Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
The official in charge of safeguarding the United States financial system now wants to rewrite the rules that govern it. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is pushing to remake the powerful council that polices systemic risk, arguing that the current framework is choking off credit and innovation instead of preventing the next crisis. His call to…
The next phase of the market cycle is starting to look less like a late-stage grind and more like the early innings of a new expansion, with earnings growth poised to reaccelerate. Morgan Stanley is leaning into that view, arguing that investors who position now for an economic upswing can tap into a powerful combination…
U.S. stocks are back in record territory, powered by a narrow group of technology giants and relentless enthusiasm for artificial intelligence. Valuations are stretching, forecasts are climbing, and yet the nagging question of whether this is an AI bubble refuses to fade from the tape. I see a market that is both rationally excited about…
Walmart’s sweeping reset of its self-checkout strategy is reshaping how millions of Americans move through the front of the store, and competitors are scrambling to keep up. Instead of a simple expansion or retreat, the retailer is selectively removing kiosks, tightening rules, and rethinking “smart” technology in ways that are already rippling across the broader…
China’s biggest technology buyers are turning away from Nvidia’s H200 artificial intelligence chip, signaling that Washington’s carefully calibrated export strategy is not playing out as planned. Instead of locking Chinese firms into a slower, U.S. controlled upgrade path, Beijing is using the opening to accelerate its own semiconductor ecosystem and blunt American leverage over its…
Prices in the United States are no longer climbing at the breakneck pace of the pandemic years, but they are not falling across the board, and they are certainly not “coming down very substantially” in the sweeping way President Donald Trump keeps telling voters. The official inflation gauges show a slower rise in costs, not…
Apple CEO Tim Cook now earns so much money, so quickly, that the average American’s yearly paycheck is roughly a morning’s work for him, and a typical house costs him about a long weekend. His compensation has become a vivid shorthand for the widening gap between corporate leaders and the workers whose labor underpins their…
DOGE was supposed to be over. The Department of Government Efficiency was declared finished, its brand retired, its operatives scattered. Yet inside agencies, staff now describe something closer to a phase change than a shutdown, with the same methods and people quietly embedded in the bureaucracy’s daily work. In place of a headline-grabbing crusade, DOGE…
Wall Street is enjoying record stock prices even as a growing chorus of strategists warns that the next decade could look far less generous for investors. The fear is not of an imminent crash, but of a grinding period in which inflation, interest rates and slower growth quietly erode returns and leave index investors treading…
Elon Musk is reassessing one of his most high-profile political experiments, conceding that the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, delivered only modest gains and is not a model he wants to repeat. His shift in tone marks a rare public admission that his aggressive push to streamline Washington under President Donald Trump has not…