Patrick Temple-West

WASHINGTON — Business inventories increased 1.0% in March as retail inventories gained 0.9%, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

WASHINGTON — Retail sales increased 0.5% in April, as sales excluding autos and gasoline increased by the smallest amount in four months, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

WASHINGTON - Business inventories increased 1.0% in March as retail inventories gained 0.9%, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

WASHINGTON - Retail sales increased 0.5% in April, slightly below economists’ estimates, as sales excluding autos and sales of gasoline increased by the smallest amount in four months, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service’s tax-exempt bond office has received referrals of around 30 whistleblower claims of potential abuses in the municipal bond market, an official said Friday.

WASHINGTON — House Ways and Means Committee panel members, researchers, and muni market participants debated the merits and faults of a public-pension disclosure bill Thursday at a hearing that also focused on tax-exempt financing and pension obligation bonds.

WASHINGTON — Though several deficit-cutting commissions are recommending Congress and the Obama administration overhaul the tax code and cut tax expenditures, such as the tax-exempt interest from municipal bonds, the head of the Tax Foundation said Tuesday that the budgetary cost of munis is relatively small.

The Internal Revenue Service is auditing $20 million of Series A bonds issued in December 2005 by the City School District of Middletown in Orange County, N.Y. The audit was disclosed Monday in an event notice the issuer filed with the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s online EMMA system.

Factory orders jumped 3.0% in March, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday.

WASHINGTON - Factory orders jumped 3.0% in March, increasing for the fifth month in a row, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — States are ramping up pressure on online-only retailers to pay billions of dollars in state sales taxes, hoping the funds will help bring their tax collections into the 21st century.

WASHINGTON — Construction spending increased 1.4% at a seasonally adjusted annual rate in March, the first increase in four months and the largest increase in almost a year, the Commerce Department reported Monday.

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department will stop selling state and local government series securities to municipal issuers on Friday unless Congress votes to raise the federal debt limit, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told congressional leaders Monday.

WASHINGTON - Construction spending increased 1.4% at a seasonally adjusted annual rate in March, the first increase in four months and the largest increase in almost a year, the Commerce Department reported Monday.

WASHINGTON — A federal cap on tax-exempt bonds could gradually wean investors and issuers off the muni market and toward a permanent, expanded Build America Bond market that has a flexible subsidy rate, a new report from the Center for American Progress argues.

WASHINGTON — Personal consumption expenditures increased 0.6% in March as incomes gained 0.5%, the Commerce Department reported Friday.

WASHINGTON – Personal consumption increased 0.6% in March as incomes gained 0.5%, the Commerce Department reported Friday.

WASHINGTON — Real gross domestic product expanded at a 1.8% annual rate in the first quarter of 2011 as imports and slower consumer and government spending hindered growth, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

WASHINGTON – Real gross domestic product expanded 1.8% at an annual rate in the first quarter of 2011 as imports and slower consumer and government spending hindered growth, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve Wednesday lowered its forecast for economic growth in 2011, while also lowering its expectation for the unemployment rate this year, as chairman Ben Bernanke warned the U.S. budget deficit is the “most important economic problem” the country faces.