Deal Journal’s Deal Yenta, Heidi N. Moore, sees some signs pointing to an eventual sale of St. Louis-based Wachovia Securities. As I pointed out in Tuesday’s column, the forced sale of Wachovia Bank leaves the securities unit, along with asset…

The metro St. Louis unemployment rate stayed at 7.2 percent in August, the same as in July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. That represents a sharp increase from August 2007, when the local jobless rate was 5.6 percent.

As we…

Anheuser-Busch shares fell almost 4 percent to $63.50 during today’s turmoil on Wall Street. The selloff leaves BUD more than 9 percent below the $70 a share that InBev has agreed to pay, in cash, for all of A-B. InBev reiterated today – after…

Not long ago, conventional wisdom held that a big brokerage firm needed to be affiliated with a big bank to be successful. Now, with the forced sale of Wachovia Bank’s assets to Citigroup, St. Louis-based Wachovia Securities finds itself as virtually…

 James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, used a speech in Murfreesboro, Tenn., today to deliver his first public remarks on the crisis in financial markets. Its effects on the economy, he said, are uncertain:

There is…

One glance at the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ regional GDP map is enough to see that St. Louis is not doing well. We’re shaded in gold, which means we’re in the worst-performing 20% of the nation’s 363 metropolitan areas.

Go to…

Timothy Roberts, whose name will be familiar to St. Louisans with a memory of the late-1990s Internet bubble, has paid $30,000 to settle stock-manipulation charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition to paying the civil penalty, Roberts…

More than 180 economists, including David Levine and Michele Boldrin from Washington University, have signed a letter opposing the $700 billion financial bailout now before Congress. They see “three fatal pitfalls” in Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s proposal: Its fairness, its ambiguity,…

If you’re a Missouri parent trying to save money for college, you should be aware of an important tax-law change that took effect last month. Accounting firm RubinBrown reminds us that, beginning this year, Missouri taxpayers can take a deduction…

 The art form is generically known as the Nigerian scam, but this satirical version has a delightfully American twist. Real Time Economics claims to have received an email purporting to be from “Ministry of the Treasury Paulson” about an “urgent secret…