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“The life you live trains you for the life you’re going to lead.”  This is the opinion of Michael Lee Stallard and Jason Pankau, partners in E Pluribus Partners, the world’s leading experts on how rational and emotional connections can boost productivity, innovation and organizational performance in the workplace. In a recent interview for the […]

Treasuries were little changed after the minutes of the Federal Reserve’s last meeting confirmed that policymakers believe that economic growth is gaining traction.   Fed officials, however, believe that the economic gains were “not sufficient” to curtail their plans to buy $600 billion in U.S. debt to encourage employment in a stimulus strategy called quantitative […]

As Chicago’s longest serving mayor leaves his post in May of 2011, Richard M. Daley leaves a legacy that includes the iconic Bean in Millennium Park to the flower-filled planters that ornament 85 miles of the city’s streets.  Whoever fills his post will find that budget shortfalls resulting from the Great Recession will collide with […]

With the stock market ending its best December since 1987, there is hope that 2011 will see a strong Wall Street recovery.  One source of hope is the fact that the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has returned to its pre-Lehman Brothers level.  It joins the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Nasdaq Composite Index and […]

Distressed commercial real estate volumes seem to have reached a plateau of $186.9 billion in October,  according to a report prepared by Delta Associates that crunched numbers provided by Real Capital Analytics.  The trend has been apparent for several months, according to Delta’s CEO Greg Leisch. Even as the industry breathes a collective sigh of […]

Now that the long-awaited data from the 2010 Census has been published, the states are learning which places will gain congressional seats and precious electoral votes — a circumstance that could impact the outcome of the 2012 presidential election.  The U.S. Constitution requires a census count every 10 years to accurately reflect population shifts in […]

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision overhaul of bank capital rules may cut global economic growth by 0.22 percent, which is seen as a reasonable amount.  This will occur over an eight-year transitional period during which the rules are put into place, according to the Basel committee and Financial Stability Board (FSB).  According to the […]

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn’s efforts to keep the successful Put Illinois to Work program alive have come under fire from State Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno (R-Lemont).  The issue is $47 million in bond money that Quinn used to extend the job-creation program through the first of the year.  The program was originally funded by […]

Illinois ranks as the nation’s worst state to retire in,  according to a study by TopRetirement.com. The nine other losers include California, New York, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Ohio, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Nevada.  John Brady, TopRetirement.com’s president, says the 10 states belong on this list because of their fiscal health (poor), taxation (high) and […]

Approximately half – 47 percent – of American companies whose sales range from $25 million to $2 billion say they will hire more employees in 2011, according to a Bank of America survey of chief financial officers (CFOs).  The new number represents a significant uptick over the 28 percent who planned to hire new employees […]