Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
The Supreme Court is weighing whether President Trump’s tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) are legal, and the outcome could rip a massive hole in the federal budget. The case, Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump (docket 24-1287), has already drawn sharp analysis from economists and legal scholars who warn that striking…
Orland Park’s Village Board gave the green light to a roughly 230,000-square-foot Amazon retail store on Jan. 19, 2026, making the Chicago suburb home to what officials call a first-of-its-kind brick-and-mortar concept for the e-commerce giant. The approval has drawn sharp criticism from local shoppers who worry the massive store will choke traffic on already…
Soros Fund Management LLC, the investment vehicle tied to billionaire George Soros, reported about $137 million in holdings tied to AI chipmakers while paring back its position in Alphabet, according to the firm’s latest quarterly securities filing. The moves, disclosed in a Form 13F-HR covering the quarter ended December 31, 2025, show a shift in…
Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP are all sliding as a collision of regulatory reversals and tightening financial conditions drains confidence from digital asset markets. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has abruptly dropped its enforcement case against Coinbase while the fallout from the Ripple litigation remains unresolved, and rising real yields on U.S. Treasuries are pulling…
A UK court has granted Google emergency legal protection against efforts to enforce a Russian court penalty that has been estimated at about $125 nonillion (a 1 followed by 30 zeros), a figure cited in the English proceedings as far exceeding any realistic economic scale. The ruling, issued by the UK Commercial Court in January…
Toyota Motor Corp. has closed the first $250 million tranche of a $500 million stock purchase agreement with Joby Aviation, the electric air taxi developer that has yet to fly a single paying customer. The cash infusion, which pushes Toyota’s total financial commitment toward $1 billion, arrives while Joby still awaits FAA certification for commercial…
UPS has signaled plans to cut thousands of jobs as part of a sweeping cost-savings overhaul, a high-profile move that has added to worker anxiety as hiring cools. The January 2026 jobs report showed the U.S. economy added just 130,000 nonfarm payroll positions while the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3 percent. Yet weekly jobless…
Blue Owl Capital, a private lender that has amassed nearly $300 billion in investor money, announced on February 18, 2026 that certain of its business development companies would sell $1.4 billion in assets to institutional investors. The deal arrived alongside reports that the firm was halting redemptions at one of its funds, triggering a selloff…
The U.S. goods trade deficit ballooned to $1,240.9 billion in 2025, an all-time record, even as President Trump’s tariff campaign was explicitly designed to shrink it. At the same time, academic modeling tied to the tariff escalation estimates that 83,000 American jobs disappeared as trade shocks rippled through supply chains. The data, released by the…
The Federal Reserve held its benchmark interest rate steady at 3.50%-3.75% after the January 27-28 meeting, but the minutes released today reveal a shift in tone that should concern anyone with money in the market. Some officials openly discussed the possibility of raising rates again, putting hikes “back on the table” just as investors had…