Business Blog

  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac won’t be taking part in the Obama administration’s home mortgage principal reduction program. That’s bad news for underwater homeowners but cause for rounds of high-fives among executives in the nation’s financial sector. The setback for homeowners came Tuesday when Federal Housing Finance Agency Acting Director Ed DeMarco bowed to [...]

Here is a great story from the New York Times this weekend. It is enlightening and thoughtful. We wish more people would think outside the box …

Gov. Bryant’s office announced in a release this morning that Teleflex Incorporated, a “leading global provider of medical devices for critical care and surgery,” is relocating its distribution operations to Olive Branch, a move that is expected to employ more than 200 workers within four years of operation. Bryant said Teleflex is the first company to take [...]

Once a popular meeting space for the community, the Hinds County Armory has sat in ruins at the Mississippi Fairgrounds since the Easter Flood of 1979. Despite its dilapidation it has peaked the interest of former Gov. William Winter and Mississippi agriculture commissioner Cindy Hyde-Smith. Now a grant from the Mississippi Department of Archives & [...]

Leaders in the City of McComb took a significant step forward with the goal of growing their economy and tax base by taking swift action ratifying the Tax Increment Financing Redevelopment Plan (TIF) as a tool for development and redevelopment in their city. Mayor Whitney Rawlings and the Board of Selectmen voted this week to [...]

Who would have expected this reaction? The head of the American Bankers Association is disappointed and dismayed by the about-face Citigroup chairman emeritus Sandy Weill has done on breaking up the nation’s big banks. Push the pause button on such thinking, Frank Keating, ABA president & CEO, urges. Weill, often described as godfather to the [...]

Jackson attorney and former state justice Oliver Diaz spoke with MBJ-TV and MBJ editor Ross Reily this week about his involvement in the recently released HBO documentary “Hot Coffee.” Directed by lawyer turned filmmaker Susan Saladoff, the movie premiered last year at the Sundance Film Festival. Diaz said it focuses on several high-profile tort litigation cases [...]

  Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy and the rest of the Muppets have weighed in on same-sex marriage. Or at least their employer has. The Jim Henson Company, a multiple Emmy and Grammy Award winning puppet company founded by Mississippi native Jim Henson, says on its official Facebook page that it is no longer affiliated with [...]

Last month, one of the biggest financial scandals in history came to light, involving many of the most pre-eminent banks in the world. But public reaction has been so muted that a Los Angeles Times columnist was compelled to ask, “Why aren’t more people furious about the Libor scandal?” In fact, people are. The news [...]

As BBC producer Stuart Hughes shows here, prosthetic limbs have come a long way in recent years. The reporter lost part of his leg in Iraq but this week he is running part of the Olympic torch relay thanks to a carbon fibre blade prosthesis. Mississippi College student and multiple amputee Carrie Holmstrom recently told her own [...]