Topic - U.S. Federal Reserve

• Capital One OK'd to buy ING Direct

  Capital One has won approval to acquire ING Direct for $9 billion, clearing the way for it to become the nation's fifth-largest bank.

• Economy Briefs

  Late payments on mortgages ticked up in the last three months of 2011, the second straight quarter-to-quarter increase after nearly two years of steady decline.

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  HOLTZ-EAKIN: Get moving on spectrum auction

  As congressional gridlock continues, there is a lot more at stake than payroll taxes, unemployment benefits, doctors' payments, improving job growth and a better budget outlook. Too often good policy gets forgotten amid financial decisions. Unfortunately, spectrum auctions are treated as merely a budgetary means to pay for other programs.

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  LAMBRO: Obama's proposed budgetary house of cards

  Two things you need to know about President Obama's nearly $4 trillion budget for fiscal 2013: It will likely add another $1 trillion to a $15.3 trillion debt, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he will not act on any full budget plan this year.

• Michelle Wie gets the best of both worlds

  Michelle Wie did not go to Stanford to play golf, at least not the game that brought her worldwide fame as a teenager.

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  RAHN: Obama has no Plan B

  President Obama has just presented his new budget, which again ignores reality. It contains another trillion-dollar deficit, which assumes a large increase in revenue resulting from a tax-rate increase on "the wealthy" and corporations. He knows, and so does everyone else, that Congress is not going to pass the tax increase.

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  EDITORIAL: Sugar police on the prowl

  Mary Poppins, call your office. That spoonful of sugar might make the medicine go down, but it also makes the weight go up and should be kept away from kids - or so say sugar nannies sprinkled across the country. While some simply frown upon consumption of the sweet stuff, the more ambitious want it outlawed entirely. Americans ought to tell these busybodies to keep their sticky fingers off our fridges before the land of the free dissolves into the land of the sugar-free.

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  Romney to CPAC: 'I know conservatism'

  Mitt Romney tried to erase any doubts about his conservative credentials, arguing that he's fought on the front lines against government overreach and reminding a gathering of thousands of grassroots activists that he's the only candidate in the Republican presidential race who is not a "creature" of Washington.

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  EDITORIAL: Twisting long-term bond markets

  The Federal Reserve is keeping short-term interest rates absurdly low through late 2014, and that choice is going to cause long-term damage to our economy. Now there are signs that the Fed's policy of driving down long-term interest rates, known as Operation Twist, is wreaking havoc with the long-term bond market as well. Such market distortions are the inevitable result of attempting to achieve the impossible.

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  Bernanke: Weak housing has hurt consumer spending

  Ben Bernanke says declines in home prices have forced many Americans to cut back sharply on spending and warns that the trend could continue to weigh on the economy for years.

• VERSACE: If market pauses or pulls back, refresh holdings

  In 1929, the Coca-Cola Co. used the slogan "The pause that refreshes" to advertise its flagship beverage. The idea was that drinking Coke would restore and provide fresh vigor. I bring that slogan up as it appears the overall stock market, which has had one of its best starts in more than 20 years, is heading for a pause, if not a pullback.

• Economy briefs

  The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that it had sold $6.2 billion of assets once held by bailed-out American International Group Inc. to New York investment bank Goldman Sachs.

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  ISAAC and KOVACEVICH: Dodd-Frank won't prevent next bank bailout

  There always have been bank failures and always will be. The trick is to allow sufficient risk to promote economic growth but not so much that it leads to widespread failures and financial panic. It's clear from the three major banking crises in the past 40 years that we have not achieved this balancing act.

• Gene Mueller's Fishing Report

  As you read this, the air will tell what typical February weather should feel like, but the past six or seven days' spring-like temperatures have worked wonders on man and fish.

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  GHEI: A nation of moochers

  Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned Tuesday against both raising taxes and cutting spending. In testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, Mr. Bernanke said we must protect the fragile economic recovery, which saw some 243,000 jobs created in January.

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