Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Grocery shoppers are being greeted by a new line on their receipts, a small checkout fee that can quietly snowball into a meaningful hit to the monthly food budget. A 10 cent charge on paper carryout bags might sound trivial, but for households that rely on store bags several times a week, it can add…
Millions of federal student loan borrowers who enrolled in President Joe Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education plan have enjoyed an unusually long break from payments. For 7.6 million Americans, that pause is about to give way to a very different repayment landscape, shaped by court rulings, a new presidential administration, and sweeping policy changes…
President Donald Trump told Americans that by Jan. 20, credit card companies would be breaking the law if they charged more than 10 percent interest. Yet as that deadline passed, card statements still showed rates in the high teens and twenties, and banks kept business as usual. The gap between the promise and reality lies…
Texas is testing how far a state can go in tying everyday life to immigration status, and the backlash is coming from places Republican leaders do not usually expect: county tax offices and the auto industry. A new push to tighten identification rules for vehicle registration has united local officials, car dealers and immigrant advocates…
Across the United States, a quiet new line on grocery receipts is stirring loud frustration. A wave of carryout bag rules and checkout tweaks is turning what looks like pocket change into a recurring hit for shoppers who already feel squeezed by higher food prices. Many are discovering that the fee that seems trivial on…
The United States is marking 250 years with a fresh set of circulating coins, but the designs are already sparking debate over what, and who, is missing. Instead of spotlighting some of the country’s hardest fought struggles, the new images lean heavily on familiar founders and broad patriotic themes. That tension between commemoration and omission…
President Donald Trump’s call for a one year, 10% ceiling on credit card interest has put Wall Street’s most powerful executives on the spot. The idea sounds simple and popular, but the people who actually run the card business say it would ripple through everything from bank earnings to who gets approved for plastic in…
America’s biggest banks just posted the kind of numbers that usually send markets into a full‑throated rally, yet the reaction has been oddly muted. Profits are up, revenue is at records, and deposit flight fears have faded, but traders are treating the results as one more data point in a foggy outlook rather than a…
Collectors are quietly hunting through wallets and cash drawers for the redesigned blue security–strip $100 notes, because some of them are trading for far more than face value. With the right combination of serial number, condition and scarcity, a single bill that spends like $100 can sell for as much as $2,500 to a specialist…
Cash used to feel like the one part of personal finance that was simple: money in the bank, ready when you needed it. That picture is changing fast as new reporting rules, fraud controls, and transparency laws tighten how and when large sums can move. Your balance might look the same on a screen, but…