Welcome to one of the most exciting beats in business. Heather Landy, Mary Fricker and Theo Francis tackle some of the big issues.
Only a few states, including Connecticut, have an inheritance tax. (Forbes has a great graphic to help you find states that do.) Until I read Christopher Keating’s Hartford Courant story, I didn’t realize how much states can benefit when wealthy residents die. He writes: “Legislators expecting to collect about $150 million were stunned recently when [...]
A word we haven’t heard much of in recent years suddenly seems to be rippling through the zeitgeist again: “Flipping.” The pre-recession practice of buying a house, fixing it up a bit and then within a handful of months selling it off to eager buyers is back, with a few post-recession twists. And with the [...]
The shrieks from roller-coaster cars and the splashes of flume rides are as much a part of the summer ambiance as the play-by-play of a baseball game and the whine of mosquitoes. And if you’re looking for a colorful story premise on just about any beat – technology, health care, personal finance, retail sales and [...]
Business writers sometimes encounter the summer doldrums, when there’s a lull in big corporate news, regulatory affairs and other drivers of financial news. By contrast, my ideas log is experiencing a touch of spring fever, with so many good story pegs hitting my desk and so little time to pursue them. So here – better short [...]
With increasing property tax delinquencies, many local governments have turned to tax-lien auctions to collect the money and avoid budget shortfalls. It’s not much of a business story until you look at who’s buying the liens – which is what Megan O’Matz and John Maines of the Sun Sentinel did. Historically, individual investors bought the [...]
Melody Petersen at the Orange County Register did the math on capital appreciation bonds area schools use to finance projects. She found that one $22 million borrowing will cost taxpayers $280 million, her story says. That’s because the loans delay payments for decades as “interest is charged on a growing pile of unpaid interest,” she [...]
Automakers will release May new-vehicle sales next week, and reports say the results are expected to be spectacular: NPR reports that sales so far this year are on track to hit 16 million, a level not seen since 2002. And the Associated Press has reported that U.S. automakers say they will curb the traditional two-week [...]
With the deadly Oklahoma tornados still top of mind — some meteorologists now say the storm had far more power than the atomic bomb the United States released on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II — you might want to contemplate another day or so of related business angles. Even if you’re far from the [...]
With stock market indices topping records and hitting psychological milestones like “Dow 15,000,” your audiences probably are wondering if it’s finally safe to peek at their 401(k) statements, and what else this bull run means for them. And more to the point, “Can it last?” As CNBC reports, major indices are up by double-digits so far [...]
