunications company founded by prolific St. Louis entrepreneur Robert Brooks, agreed today to sell itself to Windstream Corp. of Little Rock, Ark. The purchase price is $643 million in cash, stock and assumed debt.
NuVox is what’s…
[...]Illinois and Missouri both lost ground this year in Site Selection magazine’s influential business climate ranking. The magazine’s latest league table, based partly on a survey of executives and partly on actual plant-location decisions, has Illinois No. 14 and Missouri No.…
[...]As I mentioned in Sunday’s column, St. Louis University economist Jack Strauss thinks the lack of an entrepreneurial culture is a big reason why St. Louis has a tortoise-like economy. At a conference Thursday sponsored by SLU’s [...]
SubsidyScope, a government-tracking effort of the Pew Charitable Trusts, has trained its lens on Amtrak, and it says the railroad is losing a lot more money than it admits. After adding in depreciation and overhead, which an airline or any [...]
Last year’s financial crisis didn’t scare workers away from their 401k plans, new data from Charles Schwab show. In retirement plans managed by Schwab, 77 percent of eligible workers participated at the end of 2008, up from 73 percent [...]
If you’ve known someone who came of age during the 1930s — a grandparent perhaps — you know that the Depression had a lifelong effect on people’s attitudes toward debt, the stock market and government social programs. As a father…
[...]All the behavioral theories about workers’ inertia appear to be true. According to a new Government Accountability Office study, participation in 401k plans is boosted significantly when employers add an automatic-enrollment feature. The GAO reviewed six other research efforts, which…
[...]Stan Kroenke, who owns 40 percent of the Rams, is inching closer to a takeover bid at Premier League soccer team Arsenal, based in London. Every purchase of the team’s shares by Kroenke, no matter how small, is detailed in…
[...]The New York Times, in an editorial this morning, is calling for the Justice Department to investigate alleged anticompetitive practices by Monsanto. The Times editorialists note the importance of technology in modern agriculture and then add:
Following a decade of unchecked…
[...]Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, said this morning that he expects the nation’s economy to grow about 4 percent next year and almost that fast in 2011. That means the recession is definitely over, and Prakken admits that he’s…
[...]Supervalu’s earnings release yesterday was full of bad news, including a revenue decline and a dividend cut, but it contained some good news for the Save-A-Lot division, which is based in suburban St. Louis. The reason the dividend is being…
[...]Housing prices haven’t yet bottomed out nationally, according to a forecast from Fiserv, but they’re close to stabilizing in St. Louis. Nationally, according to a CNNMoney account, the financial data firm expects prices to fall 11.3 percent between mid-2009 and mid-2010.…
[...]An executive of First Bank Business Capital, which is part of First Banks of Clayton, Mo., took the stand today in the federal fraud trial of Sholom Rubashkin, the former head of kosher meat firm Agriprocessors Inc.
One disclosure: The bank…
[...]At last week’s St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank economic policy conference, economist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde presented an interesting challenge to conventional Federal Reserve history. Conventional wisdom holds that the Fed chairmen of the 1960s and 1970s, such as Arthur Burns and G.…
[...]A lot of states are competing for Hollywood dollars these days, and we now know what can happen when you compete too hard. According to the Wall Street Journal, Iowa has suspended its film tax credits after an audit pointed [...]
The European Central Bank has come out with some harsh criticism of programs that pay consumers for scrapping old cars. The Wall Street Journal calls the report “an official slap on the wrist to European governments.” In its [...]
MayorSlay.com was nice enough to nominate this blogger/columnist for its local version of the Nobel prize in economics, but the honor came with sort of a backhanded compliment. Here’s how the nomination is phrased:
David Nicklaus, for his grouchy financial columns in…
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