April 22, 2010 at 1:32 p.m.
Filed under:
Exchanges,
Government
Dow Jones Newswires | Shares of exchanges CME Group Inc. and
IntercontinentalExchange Inc. climbed steadily Thursday as the financial
regulation that could push over-the-counter derivatives trades onto
their exchanges appeared to move closer to passing and got a rousing
boost from President Barack Obama’s midday financial speech.
Both exchange operators, along with the rest of their peers, have been
pushing Congress and regulators worldwide to allow them to bring the
over-the-counter trades onto open exchanges, thereby bringing
speculative trades such as credit-default swaps more out into the open.
They argue that by using the exchanges, there will be a central
guarantee for trades done bilaterally, reducing systemic risk such as
that partially blamed for the collapse of financial markets.
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April 22, 2010 at 6:05 a.m.
Filed under:
Banking,
Credit Cards,
Government
Dow Jones Newswires | Discover Financial Services said its
earnings in the second quarter would be reduced by 13 cents a share, as
the company repaid $1.2 billion it got last year from the U.S. Treasury
Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program.
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April 22, 2010 at 5:52 a.m.
Filed under:
Exchanges,
Government
Associated Press | President Barack Obama has chosen the place
where the economic meltdown began to argue that it can never happen
again and plead for legislation imposing stronger oversight on the
financial industry. Without it, he says, America is doomed to repeat
the past.
In a speech Thursday at New York’s Cooper Union college, near Wall
Street, Obama is expected to outline the need for new financial
regulations and explain what the nation would be risking if the
existing framework is allowed to remain in place unchanged.
The president also was calling on Wall Street to join — not fight — the overhaul effort.
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April 21, 2010 at 12:52 p.m.
Filed under:
Agriculture/Farming,
Exchanges,
Government
Associated Press | A Senate panel approved legislation Wednesday
that would limit the ability of Wall Street banks to trade complex
financial tools called derivatives. The bill offered by Senate
Agriculture Committee Chairman Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., would also
improve transparency of most derivative trades.
The legislation was approved on a 13-8 vote. Sen. Charles Grassley,
R-Iowa, joined the panel’s 12 Democrats in supporting the measure. His
defection suggests some Republicans may break party ranks and support
the Obama administration’s financial regulatory reform effort.
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April 21, 2010 at 8:19 a.m.
Filed under:
Autos,
Government
Associated Press | General Motors Co. has repaid $8.1 billion in
loans it got from the U.S. and Canadian governments, a move its CEO
says is a sign automaker is on the road to recovery.
CEO Ed Whitacre announced the repayments Wednesday at GM’s Fairfax
Assembly Plant in Kansas City, Kan., where he said GM is investing $257
million in that factory and the Detroit-Hamtramck plant. This
afternoon, he flies to Washington to meet with top lawmakers.
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April 20, 2010 at 2:03 p.m.
Filed under:
Defense,
Government
Associated Press | A European defense contractor said Tuesday that will make its own bid
for the U.S. Air Force’s long-delayed $35 billion contract to build a
fleet of new refueling jets after its U.S. partner dropped out.
The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, also known as EADS,
opens a new chapter in the bitterly disputed and politically sensitive
Pentagon effort to replace its fleet of KC-135 refueling tankers that
date back to the 1950s.
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April 20, 2010 at 12:18 p.m.
Filed under:
Government,
Policy
By Kathy Bergen |
The state legislature’s key adviser on the McCormick Place overhaul
effort assured a worried trade show customer this week that he is
“relatively confident” the General Assembly will make major changes in
center operations, even if the board that runs the complex recommends
less comprehensive moves, according to e-mails obtained by the Tribune.
Regional Transportation Authority Chairman Jim Reilly, who is advising a
legislative panel on McCormick Place, made the statements in a
correspondence Monday with Chris Price, a point person for the Graph
Expo printing industry show. The exchange was passed along to the
Tribune by an unrelated third party.
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April 16, 2010 at 4:30 p.m.
