Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Donald Trump has made tariffs and trade wars central to his economic brand, pitching them as a way to protect American workers and industries. An analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), described on an official U.S. Senate Budget Committee page, points in a different direction and warns that tariff-heavy policy can raise prices and…
Imagine a household earning $250,000 a year hearing a promise from Donald Trump that federal income taxes could vanish. On paper, that sounds like a giant raise, the kind of change that might move a family from feeling merely comfortable to feeling flush. The real issue, though, is not only how much more they might…
New federal research on credit card interest rates is sharpening a long-running debate over how much profit is fair in consumer finance. By highlighting how far card APRs have climbed, regulators are effectively questioning the business model of the country’s largest lenders and inviting policymakers to ask whether current pricing still reflects basic economic conditions….
When the January 2026 jobs report landed, the Trump administration quickly pointed to it as proof that the labor market remained strong. The headline figures on hiring and pay growth gave the White House a clear opportunity to promote its economic record, and officials moved fast to highlight the gains in both employment and wages….
Oil prices crashing below 1 dollar a barrel would once have sounded like a typo, and that kind of extreme scenario still sits far outside the range of official forecasts. Instead, the latest projections from the U.S. Energy Information Administration point to a more measured cooling in oil markets, with prices easing over several years…
When a Republican member of Congress declares that the United States economy is “built on fraud” and near collapse, the charge lands in a country already anxious about jobs, prices, and debt. The words suggest a system propped up by fake numbers and easy money rather than real work and production. To test that claim,…
Harley-Davidson’s balance sheet is starting to look like one of its aging engines: still running, but under real strain. The company’s latest SEC filings show a heavy reliance on debt just as higher borrowing costs and uneven demand make that strategy riskier. The central question for investors now is whether the motorcycle icon can manage…
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,…
Shorting Nvidia has become a widely discussed contrarian trade just as artificial intelligence spending by Amazon, Google and other hyperscalers has accelerated in recent years. The basic bet is that the stock has run too far ahead of fundamentals. Yet a close read of the hard filings and the scale of cloud capital plans suggests…
Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to plant roots in Florida has become a convenient symbol in a much bigger fight over how far California should go in taxing extreme wealth. As California voters weigh a proposed “New tax on the wealth of billionaires,” the image of one of the world’s richest tech founders decamping to a low-tax…