If you own a business and have a 401k plan for your employees, you’re required to file reports with the Labor Department. Paper forms used to be OK, but according to consultant Brett Goldstein, businesses now have to file electronically…

Trying to call the bottom of the housing market is a tough assignment. Employment is still shrinking, so many people don’t have the income to finance a purchase. Foreclosures remain commonplace.

On a webcast today, IHS Global Insight economist James Diffley…

If there’s any group that should be wise to the dangers of too much debt, it’s the Mortgage Bankers Association. The Wall Street Journal reports today, however, that the association took a big loss on the sale of its office building.…

MEMC Electronic Materials disclosed today that Chief Executive Ahmad Chatila won’t be accepting a $500,000 bonus that he was due for 2009. Instead, the company said, the money will go to a retraining program to help 450 workers who will…

During a week when many hands are being wrung over a $1.6 trillion federal budget deficit, Fortune columnist Allan Sloan is focusing on one small, but troubling, piece of that gap. For the first time in 25 years, he says, Social…

When a company suspends its matching 401k contributions, employees are likely to grumble and say that management is just trying to pad profits. A new study, though, finds that such decisions are driven by liquidity concerns, not profitability.

In their paper…

The Missouri State Employees Retirement System, known as MOSERS, said this week that it earned an 18.5 percent return for 2009. That’s certainly well above the fund’s long-term return target of 8.5 percent, but by itself the number doesn’t tell us…

Don’t get too accustomed to the world of super-low interest rates, says UMB Bank Chief Investment Officer William Greiner. He predicts that the Federal Reserve will start raising short-term rates this summer, and will push the overnight federal funds rate…

Just like Chicago-area business leaders, St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay is concerned about the rising cost of public pensions. Specifically, Slay writes on his blog, he’s worried about what those costs will do to the city’s budget:

In the recent past,…

Most individual holders of auction-rate securities, the supposedly liquid investment that froze solid during the credit crunch, got out of the mess with the help of some regulatory muscle. Most corporate buyers, however, were on their own. KV Pharmaceutical, as…