Business Blog

There’s always next year, says Mississippi Treasurer Lynn Fitch of her campaign to require financial literacy training in the state’s public schools. The effort gained easy passage in the House but failed to get a vote in the Senate, a circumstance she thinks could be related to a misconception that financial literacy is already widely [...]

  The Mississippi Council on Economic Education will observe April as Financial Literacy Month by bringing together high school students from across the state for the state Economics Challenge on Tuesday and the state Financial Literacy Challenge on Tuesday, April 23. Both Challenges will be at Millsaps College in the Leggette Center starting at 10 [...]

A forum titled “Commercial Real Estate an Economic Forecast” is on tab Thursday afternoon at the Mississippi Association of Realtors headquarters at 4274 Lakeland Drive. The forum presented by the Mississippi CCIM Chapter includes a panel discussion by Fountain Barksdale, Bank Plus; Jonathan Gould, Stonemar Realty; Paul Gunn, Watkins Eager Law Firm; Dr. Matthew Hill, [...]

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder’s early March concession that the banking executives who contributed to the nation’s banking collapse are “to big to jail” has brought protests from around the country. Holder, in March 6 testimony to the Senate Banking Committee, said going after leaders of the big banks for illegal activity related to the [...]

Just off the closing of its acquisition of Mobile-based BancTrust Financial Group and its 49 Alabama branches, Trustmark National Bank has agreed to buy the two Oxford locations of SOUTHBank, F.S.B. Under the agreement, Trustmark would acquire deposits of the two locations totaling about $11.8 million and the office buildings at 106 Court House Square [...]

Tupelo-based BancorpSouth has earmarked $500 million for loans to businesses and entrepreneurs seeking to locate in our state, as well as for existing businesses looking to expand operations through a loan pool dubbed “Grow Mississippi 2013.” In announcing the initiative, BancorpSouth CEO Dan Rollins said additional funding will be added to the loan pool during [...]

“The new normal.” Those are an awful trio of words the nation’s nagging economic slump has left us with. They mark a concession that we are prepared to live with things that are less good than before, such as double-digit unemployment, underwater home values and — for downtown Jackson — historically high office vacancy rates. [...]

A hearing is set for April 3 in St. Louis to finalize the sale of three hotels owned by St. Louis-based Roberts Cos., owners of downtown Jackson’s shuttered Roberts Vista Hotel. The Jackson property, known for several decades as The Walthall, is not among the Roberts hotels to be sold April 3. The 85-year-old East [...]

Legislation to increase surveillance and deploy National Guard troops in schools, among other measures, could gain bipartisan approval in Congress – but only by sacrificing such education programs as financial literacy for students, Time.com reports. The school safety bill, introduced by Barbara Boxer of California, was originally going to spend $800 million on surveillance and [...]

Here is the White House says the across-the-board automatic budget cuts set to begin Friday under the fiscal sequester deal between Congress and the Obama Administration will mean for Mississippi. The cuts threaten hundreds of thousands of middle class jobs, and cut vital services for children, seniors, people with mental illness and our men and [...]