Business in brief: Personal income up slightly in Q3

The Idaho economy produced a modest gain in personal income during the third quarter this year, but the 1.1 percent increase from the second quarter was still enough to maintain Idaho’s rank among the top states in terms of income growth.

Idaho’s personal income, on an annualized basis, rose $502 million to $44.2 billion in the July-September quarter from the April-June period, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported.

Compared with the summer quarter of 2005, Idaho recorded an 8.1 percent increase in personal income, which is the total of all wages, business owner profits, investment earnings and transfer payments such as Social Security.

That was the sixth-highest growth rate in the nation.

Clarkston

Palouse Web site lists businesses

Folks on the Palouse now can look online for a list of area businesses and services. They’ll find 223 businesses located in a dozen communities in the new Whitman County Online Business Directory.

Businesses are organized by town. Below each company name is a brief description of its products and services, address and a link to its home page, if it has one. Visit the Web site at www.palouse.org, click on counties, then click on Whitman County and finally, click on business.

Washington

FCC rules target cable TV market

A sharply divided Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 along partisan lines Wednesday to impose new measures meant to ensure that local governments do not block new competitors from entering the cable television market.

The vote came on the same day that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin released a report on cable prices that shows in 2004, average cable rates rose 5.2 percent. The report also shows that from 1995 to 2005 rates increased 93 percent.

The new rules approved by the commission will require local cable franchising authorities to act on applications from competitors with access to local rights of way within 90 days, and to act within six months on applications from other new competitors.

The FCC will also ban local governments from forcing new competitors to build out new systems more quickly than the incumbent carrier and to count certain costs required of new carriers to go toward the 5 percent franchise fee they are required to pay.

New York

Goldman Sachs bonus a record

John Mack’s record for the biggest bonus ever paid to a Wall Street chief executive didn’t last even a week. It was smashed by the $53.4 million that Goldman Sachs gave its chief executive, Lloyd Blankfein.

The bonanza for Blankfein included a cash bonus of $27.3 million, with the rest paid in stock and options. He took the helm of the investment bank in June after Henry Paulson left to be Treasury secretary.

The record payday breaks the one set just last Thursday when Morgan Stanley disclosed that it paid CEO Mack $40 million in stock and options.

Associated Press