VOL. 35 | NO. 45 | Friday, November 11, 2011
No new state-chartered banks have started up in Tennessee since Nashville’s Capstar Bank opened in 2008, and it’s been about four years since the state’s Department of Financial Institutions received any applications from groups seeking to launch a bank.
The growth at MIBANCO, a new bank in Nashville mainly serving the Hispanic population, has been in line with projections, its leadership says.
REAL ESTATE
Home sales in the Nashville region showed strength in October, thanks to first-time and move-up buyers rushing to move into their new houses before the holidays and the onset of winter weather.
REALTY CHECK
With November in full swing, the number of new listings will begin to wane. Traditional wisdom has it that the shoppers abandon their search for homes on the market in favor of markets in the malls. Sellers may think ’tis not the season for listing houses until after the first of the year, or even the spring market.
TERRY McCORMICK
We’re halfway through coach Mike Munchak’s first season and still have no idea what to make of his Titans.
NEWSMAKERS
Jason I. Epstein and Gary C. Shockley, shareholders in the Nashville office of Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC, have been recognized as “Lawyers of the Year” by The Best Lawyers in America 2012. Mr. Epstein was named Nashville’s “Information Technology Law Lawyer of the Year,” and Mr. Shockley was named Nashville’s “Environmental Litigation Lawyer of the Year.”
I SWEAR
“Senators urge baseball players to chew on smokeless tobacco ban,” the headline read
NASHVILLE AREA
WASHINGTON (AP) - A panel of federal judges has found that a bankruptcy judge's membership in a Nashville, Tenn., country club that has no women or blacks as full-fledged members violates the judiciary's code of ethics.
NASHVILLE (AP) - While Occupy Wall Street camps across the country are being evicted, Nashville protesters are staying put, at least for the time being.
NASHVILLE (AP) — A federal investigation into flash fires that killed five people this year at a Gallatin metal powders plant found that multiple reports of earlier small flash fires at two plants did not spur the Hoeganaes Corp. to try to mitigate the hazard, according to a report released Wednesday.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America is collaborating with a local non-profit organization to help provide artificial limbs to amputees in the West African country of Ghana.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) - State Sen. Eric Stewart says he will run to represent Tennessee's 4th Congressional District next year.
CHATTANOOGA (AP) — Motor Trend magazine has named the Volkswagen Passat as 2012 Motor Trend Car of the Year.
NASHVILLE (AP) — The aeronautics division of the Tennessee Department of Transportation has a new director.
NATIONAL BUSINESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of people applying for unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest level since early April, a sign that layoffs are easing and hiring may pick up.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The average rate on the 30-year mortgage stayed near 4 percent for the third straight week, just above the record low. But cheap mortgage rates have done little to boost home sales or refinancing.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. builders started slightly fewer homes in October but submitted plans for a wave of apartments, a mixed sign for the struggling housing market.
NEW YORK (AP) — Boeing Co. has received its largest commercial airplane order ever, topping its own record set less than a week ago.
PARIS (AP) — World stocks continued to slide Thursday, as investors worried that Europe's debt crisis was intensifying and spreading to larger countries in the 17-nation euro union.
BRUSSELS (AP) — Greece is losing out on about euro60 billion ($81 billion) in uncollected taxes, with half of that caught up in lengthy legal disputes that prevent the debt-ridden country from getting its hands on desperately needed funding, a European Union task force said Thursday.
HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill. (AP) — Sears Holdings Corp.'s third-quarter loss widened, dragged down by weakness in Canada, declining consumer electronics sales and softer clothing sales at its Kmart stores.
NATIONAL POLITICS
NEW YORK (AP) — Thousands of Occupy Wall Street demonstrators took to the streets around the U.S. on Thursday to mark two months since the movement's birth and signal they aren't ready to quit, despite the breakup of many of their encampments by police.
WASHINGTON (AP) — WASHINGTON (AP) — With a special deficit-reduction supercommittee floundering, the top Republican in Congress warned Thursday that he won't permit savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to pay for President Barack Obama's jobs spending agenda.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of taxpayers who take advantage of deductions for mortgage interest, charitable donations and state and local taxes would be targeted for potential tax hikes under a GOP plan to raise taxes by $290 billion over the next decade to help reduce the nation's deficit.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Taking responsibility for a debacle that has embarrassed the Obama administration, Energy Secretary Steven Chu says he made the final decisions on a half-billion-dollar loan to a California solar company that later went bankrupt.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama — pronounced tobacco-free in his latest medical checkup — has tough words for cigarette makers.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A flood of support for Wall Street protesters poured in after Gov. Bill Haslam imposed a curfew that led to the arrests of 55 people in Nashville, according to public records obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday.
