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…

Big cities like St. Louis aren’t usually thought of as retirement destinations, but Forbes argues that maybe they should be. Cities offer job opportunities to senior citizens who think they may have to go back to work at some point, plus…

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…

Housing prices haven’t yet bottomed out nationally, according to a forecast from Fiserv, but they’re close to stabilizing in St. Louis. Nationally, according to a CNNMoney account, the financial data firm expects prices to fall 11.3 percent between mid-2009 and mid-2010.…

Members of the National Association for Business Economics think that the recession is over, but that the unemployment rate will remain almost as high a year ago from now as it is now today. Those are the highlights of a…

The housing market is in bad shape, and some people want the government to fix it. But does anybody really think it’s worth spending $121,000 for each additional sale we generate?

The $8,000 credit for first-time home buyers is about to…

The law of unintended consequences seems to be at work in the real-estate market. Even as an $8,000 tax credit is helping to create more first-time home buyers, Reis Inc. reports that the vacancy rate for apartments is at a…

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.…

Some CEOs are risk takers, willing to leverage their companies to the hilt in an attempt to pump up profits. Others are more conservative, eschewing debt to avoid the risk of failure. If you want to find out which type…

Paul Christopher is among a large number of economists who think we’re close to the end of this recession. He’s also starting to worry about the next one.

Christopher, the global macro strategist for Eclipse Capital Management in Clayton, spoke this…