Sale of The Telegraph by Freedom Communications to an arm of Versa Capital Management is part of a four-newspaper deal the companies announced Thursday. The privately held companies did not disclose the purchase price.

In addition to The Telegraph, Versa is buying The Journal-Courier in Jacksonville, Ill.; The Sedalia (Mo.) Democrat and The Lima (Ohio) News.

Jim Shrader, The Telegraph’s publisher, referred questions to a Freedom Communications spokesman, Robert Emmers. Sale of Telegraph and the other papers should be completed in about 30 days, Emmers said.

Freedom Communications, based in Irvine, Calif., said “substantially all” employees will “transition” to the new owner. Mitch Stern, Freedom’s chief executive, said in a statement that the deal “represents an opportunity to add to the financial strength of the company and enhance the value of our shareholders’ investments.”

Versa’s chief executive, Gregory L. Segall, said his company is pleased to acquire the Freedom papers faxless cash advance. Last year Versa bought Ohio Community Media, which owns and operates 14 daily newspapers and 30 weeklies in northern and western Ohio.

Philadelphia-based Versa is a private equity investment firm with holdings in a variety of companies, including apparel firm Polartec, Central Parking System, paper distributor Central Lewmar and Black Angus Steakhouse.

Freedom’s flagship newspaper is the Orange County Register. The company owns 24 daily newspapers, weekly newspapers, ancillary magazines and other specialty publications, plus news, information and entertainment websites.

After emerging from bankruptcy in 2010, Freedom sold some of its properties, including eight television stations Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. bought for $385 million. Freedom also sold its newspapers in Seymour, Ind., and Clovis, N.M.

The Telegraph was formerly operated by generations of the Cousley family, of Alton. Before Freedom assumed ownership in 2000, Connecticut-based Ingersoll Publications bought a controlling interest in the paper in 1985.

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The meeting comes just days after the bank disclosed the massive trading loss, an event that led to the departure of its chief investment officer and forced its CEO to repeatedly apologize for the bank’s actions.

"This should never have happened. I can’t justify it. Unfortunately these mistakes were self inflicted," Dimon told shareholders just after the meeting began.

The $2 billion loss resulted from trades that were originally designed to hedge against risk, but grew in size and complexity, raising questions about whether the bank’s actions violated the spirit of the Volcker Rule.

That rule, a part of the Wall Street reform law passed in response to the financial crisis, aims to ban risky trading by banks for their own profit, a strategy sometimes referred to as proprietary trading.

Dimon said Tuesday that he believes it is important for the bank to continue to be able to hedge against risk, but that he also recognizes the need for rules that "ensure hedging doesn’t morph into something different."

"What this hedge morphed into violates our own principles in terms of complexity and risk," Dimon said.

Senate panel plans hearings after JPMorgan loss

Dimon, who also serves as the bank’s chairman, faced shareholders who have seen the company’s stock decline by more than 14% over the previous five trading sessions.

Those shareholders offered preliminary votes on a series of proposals on topics including political contributions, controversial investments in Sudan, and executive compensation, including Dimon’s $23 million compensation for 2011.

Final vote totals will be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, but preliminary results showed that shareholders approved of the bank’s executive pay packages by a nine-to-one margin.

Shareholders also considered a proposal that calls for the appointment of an independent chairman, which would strip Dimon of some of his power.

The bank’s board of directors was firmly opposed to this idea, saying in a recent proxy statement that such a move could cause "uncertainty, confusion and inefficiency in board and management function and relations."

Others were not so sure. Glass Lewis & Co., a governance analysis and proxy voting firm, had recommended the positions be separated as corporate governance is weakened by allowing one individual to perform both jobs creditreport.

Shareholders were split on the issue, with preliminary results showing that only 40% support the proposal.

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, shareholders have looked upon the nation’s largest banks with increased scrutiny, and have often used shareholder meetings to push an agenda of reform.

The JPMorgan (, Fortune 500) meeting moved briskly on Tuesday, with the official meeting lasting less than one hour and concluding just before 11:30 a.m. ET.

A smattering of protesters were on location, holding signs that criticized the bank for its actions in the housing market and some that alluded to the bank’s $2 billion loss.

The loss, while eye-popping, should be rather easily absorbed by JPMorgan, which is the nation’s largest bank by assets. Even this quarter, the bank is expected to turn a multi-billion dollar profit.

The bank’s stock, which fell sharply on Friday, was up almost 3% in trading on Tuesday, and is up 11% this year.

JPMorgan’s big loss: FAQ

Yet Dimon has been in full damage-control mode in recent days. After holding a hastily-arranged conference call to announce the loss, the CEO followed that with an appearance on Meet the Press, where he admitted the company had made a mistake.

