Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Americans are not just feeling the pinch of higher prices, they are increasingly pointing the finger at President Donald Trump. A new wave of polling shows that by roughly a two to one margin, adults in the United States say Trump has pushed the cost of living up rather than down, a striking reversal from…
Argentina’s economic unraveling is not just a local tragedy, it is a live stress test of what happens when chronic fiscal excess, political fragmentation, and social exhaustion collide. I see in Argentina’s turmoil a warning for other democracies that are flirting with similar pressures, from unsustainable debt and inflation to populist backlashes against traditional parties….
Shrinkflation in 2025 is quietly reshaping everyday shopping, as familiar staples get smaller while price tags stay put. From snack aisles to cleaning supplies, the pattern shows how brands respond to cost pressures without obvious sticker shock, leaving households to do the math. I will walk through eight concrete examples that illustrate how this hidden…
The headline numbers say the United States is still growing, yet daily life feels like a grind of higher prices, fragile jobs, and constant anxiety. That disconnect is not a mirage. It reflects an economy that is not collapsing all at once, but instead slipping into and out of trouble sector by sector, in a…
The United States now carries one of the largest public debt loads in history, and the raw figures are staggering enough to dominate headlines and campaign ads. To understand how that burden really compares with other nations, I need to look past the shock value of trillion‑dollar numbers and focus on scale, structure, and global…
California’s decade of surging tax receipts has allowed Governor Gavin Newsom to expand programs, promise ambitious climate investments, and backstop struggling cities without confronting the full cost of those commitments. That era is now colliding with slower growth, volatile capital gains, and a state budget that has swung from record surplus to deep deficit in…
Blue-collar employment is slipping even as political leaders and executives celebrate a manufacturing revival. The latest data show a net loss of 59,000 production and nonsupervisory jobs, a setback that undercuts the promise that reshoring and industrial policy would reliably lift working-class employment. I see a widening gap between the rhetoric of factory comebacks and…
President Donald Trump is pressing ahead with plans for a new White House ballroom, but he will not say how much of the project he will personally fund. The refusal to disclose his own contribution has turned what might have been a routine facilities upgrade into a test of transparency, ethics, and influence in the…
Disney’s latest animated sequel has surged out of the gate, with Zootopia 2 racing to an estimated 556,000,000 dollars worldwide in its first weekend and instantly resetting expectations for family box office potential. The film’s debut underscores how a well-timed follow up to a beloved original can still mobilize global audiences at scale, even in…
Big banks have helped drive some of the largest financial scandals of the modern era, yet the people who run them rarely see the inside of a courtroom, let alone a jail cell. Instead, institutions pay fines that barely dent their balance sheets while executives keep their bonuses and their careers. I want to unpack…