Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
The Trump administration is signaling that banks may soon unveil a new kind of plastic branded as “Trump cards,” a proposal that fuses the White House’s populist credit card push with its broader fight over access to financial services. The idea lands at a moment when President Donald Trump is pressuring lenders on interest rates…
Johnny Carson’s onetime retreat in the hills above Los Angeles is back in the spotlight, with his former Bel-Air estate returning to the market at just under $40 m. The Midcentury Modern compound, long held by his third wife Joanna Carson, is now being positioned as both a blue-chip piece of real estate and a…
The Federal Reserve is scrambling to contain a fast‑moving threat that is no longer theoretical: highly capable artificial intelligence tools are now being used to break the very security systems banks spent decades building. After OpenAI leaders warned that financial institutions face an “impending fraud crisis,” regulators and bankers are racing to upgrade defenses before…
President Donald Trump’s decision to assert control over Venezuela’s oil sector has instantly rearranged the global energy chessboard, turning a long isolated petrostate into a prize for well positioned corporations and financiers. The biggest winners are likely to be a tight circle of American oil majors, bond speculators and refinery operators that spent years preparing…
Bank of America is sounding an alarm that cuts to the core of how modern finance is wired. If regulators allow interest-bearing stablecoins to compete head-on with traditional deposits, the bank’s chief executive says trillions of dollars could migrate out of the regulated banking system and into digital tokens. That kind of shift would not…
Early January 2026 opened with a wave of job cuts at major U.S. employers, as companies moved quickly to reset costs and restructure for the year ahead. With More than 100 firms signaling layoffs through formal notices and internal plans, workers across sectors are confronting renewed uncertainty. I break down eight prominent U.S. companies that…
President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on metals and autos were meant to squeeze rivals and pull allies closer. Instead, they have jolted Canada into a surprise strategic embrace with China, complete with its own tariff bargain and a new political vocabulary of “partnership” and “reset.” What began as a defensive move against a 50% levy…
United Parcel Service is undertaking the most sweeping overhaul of its workforce in more than a century, cutting 48,000 positions as it tries to reset its business model for a slower, more competitive era of parcel delivery. The move, which executives have framed as a historic restructuring, marks a break from the e‑commerce boom years…
Big bank executives are telling investors that the United States is on solid footing, even as public debate fixates on a so‑called K‑shaped economy where the affluent surge ahead and everyone else falls behind. Their message is blunt: the picture of a country split into winners and losers is, in their view, overstated, and the…
Americans are still wrestling with stubbornly high prices, and the political fight over who can actually make life cheaper has only intensified. President Donald Trump has rolled out a menu of ideas, from capping credit card rates to squeezing tech giants on energy use, but Nobel economist Paul Krugman argues that one relatively simple institutional…