The financial news that actually matters
Federal prosecutors say Edwin Brant Frost IV, president of Georgia-based First Liberty Building & Loan, funneled more than $230,000 of investor money into renting a waterfront vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine, for his family. That spending line is one piece of a broader pattern of personal outlays allegedly drawn from a $140 million Ponzi scheme…
American households already stretched by rising costs at the pump and the grocery store now face the sharpest annual price increase in nearly three years. The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers rose 4.2 percent over the 12 months ending in May 2026, up from 3.8 percent in April, driven almost entirely by a…
Federal authorities have accused 21 people of participating in an insider-trading operation that stretched across years and drew on stolen merger details from some of the world’s top corporate law firms. At the center of the alleged scheme is Nicolo Nourafchan, a Los Angeles-based mergers-and-acquisitions attorney who, according to the SEC, orchestrated the ring and…
American homeowners now hold roughly $34.5 trillion in equity across their properties, an average of about $302,000 per owner-occupied home. That figure, drawn from the Federal Reserve’s Financial Accounts data, sits just below the record high reached several years ago and represents more than double the level from a decade earlier. Yet for tens of…
Homeowners who locked in 15-year fixed mortgages above 6 percent during 2023 and 2024 now face a narrower gap to clear before a refinance pays off. The average 15-year fixed rate fell to 5.81 percent this week, according to Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey, after Treasury yields pulled back on news of an Iran-related…
Roughly 93,000 retail workers lost their jobs last year as a wave of store closures and bankruptcy filings swept through the sector. Chains large and small shed locations, cut headcount, and turned to court-supervised restructuring to stay afloat. With forecasts pointing to even steeper closure numbers in 2025, the pressure on retail employment shows no…
Key Takeaways Contact the credit card issuer first and ask the fraud department to close the unauthorized credit card account. Report identity theft at IdentityTheft.gov to create an Identity Theft Report for disputes and recovery. Pull credit reports from Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion and check for unauthorized accounts, inquiries, personal loans, auto loans, insurance applications,…
A federal grand jury in the Western District of Tennessee has indicted Misam M. Abidi, a 47-year-old resident of Nolensville, on 11 counts tied to an alleged crypto Ponzi scheme that operated through Star Credit Holdings from 2020 to 2024. The charges include three counts of wire fraud and two counts of unlicensed money transmitting,…
Households and small businesses earning less than $400,000 a year are shielded from any uptick in IRS audit activity under a directive issued by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. The order, sent to the IRS Commissioner, explicitly bars the agency from using new enforcement funding to raise the share of examinations on filers below that income…
Millions of Americans carrying credit-card balances or drawing on home-equity lines of credit are paying steep interest charges that have barely budged since the Federal Reserve cut rates six months ago. The U.S. bank prime loan rate stands at 6.75%, exactly three percentage points above the federal funds target range of 3.50% to 3.75% set…