Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Tech’s richest founders are circling the next big frontier in physics, and the Future Circular Collider at CERN is rapidly becoming the focal point of that interest. While a specific $1 billion pledge from tech billionaires is unverified based on available sources, the scale of private wealth now eyeing deep science, combined with CERN’s own…
TikTok has agreed to carve out its American business into a new venture controlled by Oracle and a group of United States investors, a move designed to keep the app running in its largest market while satisfying national security hawks in Washington. The deal effectively approves a sale of TikTok’s U.S. unit into a complex…
Consumer confidence in the United States is slipping again as households look past lower borrowing costs and focus instead on a labor market that suddenly feels fragile. Rate cuts have eased some pressure on mortgages, credit cards, and auto loans, but a weaker jobs outlook and stubbornly high prices are weighing more heavily on how…
Target has spent the past few years watching profits leak out of its stores as theft and other losses quietly eroded margins. Now the retailer is betting that a mix of redesigned stores, tougher intervention rules, and new technology can finally plug a problem that has cost it billions of dollars in profit. The fix…
Elon Musk is already the richest person on the planet, but the numbers now swirling around SpaceX suggest his personal balance sheet is on the verge of entering a different universe. With a towering private valuation and a confirmed path to the public markets, a SpaceX IPO could be the catalyst that turns a several-hundred-billion-dollar…
The latest jobs report shows a labor market that is no longer sprinting ahead but starting to limp. Unemployment has climbed to 4.6%, the highest level in several years, and the shift is sharp enough that it is beginning to flash early warning signs for growth, markets, and household finances. The headline number still looks…
Cheaper fuel is quietly reshaping the economic mood in the United States, easing pressure at the pump and giving households a little more room to breathe. As gasoline prices retreat from their recent peaks, early signs point to a modest but meaningful lift in consumer confidence, even as inflation in other parts of the economy…
When a chief executive warns that his advice might hurt, most people brace for a lecture about working harder. McDonald’s chief executive officer Chris Kempczinski is going somewhere sharper: he is telling ambitious employees that the biggest obstacle to their careers is often the story they tell themselves about how advancement works. His recent comments,…
Corporate layoffs have ramped up in recent weeks, and the impact is spreading across industries that once looked insulated from large-scale cuts. I am focusing on seven major employers that, based on recent reporting, are each planning or executing job reductions on the scale of roughly 1,000 roles or more. Together, their decisions illustrate how…
U.S. inflation is back in the spotlight after a turbulent year for prices, interest rates and household budgets. Early estimates pointed to November delivering the sharpest annual rise in consumer prices in roughly a year and a half, even as the underlying pace of inflation looked cooler than many feared. That apparent contradiction, a headline…
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