Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Wells Fargo has signed off on a striking 28% pay increase for Chief Executive Charlie Scharf, lifting his total potential compensation for 2025 to $40 million. The package, which vaults Scharf into the very top tier of U.S. bank bosses, comes as the lender tries to turn a page on years of regulatory penalties and…
Warnings that the global economy could face a 2008-style shock in 2026 are no longer coming from fringe pessimists but from official surveys focused squarely on artificial intelligence. The latest research flags a build-up of leverage behind AI infrastructure and stocks that looks uncomfortably like the mortgage-fueled excesses of the last crisis, only faster and…
The United States is gliding into a labor market shock that will not look like past recessions, and the warning signs are hiding in plain sight. Official jobless figures still look manageable, yet the combination of rapid automation, slowing hiring, and deep racial and sectoral divides is setting the stage for a wave of displaced…
Texas is not just adding people and jobs, it is steadily increasing the amount of economic output and income available to each resident. Strip out the population surge and the state is generating thousands of dollars more per person than it did only a few years ago, a sign that households are genuinely getting richer…
Kevin Warsh is not yet running the Federal Reserve, but markets are already trading on the possibility that he could quietly reset how money works across the globe. President Trump’s decision to nominate the former central banker to replace Fed Chair Jerome Powell signals a potential break with the past decade and a half of…
Zillow has launched a sweeping cull of underperformers, cutting roughly 3% of its workforce in what insiders describe as a harsh performance purge at the real estate technology giant. The move eliminates about 200 roles across the company, signaling a tougher internal culture around results at a time when the housing market remains choppy and…
Paul Krugman is warning that President Donald Trump’s impulsive trade moves and social media outbursts are not just rattling markets, they are pushing the rest of the world to reorganize its economic life without America. In his telling, what began as a noisy trade war is hardening into a structural split that will leave Americans…
New York’s long running Bay Ridge condo scandal has reached a turning point, with a court ordering landlord Xi Hui “Steven” Wu to repay more than $4.2 M to the immigrant families he deceived. The ruling forces the man who “sold” nonexistent or illegal apartments to finally return $4.2 Million, plus interest, to buyers who…
The fight over who controls interest rates is no longer an abstract battle in Washington. It is arriving directly in Americans’ bank statements just as savings yields start to slip and inflation anxiety lingers. With the war for the Federal Reserve’s future intensifying, the return on a basic savings account really does feel as if…
Corporate America is starting 2026 with a jolt, as Dow and Home Depot move to cut thousands of jobs in a labor market that had seemed remarkably resilient. Their decisions land in the middle of a broader reset in which major employers are trimming headcount, rethinking remote work and leaning harder on automation and artificial…