Nat Weinberg, for many years the chief economist of the United Automobile Workers, invented the idea of government insurance of private pensions in 1961. If we are going to negotiate for bigger pensions, which the auto companies may not be able to pay, he reasoned, let’s get the government to guarantee them. His idea resulted in the creation of the U.S. government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. in 1974. Viewed from the UAW’s interests, this was a brilliant political strategy.

How is the PBGC insurance program doing on its 40th anniversary? Well, it is dead broke. Its net worth is negative $62 billion as of the end of September. That is even more broke than it was a year ago, when its net worth was negative $36 billion.

So, inspired by Weinberg, who left the UAW in 1974 and died in 1985, the U.S. government is the owner of a deeply insolvent insurance company. A private insurance company with this financial condition would have been closed down long ago. Is the taxpayer on the hook for the $62 billion deficit? The PBGC’s annual report earnestly assures that “the U.S. Government is not liable for any obligation or liability incurred by PBGC.” Of course not! Just like it wasn’t for mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac .

A $12 million industrial building will replace a 49-year-old vacant building in Elk Grove Village’s business park that the property owner says is functionally obsolete. The existing 140,100-square-foot building at 2200 Arthur Ave. will be torn down in the coming months, according to representatives of DCT 2200 Arthur LLC, which bought the site in September.

In its place will be a new 112,800-square-foot building, to be leased to an industrial user for warehousing, manufacturing and/or distribution and bringing 50 to 100 jobs, officials said. The Elk Grove Village board has endorsed the owner’s application for a Cook County’s Class 6b property tax break, in which the land will be assessed at 10 percent of market value for 10 years, at 15 percent in the 11th year, and 20 percent in the 12th year. Normally, property is assessed at 25 percent of market value. Construction is expected to be finished by mid-2015.

Was the “Welcome Home Illinois” Loan Program a noble effort to help first time home buyers or a vote buying scheme premised on bad policy?  Here are the facts. Decide for yourself.

Governor Quinn announced the program in April 2014. It provided $7,500 to first time buyers to help cover the down payment, secured by a second mortgage on the home, and was administered by the IHDA — the Illinois Housing Development Authority. About $80 million was disbursed under the program to over 10,000 home buyers, according to the Tribune. Credit requirements were relaxed compared to conventional home loans — a minimum credit score of 640 was required.  The program terminated about two weeks after the election. It was earlier scheduled to terminate on November 30.

Importantly, the down payment loans are forgivable.

I was struck to read the other day that Illinois receives back from the federal government only 56 cents of every dollar it sends to Washington in taxes, which ranks us 49th on this indicator. I have known for decades that Illinois has been on the short end of the stick, but I did not know it was so bad.

So I decided to dig a little deeper to see if it could be true. I found that, yes, it probably is correct.

The state of Illinois should mount a major effort in the new Rauner administration to begin to claw back some of our money.

A year after the Obama administration temporarily shelved an unfinished part of HealthCare.gov intended for small businesses, it has opened with reports of only modest technical flaws — but with doubts that it will soon benefit the millions of workers at little companies with inadequate health insurance or none at all.

Insurance brokers are, at times, having trouble getting into their accounts and, in scattered cases, are not showing up in the computer system’s lists of local insurance professionals available to coach small businesses. More broadly, interviews with brokers and others suggest that, in the two weeks since the marketplace’s health plans went on sale for 2015, interest within the niche they are intended to help seems scant.

During the first week, that part of HealthCare.gov drew 200,000 visits, compared with more than 1.5 million people who looked at the Web site’s health plans for individuals, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the branch of the Department of Health and Human Services overseeing the ­online insurance marketplaces. CMS officials would not provide figures on how many small businesses in that first week decided to offer workers coverage through the health plans created for them — or how many workers, in turn, have bought it.

As Harding took office in March 1921, Americans were in a funk, disillusioned by World War I and fearful of alleged radicals. But the main source of anguish and anger was the unstable economy, which in the span of three years had gone from an inflationary boom to a deflationary bust.

The wartime boom and easy credit had created full employment. From 1918 to 1919, General Motors’ payrolls swelled from 49,118 to 85,980. But the boom also stoked inflation, which averaged 16 percent annually from 1917 to 1919. Prices raced ahead of wages, triggering massive strikes of coal miners, steelworkers, longshoremen, garment workers and others. In 1919, one in five workers was a striker, the largest share ever. Meanwhile, high prices helped farmers, who fed a war-ravaged Europe. Their 1919 harvest was triple the value of its prewar predecessors.

Then came the bust. As Europe recovered and credit tightened, industrial America ground to a halt. GM’s sales were averaging 52,000 a month; by January 1921, they were 6,150. As companies sold bloated inventories, production, prices and wages declined; layoffs increased. A 1921 survey found 4.3 million jobless Americans out of a non-farm labor force of 28 million, indicating an unemployment rate of 15.3 percent. Farmers who borrowed to buy more land – assuming prices would remain high – couldn’t repay their debts. In the second half of 1920, the average price for 10 leading crops dropped 57 percent.

Monmouth residents may soon see a property tax increase of almost 10 percent for the second time in two years.

The situation is reminiscent of the 9-percent hike local property owners faced last year around this time, when taxes were increased for the first time in three years in response to rising pension costs.

Mayor Rod Davies will address taxation levies and the pensions of firefighters and police during an upcoming City Council meeting at 7 p.m. Monday.

While Chicago aldermen press to boost the wages of the city’s lowest-paid workers as they enter campaign season, half of those seeking another term on the City Council also have seen fit to accept their own pay increase.

In all, 28 of the city’s 50 aldermen accepted a 2015 pay increase, which added more than $2,000 to each of their salaries. They include Ald. Bob Fioretti, 2nd, who is running for mayor, and two City Council members not seeking re-election.

Among those who took the raise was Ald. Margaret Laurino, 39th, who has repeatedly benefited since aldermen in 2006 approved automatic wage adjustments tied to the local cost of living index. Next year, she and 20 colleagues will make $117,333, the highest salary on the council.