Caterpillar has agreed to pay $16.5 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that its 401k plans charged excessive fees to employees. Cat’s news release says the money, minus attorneys’ fees and costs, will go into the accounts of employees and former…

We’ve written recently about St. Louis’ lack of small-business job growth,  and today a new Kauffman Foundation study reminds us why this issue is so important. Analyzing U.S. Census data for 2007, Kauffman says that two-thirds of all net job creation…

SubsidyScope, a government-tracking effort of the Pew Charitable Trusts, has trained its lens on  Amtrak, and it says the railroad is losing a lot more money than it admits. After adding in depreciation and overhead, which an airline or any other…

Last year’s financial crisis didn’t scare workers away from their 401k plans, new data from Charles Schwab show. In retirement plans managed by Schwab, 77 percent of eligible workers participated at the end of 2008, up from 73 percent a year…

Bloomberg is reporting that Senate leaders are close to hammering out a deal to expand the home buyer’s tax credit, which is due to expire Nov. 30. The deal would extend it to cover any purchase that’s under contract by next…

Joel Prakken, chairman of Macroeconomic Advisers, said this morning that he expects the nation’s economy to grow about 4 percent next year and almost that fast in 2011. That means the recession is definitely over, and Prakken admits that he’s…

At last week’s St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank economic policy conference, economist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde presented an interesting challenge to conventional Federal Reserve history. Conventional wisdom holds that the Fed chairmen of the 1960s and 1970s, such as Arthur Burns and G.…

The European Central Bank has come out with some harsh criticism of programs that pay consumers for scrapping old cars. The Wall Street Journal calls the report “an official slap on the wrist to European governments.”  In its monthly bulletin for…

The economy is already recovering from recession and will get stronger in 2010, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Donald Kohn said today in St. Louis. The recovery is being driven by a slowing of inventory liquidation and an improvement in home building, he said.

However, like…

Tommy Thompson, who was secretary of health and human services during President George W. Bush’s first term, predicts that Congress will pass a health-care bill this year that includes the so-called public option.

Speaking at the National Association for Business Economics…