[naviga:h3]Sears to close 46 stores in Nov., may sell Kenmore

HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill. — Sears Holdings Corp. is closing another 13 Kmart stores and 33 Sears stores as sales shrink and losses grow.

The ailing company said Thursday that liquidation sales at the 46 unprofitable stores marked for closure will start Aug. 30, and the stores will close in November. The company said it informed its workers.

The move comes as Sears is considering a bid from CEO Eddie Lampert’s hedge fund ESL Investments to acquire its jewel Kenmore appliances from the company for $400 million. The company has put others of its famous brands on the block before.

In January, Sears had said it was closing 100 stores. It announced in May that it was closing another 100. As of May 5, it had about 894 stores, down from about 1,000 at the end of last year. The number of stores peaked in 2012 at 4,000, which included the Sears Canada division that was later spun off. In 2005, when Sears merged with Kmart, it operated 2,200 stores.

The latest closings underscore the deep-rooted problems at Sears, a onetime powerhouse retailer that survived two world wars and the Great Depression but has been calving off pieces of itself as it burns through money.

[naviga:h3]Fed officials: Trump comments won’t affect rate vote[/naviga:h3]

WASHINGTON — Two top Federal Reserve officials said Thursday that President Donald Trump’s complaints that the Fed’s interest rate increases risk hurting the U.S. economy won’t affect their decisions on whether to raise rates.

Esther George, president of the Fed’s Kansas City regional bank, said she thinks two more rate increases this year “could be appropriate” in light of the strong economy. And Robert Kaplan, head of the Dallas regional bank, said he expected three to four rate hikes over the next nine to 12 months.

Both separately dismissed any notion that Trump’s critical comments about the Fed’s rate increases would factor into their policies.

“Our job at the Fed is to make decisions on monetary policy and supervision without regard to political considerations, and I’m confident we’ll continue to do that,” Kaplan said in a CNBC interview.

George, in a separate CNBC interview, said, “Expressions of angst about higher interest rates are not unique to this administration.”

She suggested that Congress had “anticipated this kind of tension when they designed the central bank, and they put firewalls in place so that the central bank can be independent and carry forward with its decision making.”

The remarks from Kaplan and George came as central bankers gathered for their annual summer conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo.