The financial news that actually matters
Nearly one in three North Carolinians depends on Medicaid for basic health care. The program that covers them is now at the center of a high-stakes standoff in Raleigh, where lawmakers have approved $319 million to keep it solvent but attached new eligibility verification requirements that could reshape who qualifies for coverage. House Bill 696,…
BP reported first-quarter profit of $3.2 billion, more than double what the company earned in the same period a year ago, as the war involving Iran choked global oil supplies and pushed U.S. gasoline prices to their highest level since the conflict began. The results, disclosed in a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange…
When Russia’s new tax year began on January 1, 2026, tens of thousands of small businesses woke up to a reality they had spent months dreading. A higher value-added tax rate and a drastically lower income ceiling for VAT exemptions under the simplified taxation system (USN) had taken effect simultaneously, and for firms operating on…
Gasoline prices jumped 21.2% in a single month. The Consumer Price Index hit 3.3% year-over-year. And Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of Bridgewater Associates, chose that moment to post a blunt warning on LinkedIn: the U.S. economy is sliding toward stagflation, and investors banking on Federal Reserve rate cuts are making a dangerous bet. Dalio’s…
A New York City teacher earning $65,000 a year wants to move closer to her school. A nurse needs a bigger apartment after a second child. A restaurant worker’s landlord won’t fix the heat. All three face the same brutal arithmetic: signing a new lease in the same city would require roughly $70,000 more in…
Last winter, when electricity bills in Arlington, Massachusetts, spiked for the third year running, a cluster of neighbors on the same block decided they were done waiting for rates to come back down. They pooled their interest, vetted a single solar installer together, and negotiated a bulk discount that none of them could have landed…
The S&P 500 closed at a record high on Thursday, April 24, 2026, capping its strongest weekly gain of the year and pushing the benchmark index past every previous peak in its history. The milestone, confirmed by the Associated Press, arrived during a week when several other major U.S. indexes also touched fresh highs. For…
When Sarah Kline started apartment hunting in Austin this past February, she expected the same bruising experience she had in 2022: bidding wars, application fees stacked on top of each other, and landlords who wouldn’t return calls. Instead, the property manager at the first complex she toured offered two months free on a 14-month lease…
JetBlue Airways spent roughly $2.7 billion on jet fuel in fiscal 2024, making it the airline’s single largest operating expense. That same year, the carrier wrote a $69 million check to Spirit Airlines just to walk away from a merger a federal judge killed. Now, as JetBlue tries to convince Wall Street that its JetForward…
North Carolina’s State Health Plan covers roughly 740,000 people, from first-year teachers to retired correctional officers, and it is burning through money faster than the state can replenish it. Actuarial projections shared with the plan’s Board of Trustees show cumulative net losses on track to exceed $1 billion by 2027, driven by hospital and specialty-care…