Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan called the House back into session on Monday to put together new legislation for tax breaks for CME Group, CBOE and Sears. The House voted 99-8 last week to reject a tax package for the three for more than $100 million in tax breaks. more ›

Someone up in the ivory tower of the Chicago Board of Trade showered Occupy Chicago protesters with McDonald's job applications. more ›

What we'd like to know: who occupies the eighth floor offices of the Board of Trade where these incidents keep happening? Anyone who has a clue should feel free to email us. more ›

Someone at the Board of Trade is getting cheeky with the Occupy Chicago protests. more ›

The Tribune reports today that CME Group, owners of the Chicago Board of Trade Building, has hired brokers to market a sale of the classic Art Deco-style building. more ›

An inevitable confirmation of the obvious: Hollywood movies only exist in order to make money. On Friday, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission approved a proposal to establish Trend Exchange, a futures market for entertainment that would be run out of Chicago. Pending approval by the CFTC, the first products to be offered would be options and futures contracts on opening weekend domestic box office sales by MPAA feature films. As the company states on their website, "The creation of a regulated marketplace for these options and futures products will improve risk transfer opportunities and provide price discovery information in the public interest." Translation: it's time for us all to place our bets on which movies will make a pile of dough opening weekend, since that's all that seems to matter anymore. more ›

Watching the Dow rise and fall in recent weeks has been like riding a roller coaster with a bad case of stomach flu. It sank like a stone last week after Congress approved a $850 billion bailout and the credit markets remained frozen. This week, upon news that the Federal government will be partially nationalizing the nation's major banks, the Dow saw its biggest one-day increase ever. In a year in which we've seen skyrocketing grocery prices in relation to increased oil costs, the thought of paying even more for provisions crossed us more than once. more ›