Grand opening set for Art Cafe Studio

Grand opening set for Art Cafe Studio

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Eva Popovec, owner of The Art Cafe Studio, will have a grand opening and ribbon-cutting event Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m. for her new pottery-painting studio at the Southern Park Mall.

The studio provides high-quality materials to create individualized pottery and mosaic creations.

Jobless-claims data show soft job growth

WASHINGTON

September is looking as if it’s going be another sluggish month of job growth.

New claims for jobless benefits remained relatively high last week, confounding analysts’ expectations for a sizable drop after a spike in filings the prior week because of Hurricane Isaac.

The Labor Department said Thursday there were 382,000 new applications for unemployment benefits filed last week. That was down just 3,000 from the week ended Sept. 8 and left the less-volatile, four-week moving average at about 378,000 — compared with 368,000 a month earlier.

The jobless-claims data, an indicator of layoff trends, suggest the labor market is essentially moving sideways. And that’s not a good sign, given that the economy added just 96,000 jobs in August and that same number on average in the past six months.

Americans regaining wealth lost recently

WASHINGTON

A jump in the stock market and rising home prices are bringing Americans closer to regaining the wealth they lost in the recession.

U.S. household net worth dipped in the April-June quarter, according to a Federal Reserve report released Thursday. But gains in stock and home equity since the last quarter ended likely have raised total household wealth to within 5 percent of its peak before the Great Recession.

Millions of Americans still feeling the effects of the housing bust, or who don’t own any stocks, haven’t benefited as much.

Still, the increased overall wealth could give many people and businesses the confidence to step up spending and boost U.S. economic growth and job creation.

Probe: Microsoft, HP avoid offshore taxes

WASHINGTON

Microsoft Corp., the Hewlett-Packard Co. and other multinational corporations have avoided billions in U.S. taxes by shifting profits offshore and taking advantage of weak, ambiguous sections of the tax code, Senate investigators said Thursday.

Microsoft used “aggressive” transactions to shift assets to subsidiaries in Puerto Rico, Ireland and Singapore, in part to avoid taxes, said the report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. In one example, the report said that the Washington state-based software giant saved $4.5 billion in taxes from 2009 to 2011 by shifting assets to Puerto Rico, a U.S. commonwealth that offers numerous tax breaks to businesses.

The report, released at a subcommittee hearing, also said that since at least 2008, HP has used complex offshore loan transactions worth billions of dollars to avoid paying taxes while using the money to run its U.S. operations.

Vindicator staff/wire reports