DETROIT — Ford Motor Co. workers have overwhelmingly rejected contract changes that would have allowed the automaker to cut labor costs, leaving Ford at a disadvantage to its Detroit rivals as it continues its struggle to return to profitability. The United Auto Workers union had given local unions until Monday to complete voting.
Weathering a blizzard of statistics is the fate of the public minded. Numbers come at us from all points of the compass. Some are raw data, some massaged, some naked and some fitted out for the occasion by their sponsors.
If you listen to the happy-talk folks at Treasury and the Fed, and on the tube, you’d think things had finally turned a corner. The economy grew at a 3.5% annualized rate in the third quarter ended September 30.
A key House committee just passed two major reforms that will help our wallets. Now we need the entire House to do the same so we can end the banks’ financial tricks! One bill would implement new credit card rules on Dec. 1 in time for the holiday season, rather than waiting until next February
Jeremy Grantham’s long awaited quarterly letter made the rounds earlier this week. Most reporters, including MoneyWatch’s own Conrad de Aenlle , focused on the guru’s sarcastic evisceration of Bernanke and Geithner and his gloomy outlook for the stock market in general. But buried in the letter was a rare (of late) positive review for one sector of the stock market
Lawrence Summers, the White House economics czar, paints a fuzzy picture of a social compact between Wall Street and Main Street, an agreement based on speed limits and guardrails, overseen by Washington, with the goal of limiting risk and encouraging growth. In my StreetTalk column for Forbes.com, Larry Summers Has A Dream, But No Details , I noted that Summers lacks specifics and that such symbolic moves as limiting compensation for a tiny group of executives at bailed-out banks is not going to restore public confidence. A more noteworthy Summers point: his prediction that “the incidence of financial crises may be greater over the next 25 years than the past 25 years.” Yes, that means a return to the days of the 1987 crash in the stock market; the liquidation of Long Term Capital Management; the default of Russia and Argentina on their sovereign debts; serial monetary crises in Asia, Latin America and emerging markets; and the dot-com meltdown and the global subprime disaster that froze financial markets, requiring trillions in taxpayer bailout money
NEW YORK — Regulators shut nine banks Friday, including Los Angeles-based California National, as the still-weak economy produces a stream of loan defaults. The banks were units of privately held FBOP Corp., a Chicago-based bank holding company. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said U.S.
Search engine optimization by SEO Design Solutions