A few years ago, an MBA degree seemed like an instant ticket to riches. The typical graduating MBA would deluged with job offers, complete with signing bonuses and other nice perks. That, however, was before the Wall Street meltdown. Now,…

St. Louis banker David Kemper doesn’t like some of the rhetoric he’s hearing about bank bailouts. In particular, he said this morning in a speech at Washington University’s Olin School of Business, he doeesn’t like the fact that banks have…

The late Washington University economist Hyman Minsky was never considered a mainstream economist. These days, though, mainstream economists are giving Minsky’s insights plenty of thought. A long piece in yesterday’s Boston Globe explains the recent fascination with Minsky, who is…

Economist Mark Vaughan, who left one Federal Reserve Bank post last year and is taking another one this summer, thinks the central bank’s independence will become a hot topic soon in Washington. With the Fed’s balance sheet having ballooned to…

Michael Astrue, the nation’s Social Security commissioner, says he’s optimistic about the possibility of reforms that will improve the pension system’s solvency. Speaking Monday morning to backers of Washington University’s Weidenbaum Center, Astrue  predicted that Congress will be ready to tackle…

The editors of the Current, the student newspaper at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, are unhappy about the name of the school’s new business school building. They split hairs about why it will be called “Anheuser-Busch Hall” instead of “Anheuser-Busch…

Even as an $819 billion economic stimulus bill moves forward in Congress, about 200 economists have signed an advertisement saying that it won’t work. The ad, funded by the Cato Institute, starts out with a quote from Barack Obama saying that “there is…

Washington University’s Olin School of Business has the 28th-best MBA program in the country, according to Business Week’s new biennial rankings. That’s down a notch from 27th place in the 2006 ranking, and a fair bit below the 17th-place slot that…