Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
UnitedHealth is back under the regulatory spotlight, with fresh scrutiny of its Medicare business arriving just as investors are still digesting earlier legal and political blows. The new accusations raise questions about how much legal risk is already reflected in UNH’s valuation and how much more volatility shareholders should brace for. I see a company…
The Trump administration’s health team tried to quietly pull roughly $2 billion from the country’s mental health and addiction safety net, then scrambled to put the money back after a political and public health firestorm. The Department of Health and Human Services is now racing not only to restore the grants on paper but also…
For many families, the dream of having one parent at home with the kids collides quickly with the reality of rent, groceries and health insurance. The amount a single earner has to bring in so the other parent can step back from paid work varies sharply by state, shaped by housing markets, wages and taxes….
China’s trade machine just delivered a blunt verdict on Washington’s tariff strategy. In 2025 the country booked a record trade surplus of $1.2 trillion, a figure that surged even as President Donald Trump escalated duties on Chinese goods. Rather than forcing Beijing to bend, the tariff fight has coincided with a wider realignment of global…
The Internal Revenue Service has now locked in the 2025 income tax brackets, standard deduction amounts, and key retirement contribution limits, setting the rules that will govern how much of your paycheck ultimately goes to Washington. The structure of the system is familiar, but the thresholds and deductions have shifted enough that a passive approach…
The Pentagon is making an unusually direct bet on the future of U.S. missile power, committing $1 billion to the rocket motor arm of L3Harris in a move that blends industrial policy with hard-edged defense planning. Instead of relying solely on contracts, the government is taking an equity stake in a new Missile Solutions business…
Donald Trump’s relationship with the oil industry has usually been defined by mutual convenience, not confrontation. So when a prominent energy executive publicly challenged his approach, the reaction inside the White House was described by one aide as pure blowback, the kind that comes when a president expects deference and instead gets a blunt reality…
Boeing has finally put hard numbers behind its long-promised turnaround, logging its strongest year of jet deliveries since 2018 and signaling that its industrial recovery is gaining real traction. After years of crisis and production setbacks, the company has pushed output back to levels that matter for airlines, investors, and rivals alike. The comeback is…
JetZero has just secured a war chest that would make most climate-tech startups blink, raising $175 million to push a radically different airliner shape from sketchpad to sky. The Long Beach company is betting that a blended-wing body can cut fuel burn so sharply that even entrenched giants like Airbus and Boeing will have to…
For students and career changers, the safest bet in a choppy labor market is a bachelor’s degree that lines up with a large, steady stream of openings. Instead of chasing fads, the data point to a handful of fields that employers hire for year after year, from business operations to healthcare and technology. I focus…