Money, Wealth & Power—A Daily Look at the Financial World
Buying a home with cash sounds like the ultimate power move. No monthly payments, no interest charges, no lender breathing down your neck. Yet a surprising number of high-net-worth households choose to carry mortgage debt even when they could write a check for the full purchase price. The reason is not financial carelessness. It is…
Peter Schiff built his reputation on a single, well-timed call: he warned that the U.S. housing market was a bubble before the 2008 financial crisis proved him right. Now Schiff is using the word “emergency” to describe current housing conditions, arguing that a combination of inflated prices, strained affordability, and loose monetary policy is setting…
California’s homeowners insurance market is fracturing under the weight of wildfire exposure, regulatory friction, and carrier withdrawals that have left growing numbers of residents without reliable coverage options. The state’s insurance regulator has moved to approve a new catastrophe modeling framework meant to stabilize the market, but the reform carries a built-in tension: it asks…
Florida’s next five years are expected to be shaped by favorable job growth, steady in‑migration and what one forecast calls sustained demand for the Sunshine State, which together keep housing on investors’ radar. Real estate agents watching those trends are zeroing in on a handful of metros where pricing, population and local development line up…
Mayor Eric Adams has spent much of his tenure telling immigrant communities that buying a home is the surest route to building wealth in America. His administration has backed that message with real dollars, credit seminars, and first-time buyer programs. But with New York City’s homeownership rate stuck at roughly 30 percent and property tax…
Rising auto insurance costs have become a significant burden for American drivers, with the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting that the motor vehicle insurance component of the Consumer Price Index surged between December 2024 and December 2025. Consumer Reports has released a new analysis identifying the ten cheapest new cars to insure, incorporating factors like…
Millions of homeowners are suddenly much closer to seeing their property tax bills plunge, or in some cases nearly disappear, thanks to aggressive new efforts in Florida and North Dakota. A proposed Florida constitutional amendment known as HJR 201 would exempt homestead property from almost all local property taxes, while a signed package in North…
The clearest answer yet to whether Coinbase would touch prediction markets did not come from a splashy product reveal, but from a dense SEC filing that quietly put CEO Brian Armstrong’s oversight in writing. Buried in that document is a statement that subsidiary Coinbase Financial Markets, Inc. is already operating as a futures commission merchant…
Zillow has issued stark warnings about unprecedented disruption coming to the US housing market, driven by sweeping changes to real estate commission structures and mounting antitrust pressures that could fundamentally alter how Americans buy and sell homes. The company’s recent policy shifts and public statements signal a dramatic pivot from traditional listing practices that have…
Drivers are shuffling billions of premium dollars as they abandon frustrating auto insurers and flock to competitors that feel fairer and easier to work with. I look at five carriers widely reported as losing customers and pair each with a company that those drivers are likely switching to, based on satisfaction data, switching surveys, and…