The threat of rising federal deficits has a silver lining: low interest rates. Those low rates, which make Treasury debt less costly, mean Congress has more time to address the nation's fiscal challenges, the head of the Congressional Budget Office told lawmakers Wednesday. "When interest rates are low, as they are today, the cost of not acting is pretty modest," CBO Director Phillip Swagel ...

WASHINGTON - The Federal Reserve kept its key interest rate unchanged, as expected, on Wednesday and continued to signal policy would stay on hold for the time being as the U.S. enters a presidential election year. The target range of the federal funds rate of 1.5% to 1.75% is "appropriate to support sustained expansion of economic activity," the Federal Open Market Committee said, repeating ...

The estate of bankrupt Sears Holdings has agreed to settle a lawsuit over the $5.2 billion sale of its Sears and Kmart chains to former chairman and CEO Edward Lampert for about $18.3 million. Lampert and his hedge fund formed a new company, Transform Holdco, to buy most of Sears' remaining assets, including 425 stores, last year. Disputes between Sears and Transform over certain terms of the ...

Remember the tax-cut bonuses? Two years ago, after President Donald Trump and the Republican Congress approved a new tax law, hundreds of companies said they would share the bounty with workers. AT&T, American Airlines, Comerica and Southwest Airlines were among the companies doling out $1,000 bonuses. Other major employers, including Walmart and Bank of America, joined in. In all, over $4 ...

CHICAGO - Now that recreational pot is legal in Illinois, marijuana enthusiasts may feel like it's finally time to emerge from hiding. But people with jobs - or looking for them - might want to stay in the shadows for now as companies figure out how to handle employees who partake. In Illinois, employers are allowed to fire workers who bring cannabis to the office, show up impaired or fail ...

When U-Haul recently announced it will no longer hire people who use nicotine in any form in the 21 states where such hiring policies are legal, the Phoenix-based moving company joined a cadre of companies with nicotine-free hiring policies. U-Haul's announcement is receiving outsize attention because nicotine-free hiring policies are more common at high-profile hospitals such as Cleveland ...

American Airlines has reached a confidential deal with Boeing over the grounding of 737 Max jets for 2019 and will give $30 million back to employees through its profit-sharing distribution in March. The settlement only covers damages that Fort Worth, Texas-based American Airlines incurred in 2019 because there is no timeline for when the Federal Aviation Administration will clear the Max for ...

A Fresno, Calif., law firm has scored a major victory with a U.S. Court of Appeals decision upholding a multi-million-dollar verdict for about 700 Walmart truck drivers. Lawyer Nicolas "Butch" Wagner of Fresno successfully represented the California truck drivers who filed a class-action lawsuit against the mega-retailer nearly a decade ago for short-changing their pay. About 100 of the truck ...

The last two years have witnessed a wave of walkouts, petitions and other workplace actions at video game and tech companies. But despite this swell in labor activism, employees at no major video game studios and only a handful of tech offices have formally voted to form or join a union. A new campaign launched Tuesday by one of the nation's largest labor unions - and spearheaded by one of the ...

Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, the world's second-richest person, said he wants his fellow billionaires to pay much higher taxes. U.S. lawmakers should close loopholes, raise the estate tax and hike the capital-gains tax so that it equals the rate on labor income, Gates wrote Monday in a year-end blog post. He also called for states and local governments to make their taxes "fairer" ...