And on Monday, the bank announced the retirement of Ina Drew, the firm’s chief investment officer and the supervisor of the bank’s chief investment office.

F. Daniel Siciliano, a professor at Stanford’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance, predicted on Monday that "fireworks are likely to be modest" at the JPMorgan meeting.

That’s because Tampa is an out-of-the-way location, and many shareholder votes have already been cast.

"In theory, people can change their votes on their proxy," Siciliano said. "But by and large, mechanically, that tends to not happen."

Earlier this year, Citigroup (, Fortune 500) shareholders rejected a pay increase for CEO Vikram Pandit that would have taken his salary from $1 to $15 million.

The vote, mandated by the "say on pay" regulations in the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, is non-binding, but marked the first time shareholders have rejected executive pay packages at a major bank. The bank’s board of directors has not yet indicated a course of action.

– CNN’s Poppy Harlow contributed to this report. 

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For the ninth straight day, Greek party leaders were struggling to form a coalition government, riven by differences over the harsh austerity measures demanded by international creditors in return for rescue loans. The impasse means the debt-stricken country is facing the prospect of another national election next month after holding an inconclusive ballot May 6.

Talks led by President Karolos Papoulias failed Sunday to break the impasse, and he invited party leaders back Monday evening to try again.

The turmoil in the eurozone nation took a toll on markets across Europe, with shares on the Athens Stock Exchange down 4.4 percent at 584.29 in afternoon trading.

The conservative New Democracy party had the most votes in the May 6 election, but no party received even 20 percent of the votes, and any coalition would need a combined 50 percent. Alexis Tsipras, leader of the left-wing Syriza party that finished second, has refused to join a coalition that accepts the terms of the international bailout. He wants to scrap or renegotiate the deal.

“They are looking for an accomplice to continue their catastrophic work,” Syriza spokesman Panos Skourletis told Mega television. “We will not help them.”

Many see more elections as inevitable. If anti-austerity parties were to gain more support and be able to govern, that could prompt a rift in the 17-nation eurozone and raise the risk of a Greek exit from the shared currency. Nobody knows how catastrophic that could be for Europe or the global economy.

“There’s been a frenetic rise in the number of people predicting the country’s exit from the euro,” Greece’s top-selling newspaper, Ta Nea, said in an editorial. “The dramatic drop in state revenues during the election campaign and the serious souring of the atmosphere in Europe toward Greece mean that after almost certain repeat elections there will be a need for even tougher austerity measures.”

Shut out of main debt markets, Greece is surviving on rescue loans from other euro countries and the International Monetary Fund, who have repeatedly warned that payments will continue only as long as the country continues to cut its spending.

Greece’s two traditionally dominant parties, New Democracy and the Socialist PASOK, lost significant support in the May 6 elections as Greece suffers through a fifth year of recession, with more than one in five of its citizens out of work.

Syriza finished second in those elections, and its support has grown since. In a poll published Monday, Syriza had 20.5 percent of public support, compared with 19.4 percent for New Democracy and 11.8 percent for PASOK. The margin of error was 3.1 percent for the Rass poll of 1,002 people, conducted May 10-11 for the Eleftheros Typos newspaper.

New Democracy and PASOK could form a government without Syriza if they had the support of the small Democratic Left party _ but that party has refused to join any government that doesn’t include Syriza.

“The president has invited us to a new meeting and I will attend,” Democratic Left leader Fotis Kouvelis told Antenna television. “I will repeat my position: that without the participation of the second-largest party (Syriza), the government would not have sufficient popular and parliamentary support.”

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American parent AMR Corp. says that the company and its bankruptcy creditors agreed to develop “potential consolidation scenarios,” but that didn’t mean it would pursue a deal with any particular party.

Still, Friday’s announcement suggested that events could be moving faster than AMR had expected since US Airways turned up the pressure for merger talks.

AMR CEO Thomas Horton has said for months that he wanted American, the nation’s third-biggest airline, to emerge from bankruptcy protection as an independent company. A bankruptcy judge granted AMR the exclusive right through late September to present a reorganization plan to the court. Politicians including Texas’ senior U.S. senator appealed for everyone else to leave AMR alone.

None of that deterred US Airways, a smaller competitor _ but a profitable one. US Airways has lobbied AMR’s creditors and lined up support from American’s three unions for a takeover.

On Friday hundreds of pilots and other employees marched into AMR headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, and in New York to deliver a message of “no confidence” in AMR management. The unions believe that a combined company would cut fewer jobs and stand a better chance at competing with industry leaders United and Delta.

