July 21 Biz Minute

Today drugmaker Merck & Co. posted a 12 percent drop in second-quarter profits, then Caterpillar's second-quarter profit tumbled, and CIT Group said in a regulatory filing that it might still have to file for bankruptcy protection.
Up in Sacramento, legislative leaders began lobbying rank-and-file members to vote for a compromise to close the budget shortfall - a contentious vote is expected Thursday.
Over in Washington Fed Chairman Bernanke ran into skepticism about expanding the Fed's duties to police big financial companies - considering they failed to spot problems that led to the financial crisis in the first place.
But some good news - JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon made a $2.2 million pretax profit by exercising stock options and then selling most of the resulting shares of the second-largest U.S. bank.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Merck & Co
• Caterpillar
• CIT Group
• bankruptcy
• Sacramento
• legislative
• budget
• Washington
• Federal Reserve
• Chairman
• Ben Bernanke
• financial
• JPMorgan Chase
• Jamie Dimon