Category: Markets and Macro

Importers owed tariff refunds by the U.S. government are now being offered upfront cash buyouts worth 60 percent or more of their pending claims, feeding a secondary market that has grown to an estimated $100 billion as federal processing delays stretch on. The offers come from investors betting they can collect the full refund later,…

Ford CEO Jim Farley told a podcast audience that his company has thousands of open mechanic and technician positions paying as much as $120,000 a year, yet cannot fill them because the training pipeline produces far fewer skilled workers than the industry loses. The disclosure puts a sharp number on a problem that stretches well…

A bipartisan group of senators is pushing to create a fiscal commission charged with reining in federal spending and debt, which now exceeds $38.8 trillion. Senators Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, John Curtis, a Utah Republican, and Angus King, a Maine independent, along with other colleagues, introduced the Bipartisan Fiscal Commission Act as the government’s…

A growing number of U.S. employers are abandoning performance-based raises in favor of uniform pay increases spread evenly across their workforces, a strategy compensation professionals call “peanut butter” pay because it smears the same thin layer over everyone. The tactic mirrors what companies did during the 2008-2009 financial crisis, when recession fears drove firms to…

A coalition of Democratic lawmakers introduced multiple bills on February 20, 2026, demanding that the federal government automatically refund tariffs paid by small businesses under President Donald Trump’s trade orders, which federal courts have ruled illegal. The push, estimated to involve as much as $175 billion in total refunds, has drawn support from both chambers…

Federal regulators across at least four agencies have now issued warnings about fraudulent messages reaching Americans’ phones through text and messaging apps, with scam losses hitting $470 million in 2024 alone. The concern is no longer limited to individual theft. A growing body of evidence ties the same phone-based misinformation channels to broader financial instability,…

The post-2008 era of near-zero interest rates, when central banks flooded economies with cheap credit, is over. A convergence of sticky inflation, record sovereign borrowing needs, and fragile market plumbing now threatens to expose how deeply governments, corporations, and investors built their strategies around money that no longer comes cheap. The adjustment has barely begun,…

President Donald Trump’s early 2025 executive order calling for a U.S. sovereign wealth fund set off a chain of events that has quietly reshaped the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, a federal agency originally designed to support overseas development. What began as a 90-day planning exercise for a new national investment vehicle has instead become…

Taiwan’s government has flatly refused to reopen the terms of its recently signed trade agreement with the United States after a Supreme Court ruling limited presidential tariff authority. Vice Premier Cheng Li-chiun told reporters that preferential tariff treatment for Taiwan’s exports, set at 15 percent under the arrangement with Washington, will not change. The comments…

Home Depot reported fourth-quarter results on February 24, 2026, revealing that American homeowners have pulled back sharply on big renovation projects as housing affordability and job-security worries intensify. The nation’s largest home-improvement retailer posted $38.2 billion in quarterly sales, a 3.8% year-over-year decline, while comparable sales barely moved. The results, paired with a housing market…