Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
On paper, the United States is enjoying a powerful rebound, with headline growth, solid hiring and confident forecasts all pointing to a “booming” economy. Yet for millions of households, the lived reality is a grinding affordability crisis that makes that boom feel like a mirage. The gap between the glossy numbers and everyday life is…
California is racing toward a high-stakes showdown over whether to slap a new levy on its richest residents just as some of those fortunes are already heading for the exits. A proposed wealth tax aimed squarely at billionaires has split Democrats, rattled Silicon Valley and drawn in some of the country’s most powerful unions. At…
The Federal Reserve has chosen to hold its benchmark interest rate in a range of 3.5 to 3.75 percent, resisting direct pressure from President Donald Trump to ease more aggressively even as major stock indexes flirt with or surpass record highs. The move underscores a widening gap between a White House eager for cheaper money…
Amazon’s latest wave of job cuts is rippling far beyond its own campuses, feeding a broader surge in layoffs and hiring freezes that is testing worker confidence in the tech-driven economy. The company is eliminating 16,000 roles as it unwinds pandemic-era expansion and doubles down on artificial intelligence, a shift that is forcing other employers…
New York City’s new mayor is betting that the way out of a deep fiscal hole runs straight through the bank accounts of its wealthiest residents. Facing a projected $12 billion deficit and a fragile recovery in public services, Zohran Mamdani is pushing a steep tax increase on high earners as the centerpiece of his…
President Donald Trump’s threat to restore tariffs on South Korean imports to 25 percent has collided head‑on with Seoul’s aggressive regulatory campaign against a major U.S. tech firm, turning a technical trade dispute into a broader test of political leverage. What began as a fight over delayed ratification of a trade deal and new digital…
President Donald Trump’s decision to seize and rapidly sell Venezuelan oil after the military capture of President Nicolás Maduro has detonated a political fight over who really controls the money and whose interests are being served. What began as a dramatic foreign policy move is now colliding with basic questions of transparency, legality, and personal…
Investors entered 2026 riding a powerful bull market and a wave of optimism about earnings, but that confidence is colliding with a stark warning from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. After a year in which major indexes surged and valuations stretched, Powell has signaled that equity prices look expensive and that policy makers are in…
The race to build the infrastructure behind artificial intelligence has turned a handful of chip specialists into market barometers, and Nvidia sits squarely at the center of that storm. As demand for AI training and inference explodes, one of Nvidia’s closest partners has suddenly become a focal point for investors trying to gauge how far…
Mass layoffs have shifted from a background worry to a defining feature of early 2026, as job cuts at some of the country’s most recognizable employers collide with a workforce already exhausted by years of churn. The result is a climate in which workers are not only losing jobs at scale but also bracing for…