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Econ 101: June 20, 2011

Welcome to ThinkProgress Economy’s morning link roundup. This is what we’re reading. Have you seen any interesting news? Let us know in the comments section. You can also follow ThinkProgress Economy on Twitter.

  • “A mounting body of economic research indicates that the rise in pay for company executives is a critical feature in the widening income gap,” which is the widest its been in the U.S. since the 1920s. [Washington Post]
  • “Foreign direct investment in the U.S. increased by 49 percent in 2010,”, according to a report being released today by the White House Council of Economic Advisers. [Bloomberg]
  • Charitable donations rose by 2.1 percent last year, the first increase since 2007. [New York Times]
  • General Electric yesterday “reached a tentative, four-year national labor contract with two key unions that cover more than 15,000 GE workers, or about 11 percent of its U.S. employees.” [Reuters]
  • The Obama administration is hoping “to send all three pending free trade agreements — Colombia, Panama, and Korea — to Congress before the August recess.” [McClatchy]
  • Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) said that a group of five senators attempting to put together a deficit reduction package “will rely on a ratio of roughly 3:1 spending cuts to revenue raises — with one of the three coming from savings and interest, putting the real ratio at about 2:1, the formula put forward by the president’s deficit-reduction panel in December.” [National Journal]
  • Workers at a Target store in New York State voted against joining the United Food and Commercial Workers on Friday during the first union election at a Target store in more than 20 years. However, the UFCW said that the outcome “was the result of an illegal program of intimidation by Target management that made workers too frightened to express their real sentiments at the polls.” [Huffington Post]
  • Is Wall Street helping drive newspapers to ruin? [New York Times]
  • The two largets providers of reverse mortgages in the U.S. — Wells Fargo and Bank of America — “are no longer offering the loans, as the economics of the business have come under pressure.” [New York Times]
  • States looking for waivers from some of the federal requirements under No Child Left Behind “are taking a wait-and-see approach to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s plan to offer those that embrace his reform priorities wiggle room when it comes to the law’s mandates.” [Education Week]
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