Welcome to the site for Greg Burns. Find examples below of Greg’s critical thinking in action on the Chicago Tribune editorial board. Click the Archives tab for a few selected publications from the thousands Greg has written and edited on business and economics. The Video tab takes you to a sample of Greg’s expert TV…
A century ago, when Daniel Burnham was noodling his Plan of Chicago, he famously urged civic leaders to make no little plans. “Make big plans,” he added. Less known is the advice Burnham gave in the very next sentence: “Aim high in hope and work.” When Peter McKnight launched his Jamaica Jerk Villa restaurant at…
If you wonder why this jobs-hungry city has a reputation as a hard place to do business, read on. Looks to us like developers of a big Ford dealership planned for the North Side got tutored in Chicago-style political muscle. It’s a familiar story in a city and state where elected officials, in the words…
The Chicago Bears were watching instead of playing in Sunday’s Super Bowl, but that could change next year now that the team has hired a coach from a rising star among nations: Canada. Yes, Canada. Boring, eager-to-please Canada is taking Chicago by storm — in a nice way, of course. It isn’t just the arrival of Marc…
C.S. had plenty of cash. He wanted plenty of guns. He wanted them fast. He was a dream customer. He got what he wanted. Federal agents allege that last April 22, Levaine “Boo Man” Tanksley invited C.S. to his home on the South Side and sold him three .45-caliber Glock semi-automatic pistols for $2,300. C.S.…
A defining symbol of Chicago business is going the way of the stockyards. But it’s not going without a fight. For generations, the commodity trading pits have brought together buyers and sellers in a cacophony of arm-waving and shouting known as open outcry. CME Group, owner of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Chicago Board of…
Emanuel & Co. should get creative to shed the millstone. Chicago can’t afford to stand pat for the rest of these 75 years. New York City is exploring a deal to lease out its parking meters to a private company. As they say in the Big Apple, “Whattaya, nuts?” Don’t these Noo Yawkers know what…
Last July, two 14-year-old girls from Sterling in northwestern Illinois died of electrocution when they came into contact with irrigation equipment that had been damaged by lightning. Jade Garza and Hannah Kendall were best friends engaged in the seasonal ritual of detassling corn for seed production. Shortly after the girls’ deaths, the Labor Department proposed…
The U.S. needs all the jobs it can get, and we’re all for employers bringing factory work back here from China and other foreign locales. We support American manufacturing — period. But the nation is not going to see the return of loads of jobs that have been lost to outsourcing. The U.S. will prosper…
Jade Garza and Hannah Kendall, of Sterling, Ill., were 14-year-old best friends whose Facebook page describes how they laughed together every day. They died side by side Monday, electrocuted while working in an Illinois cornfield. Anyone who grew up in Midwest farm country is familiar with the annual summer ritual of removing tassels from seed…
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