MURFREESBORO (AP) — A team from Middle Tennessee State University has won the Mid-South Mock Trial Invitational Tournament at the school.
NATIONAL BUSINESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. manufacturing is recovering from a slump, and inflation may be peaking.
NEW YORK (AP) — Citigroup Inc. is considering plans to cut 3,000 or more workers as part of an ongoing effort to control expenses.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Consumer inflation may have peaked after surging in the spring.
BERLIN (AP) — A recent wave of spam flooding Facebook users' pages with graphic pictures depicting sex and violence has mostly been stopped, but the social networking site said Wednesday that people need to remain vigilant to keep their accounts from being hijacked.
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks fell broadly in midday trading Wednesday as the price of oil topped $100 a barrel for the first time since July.
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock futures are edging lower ahead of a full day of economic reports.
NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices have hit $100 per barrel for the first time in nearly four months.
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker John Boehner publicly blessed a Republican deficit-reduction plan Tuesday that would raise $300 billion in additional tax revenue while overhauling the IRS code, bucking opposition by some GOP presidential hopefuls and colleagues wary of violating a longstanding point of party orthodoxy.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress is getting ready to send President Barack Obama a bill helping government contractors and unemployed veterans that contains the first shred of his jobs plan likely to reach his desk for his signature.
WASHINGTON (AP) — What are taxpayers supposed to think? The Pentagon says threatened budget cuts will invite aggression, endanger national security and devastate its operations.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Most people don't want to think about death, much less plan for it — especially when they feel healthy and young in their middle-age years.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 15
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) - A Nashville pharmacist has been sentenced for the unlawful distribution of the narcotic hydrocodone and filing false income tax returns.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) - The fate of about $242 million in federal dollars that the state health department depends upon could be in jeopardy if a special deficit committee in Washington proposes drastic cuts, the agency's chief said Tuesday.
NASHVILLE (AP) - The main lobbyist for a state law that overruled local protections for gay and lesbian workers led an orchestrated effort to portray the bill as being about best business practices rather than opposition to homosexuality.
NASHVILLE (AP) - Tennessee has fined a Florida-based fundraising company $720,000 for repeatedly failing to tell people that calls soliciting donations to the American Association of State Troopers were coming from a professional fundraiser.
NASHVILLE (AP) - The Tennessee Department of Education is making some changes to a waiver that would allow the state to opt out of the No Child Left Behind law.
NATIONAL BUSINESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Consumers are giving a modest lift to the economy. They spent more on autos, electronics and building supplies in October to boost retail sales for the fifth straight month.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. companies paid less in October for gas, new cars and other goods, driving down wholesale prices for the first time since June. The report indicates inflation pressures are easing as the cost of oil and other commodities has declined.
NEW YORK (AP) — Wal-Mart is reporting that the third-quarter profits slipped 2.9 percent and offered a conservative fourth-quarter outlook. But the world's largest retailer announced its first quarterly gain in its U.S. namesake business, reversing a more than two year sales slump.
FRAMINGHAM, Mass. (AP) — Staples Inc. said Tuesday that its profit climbed 13 percent in the third quarter, helped in part by improved sales of office and break room supplies to businesses as well as promotional products.
PARIS (AP) — Rising borrowing rates for many of the eurozone's more indebted countries sent investors scurrying out of stock markets Tuesday, on a day that Italy's premier-designate was looking to get the support of the country's political parties for a technocratic government.
Oil prices slipped below $98 a barrel Tuesday on worries about slowing economies in Europe, despite expectations that U.S. crude inventories are falling and demand could be increasing.
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential hopefuls are assaulting a proposal by GOP lawmakers on a bipartisan deficit-reduction panel that calls for increased tax revenues even as the special supercommittee appears increasingly headed for deadlock.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The weight of a Supreme Court decision isn't likely to settle the contentious debate over health care in America, a nation disdainful of big government and historically unable to guarantee affordable basic coverage to all its citizens.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Another shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration is possible because lawmakers haven't resolved a labor issue that's holding up passage of a long-term funding bill for the agency, a key senator said Monday.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 14NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) - A Nashville judge on Monday dismissed trespassing and other citations against 55 Occupy Nashville protesters and ordered their records expunged.
