Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Amazon just committed roughly $200 billion in capital spending for 2026, a bet so large it spooked investors even as the company posted strong holiday-quarter results. That figure lands against a backdrop of surging global demand for data center capacity, with one research firm projecting the sector could top $650 billion in spending this year…
The UK government has scrapped a £950 million electric vehicle rapid charging fund originally announced by the Conservatives, replacing it with £400 million spread over five years. The decision comes as industry groups warn that planning bottlenecks at British ports are delaying infrastructure needed to meet net zero targets. Taken together, the reduced funding and…
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s fiscal year 2027 preliminary budget for New York City includes a proposed 9.5% property tax rate increase, a move that would hit more than three million homes and over 100,000 commercial buildings. The plan has drawn sharp criticism from residents and political figures who say it contradicts the mayor’s campaign pledges to…
Robert Kiyosaki, the financial author behind “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” is betting big on Bitcoin and predicting it will reach $250,000, a price level he believes will cement the cryptocurrency’s dominance over gold as a store of value. At the same time, he forecasts gold will climb to $27,000 per ounce, a target he credits…
Two semiconductor giants are racing to shape the artificial intelligence chip market, but their strategies could not be more different. Broadcom Inc. has built its AI business around custom silicon designed for hyperscale cloud operators, while Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) sells general-purpose accelerators that compete head-to-head with Nvidia. With both companies reporting record revenue and…
Economist and gold advocate Peter Schiff has sharply criticized the idea of letting Americans tap their 401(k) retirement accounts to buy homes, arguing the policy would gut long-term savings while pumping more money into an already overheated housing market. His warning comes as legislation in Congress would do exactly that, raising a pointed question: does…
U.S. home sales fell sharply in early 2026 as elevated mortgage rates and steep prices pushed buyers to the sidelines. Existing-home sales dropped 8.4% in January to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.91 million units, hitting the lowest level in more than two years. New-home sales also edged lower at the end of 2025,…
The American economy keeps splitting into two separate tracks, and the divide is growing harder to ignore. Low-wage workers who bore the brunt of pandemic-era job losses have, in several measures, struggled to recover lost ground, while wealthier households have ridden soaring stock portfolios and rising home values to gains in net worth documented in…
Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes dropped sharply in January, recording the largest monthly decline in nearly four years even as mortgage rates edged lower. The data, released by the National Association of Realtors, signals that cheaper borrowing costs alone have not been enough to thaw a housing market that has been sluggish since 2022….
Precious metal futures were little changed to slightly higher on February 20, 2026, as traders weighed the fallout from a court ruling that curtailed President Trump’s global tariffs and his rapid pivot to a replacement levy. Gold’s modest moves reflected a market caught between two competing forces: relief that the broadest tariffs were curtailed, and…