Category: Business
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Layoffs on Wall Street?
After adding thousands bankers in the past two years, financial firms again appear to be on the verge of cutting that many positions and then some. Consultants and Wall Street recruiters say banks could eliminate nearly 21,000 jobs from their securities divisions in New York alone. Worldwide cuts could be even larger. Recruiters say big…
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Scientists plan $1b Ghost Town
A scientific ghost town in the heart of southeastern New Mexico oil and gas country will hum with the latest next-generation technology — but no people. A $1 billion city without residents will be developed in Lea County near Hobbs, officials said Tuesday, to help researchers test everything from intelligent traffic systems and next-generation wireless…
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China Enters U.S. Banking Market
The United States on Wednesday opened its banking market to ICBC, China’s biggest bank, for the first time clearing a takeover of a US bank by a Chinese state-controlled company. Just days after high-level US-China economic talks in Beijing, the Federal Reserve approved an application from Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to buy a…
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Labor Force Participation Rate Messes with Unemployment Rate
Exactly a month ago I wrote about the bogus employment numbers claimed for the Chicago area. I claimed that there were no actual jobs “created” and that the only reason the employment rate went down was because people simply left the job market. Didn’t have this at the time… but my theory has real support.…
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IL, 3rd Worst for Business …again
Let’s first get some background on the winners: In Chief Executive’s eighth annual survey of CEO opinion of Best and Worst States in which to do business, Texas easily clinched the No. 1 rank, the eighth successive time it has done so. California earns the dubious honor of being ranked dead last for the eighth…
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Another Foreclosure Wave Arrives
Half a decade into the deepest U.S. housing crisis since the 1930s, many Americans are hoping the crisis is finally nearing its end. House sales are picking up across most of the country, the plunge in prices is slowing and attempts by lenders to claim back properties from struggling borrowers dropped by more than a…
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Governments’ CCTV System Knows You
It’s 1984 all over again: A new camera technology from Hitachi Hokusai Electric can scan days of camera footage instantly, and find any face which has EVER walked past it. Its makers boast that it can scan 36 million faces per second. The technology raises the spectre of governments – or other organisations – being…
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How Retirement Benefits May Sink Illinois
We’re national news again. … Indiana’s debt for unfunded retiree health-care benefits, for example, amounts to just $81 per person. Neighboring Illinois’s accumulated obligations for the same benefit average $3,399 per person. Illinois is an object lesson in why firms are starting to pay more attention to the long-term fiscal prospects of communities. Early last…
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IL’s ‘Amazon-tax law’ Unconstitutional – 9K Jobs Lost for Nothing
An Illinois law aimed at leveling competition between online and offline retailers while collecting more state sales taxes owed from Internet purchases is unconstitutional a Cook County judge said Wednesday. … In March 2011, Illinois passed the Main Street Fairness Act, informally dubbed the Amazon-tax law.Before the law, online retailers were forced to collect and…
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lllinois Moves Toward Insolvency
We’re now making national news: After trying to tax Illinois to governmental solvency and economic dynamism, Pat Quinn, a Democrat who has been governor since 2009, now says “our rendezvous with reality has arrived.” … Illinois was more heavily taxed than the five contiguous states (Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin) even before January 2011, when…