Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
The Federal Trade Commission has put a name on something grocery shoppers have long suspected but could not prove: the possibility that the price on the screen is not the same price everyone else sees. The agency’s interim findings from a formal market study describe an emerging ecosystem of data intermediaries that use personal information…
American households now owe a record $18.8 trillion, and recent growth has been fueled in part by rising credit card balances. The fourth quarter of 2025 added $191 billion to the national debt pile, with credit card balances alone climbing $44 billion to roughly $1.28 trillion, according to the New York Fed. What makes this…
New legislation targeting the wealthiest Americans keeps surfacing in Congress, but the bills share more than a desire for revenue. They reflect a growing push among some lawmakers to argue that the existing tax code undertaxes accumulated wealth, and that traditional income-based approaches may not fully reach it. Two distinct legislative strategies, one taxing net…
Gold and silver have entered a period of sharp, unpredictable price swings that are forcing investors to rethink how precious metals fit into a balanced portfolio. The volatility is not random noise; it reflects structural forces in futures markets, shifting retail demand for physical metal, and Wall Street forecasts that remain surprisingly bullish even after…
Toyota has signaled a bigger push into battery-electric vehicles, after years of emphasizing hybrids and other alternatives. The shift comes as the automaker has said it plans to introduce 10 new battery EV models by 2026, expanding beyond its limited BEV lineup to date. Whether that rollout is enough to close the gap with earlier-moving…
Home prices in the United States posted a meaningful monthly gain at the close of 2025, offering fresh evidence that the housing market is stabilizing after a prolonged stretch of high borrowing costs and sluggish activity. A 0.6% month-over-month increase in November 2025, paired with steady construction and tightening new-home inventory, suggests the market may…
Several East Coast housing markets that have enjoyed steady price gains over the past two years now face conditions that could push values lower within the next 12 months. National home prices rose 4.0 percent year over year and 0.7 percent from late 2024, according to the latest federal data, but that broad upward trend…
The U.S. car market is under real stress, but the picture is more complicated than a simple crash. Wholesale used-vehicle values are drifting lower year over year, repossessions have surged to levels not seen since the Great Recession, and retail prices keep climbing for buyers who can least afford it. For anyone planning to buy,…
Generation Z is redirecting money that previous generations would have saved for a down payment into brokerage accounts, and federal data now quantifies the scale of that shift. With home prices at record highs and mortgage rates stuck above 6%, the youngest cohort of working adults is building wealth through equities rather than real estate,…
XRP is gaining ground against Bitcoin on a metric that matters most to institutional traders: liquidity. A combination of improved regulatory visibility after key court developments in the SEC’s case involving Ripple, the emergence of a spot XRP exchange-traded product framework, and measurable improvements in order-book depth across major centralized exchanges may be shifting the…