The financial news that actually matters
A driver in Los Angeles paying $5.89 a gallon for regular on Friday morning could be forgiven for wondering whether the oil market crash everyone was talking about was happening on a different planet. Brent crude futures fell roughly 7% this week, settling near $101 a barrel after President Trump floated a deal with Iran…
Kevin Warsh is on track to become the next chair of the Federal Reserve, and if the Senate vote goes the way both parties expect, he will get there without a single Democratic vote. That would make him the first Fed chair confirmed on purely partisan lines since at least 1979, when the modern confirmation…
If you have been earning 4% or better on your savings without thinking much about it, check your account. That number has probably slipped. As of late May 2026, three of the most popular online savings accounts in the country have trimmed their rates below the 4% APY threshold that became a benchmark for rate-conscious…
On Friday, May 8, at 8:30 a.m. ET, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will publish the April 2026 Employment Situation report, and the range of expectations heading into the release is unusually wide. Analyst forecasts for nonfarm payroll gains stretch from roughly 53,000 to 150,000 new jobs. A gap that large reflects more than normal…
PayPal cleared Wall Street’s bar for the first quarter of 2026 and got punished for it anyway. According to figures the company reported in early May 2026, PayPal posted $8.353 billion in net revenue and diluted earnings of $1.21 per share for the three months ended March 31, both ahead of analyst consensus estimates. GAAP…
Small-cap stocks stole the spotlight on Wall Street on Tuesday, June 10, 2026, as falling oil prices and solid labor-market data pushed investors toward the domestically focused companies that rarely lead the tape. The Russell 2000 surged 1.8% to about 2,845, a level that, based on available index data, appeared to mark a fresh all-time…
If you run a gun shop, a crypto startup, or a faith-based nonprofit, you may have experienced something that never shows up on a bank statement: your account quietly closed, your application denied, no real explanation given. Starting June 9, 2026, a new federal rule is designed to stop that from happening, at least when…
In 2009, roughly one in every 45 American households received a foreclosure notice. In 2024, that figure was closer to one in 370. The gap between those two numbers is the single most important thing to understand about today’s foreclosure headlines. Foreclosure filings across the United States have climbed about 26% from the historic lows…
The Senate is set to vote the week of May 11, 2026, on Kevin Warsh’s nomination to lead the Federal Reserve, and the math points toward something that has never happened in the central bank’s modern era: a chair confirmed without a single vote from the opposing party. Majority Leader John Thune filed cloture on…
Ten thousand dollars in credit card debt used to be a warning sign. Now it is closer to the norm. According to a Bankrate survey published in early 2026, roughly 29 percent of U.S. cardholders report carrying a balance of $10,000 or more, up from about 23 percent a year earlier. That six-point jump in…