Beverly K. Goulet, AMR’s chief restructuring officer, said Friday’s agreement to work with the bankruptcy creditors committee on potential merger scenarios represented no change in AMR’s belief that its fate will be decided by company management, directors and creditors. She said the agreement “does not in any way suggest that a transaction of any kind or with any particular party will be pursued.”

US Airways, the nation’s fifth-biggest airline, issued a statement late Friday praising AMR’s decision. It said a combination would be best for both companies’ employees and customers, as well as for AMR creditors and US Airways investors.

Jamie Horwitz, a spokesman for the Transport Workers Union, which represents mechanics and bag handlers at American, said he was pleased American would at least consider a merger while still in bankruptcy.

“We’ve run (newspaper) ads and done everything we could to tell the company to consider every option, and one is the possible sale or merger,” he said. “It should be explored now rather than later.”

Standard & Poor’s, citing a Bloomberg News report earlier Friday, said news that AMR would consider a merger as an alternative to its stand-alone restructuring plan made it more likely that US Airways will acquire or merge with AMR.

S&P analyst Jim Corridore said a merger would fix US Airways’ weak international network and give it size to compete with bigger rivals. S&P reiterated its “Buy” rating on US Airways stock, which rose 39 cents, or 3.6 percent, to close at $11.32.

Helped by talk of taking over AMR, US Airways shares have more than doubled in 2012, rising much faster than stock in competitors United or Delta.

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Molina, a losing bidder on the contracts, had accused state officials of violating Missouri’s competitive bidding law in awarding the Medicaid contracts on Feb. 17 to Clayton-based Centene Corp. and two other companies to care for 427,000 of the state’s Medicaid patients.

“The plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction  is unsupported by the facts and the law,” wrote Senior Judge B.C. Drumm Jr. of the Cole County Circuit Court.

Drumm said that Molina Healthcare knowingly participated in the state’s bid process for months, making no objections until the company learned that it had lost.

The judge, who dismissed the lawsuit “with prejudice,” said that Molina was well aware of the state’s intention to limit the number of contracts awarded to three firms in each state region, but did not challenge that process even though Molina had finished below third place in Missouri Medicaid contract award scoring in 2006 and 2009.

He also said that Molina did not question the state’s reliance on a committee of outside evaluators to scores the contract bids — until after the contracts were awarded to other firms.

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In an effort to avoid cuts to defense spending, House Republicans are pushing a bill that would shift hundreds of billions in spending cuts from the Pentagon to domestic programs, services for the poor and government regulators.

The plan would strip regulators of the ability to wind down failing financial firms, cut spending on Medicaid and end an Obama administration housing program designed to help struggling homeowners.

The cuts total $18 billion in the next fiscal year, and more than $250 billion over the next decade.

The Republican plan is the party’s first effort to articulate how it would replace the so-called "sequester," a component of the 2011 Budget Control Act.

The Budget Control Act, which became law in August, raised the debt ceiling, but contained substantial budget cuts, including some that would be negotiated by a so-called super committee.

Should the super committee fail, as it did in November, a set of spending cuts, called the "sequester," would go into effect. The cuts were to fall evenly on defense and discretionary programs. They are scheduled to start in January.

Now, Congress is trying to avoid the already-agreed-upon consequence of failure, and re-negotiate the sequester.

Defense spending: Slaying the sacred cow

Both parties agree something must be done. Across-the-board cuts at the Pentagon are undesirable, and lawmakers generally agree that an alternative must be developed.

The Pentagon is already digesting $450 billion of reductions over the next decade, and fears the additional $500 billion or more in cuts may be imminent.

"Such a large cut, applied in this indiscriminate manner, would render most of our ship and construction projects unexecutable … and seriously damage other modernization efforts," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said late last year in a letter to members of Congress.

The plan being debated in the House would avoid those cuts at the Pentagon, but it will almost surely be defeated in the Senate, where Democrats still outnumber Republicans payday loans with no fax.

Democrats have yet to offer their own plan on how to best avoid the sequester, but generally favor increasing taxes on the wealthy as a way to achieve deficit reduction.

A report prepared by the House Budget Committee Democratic staff called the Republican plan an "unbalanced approach to deficit reduction" that recommends cuts to "vital services that will affect Americans."

There are questions, too, about some of the budget cuts. Democratic House staffers have called the effort to repeal part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill a budget-savings "gimmick."

Republicans say billions can be saved by stripping the FDIC of the authority to shut down a failing financial firm. But Democrats contend that the bill contains a self-funding mechanism that will allow all costs to be recouped from other large financial firms.

