Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Amazon is no longer content to dominate only the digital aisle. Its latest move, a sprawling big-box experiment outside Chicago, signals a direct assault on Walmart’s core territory of weekly stock-up trips and one-stop household shopping. By scaling up to a footprint that rivals or exceeds traditional supercenters, Amazon is turning physical retail into the…
Wall Street went into the new year convinced that the Federal Reserve would glide into a neat, predictable cycle of interest rate cuts. Instead, Goldman Sachs has jolted that consensus, first flagging reasons the Federal Reserve might move earlier than investors assumed, then abruptly signaling that cuts could arrive later than markets had priced in….
California Governor Gavin Newsom is trying to slam the brakes on a proposed wealth tax that targets the fortunes of the state’s richest residents, warning it could drive capital and companies out of the state. He has branded the measure “nonsense” and signaled he is prepared to fight it aggressively if it reaches voters, setting…
Elon Musk is no longer talking only about Mars. He has started sketching a path for humanity that stretches all the way to other stars, with future generations of Starship-scale vehicles forming the backbone of an interstellar migration plan. The blueprint is wildly ambitious, but it is also being built on hardware that already exists,…
China is tightening its grip on discounted Russian crude just as the global energy map is being scrambled by war, sanctions and tariff threats. The country is not only buying more barrels, it is also reshaping storage, trade and diplomacy to turn that flow into long term leverage. The result is a fragile bargain in…
Two veterans of Citadel and Point72 have secured a striking $200 million commitment to launch a new hedge fund seeded by Squarepoint Capital, underscoring how aggressively the industry is still willing to bankroll proven quantitative talent. The new firm, led by Tomohiro Yamaguchi and Takeo Serizawa, instantly joins the top tier of start‑ups by capital…
Senator Elizabeth Warren is turning a procedural breach into a broader indictment of President Donald Trump’s stewardship of the economy, arguing that his early disclosure of confidential jobs data is part of a pattern of disregard for rules meant to protect ordinary investors. In a series of public remarks, she has framed the leak as…
Artificial intelligence is colliding with a very old constraint: the electric grid. As Microsoft races to build out massive AI data centers across the United States, communities are increasingly worried that the power needed to train large models will show up on their monthly bills. In response, the company is rolling out a sweeping “community-first”…
Baby boomers now control a towering share of American wealth, a stockpile that has become shorthand for generational tension. The question is whether that $85.4 trillion hoard will ultimately entrench inequality or give younger Americans the financial break they have struggled to find. The answer depends less on the size of the pot than on…
UPS is pulling back from a key distribution hub in Alabama, a move that crystallizes how its break with Amazon is reshaping the company’s entire U.S. network. The closure, part of a broader plan to strip out roughly $8 billion in costs, is landing hardest on workers and local officials who once saw parcel logistics…
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