The Federal Reserve extended its year-long fight against high inflation Wednesday by raising its key interest rate by a quarter-point despite concerns that higher borrowing rates could worsen the turmoil that has gripped the banking system.
Economy
Talks of a four-day workweek are heating up nationwide. A lawmaker in California has reintroduced a U.S. House bill that would make a 32-hour workweek the national standard. A bill in Maryland proposes tax incentives for companies that try out a four-day workweek.
Applications for unemployment benefits are seen as a barometer for layoffs in the U.S.
Over the last three days, the U.S. seized the two financial institutions after a bank run on Silicon Valley Bank, based in Santa Clara, California. It was the largest bank failure since Washington Mutual went under in 2008. How did we get here? And will the steps the government unveiled over the weekend be enough?
America’s employers added a substantial 311,000 jobs in February, fewer than January’s huge gain but enough to keep pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates aggressively to fight inflation.
The Justice Department said the tie-up would especially hurt cost-conscious travelers who depend on Spirit to find cheaper options to JetBlue and other airlines.
Will County is home to the largest inland port in the United States, taking in an array of products that just about all of us depend upon. But serving as a major logistics hub has made its mark on the community: traffic jams, potholes, open land converted to warehouses.
The factory, which employs about 1,350 workers, officially was placed on “idle” Tuesday; that term means the company intends to shut down the plant. Belvidere’s future is likely to be an issue in national contract talks coming up with the United Auto Workers union, one that could bring a strike.
State labor officials are investigating an Illinois-based pharmaceutical company’s decision to abruptly close all of its operations, including its out-of-state locations in New Jersey, New York and Switzerland, and to lay off hundreds of workers with almost no warning.
Ratings agency S&P on Thursday moved Illinois’ bond rating up a notch, from BBB+ to A- on general obligation bonds. It’s the agency’s third upgrade since the summer of 2021.
The Bipartisan Policy Center, which forecasts the approximate “X-date” when the government will no longer be able to meet its financial obligations on time, said the U.S. will reach its statutory debt limit as soon as the summer or early fall of 2023.
If homeowners are delinquent more than a year on making property tax payments, they’re at risk of owing large interest payments to private investors who buy up that debt. “It’s the poorest people paying the richest people,” Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas said.
Consumer prices climbed 6.4% in January from a year earlier, down from 6.5% in December. It was the seventh straight year-over-year slowdown and well below a recent peak of 9.1% in June. Yet it remains far above the Federal Reserve’s 2% annual inflation target.
More than 233,000 Cook County residents applied to be part of the $42 million program, and 3,250 households won a lottery to participate in the two-year program.
President Joe Biden checked those boxes, and a few more, during his speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night. In part, he seemed to be laying the foundation to run for a second term. “We’ve been sent here to finish the job,” he said.
His speech before a politically divided Congress comes as the nation struggles to make sense of confounding cross-currents at home and abroad — economic uncertainty, a wearying war in Ukraine, growing tensions with China among them — and warily sizes up Biden’s fitness for a likely reelection bid.
