Category: Business
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Chicago’s Pension Time-Bomb
While Emanuel can coast for two more years, the city in 2015 is required by law to set aside an additional $700 million a year for two of its four pension funds, all of which are woefully underfunded: That year’s budget will include a total of $1.2 billion for the retirement accounts of teachers, police,…
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Businesses Expanding but Not Hiring
A majority of owners of midsized businesses in the Chicago area plan to expand in the next three months, but only a third say they will hire more workers in that time, according to a new survey. … The most recent poll … found that nearly 60 percent of surveyed businesses planned to expand in…
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$2M in Unemployment to Inmates
More than 1,100 people have collected nearly $2 million in unemployment benefits while they were in county jails or state prisons, including $43,000 that went to a person in the Cook County Jail, a state agency said Tuesday. Now they may face state or federal criminal fraud charges as well as having to repay what…
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Ald. Burke, Wrigley & Your Tax Dollars
Ten years ago, Chicago’s most powerful alderman, Edward M. Burke, and the rest of the City Council signed off on a deal that promised $16 million in taxpayer subsidies to the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. to help it build a new corporate campus on Goose Island rather than move to the suburbs. Three years later,…
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Illinois Need to Cut COLAs
The head of Illinois’ largest pension plan strongly suggested that cuts in cost-of-living benefits are inevitable for more than 360,000 teachers and retirees outside of Chicago. In an interview with Crain’s editors and reporters, Richard Ingram, executive director of the underfunded Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System, said state politicians will have few other options if they…
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Illinois – Worst Financial Shape Ever
Bloomberg L.P., the big New York financial data firm, is holding its fall municipal-financing conference on Wednesday, and guess what the title is for the special panel on the Land of Lincoln? Try Land of Entropy. Yes, sports fans, the panel titled “Illinois Treading Water” is set for 1:45 p.m. and, according to a synopsis,…
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Jimmy John’s Leaving Illinois, Florida Bound
Jimmy John Liautaud is moving part of the sandwich chain that bears his name to Florida next year, making good on a threat issued in 2011 after Illinois hiked its corporate tax rate. The founder of Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches said during a Sept. 18 panel discussion in Chicago that he will relocate the company’s…
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U.N. Wants New Global Taxes
A 1 percent tax on billionaires around the world. A tax on all currency trading in the U.S. dollar, the euro, the Japanese yen and the British pound sterling. Another “tiny” tax on all financial transactions, including stock and bond trading, and trading in financial derivatives. New taxes on carbon emissions and on airline tickets.…
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Huge Increase in Warrantless Electronic Surveillance
Pen register and trap and trace devices now generally refer to the surveillance of information about—rather than the contents of—communications. Pen registers capture outgoing data, while trap and trace devices capture incoming data. This still includes the phone numbers of incoming and outgoing telephone calls and the time, date, and length of those calls. But…
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Aldermen Briefed on Pension Time-Bomb
[Chicago’s] Chief Financial Officer Lois Scott reminded council members that absent significant changes to pension plans, the city will be forced to drastically cut services, raise taxes or do both to close a funding gap that could reach $700 million in just a few years, aldermen said. … … Lawmakers are looking to fix the…