The financial news that actually matters
In the first three weeks of 2025, cryptocurrency platforms lost more than $600 million to hackers, with North Korea’s Lazarus group responsible for the overwhelming majority of the damage. The centerpiece: a $1.5 billion theft from the Bybit exchange on or about February 21, 2025, which the FBI formally attributed to Lazarus in a public…
Jessica Tarlov spent weeks as the loudest voice in a growing tax revolt against the Trump administration, pledging on camera and across social media that she would refuse to send the IRS a single dollar of what she owed. Then, according to her own account, she filed her 2025 federal income tax return before the…
The federal government is processing an estimated $175 billion in tariff refunds this spring, and every dollar is flowing to the companies that paid duties at the border. Not a cent is going to the families who spent more on groceries, car seats, power tools, and electronics for years because of those same tariffs. Under…
For the first time in its 51-year history, Microsoft is offering voluntary buyout packages to U.S. employees, extending the option to as many as 8,750 workers, roughly 7% of its domestic workforce. The offers are expected to go out in early May 2026, according to an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg and two people familiar…
Bank of America Securities analyst Justin Post is sticking with his Buy rating on Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and a $370 price target heading into the company’s first-quarter 2026 earnings report on April 24. Post expects Alphabet to beat Wall Street estimates on both revenue and earnings per share, driven by strength in Google Cloud…
Fifteen months after the Palisades and Eaton fires destroyed more than 12,000 structures across Los Angeles and Ventura counties, thousands of displaced homeowners are still waiting to rebuild. Many remain in temporary housing, caught between mortgage payments on homes that no longer exist and a reconstruction process slowed by permit backlogs, contractor shortages, and insurance…
Patrick Barber has sold homes in San Francisco for more than two decades. He weathered the dot-com crash, the 2008 collapse, and the pandemic freeze. But nothing prepared him for what happened last month in Noe Valley, when a three-bedroom house drew 14 competing offers. “Almost every winning bid came from someone at an AI…
Renewing a homeowners insurance policy in 2026 will cost more for most Americans. How much more depends almost entirely on where the house sits. Nationwide, annual premiums are projected to rise between 3% and 8% this year, according to state-level modeling published by Insurify, an insurance-comparison platform that bases its forecasts on recent carrier filings,…
When Mariana Castillo walked across the stage at her university commencement in May 2024, she assumed her federal student loan payments would be manageable. She had budgeted around the SAVE plan, the most generous income-driven repayment option the government had ever offered. By the time her first payment came due that fall, SAVE was frozen…
For the first time in Medicare’s six-decade history, the standard Part B premium will top $200 a month. Beginning in January 2026, most of the more than 60 million Americans enrolled in Part B will pay $202.90 per month, a $17.90 jump from the current $185.00. The annual deductible climbs to $283, up $26 from…