Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Corporate America is lining up behind Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller as President Donald Trump weighs whom to install as the next chair of the central bank. More than four out of five leading chief executives now say the White House would be making a serious mistake if Trump passed over Waller, a rare show…
The alleged diversion of roughly $250 million from a federal kids-meal program in Minnesota is more than a spectacular white-collar crime story. It is a case study in how emergency COVID money, weak oversight, and opportunistic middlemen can collide to leave real children hungry while adults cash in. As the “Feeding Our Future” scandal moves…
The idea that a family earning six figures could still feel poor sounds absurd until you start tallying rent, child care, health insurance, and the quiet cost of losing government help. A Wall Street investor has pushed that tension to an extreme, arguing that the real poverty line for a family of four is $136,500…
The classic promise of higher education was simple: earn a degree, land a stable white-collar job, and watch your income climb over time. That social contract is under strain as college graduates increasingly find themselves in the same unemployment lines they were told a diploma would help them avoid. With degree holders now accounting for…
The latest reading on United States growth is not just another strong quarter, it is a direct challenge to the idea that the country is stuck in a “vibecession,” where sentiment is sour even as the fundamentals quietly improve. With real output accelerating at its fastest pace in two years and key engines like consumer…
Steakhouse chains that once defined American casual dining are shrinking at a pace that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. More than 600 locations have vanished from a single brand, and hundreds more have gone dark across competitors, leaving only scattered survivors of what used to be sprawling national empires. What looks like one…
Federal investigators say they created fake Obamacare customers and watched as the government sent them an average of $2,350 a month in premium help, a vivid illustration of how easily the Affordable Care Act’s subsidy system can be gamed. The same watchdog is now warning that those test cases sit on top of a much…
The White House is leaning hard on a fresh batch of economic data to argue that the recovery is not just intact but accelerating, pointing to rapid growth, easing inflation and a pickup in private investment as proof that momentum is real. The latest figures show output and hiring holding up even as borrowing costs…
President Donald Trump is betting that his sweeping tariff regime will not only reshape the global economy but also define the political battlefield in 2026. He has framed the levies as a generator of “great wealth” for the United States and argued that voters will ultimately judge him and his party on the prices they…
The Federal Reserve is finally saying the quiet part out loud: the tools it used to tame inflation have helped fracture the recovery, and there is no quick way to repair the damage. After a historic cycle of rate hikes and a late pivot to cuts, the central bank is confronting an economy where growth…