The financial news that actually matters
Federal regulators and prosecutors allege that a Chicago-based investment adviser raised roughly $4 million from about 28 investors, most of them his own family members, friends, and acquaintances, then funneled new money to earlier investors in a classic Ponzi-style cycle. John Sterling Myers, along with his firms Sterling Capital, LLC and Sterling Capital Management, LLC,…
New orders for manufactured goods dropped $8.5 billion in May 2026, falling 1.3% to $657.4 billion after a 5.3% surge in April. The reversal, reported by the U.S. Census Bureau, signals that business demand for factory output is losing momentum even as shipments and backlogs continued to grow. For manufacturers, purchasing managers, and economic forecasters,…
Homeowners hoping to cut their monthly mortgage payments face a tougher road this week after the average 30-year refinance rate ticked up to 6.82 percent. The Federal Reserve’s policy committee released a statement on June 17, 2026, reaffirming that inflation remains elevated, a signal that borrowing costs are unlikely to ease soon. That language, paired…
Anyone with a Roth IRA can pull out the money they personally contributed at any age, for any reason, without owing federal income tax or an early withdrawal penalty. That single rule, rooted in the ordering framework of 26 U.S. Code Section 408A and its companion regulation, separates the Roth from nearly every other retirement…
Families adding a teenager to their car-insurance policy faced an average premium increase of 17 percent over the past year, even as the broader U.S. motor vehicle insurance market showed little price movement. The split hit hardest in households already stretched by rising costs elsewhere, turning what should be a routine milestone into a significant…
The U.S. government has filed its largest civil forfeiture action ever against cryptocurrency confidence scams, targeting more than $225.3 million in digital assets stolen from over 430 suspected victims worldwide. The complaint, docketed as Civil Action No. 25-cv-1907 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, names approximately 225,364,961 USDT as the defendant…
Millions of married couples filing joint tax returns will see their standard deduction rise to $32,200 for tax year 2026, a figure the IRS locked in after Congress passed the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act. The increase reshapes the math that determines whether joint filers benefit more from claiming the standard deduction or itemizing, and…
Fraud cost Americans roughly $16 billion in 2025, a record sum that jumped about 25% from the prior year even as the total number of reports rose more modestly. The Federal Trade Commission logged about 3 million fraud complaints for the year, up from 2.6 million in 2024, with imposter scams alone draining $3.5 billion…
Factory owners across the United States are watching their raw-material bills shrink at the fastest pace in months, offering a concrete signal that the inflation pipeline feeding consumer prices may be losing pressure. The Bureau of Labor Statistics published its latest Producer Price Index results covering May 2026, and the data on intermediate demand and…
People who send money across borders through stablecoins now face a new federal compliance test after Congress enacted the first U.S. law dedicated to regulating these digital dollar tokens. A stablecoin called Open USD has entered the market with a pitch aimed squarely at cross-border payments, arriving just as the legal ground rules for reserve…