The financial news that actually matters
American consumers kept swiping their cards in April 2026, but the receipt tells a split story. Total retail and food service sales rose 0.5% from March to a seasonally adjusted $757.1 billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s advance monthly report. That is a sharp cooldown from March’s revised 1.6% surge, a gain initially pegged…
If you were hoping cheaper borrowing was around the corner, Kevin Warsh just closed that door. The incoming Federal Reserve chairman, who takes the gavel in June 2026, told the Senate Banking Committee during his April 14 nomination hearing that interest rate cuts this year are not happening. Republican senators on the panel cheered the…
For the roughly 70 million Americans who depend on Social Security, the size of next January’s cost-of-living adjustment just became a lot harder to predict. Two consecutive months of stronger-than-expected inflation have jolted early 2027 COLA estimates upward, with projections now stretching from 2.8% to as high as 4.5%, a range that could mean the…
If you run a firearms shop, a cryptocurrency exchange, or a religious nonprofit, you may already know what it feels like to open a letter from your bank informing you that your account is being closed, with no meaningful explanation attached. For years, businesses and individuals operating in legal but politically sensitive spaces have reported…
On May 14, 2026, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Guo Jiakun stood before reporters in Beijing and delivered a message aimed squarely at Washington: China’s opposition to any toll on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz is “consistent and clear.” In Chinese diplomatic language, that phrasing signals a position that is not open for negotiation….
A parent borrowing $30,000 through the federal PLUS loan program this fall will pay roughly $17,200 in interest over a standard 10-year repayment term. Four years ago, when the same loan carried a rate of 5.30%, that interest bill would have been about $8,700. The difference, more than $8,500, buys nothing: no extra credits, no…
The Social Security check that hit bank accounts today is bigger than last month’s by 2.8%, the cost-of-living adjustment the Social Security Administration locked in last October and the only raise most of the program’s nearly 71 million beneficiaries will see all year. For the average retired worker, that works out to roughly $56 more…
The cost of producing goods and services in the United States jumped at its fastest pace in more than three years during April, extending a streak that is making it harder for the Federal Reserve to justify cutting interest rates and raising the odds that consumers will feel the squeeze in the months ahead. The…
Ford Motor Company spent years and billions of dollars trying to become a major EV battery manufacturer. That chapter is over. The Dearborn automaker has launched Ford Energy, a wholly owned subsidiary that will build shipping-container-sized battery storage systems in the United States, targeting data centers, electric utilities, and large industrial operations. The goal: 20…
Illinois merchants were one day away from paying less every time a customer swiped a credit card. Then a federal regulator killed the discount before it started. On June 30, 2026, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency published an interim bulletin declaring that national banks and federal savings associations do not have to…