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The banking industry has undergone significant consolidation since branching laws were relaxed in the 1990s. But federal regulators still analyze every proposed merger or acquisition to make sure it won't violate antitrust statutes.
The census shows we lag the country in population growth and in racial diversity.
Taxpayers can get more bang for their buck on other projects, but saying "no" to the home team is hard to do.
Comparing the recent growth in the Eighth District's real estate markets to the previous year's record-breaking pace can make things look a little sluggish. The reality is anything but.
The economy of the Eighth Federal Reserve District gets a second wind.
No more Social Security earnings test for those between 65 and 69.
U.S. workers are not only making more stuff, but, thanks to improvements in technology and production, they're doing it faster than anyone believed possible.
After decades of discussion, the walls between commerical and investment banking and insurance have finally been taken down. And despite lingering questions about the size and the riskiness of the large institutions that may emerge, the biggest question to ask is why this took so long.
With heavy penalties for post-retirement employment, it's no wonder that senior citizens are choosing the golf course over the labor force.
With the federal government’s blessing, Tennessee replaced Medicaid with a managed care system of its own. Five years later, the prognosis is mixed: Health care coverage is in the pink, but finances are in the red.
Economists debate the cause of seemingly unending rise of stock market prices.
Talk about a slippery slope. Keeping a cartel together is like trying to stop on ice—just when you think you’ve done it, it slips out from under you.
As the Dow toys with 10,000, investors everywhere are positively giddy. But is this unprecedented growth being driven by fundamentals or black magic?
All of the stops and starts the national and regional economies made in 1998 were enough to make a drum major dizzy.
You say you want an information revolution? Well, it came and changed the world. So where’s the explosion in productivity?
On Jan. 1 of next year, 11 European nations will relinquish their individual currencies and form the European Monetary Union. Should these birds not of a feather be flocking together?
Unemployment’s low, output’s high, and the Eighth District’s economic waters appear to be iceberg-free.
It has been said that, “The value of anything is not what it cost to produce, but what you can get for it at an auction.” The U.S. government’s proving just that with its auctioning off of telecommunication licenses.
Conventional wisdom maintains that immigrants take out of an economy more than they put in. Conventional wisdom, in this case, may not be so wise.
Construction may have slowed somewhat in the area’s real estate market, but it’s still worth writing home about.
Apart from environmental arguments, the best way to reduce traffic is to hit drivers in their pocketbooks.
Manufacturers are beginning to discover that, when it comes to an ample and affordable labor force, rural areas in our region put urban ones to pasture.
Pretty well, this year, after a lackluster 1995.
The Fed’s too-little, too-late actions during the Great Depression failed to save the banking and payments systems from widespread panic. Since then, though, the Fed appears to have learned its lesson.
Everyone’s talking about the commercial possibilities of electronic currency, but the regulatory and monetary policy implications are equally meaningful points to ponder.
Its location in the middle of the country hasn’t slowed the Eighth Federal Reserve District down when it comes to shipping goods overseas.
It’s been said that statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.
Is the cable TV industry a monopoly? If so, will new players break up the concentration? Should the government let the market work things out on its own? Tune in and find out.
With its Medicaid costs spiraling out of control in the early ‘90s, Tennessee had to act quickly. Its solution: withdraw from the program and develop a health care system of its own.
Everyone knows that social welfare programs shackle an economy, right? New evidence shows that such programs’ effects on labor markets are smaller than traditionally thought.
All across the nation, newly constructed light rail systems have civic boosters doing The Loco-motion. Taxpayers, however, may not feel like dancing.
What Nathan Detroit sang about a floating craps game in Guys and Dolls, he never intended people to take him literally. Today, however, we’ve done just that, as casinos dot the nation’s waterways, especially in the river-rich Eighth District.
Most economists will tell you that minimum wage legislation is simply government intervention into free markets, harming even those it was meant to help. But new evidence has muddied the theoretical waters.
Competition among states to land the large, job-creating corporation may have reached its nadir in the recent Alabama/Mercedes Benz agreement. To make future incentive packages worth their while, states had better start including some guarantees for themselves.
As the rivers recede, damage estimates are pouring in. But preliminary estimates seldom capture the full extent of a natural disaster.
Some observers want the Fed to do something about the nation's persistently high long-term interest rates. But what they're asking for has been tried before to no avail.
As deficits rise, the federal government has learned that it can still achieve its goals without increasing its budget--by making the states pay for it. How does this happen? How do states cope?
Will exports continue to perform well here? It seems so, with both manufacturing and services leading the way.
