Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
China’s growth model is colliding with a new kind of resistance: households and private firms that would rather hoard cash than spend or borrow. The result is a powerful, bottom-up squeeze on policymakers in Beijing, who are discovering that even the most muscular central bank cannot force wary savers to open their wallets. As the…
President Donald Trump is again insisting that his sweeping tariffs will not land on American shoppers, casting them instead as a painless way to squeeze foreign governments and fund domestic priorities. Retailers, economists and even some of his own allies are signaling a different reality, warning that the costs are already creeping into grocery aisles,…
Warren Buffett is quietly preparing for a tougher market environment as 2026 approaches, and the signals coming out of Omaha are hard to ignore. Valuations have stretched, pockets of speculation have reappeared, and the world’s most famous value investor is acting as if a meaningful correction is not a remote risk but a realistic scenario….
Inflation did not pause when Washington did. Price pressures were already edging higher before the federal shutdown froze key data, and the delayed Consumer Price Index release now threatens to reveal that the cost of living kept grinding upward out of public view. As the government restarts its economic calendar, I see a risk that…
The White House is mounting an unusually direct appeal to the richest Americans, urging them to pour private money into new “Trump accounts” that are meant to seed investment portfolios for children. The push effectively turns a flagship policy of President Trump into a philanthropic challenge for billionaires and high net worth families, blending public…
The latest UK labour market numbers look uncomfortably soft, with unemployment rising and vacancies shrinking, yet they still fall short of the kind of clear-cut weakness that would let policymakers relax. The data point to a jobs market that is losing heat but not collapsing, a halfway house that keeps pressure on the Bank of…
The delayed November jobs report finally gives a clearer read on how the labor market is handling higher interest rates, and it arrives just as investors are trying to gauge when the Federal Reserve might start cutting. The numbers point to a cooler but still resilient economy, which complicates the path for borrowing costs rather…
The penny is finally slipping out of everyday American life, but what replaces it is still very much up for debate. Production has stopped, cash registers are adjusting, and lawmakers are scrambling to write rules for a world where the smallest coin no longer exists in circulation. I see a country that agrees the old…
America’s national debt has quietly crossed a threshold that will shape the lives of younger Americans far more than any viral trend or election cycle. With the federal IOU now measured in tens of trillions of dollars, the costs of past decisions are colliding with the financial futures of Gen Z and Millennials just as…
America’s race to lock down copper has turned a once-sleepy industrial metal into a frontline asset of economic and geopolitical strategy. Prices are surging, domestic premiums are distorting global benchmarks, and a metal best known for wiring and plumbing is suddenly a proxy for how the United States plans to build, electrify, and defend its…