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The Internal Revenue Service is making it riskier to cheat on your taxes.
The tax agency increased the number of returns it audited by nearly 11 percent this year. Statistics released Wednesday show that wealthy taxpayers were most likely to be targeted. Get the full story »
The Food and Drug Administration is cracking down on manufacturers of certain weight-loss, body-building and sexual-enhancement supplements that contain potentially dangerous ingredients.
The FDA said Wednesday that some manufacturers are deceptively labeling products to hide that they contain ingredients known to cause adverse health effects. Other supplements contain ingredients that should be available only by prescription. Get the full story »
It’s the end of the traditional crib that has cradled millions of babies for generations.
The government outlawed drop-side cribs on Wednesday after the deaths of more than 30 infants and toddlers in the past decade and millions of recalls.
It was a unanimous vote by the Consumer Product Safety Commission to ban the manufacture, sale and resale of the cribs, which have a side rail that moves up and down, allowing parents to more easily lift their child from the crib.
Dannon Co. has agreed pay $21 million and drop some health claims for its Activia yogurt and DanActive dairy drink under pressure from state and federal regulators.
The food company has claimed in its marketing that its Activia yogurt helps relieve irregularity and that its DanActive drink helps people avoid colds or the flu. Get the full story »
Navy Pier, like other enterprises, is finding the use of daily deal site Groupon to be a mixed blessing.
The pier sold 7,500 Groupons for the beginning days of its annual Winter WonderFest, an 283 percent increase from its first venture into discounted sales via Groupon last year. Get the full story »
President Barack Obama has signed into law a ban on bringing bighead carp into the U.S. They are among two Asian carp species threatening to infest the Great Lakes.
The measure signed Tuesday adds bighead carp to a list of wildlife that cannot be imported or taken across state lines. The only exceptions would be for scientific, medical or educational purposes and would require a permit. Get the full story »
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will likely face more pressure from some of his own colleagues next year to scale back the Fed’s $600 billion bond-buying program to rev up the economy.
Two regional Fed bank presidents known to be especially vigilant about the risk of price increases will become voting members of the Fed’s main policymaking group, the Federal Open Market Committee. Get the full story »
Interest payments on the U.S. debt could balloon to $800 billion a year, or 3.4 percent of the economy, by 2020 under current spending and tax laws, a congressional budget analysis released Tuesday said.
The report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said that U.S. debt held by investors, which stands at $9.3 trillion, will exceed $16 trillion by the end of the decade under current law. Rising interest rates means federal spending to service the debt will increase to at least $800 billion by the end of the decade from $197 billion, about 1.4 percent of gross domestic product, in 2010. Get the full story »
The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee voted Tuesday to recommend Joseph A. Smith Jr. as the next director of the beleaguered housing finance agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The mortgage giants have received $151 billion from the federal government to keep them afloat, and President Barack Obama must tell Congress his plan for reorganizing the agencies next month. Smith would be in charge of carrying that out. Get the full story »
The U.S. Federal Reserve said on Tuesday the economic recovery was still too slow to bring down unemployment, reaffirming its commitment to purchase $600 billion in bonds to stimulate growth and create jobs.
In a statement that contained remarkably little acknowledgment of a recent uptick in the economic data, the Fed characterized the U.S. expansion as “continuing,” a modest upgrade from its November description of the recovery as “slow.” Get the full story »
Encouraging economic reports are pushing Treasury yields to their highest levels in seven months. Get the full story »
European Union paymaster Germany said on Tuesday that it would support giving the European Central Bank more capital to help fight a sovereign debt crisis that continues to shake the euro zone.
ECB sources told Reuters the bank’s governing council would consider at a meeting on Wednesday and Thursday whether to seek a capital increase from euro zone members to cover the risk of losses on government bonds it has bought to support the 16-nation single currency area. Get the full story »
The Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program is on target to prevent only 700,000 foreclosures, not the 4 million the Treasury Department originally estimated when it introduced the program, according to a Congressional Oversight Panel report issued Tuesday. Get the full story »
Sales at U.S. retailers rose more than expected in November as consumers splurged on clothing and other items at the start of the holiday season and receipts at gasoline stations surged, more evidence the economic recovery gathered steam in the fourth quarter. Get the full story »
