Category: Markets and Macro

Gasoline is the one household expense that shows up on a sign by the road, updated daily, impossible to avoid noticing. That visibility is fitting, because the August inflation report just confirmed what drivers have felt: gasoline prices are up 27.4% over the past year, and within last month alone, the pump did more damage…

President Trump has told the Agriculture Department to make meatpacker enforcement a bigger priority, pointing to a beef industry now dominated by a handful of companies. The order, signed Sept. 4, 2026, directs USDA to expand investigations into potential violations by the packers that process most of the nation’s cattle, at a moment the administration…

Grocery shoppers watching the meat case and the egg carton are living out two opposite forecasts at once. The Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service now projects beef and veal prices climbing 9.8% this year, even as it expects egg prices to fall 30.8% from where they stood in 2025’s outbreak-driven spike. Both numbers come…

Every three months, Federal Reserve policymakers write down where they think interest rates are heading, and the newest set of guesses runs noticeably higher than the one they published in June. In the projections released September 16, the median official now sees the Fed’s benchmark rate sitting near 4.1% at the end of 2027, compared…

The federal government’s most closely watched energy forecast now points to a higher power bill for the typical American household this year than last, with a further increase already built into next year’s numbers. For someone managing a fixed monthly income against air conditioning, refrigeration and medical equipment, a few cents on every kilowatt-hour adds…

A 60-year-old earning $65,000 who buys a benchmark silver marketplace plan is now handing over roughly 24 percent of that income in premiums alone, according to an analysis from KFF of what changed when the enhanced federal premium tax credits lapsed. Two years earlier, at the identical income and plan tier, the same household paid…

A 60-year-old buying an Affordable Care Act plan on the open market pays a very different bill depending on the state on the mailing address. New KFF analysis of what happened after the enhanced premium tax credits expired puts the annual increase for someone in Wyoming at $22,452 for a benchmark silver plan, the largest…

A 60-year-old who buys her own health coverage on the Affordable Care Act marketplace is facing a bill that looks nothing like last year’s, and the cause has nothing to do with her health, her insurer, or her state. Congress let the law’s enhanced premium tax credits lapse on December 31, 2025, and the subsidy…

Electricity and natural gas bills are climbing for a majority of U.S. households, and the increases are tied less to a single storm or a single company than to a nationwide wave of rate cases moving through state utility commissions at the same time. A tracker maintained by the Center for American Progress in partnership…

The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark interest rate again on September 16, 2026, pushing borrowing costs higher for the second time this year and adding pressure to two kinds of debt that many older households carry: credit cards and home-equity lines of credit. Because both products typically price off a bank-set rate that tracks the…