The financial news that actually matters
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…
When Kevin Warsh calls the June 16-17 Federal Open Market Committee meeting to order, he will become the first new face at the head of that table in more than a decade. And the most probable outcome of his debut is also the quietest one: no rate cut, no rate hike, and no change to…
The national median sales price for an existing home reached $417,700 in April, the highest figure ever recorded for the month in data going back to 1999. On its face, that sounds like a booming market. It is not. Year-over-year appreciation slowed to just 0.9%, the weakest positive gain since 2011, when prices were still…
Millions of American homeowners are doing the same math and reaching the same conclusion: don’t move. A borrower who locked in a 3% mortgage during the pandemic and finances $334,000 today at 6.46% would see their monthly principal-and-interest payment leap from about $1,409 to roughly $2,108, a difference of nearly $700. Stretch the loan amount…
In just 11 weeks, the U.S. military campaign against Iran has burned through $29 billion in taxpayer money, and the Pentagon cannot fully explain where all of it went. That updated figure emerged during a House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing on May 12, 2026, as reported by the Associated Press, representing a $4 billion jump…
A homeowner who bought a median-priced house in Cape Coral, Florida, a year ago has watched roughly $30,000 in equity disappear on paper. A comparable buyer in Chicago gained about $15,000 over the same period. That gulf, documented in the FHFA’s Q1 2026 House Price Index release, captures one of the sharpest regional divides the…
In the first three months of 2025, nearly one in four Americans who financed a new car committed to paying it off over seven years. That 22.9% share, reported in Edmunds’ Q1 2025 market analysis, has roughly doubled from the sub-12% level recorded in 2018. Over the same stretch, the average monthly payment on a…
Eight out of ten companies that rolled out AI or automation technologies followed up by cutting jobs. The financial payoff those cuts were supposed to deliver? It never showed up. A Gartner survey published on May 5, 2026 found that 80% of companies adopting AI or automation reduced their workforces afterward. But the same survey…
The math keeps getting worse for anyone trying to buy a home. The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate rose to 6.46% in the week ending May 15, 2026, according to Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey. That is the highest level in nearly seven months, and it arrived after back-to-back inflation reports that caught Wall…
Last spring, a round-trip ticket from New York to Los Angeles ran about $280 on most booking platforms. This May, the same seat on the same route costs closer to $370. The jump is not unique to that corridor. Across hundreds of domestic city pairs, airfares have climbed sharply, and the single biggest driver is…