Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
The Trump administration has put a staggering price tag on suspected pandemic-era fraud in California’s small business relief programs, freezing access to aid for more than one hundred thousand borrowers and igniting a fierce political fight. Federal officials say the scheme drained $8.6 billion from programs that were supposed to keep mom-and-pop shops alive during…
One of Subway’s largest regional operators has sought shelter in Chapter 11, putting 43 restaurants and hundreds of jobs in limbo across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. Pennsylvania based MTF Enterprises, which runs those 43 Subway outlets in Pennsylvania, Maine, New Hampshire and Virginia, is trying to keep doors open while it restructures heavy debts tied…
Artificial intelligence just delivered one of the sharpest gut punches to markets since the early pandemic panic, vaporizing roughly $400 billion in software and tech value in a matter of days. The trigger was not a scandal or a regulatory shock, but the debut of a single workplace AI assistant and a wave of copycat…
The US dollar has slipped to a four‑year low, down about 11% over the past year, turning the world’s most important currency into a quiet but powerful force in household budgets. That slide is already lifting prices on imported goods and nudging inflation expectations higher, even as policymakers debate whether a softer currency can help…
The chill in the labor market is no longer a metaphor. U.S.-based employers announced 108,435 job cuts in January, the worst opening month for layoffs since the depths of the 2009 financial crisis, and more than double the 49,795 cuts a year earlier. At the same time, announced hiring plans sank to record lows, turning…
President Donald Trump has spent the winter declaring that “inflation has been defeated,” casting the economy as a success story in speeches from Detroit to Davos. He has even cited a supposed core inflation rate of just 1.4 percent as proof that prices are under control. Yet the numbers on grocery shelves, power bills and…
President Donald Trump is selling his sweeping tariffs as proof that he has resurrected American industry and engineered an “economic miracle.” The political story is simple: foreign countries pay, factories boom, and households are about to cash in. The economic record that has emerged over his second term is far messier, with higher taxes on…
President Trump’s new 10% tariffs are no longer an abstract policy debate for the world’s biggest online marketplace. They are starting to show up in the totals on checkout screens, and Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy is now publicly acknowledging that the impact is real. After months of insisting the company had largely insulated shoppers,…
President Donald Trump now presides over something closer to a personal investment empire than a traditional blind trust. Recent disclosures show a sprawling mix of bonds, blue chip stocks, crypto and licensing income that has grown rapidly alongside his return to the Oval Office. The core question is no longer whether his portfolio is big,…
Artificial intelligence is colliding with a hard physical limit: the electricity grid. Training large language models and running real‑time AI services now consumes so much power that the industry risks outgrowing the capacity of wind, solar, and existing transmission lines. In response, the same companies that once branded themselves as purely “digital” are quietly becoming…