Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Taylor Chip, a Lancaster County cookie brand that styled itself as a fresh competitor to Crumbl, is now seeking protection from its creditors in federal court. The company has filed for Chapter 11, a move that collides awkwardly with recent public investment and raises questions about how aggressively governments should back fast-growing food chains. The…
Ron Paul, the former Republican congressman and longtime critic of the Federal Reserve, has spent decades arguing that the U.S. monetary system amounts to a legalized fraud against ordinary savers. His core claim is straightforward: a currency backed by nothing but government promises, paired with relentless debt expansion, quietly destroys the purchasing power of every…
The Seattle City Council declared a public health emergency on October 28, 2025, responding to a wave of grocery store closures that threaten to cut off food access for entire neighborhoods. The move, which includes emergency legislation banning restrictive covenants that prevent new grocery stores from opening, represents one of the most aggressive local government…
The economists behind one of the most cited descriptions of America’s pandemic-era labor market have a warning that extends well beyond the data tables. The authors of a Bureau of Labor Statistics working paper, whose research gave empirical weight to the idea that the post-COVID recovery was splitting workers into winners and losers, built their…
Federal Reserve policymaker Austan Goolsbee is tying any further interest-rate cuts to whether inflation keeps drifting toward the central bank’s 2 percent goal, sharpening the focus on every new price report. His stance matters because it helps set the bar for when the Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC, will feel comfortable easing more after…
Gold has been in focus this year, drawing investor attention to exchange-traded funds that hold physical bullion. But investors buying products like the SPDR Gold Trust may not realize that the IRS can treat their gains differently from ordinary stock profits. The tax treatment baked into these funds, disclosed in their own regulatory filings, could…
January’s Consumer Price Index report landed with a clear message for bitcoin holders: the inflation story that supported their biggest thesis is weakening. With headline CPI rising just 0.2% month-over-month and the annual rate dropping to 2.4% from December’s 2.7%, the macro environment that once made bitcoin look like a natural hedge is shifting under…
Elon Musk is framing a newly released trove of Medicaid spending data as a major victory for his Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. The release coincides with a federal finding that 2.8 million Americans may be enrolled in duplicate health coverage plans, a problem the administration says costs taxpayers $14 billion each year. But…
Walmart’s $2.3 billion all-cash acquisition of Vizio, announced on May 21, 2024, signals a strategic push to leverage artificial intelligence for targeted advertising across 18 million connected TVs. This move forces major technology companies to share revenues through cloud services and AI partnerships while Walmart builds higher-margin advertising and membership businesses projected to generate $8.2…
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says Moscow has still not received a single formal response to Vladimir Putin’s proposal to pay 1 billion dollars to join Donald Trump’s Board of Peace for Gaza reconstruction. The offer hinges on unblocking frozen Russian assets so the money can be transferred as a “permanent membership” contribution. Putin unveiled the…
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