The financial news that actually matters
Starting April 26, 2026, every package shipped through the U.S. Postal Service will cost more. A new 8% fuel surcharge on Priority Mail, Priority Mail Express, Parcel Select, and other parcel products will add roughly $1.24 to a five-pound Priority Mail box that previously ran about $15.50, and the markup scales with weight and distance….
The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage fell for the third consecutive week, landing at 6.76% in Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey for the week ending May 1, 2026. That marks the lowest weekly reading since mid-March and a meaningful step down from the 6.95% average recorded just three weeks earlier. The decline…
The federal government owes importers roughly $166 billion. Consumers who spent the past year paying inflated prices on electronics, clothing, shoes, and auto parts will almost certainly never see a dime of it. That is the practical fallout of a landmark ruling by the U.S. Court of International Trade, which found that President Trump’s “Liberation…
Filling up a mid-size SUV now costs north of $60 in most of the country, and the number keeps climbing. Regular gasoline hit $4.11 per gallon nationally in the U.S. Energy Information Administration weekly retail price report for the week ending April 21, 2026, the highest level since the post-invasion spike of 2022. The culprit,…
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…