This week’s top business news — Jan. 19-23, 2015

From the President’s State of the Union address to the ECB’s announcement of a new quantitative easing program, economic news from both the U.S. and Europe dominated the headlines this week. What follows is a list of what Talking Biz News views to be this week’s top 10 stories.

Monday:

• Uber CEO strikes conciliatory tone in Europe, by Amir Mizroch and Ellen Emmerentze Jervell of The Wall Street Journal
• As profits fall, JPMorgan rejects calls to break up the megabank, by Matthew Zeitlin of Buzzfeed Business

Tuesday:

• Obama calls for closing U.S. income gap, by Mike Dorning and Angela Keane of Bloomberg
• Halliburton, Baker Hughes to lay off thousands as oil slumps, by Swetha Gopinath and Shubhankar Chakravorty of Reuters

Wednesday:

• &.P. to pay nearly $80 million in settlements, by Ben Protess and Matthew Goldstein of The New York Times
• The global innovation index, by Peter Coy, Wei Lu, Keith Collins, Jeremy Scott Diamond, Braulio Amado, Cindy Hoffman and Adam Pearce of Bloomberg

Thursday:

• Family Dollar, Dollar Tree set to join ranks of incredible shrinking retailers, by Brian Sozzi of The Street
• The ECB takes out the bazooka: It’ll buy over 1 trillion euros of bonds to save Europe’s economy, by Matt O’Brien of The Washington Post

Friday:

• New king in Saudi Arabia unlikely to alter oil policy, by Stanley Reed of The New York Times
• No more Bigfoot garden statues?!? SkyMall files for bankruptcy, by Tom Huddlestone Jr. of Fortune