Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Costco shoppers who chase “deal” gift cards often think they are locking in safe savings at a trusted warehouse club. The collapse of Synergy’s rewards program shows how quickly that confidence can crack when a third-party partner fails and fine print takes over. The bad news for members is that federal rules and Costco’s own…
The U.S. Small Business Administration is preparing a rule change that would block many green card holders from its main small-business loan programs. By tightening ownership and residency standards for 7(a) and 504 loans, the agency is moving to treat lawful permanent residents as ineligible owners, even when they live and work in the United…
Crypto lender BlockFills has frozen client money movements just as bitcoin’s latest boom has started to fray, sharpening questions about whether high‑octane digital lending can survive another bout of stress. The Susquehanna‑backed firm has halted deposits and withdrawals while still allowing some trading, a split that exposes how fragile liquidity can become when it is…
Amazon shoppers have long been told that low prices are the company’s north star, but new tariffs are now testing how long that promise can hold. In recent public comments, Andy Jassy has warned that many sellers are likely to push higher import costs straight onto customers, even as he insists Amazon has not yet…
Another week brings another crypto firm telling clients they cannot reach their own money. BlockFills, a Susquehanna-backed lender and trading venue, has temporarily frozen both deposits and withdrawals after a sharp market slide. The move adds more pressure to a sector that often promises easy liquidity but has struggled to deliver it when prices fall….
Donald Trump’s $5 billion lawsuit against JPMorgan Chase turns a long-running fight over “debanking” into a direct clash between a former president and the country’s largest bank. At issue is whether a bank can legally close accounts because it fears reputational or compliance risk, or whether that kind of move can cross the line into…
YouTube TV is no longer a one-size-fits-all cable replacement. With new genre-focused plans and upgraded viewing tools, it now looks more like a streaming toolkit that you assemble yourself, piece by piece. The upside is real savings if you only care about certain channels, but the fine print on add-ons, taxes, and promos still determines…
Defaulted student loans do not just bruise your credit score, they trigger a legal collection machine that can seize paychecks and tax refunds while shutting you out of new aid. The good news is that federal rules still give you a narrow but powerful escape route if you act before collections fully ramp back up….
Jody and Paul Glaser of Los Altos did what millions of Americans still do every year: they wrote a paper check for their Santa Clara County property taxes, dropped it in the mail and trusted the system to work. Instead, thieves allegedly stole the envelope, altered the payee line, and walked out of a Wells…
Student loan forgiveness in 2025 looked frozen from a distance, with marquee programs tied up in courts and policy reversals while payments quietly resumed. Yet beneath that surface, thousands of borrowers still managed to erase balances through narrower channels that kept operating even as broader cancellation stalled. The result was a year that exposed how…