Business Blog

Dry conditions have allowed Mississippi rice producers to plant earlier this year than in previous years. Nathan Buehring, rice specialist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service, said an absence of heavy spring rains put the state’s producers well ahead of schedule. About 80 to 85 percent of the state’s rice was planted by mid-April. [...]

Alabama still has some worrisome jobless numbers in many of its counties but its overall unemployment of 7.3 percent for March should make it the envy of the two states that it is sandwiched between — Georgia (9 percent unemployment for March) and Mississippi (9.5 percent unemployment for February). Though Georgia and Mississippi both have [...]

The Export-Import Bank, a legacy of the New Deal that helps thousands of small businesses and some very large ones compete in foreign markets, teeters on the brink of extinction because it has become a symbol of big government largesse and corporate cronyism. For the bank’s allies, it is a distressing sign of the extreme [...]