Filed under:
Entertainment,
Food,
Government,
Restaurants
Jonathan Ashton of Oak Park has a beef combination sandwich from Buona Restaurant at the 2009 Taste of Chicago. Buona Restaurants is based in Berwyn and was one of the vendors eliminated this year. (Zbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune)
By Kathy Bergen | Taste of Chicago, the city’s annual chowfest in Grant Park, is returning
to its original mission of promoting only the city’s restaurants.
A handful of suburban-based vendors without restaurants in the city are being asked to exit this year, Megan McDonald, executive director of Chicago’s Office of Special Events, confirmed Friday. The step was first reported in the Chicago Sun-Times.
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April 16, 2010 at 1:24 p.m.
Filed under:
Government,
Investing,
Politics
Associated Press | President Barack Obama vowed Friday to veto a
financial overhaul bill that doesn’t regulate the eclectic derivatives
market, even as Senate Republicans lined up en mass against it.
Legislation
pending in Congress would for the first time regulate derivatives,
complex financial instruments like the mortgage-backed securities that
contributed to a near economic meltdown in 2008 when their value
plummeted during the housing crisis.
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April 15, 2010 at 5:40 p.m.
Filed under:
Government,
Jobs/employment
Associated Press | Just hours after Congress passed an $18
billion bill to restore unemployment benefits for the long-term
unemployed, President Barack Obama made it the law of the land.
The measure comes as welcome relief to hundreds of thousands of people
who lost out on the additional weeks of compensation after exhausting
their state-paid benefits. They now will be able to reapply for
long-term unemployment benefits and receive those checks retroactively
under the legislation.
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April 15, 2010 at 12:36 p.m.
Filed under:
Autos,
Government,
Investigations,
Transportation
Associated Press | Toyota is testing all its sport-utility
vehicles to reassure buyers of their safety after Consumer Reports
warned a large Lexus SUV is susceptible to rolling over.
The expanded testing covers the entire lineup of Toyota and Lexus SUVs,
including popular models such as the RAV4, 4Runner and Highlander, said
Toyota spokesman Brian Lyons. The automaker will be testing the
vehicles’ stability control to replicate the Consumer Reports’ test that
uncovered the problem, he said.
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April 15, 2010 at 5:48 a.m.
Filed under:
Economy,
Government,
Jobs/employment
Associated Press | A measure restoring jobless benefits to
people struggling to find work is back on track in the Senate. The $18
billion measure could pass Thursday and prevent even more people whose
26 weeks of state-paid benefits have run out from losing an average of
$335 a week in federally funded benefits.
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April 14, 2010 at 2:59 p.m.
Filed under:
Government,
Telecommunications
By Wailin Wong |
The Library of Congress has almost 142 million items in its vast
collection, including more than 32 million books and more than 62
million manuscripts. Now it’s adding Twitter posts. Every single tweet,
in fact, since the microblogging service was started in March 2006.
“That’s a lot of tweets, by the way,” Matt Raymond, the library’s
director of communications, wrote in a Wednesday blog post announcing
the initiative. “Twitter processes more than 50 million tweets every
day, with the total numbering in the billions.”
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April 14, 2010 at 2:40 p.m.
Filed under:
Government,
Technology,
Transportation
Jim Lovell, left, with Neil Armstrong, speaking at O’Hare in March 2010. Lovell and other astronauts criticized Obama’s proposed space program changes in two scathing letters sent to the White House. (Brian Cassella/ Chicago Tribune)
By Julie Johnsson | President
Barack Obama is expected to reshape his vision for NASA to emphasize
Mars exploration as opposition builds to his controversial plan to move
NASA away from manned space missions while commercializing spaceflight.
Lake Forest’s Jim Lovell, commander of the Apollo 13 mission, and Neil
Armstrong, the first man to step on the moon, were among the more than
two dozen space explorers to criticize the president’s plan, unveiled in
his fiscal 2011 budget, in two scathing letters sent to the White House
this week.
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April 14, 2010 at 2:25 p.m.
Filed under:
Autos,
Government,
Technology
Dow Jones Newswires | Automakers are pressing the Obama
administration for more government subsidies to spur mass-market sales
of electric vehicles, including new tax breaks for consumers, utilities
and car companies.
The Obama administration has committed billions to electric-car
programs, including aid to auto makers to revamp plants and tax credits
for car buyers.
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