Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Bill Gates has spent decades at the top of the billionaire ranks, yet many of his daily choices still look surprisingly modest. I want to unpack six specific frugal habits Bill Gates still follows with billions, using recent reporting to show how his attitude toward money, comfort and status translates into concrete behaviors that ordinary…
American employers announced plans to eliminate 108,000 positions in January 2026, a figure that represents the steepest wave of planned job cuts to open a calendar year since the depths of the Great Recession. Yet the same month delivered a contradictory signal: the economy still managed to add jobs, suggesting the labor market is splitting…
American households are carrying more credit card debt than at any recent point, and the financial system’s own data confirms the strain is getting worse, not better. Revolving consumer credit, the standard measure of card borrowing, continues to climb while delinquencies and charge-offs accelerate at commercial banks. Five forces are converging to drive this surge,…
The Federal Trade Commission has forced Amazon into one of the largest consumer refund actions in recent memory, directing the company to return money to Prime members who were enrolled in the subscription service without clear consent. The settlement addresses years of complaints about a sign-up process designed to be frictionless going in but deliberately…
The U.S. Government Accountability Office has issued a direct warning that the federal government’s fiscal trajectory is unsustainable, calling on Congress to develop a concrete strategy before accelerating debt levels trigger broader economic and security consequences. With gross national debt climbing by trillions in a single year and interest costs consuming an ever-larger share of…
Two copper battles, one in the Arizona desert and another in the tropical lowlands of Panama, are converging to force a reckoning over how the United States secures the metal that powers everything from electric vehicles to data centers. The fight is not just about mining permits or export licenses. It is about whether the…
California Governor Gavin Newsom used the Munich Security Conference as a stage to pitch his state as a willing climate partner for European governments, even as the Trump administration moved to dismantle a foundational piece of U.S. environmental regulation back home. The split-screen moment captured a broader Democratic strategy: with federal climate policy in retreat,…
Six House Republicans broke with Donald Trump to back a measure disapproving his proposed tariffs on Canada, according to the official House roll call for that vote during a recent session of the U.S. House of Representatives. Their votes turned what might have been a routine party-line test into a rare public split over trade,…
Choosing between a 401(k) and a high-yield savings account is ultimately a decision about time. One account is built to handle this month’s surprises; the other is meant to fund expenses 20, 30, or even 40 years from now. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation tracks a national average savings rate through its national rate data,…
Kevin O’Leary, the investor best known from the TV show “Shark Tank,” says many people could stop working once they have $500,000 saved. In recent comments highlighted by Yahoo’s coverage, he claimed that half a million dollars in the bank can let someone “do nothing else to make money” and still live “comfortably” off the…