Posted by Katharine Crnko
For Marketplace Morning Report, Wednesday June 22, 2011
Here are today’s top headlines from the Marketplace Morning Report and from around the web.
The financially troubled Postal Service is suspending its employer contribution to the federal employee retirement system.
The Federal Reserve wraps up a two-day meeting today. Economists are waiting to see if the Fed will extend its monetary stimulus measures because of the recent slow-patch in the economy.
The Mortgage Bankers Association said this morning that applications for mortgages dropped last week despite an average interest rate of 4.5 percent for a standard home loan.
The number of U.S. homes likely to hit the market soon fell compared to last year due to fewer new delinquencies and a high level of distressed sales, a real estate research firm said Wednesday.
FedEx said today its earnings rose by more than a third in the last three months. It was able to make up for higher fuel costs.
An internal investigation by the owner of the rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico last year largely blames oil giant BP for the disaster.
Google has reached 1 billion unique visitors a month according to new figures from ComScore. That’s up 8 percent from last year.
And AAA said this morning that holiday travel will be down 2.5 percent this year because of high gas prices.
Professional services firm KPMG today released its annual business climate report. Most bankers in the survey said they see the financial services industry improving while the rest of the economy staggers.
Some industries are cutting back in this economy but not the bourbon industry in Kentucky. Distilleries there have been spending millions of dollars expanding to quench the worldwide thirst for bourbon. In fact about 5 million barrels of the stuff are aging right now in the state. And since the state has a population of 4.3 million people it is now easier to find a barrel of bourbon than a resident in Kentucky.
Has this happened to you? You’re on an airplane. It’s dark and you wanna read your newspaper or magazine. You reach for the reading light button, and you call the flight attendant instead. How embarrassing. Well Boeing says it’s come up with a miraculous solution! On its new 737s, the attendant call and reading light buttons have been placed far apart from each other and actually look different.
You can read the rest of today’s stories from the Marketplace Morning Report here.
Here are the songs we played:
- Rolling With a Dub — Ari RozeBuy
- Grandstand — Beats AntiqueBuy
- If 6 Was 8 — SzjerdeneBuy
- How in the World — Family Force Five Buy
- L.S.F. — Mark RonsonBuy
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