Retailers have been screaming for years about the high interchange fees they pay to banks for the privilege of accepting Visa and Mastercard, and they tried unsuccessfully to get a fee limit included in this year’s credit-card legislation. Now the Government…

Fitch Ratings has taken a fresh look at some bonds issued in 2006 by the Chesterfield Valley Transportation Development District, and the credit-rating agency doesn’t like what it sees. Fitch downgraded the district’s bonds five notches today, from an investment-grade…

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.…

If you think you are (or your broker is) smart enough to beat the market, be sure to read Bloomberg’s analysis of recommendations by the top Wall Street analysts. Reporters Lynn Thomasson and Adria Cimino go back to March, just before…

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…

Unanimity is rare in surveys of business people, but the St. Louis Fed found it among area car dealers. The Fed’s latest Burgundy Book survey says that all the dealers it talked to expect lower sales this year.  Other retailers…

As the Job Watch blog mentioned earlier this week, metro St. Louis lost 7,000 jobs in March. That was the fifth straight monthly decline in the seasonally adjusted employment total, and with details now available on BLS.gov, we can see which industries…

The St. Louis metro area lost 1,600 jobs in February, according to new seasonally adjusted figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. St. Louis has posted losses for five months in a row, and employment has fallen by 31,500, or 2.3…

The St. Louis metro area lost 26,800 jobs between January 2008 and January 2009, according to new figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is the fifth straight month of year-over-year job losses, and the biggest negative number we’ve…