MURFREESBORO (AP) — Muslims are calling for action against a Tennessee state representative after he said Muslims shouldn't be allowed to serve in the U.S. military.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) - Tennessee Rep. Bob Ramsey has been named the new chairman of the House State and Local Government Committee.
NASHVILLE (AP) - A new liquor store ordinance in Memphis and one in the works for Jackson could serve as a model for a state law.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Each year, people are killed and maimed by explosions of finely powdered wood, metal or chemicals at factories around the country. Safety experts have studied the threat posed by dust at industrial sites for nearly a decade, yet tighter regulations are still years away.
NATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — The stock market fell Monday after a jump in Italy's borrowing costs reminded investors of how much work remains to be done to contain Europe's debt problems.
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina (AP) — Bank of America will sell most of its remaining shares in China Construction Bank as it raises cash and shores up its capital base.
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Carolyn Anderson likes to chat up the growers at her local farmers market in Missouri, at times hanging out behind the beds of pickup trucks brimming with ears of corn.
PARIS (AP) — European markets pulled back from early gains Monday as the initial relief over new governments in Greece and Italy gave way to the reality that those countries still face tremendous obstacles.
MOORESVILLE, N.C. (AP) — Lowe's Cos.' third-quarter net income sank 44 percent, weighed down by charges tied to store closings and discontinued projects.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Investor Warren Buffett says his company bought $10.7 billion of IBM stock this year, about a 5.6 percent stake.
Oil prices slipped below $98 a barrel Monday as markets remained cautious about the ability of new leadership in Greece and Italy to manage the countries' financial crisis.
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday promised an extraordinarily thorough springtime review of President Barack Obama's historic health care overhaul — more than five hours of argument, unprecedented in modern times — in time for a likely ruling affecting millions of Americans just before the presidential election in November.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The No. 2 Republican in the House said Monday he's still confident that a bipartisan deficit "supercommittee" will be able to reach agreement even though there's little more than a week to go before its deadline.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Transportation said Monday it has fined a regional affiliate of American Airlines $900,000 for keeping hundreds of passengers cooped up for hours on planes in Chicago earlier this year, a clear warning to airlines on the eve of the holiday travel season that similar incidents won't be tolerated.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Businessman Herman Cain contradicted himself on torture, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney offered a prescription for challenging China that didn't add up and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich seemed to forget about crucial help by Pakistani intelligence in running down terrorists.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) - State mental health officials have suspended all new admissions to a drug addiction treatment center in Dickson County after an investigation raised questions about medical care there.
NASHVILLE (AP) - Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam will ask prosecutors to drop charges against dozens of Occupy Nashville protesters arrested last month for trespassing, his office said Thursday.
NASHVILLE (AP) — A new exhibition is on display at Nashville's Parthenon, the world's only full-scale replica of the temple in Athens, Greece.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) - The former Goodyear tire plant in Union City has been sold to a maker of off-road equipment tires.
NATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — By the third time around, it really shouldn't be a surprise. The latest "Call of Duty" video game set a first-day sales record this week, generating $400 million in sales in its first 24 hours in stores. That breaks the record its predecessor set this time last year.
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks surged Friday, erasing their losses for the week, after Italy and Greece moved closer to forming new governments and getting their financial crises under control. The Dow Jones industrial average jumped back above 12,000.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage fell below 4 percent for just the second time in history.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The outlook for American jobs and trade looked a little brighter Thursday, despite growing uncertainty overseas.
NEW YORK (AP) — The price of oil is closing in on $100 per barrel for the first time since summer.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Disney's fourth-quarter net income rose 30 percent, thanks to higher spending by theme park visitors and growth at pay TV operations ESPN and Disney Channel.
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Democratic-controlled Senate on Thursday rejected a Republican bid to block new controls on power plant pollution that blows downwind into other states.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The chief of the National Guard said Thursday he deserves full membership in the Joint Chiefs of Staff despite opposition from the current chairman and the service chiefs.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska rancher Bruce Boettcher was ecstatic when he learned the rumors swirling out of Washington were true: plans to build a 1,700-mile oil pipeline from Canada to Texas were on hold to study how environmentally sensitive areas in his state could be avoided.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal advisory panel is warning that "serious environmental consequences" could result from the gas drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing if steps aren't taken to reduce its impacts.