Obama Proposes Changes to Overtime Pay
Washington — Here’s a convenient way of getting more work out of your employees, without paying the required time-and-a-half pay for anything over 40 hours a week: Call them “managers.” Currently, these so-called white collar workers are exempt from overtime if they make more than $455 a week or $23,660 per year, even if they perform routine tasks like stocking shelves at a convenience store. In fact, those small-time bosses don’t...
EPA Moves to Protect Bee Population
Washington — If honeybees are busy pollinating large, blooming croplands, farmers who want to spray toxic pesticides will soon have to buzz off, the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing. A federal rule proposed last week would create temporary pesticide-free zones when certain plants are in bloom around bees that are trucked from farm to farm by professional beekeepers, which are the majority of honeybees in the U.S. The...
Ben Bernanke: Interest Rate Critics Wrong
Washington — Federal Reserve chairs are experts at being boring. They use words like “moderate,” “uncertain,” or “stability” like we use the words “um,” “and,” or “but.” It’s, as former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan put it, a “language of purposeful obfuscation” that drones on so long you forget what was just asked, let alone whether this answered it, just as long as it’s mercifully over. But now that he’s free of the strictures of office,...
Fight Looms Over New Adviser Rules
Major financial industry trade groups are offering a restrained response to a new Labor Department proposal designed to curb conflicts of interest in the financial advisory business serving retirees, even as proponents of the measure gird for a major battle. After years of preparation and behind-the-scenes lobbying, the department last week formally unveiled the language of the new rule that would require financial advisers to put...
