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…

Regular readers will recall that we predicted this: With the “cash for clunkers” incentives now history, car sales are falling back to the abysmally low levels they reached early this year. The Associated Press reports that General Motors’ September sales were…

After reading STL JobWatch’s update on the unemployment situation in St. Louis, I headed for the Bureau of Labor Statistics website to refresh my knowledge on where the jobs are being lost. There are no surprises in the big industry categories, which I’ll…

When the Federal Reserve released its Beige Book economic survey a couple of weeks ago, the St. Louis region was the only area that didn’t report stable or improving economic conditions. It should be no surprise, then, that when the St.…

Janet Reuther-Schopp was angry last May when she found out that her family’s business, Reuther Chrysler Jeep Dodge, was on the list of dealerships rejected by bankrupt Chrysler Corp. She’s still angry, and she has…

If you weren’t swayed by my economic arguments against the “cash for clunkers” program, you may want to read Christopher Knittel’s analysis of the program’s supposed environmental benefits. Knittel, an economist at the University of California-Davis, calculated how much carbon…

It always piques my interest when a penny-stock company dramatically changes its business model, going from advertising to biotech or from career counseling to solar energy. Such situations are vulnerable to manipulation by insiders, and the ones I’ve followed generally don’t…

The federal government’s “cash for clunkers” program is plenty confusing, especially with the Senate still deciding whether to give it more money. One issue that’s sowing confusion in some parts of the country, though, isn’t a problem in Missouri or Illinois: Neither…

Some people talking about the stimulative effects of “cash for clunkers” seem to assume that the money being spent on cars is coming from a distant galaxy — or at least is coming out of savings accounts that wouldn’t have…

Missouri will open a career transition center in Fenton next week to help the thousands of workers laid off by Chrysler, state official Julie Gibson said this morning. Workers will get job-search assistance and job training, and the office will…