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President Barack Obama meets with senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, Austan Dean Goolsbee and Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel in 2009. (Nancy Stone/ Chicago Tribune)
President Barack Obama has chosen one of his longtime economic advisers, Austan Goolsbee, to be the chairman of his Council of Economic Advisers, a White House official said ahead of the formal announcement Friday.
Goolsbee, a University of Chicago professor of economics, is one of three economists on the council. He already has been confirmed to the council by the Senate. Get the full story >>
Consumers will get a newly detailed look at exactly what’s in common household cleansers, as regulators plan to start enforcing a nearly 40-year-old state law that would force manufacturers to reveal their products’ contents.
The move comes amid growing scrutiny of the chemicals that make up consumer goods. Possibly the only measures of their kind in the country, the 1971 New York law and related regulations call for manufacturers to provide ingredient lists and research on the products’ health and environmental effects.
Food and Drug Administration says five electronic cigarette companies are violating federal laws by making unsubstantiated claims about the product and for poor manufacturing practices. Get the full story »
Bloomberg News | The Federal Reserve bought another $1.35 billion in of Treasurys as part of a program begun Aug. 17 to reinvest money from the mortgage securities to keep liquidity in the financial system. This brings the total Fed investment to $14.24 billion.
U.S. private-equity kingpins are likely to be hit with a second giant tax increase next year, the New York Post reported Thursday.
It looks like the bosses will have to dig deeper because a key ally on Capitol Hill — a lawmaker who has blocked three attempts to raise the income tax paid by buyout firms — was set to favor the so-called Enterprise Value Tax. It would more than double the tax bite when moguls cash out of their private equity firms, several sources told the Post. Get the full story »
Britain’s financial watchdog fined Goldman Sachs Group Inc. 17.5 million pounds ($27 million) for failing to tell the regulator it was the subject of a U.S. probe, reviving disclosure headaches for the Wall Street powerhouse.
The fine — one of the biggest imposed in Britain — stemmed from Goldman’s troubled Abacus mortgage-security product, which was the focus of an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Get the full story »
Illinois communities hardest hit by foreclosures will receive another $30 million as part of a third round of neighborhood stabilization grants announced Wednesday by the Obama administration. Get the full story »
Regulators probing the stock market “flash crash” in May still have not uncovered a single cause but will point to “stub quotes” and other previously identified issues as having exacerbated the market’s dramatic drop, according to two sources familiar with the probe.
A third source said the Securities and Exchange Commission is still asking about a “smoking gun” that might explain the May 6 crash, when the Dow Jones industrial average plunged some 700 points before sharply recovering, all in about 20 minutes. Get the full story »
The U.S. economy has shown “widespread signs” of slowing over recent weeks, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday in a report suggesting the recovery was faltering along the East Coast and in the Midwest.
The Fed said in its Beige Book compilation of anecdotal reports that modest growth was the most common characterization of economic activity in Fed districts, primarily those in the western and middle portions of the country such as San Francisco, Dallas and Kansas City. Get the full story »
Officials from Navistar International Corp. are expected to announce the engine manufacturing company’s plan to move its headquarters to Lisle at a Wednesday morning press conference, DuPage County Board president Bob Schillerstrom said Tuesday.
Get the full story »
HSBC Holdings Chairman Stephen K. Green will leave the bank to become Britain’s minister of state for trade and investment, the company said Tuesday.
Green will retire from the bank by the end of the year – HSBC did not announced a specific date — and take up his new post in 2011. Get the full story »
Two regional Federal Reserve banks, Kansas City and Dallas, pushed again for a modest increase in the rate charged to banks for emergency loans, according to minutes from an August policy meeting released Tuesday.
The Fed — the U.S. central bank — kept the discount rate unchanged at 0.75 percent at its Aug. 10 meeting. The Dallas and Kansas City Fed boards requested an increase to 1 percent, while the other 10 regional Fed banks sought no change. Get the full story »
Federal health regulators have issued warnings to the makers of Canada Dry ginger ale and Lipton tea for making unsubstantiated nutritional claims about their green tea-flavored beverages.
In a warning letter issued Aug. 30, the Food and Drug Administration takes issue with the labeling of Canada Dry Sparkling Green Tea Ginger Ale. The agency issued a similar letter Aug. 23 to Unilever Inc., over Web site and product labeling for its Lipton Green Tea. Get the full story »
