Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
The United States has just handed a small group of crypto-native companies the keys to the banking system, and Ripple is one of them. That shift raises a sharper question than ever for investors and policymakers alike: if crypto firms can now operate as regulated banks, where does that leave XRP itself in the evolving…
Once your savings climb past $250,000, you are no longer just a diligent saver, you are managing a balance that interacts directly with federal insurance rules, bank risk and long term investing choices. Hitting that figure changes what happens to every extra dollar, from how much is protected in a crisis to whether your cash…
Netflix’s long-promised crackdown on password sharing has finally landed where it always would: in viewers’ wallets. Millions of people who once piggybacked on a friend’s or relative’s login have been forced either to start paying or to walk away, even as the company converts that friction into record subscriber and revenue growth. The result is…
The Trump administration is moving to recast how the United States fights dirty money, shifting power toward the Treasury Department and promising to lighten the load on banks while still targeting criminals and terrorists. The emerging plan would amount to the most significant rewrite of anti-money-laundering rules in years, with implications for Wall Street compliance…
Federal student loan interest is shifting again for the 2025-26 academic year, and the change will affect how much borrowers ultimately pay, even if the move looks modest on paper. Rates for new federal loans are edging down slightly from this year’s levels, but they remain far higher than what recent graduates saw earlier in…
Millions of student loan borrowers who had budgeted around the Saving on a Valuable Education repayment formula are now staring at a sudden jump in monthly bills, as the Trump administration moves to shut the program down years earlier than expected. The shift threatens to upend finances for households that had come to rely on…
New York drivers and shippers are staring at a toll increase that did not arrive through the usual front door of public hearings and formal votes. Instead, a quiet policy shift by the Thruway Authority has triggered what critics describe as a hidden hike, and the way it happened is setting off alarms far beyond…
The United States has finally done what generations of shoppers joked about but policymakers long resisted: it has stopped making the penny. That decision caps more than two centuries of minting 1 cent coins and forces a rethink of how small-value payments work in an economy that is already tilting toward cards and phones. As…
USAA is sending a massive $3.7 billion back to its members, a payout that underscores how the member-owned insurer shares financial results with the people who buy its products. I see this kind of return as more than a headline number, because it affects how policyholders budget, how they think about loyalty, and what they…
Netflix’s blockbuster agreement to buy key Warner Bros assets is already reshaping expectations for the streaming market, and the most immediate question for subscribers is simple: how soon will their monthly bill go up. The price of this deal, the history of Netflix’s past increases, and the timing of the merger all point to a…