Korb: How to cut $1 trillion from the Pentagon

The measure does serve as the opening salvo in a budget battle that is likely to linger beyond the general election and into the year-end lame duck congressional session.

That’s when lawmakers will try to avoid driving off the so-called "fiscal cliff": the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts; the expiration of the "doc fix"; and the end of a host of smaller tax breaks and emergency unemployment benefits.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan told Democrats last month that there is "no reason why we cannot work together to replace the sequester."

But most political observers see few reasons for optimism, and instead expect the fight over replacing the sequester to become a campaign issue, especially if Ryan is chosen as a running mate for Mitt Romney. The Republican presidential nominee has said he would like to avoid cuts at the Pentagon, and has in fact advocated for a sharp increase in defense spending. 

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Buffett said Saturday he was feeling good despite disclosing last month that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Buffett employed the newspaper tossing skills of his youth for a contest at Saturday’s annual meeting. Anyone who can throw a folded Omaha World-Herald further than Berkshire’s 81-year-old chairman and CEO will win a Dilly bar from DQ short term personal loans.

As Buffett toured the exhibit hall, shareholders mobbed him, trying to take pictures with their cellphones. Buffett and Berkshire Vice Chairman Charlie Munger will spend more than five hours answering questions before a crowd of more than 30,000.

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While it’s true that the unemployment rate is falling, that doesn’t include the millions of nonworking adults who aren’t even looking for a job anymore. And hiring isn’t strong enough to keep up with population growth.

As a result, the labor force is now at its smallest size since the 1980s when compared to the broader working age population.

"We’ve been getting some job growth and it’s been significant, but it hasn’t yet been strong enough that you start to get people re-engaging in the labor market," said Keith Hall, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center and former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Job market dropouts

A person is counted as part of the labor force if they have a job or have looked for one in the last four weeks. Only about 64% of Americans over the age of 16 currently fall into that category, according to the Labor Department. That’s the lowest labor force participation rate since 1984.

It’s a worrisome sign for the economy and partly explains why the unemployment rate has been falling recently. Only people looking for work are considered officially unemployed.

Jason Everett, for example, wouldn’t be counted.

Out of work for nearly three years now, Everett has given up his job search altogether.

Instead, the unemployed plumber and Air Force veteran takes a few community college courses and looks after his two children while his wife is the primary breadwinner.

"I’m not even totally convinced the college degree is really going to help at this point, but I figure at least I’ll be doing something," he said.

The unofficially unemployed

Last year there were 86 million people who didn’t have a job and weren’t consistently looking for one, according to Labor Department data.

Older people, ages 65 and over, account for more than a third. Young people between 16 and 24 make up another fifth. More than half don’t have a college degree and more than two thirds are white.

Many of the teens and 20-somethings may be enrolled in either high school or college full-time. And many of the over 65 crowd are probably retired.

But what about the other 36 million folks who fall in between?

The truth is, the Labor Department simply doesn’t know why they’re not in the labor force. Many may be staying home with children or other relatives. Some may have gone back to school or retraining programs. Others could be disabled and unable to work, and some may have retired early.

"Even in the best of times, there are millions of people who don’t want to work for a variety for reasons," Hall said.

But he suspects the number of "disengaged" Americans, like Everett, is higher than usual as a direct result of the recession.

About six million people claim they want a job, even though they haven’t looked for one in the last four weeks. If they were to all start applying for work again, the unemployment rate would suddenly shoot up above 11%.

Check the unemployment rate in your state

"At this point, the labor market is worse than people realize because people are discouraged. Certainly, a large number of workers have given up on the job market," Hall said.

That said, the decline in labor force participation is not a new problem. After peaking at 67.3% in early 2000, the rate has been falling ever since.

Researchers at the Chicago Federal Reserve attribute a large part of the decline to the recent recession and lackluster recovery, but the other half to long-term demographic trends.

For example, as more women entered the labor force between the 1960s and 1990s, the participation rate rose rapidly. That effect may have plateaued since then.

Meanwhile, as Baby Boomers entered their prime working years, they also drove the participation rate higher. Once they started hitting their 50s and 60s though, many started transitioning into retirement.

Finally, teenage jobs have been on the decline and college enrollment picked up in the last decade, leading more young people to not be counted in the labor force.

As these trends continue, the Chicago Fed expects the labor force participation rate will keep falling, hitting 62.4% by 2020.

That poses a problem for a variety of reasons.

It hits tax revenue and makes it harder to fund social safety nets like Social Security. Not to mention, it’s likely to increase income inequality.

Most importantly though, it makes the U.S. economy less productive and weighs on growth. 

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