The House of Representatives has endorsed a steel penny, as well as a nickel made mostly of steel, to save $1 billion over a decade. Production costs currently exceed the face value for both the penny, made of zinc and copper,…

St. Louis law firm Carey & Danis said today that it has filed a class-action suit against UBS over the sale of auction-rate bonds. The suit alleges that UBS marketed the bonds as short-term investments even though they were really 30-year…

 When angry consumers raise an outcry over price gouging, movie-theater popcorn is one of their favorite targets (along with beer at the ballpark and virtually any rise in the price of gasoline.) But two Stanford University professors say that the big…

Zillow.com’s home-price index for the St. Louis area fell 2 percent in the first quarter and 5.2 percent in the latest 12 months, the real-estate data firm said today. Its numbers paint a considerably bleaker picture than the latest government…

High gasoline prices shouldn’t hurt St. Louis tourism much this summer, Kathleen “Kitty” Ratcliffe said today in an upbeat discussion with the Post-Dispatch editorial board. Ratcliffe is president of the St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission, a job she began two years ago…

The concept of “blue” investing — buying shares of companies that support the Democratic party — isn’t working out so well for mutual-fund investors. The Wall Street Journal reports today that Blue Investment Management has folded its small-cap fund and…

Forbes has a provocative piece on the movement to pull public pension money out of companies that do business with Iran. Trouble is, one of its key examples appears to be wrong.

Forbes leads with a discussion of StatoilHydro, a…

Is all the NAFTA-bashing campaign rhetoric driving public sentiment, or is public sentiment pushing the candidates to be more anti-trade? It’s impossible to tell, but the Pew Research Center finds that public support for free-trade agreements is dropping sharply. Last month,…

Opponents of the Missouri Legislature’s “megaproject” tax credit bill have taken their fight to YouTube. A video titled “Bombardier, eh?” uses Popeye the Sailor Man and the always-hungry Wimpy to lampoon the Canadian company that is talking…

Today’s GDP report seems to have caused traders at Intrade, the online betting/futures market, to rethink their recession bets. Trading there today has pushed odds of a recession down to 30 percent, from 44 percent yesterday. Intrade participants were placing 70 percent…