The financial news that actually matters
A small appliance company in Ohio pays 25% more for the Chinese-made motors inside its bestselling product line than it did in 2017. A Texas auto-parts distributor has rerouted half its sourcing to Vietnam and Mexico, spending millions on new supplier relationships. A family in suburban Atlanta is paying noticeably more for washing machines, power…
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Mark Carney stood before Parliament on April 27 and made an announcement decades in the making: Canada is getting its first federal sovereign wealth fund. Called the Canada Strong Fund, the vehicle launches with CAD $25 billion, approximately $18.4 billion USD, earmarked for large-scale infrastructure, energy, and housing projects that private…
Microsoft is offering buyout packages to thousands of its most seasoned U.S. employees, marking the first time the software giant has turned to voluntary retirement as it reshapes its workforce around artificial intelligence. Workers whose age and years of service add up to at least 70 are eligible, according to The Wall Street Journal, which…
Qualcomm shares surged roughly 13% in premarket trading on Monday, April 28, 2026, after supply-chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported that OpenAI is working with the San Diego chipmaker on AI-focused smartphone processors. Qualcomm, which closed the prior Friday near $168 per share with a market capitalization of roughly $188 billion, saw billions of dollars in…
North Carolina restored Medicaid provider payments in December 2025 after courts blocked steep rate cuts, but the $319 million budget shortfall that triggered those reductions has not been resolved. As of spring 2026, the state’s roughly 3 million Medicaid enrollees and the rural hospitals that serve them face the same funding cliff, with no public…
A gallon of milk costs roughly 25% more than it did in early 2020. A basic auto insurance policy costs over 50% more. Rent, electricity, even a tube of toothpaste – nearly everything in a household budget has reset to a permanently higher price. And for most Americans, paychecks have not caught up. That gap…
For years, selling on Amazon meant accepting a growing list of fees as the cost of reaching the platform’s massive customer base. But since early 2024, when Amazon introduced an inbound placement fee and a low-inventory-level penalty on top of already-rising fulfillment and advertising charges, many merchants say the economics have tipped from tight to…
A graduate student starting a social work program this fall at a school that charges $65,000 a year could, until now, borrow every dollar of that cost through a single federal loan. Starting July 1, 2026, that option disappears. New graduate and professional students will no longer be eligible for Direct PLUS loans, the federal…
Most retirees drive less than they did a decade ago. Fewer commute miles, fewer rush-hour merges, fewer claims. Yet the insurance bill that lands in the mailbox often looks the same as it did before retirement, or worse. The reason is simple: insurers rarely volunteer discounts. If you don’t ask, you don’t get them. The…
A Netflix subscription in the United States has never been more expensive. As of early 2026, the company’s ad-free Standard plan costs $19.99 per month, a $2 increase from its previous $17.99 price point, according to the company’s help page (though the page may not always reflect the most current pricing in real time). The…