The Business Record Economic Forecast event will be held from 5 to 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Hotel Fort Des Moines. Registration begins at 4:30 p.m. The cost is $25. Robert Baur, chief global economist for Principal Global Investors, and David Vaudt, state auditor, are the keynote speakers. Kim Bakey of Iowa Realty Inc. will be honored as the 2010 Prairie Meadows CFO of the Year. Click here to purchase tickets.

Four chambers of commerce in Greater Des Moines will have a chat over coffee with four elected officials at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday at RDG Planning & Design, 301 Grand Ave. Rep. Ako Abdul-Samad, Sen. Jack Hatch, Des Moines City Councilwoman Christine Hensley and Polk County Supervisor E.J. Giovannetti will meet with Tiffany Tauscheck, president of the Des Moines Downtown Chamber of Commerce, and representatives from the South Des Moines Chamber of Commerce, East Des Moines Chamber of Commerce and Des Moines West Side Chamber of Commerce to discuss issues important to businesses.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s investment bank slashed their compensation in the fourth quarter, Bloomberg reported. The three Wall Street firms set aside $39.9 billion for pay in 2009, below the 2007 record of $44.7 billion. The total fell short of the $46.1 billion five analysts had forecast this month and is almost $10 billion less than what some analysts estimated in October. “There’s no question that Wall Street got the message from Washington,” Michael Robinson, a senior vice president of Levick Strategic Communications and former head of public affairs at the Securities and Exchange Commission, told Bloomberg. “But positioning the big banks with big bonuses as the bad guys has played well for politicians, and they are likely going to keep coming back to it. To some extent, banks are just going to have to be prepared for that.”

Economists are optimistic that the recovery will continue in 2010, as the pace of job losses slows and hiring picks up, according to a survey released today. In the quarterly survey by the National Association for Business Economics, nearly a third of respondents expect hiring to increase in the first half of the year, up from 17 percent a year ago, CNNMoney.com reported. The outlooks were particularly strong for the financial and services sectors, with about 40 percent of economists expecting those industries to add jobs. Fewer than 15 percent of economists from the goods-producing and transportation sectors expect those industries to hire workers.