The financial news that actually matters
A family that bought a new set of tires in 2025 paid more because of tariffs. So did anyone who picked up a laptop, a winter coat, or a plastic toy for a birthday party. Those tariffs have now been declared illegal. The money is being returned. But it is not going back to the…
Sixty days. That is all it took for the world to burn through its oil safety net faster than at any point in recorded history. Between March and April 2026, global observed inventories fell by roughly 246 million barrels, according to the International Energy Agency’s May Oil Market Report. The agency called the pace unprecedented….
Jerome Powell handed the Federal Reserve chairmanship to Kevin Warsh on May 15, 2026, closing an eight-year tenure that steered the U.S. economy through a pandemic shutdown, the worst inflation spike since the early 1980s, and a bruising cycle of interest-rate increases that reshaped the cost of borrowing for millions of Americans. Powell is not…
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…
Chinese President Xi Jinping warned President Donald Trump during their May 2026 meeting in Beijing that Taiwan is “the most important issue” in U.S.-China relations and that mishandling it will produce “clashes and even conflicts.” That language appeared in official Chinese government summaries published within hours of the sit-down. The White House released its own…
Cisco Systems just turned in the best quarter in its 41-year history, reporting $15.8 billion in revenue for fiscal Q3 2026. Within days, the company informed more than 4,000 employees that their jobs were being eliminated. The cuts, roughly 5% of Cisco’s global workforce, were disclosed alongside the earnings report in May 2026. On the…
Wholesale prices haven’t jumped this fast in a single month since March 2022, when the Federal Reserve was still scrambling to contain post-pandemic inflation. Four years later, the Producer Price Index just matched that spike, and the broader inflation picture is deteriorating in ways that have prediction markets flashing warnings, the Fed boxed in, and…
When Jerome Powell walks out of the Eccles Building for the last time as Federal Reserve chair on May 15, 2026, he will leave behind the same problem he spent his final two years trying to solve. Inflation is still running at nearly twice the level he was charged with controlling, borrowing costs remain punishing…
The last time gasoline cost this much in the United States, Russia had just invaded Ukraine and the world was still shaking off pandemic lockdowns. Now a different conflict is pushing prices toward the same ceiling. Regular gasoline averaged $4.53 a gallon nationally for the week ending May 19, 2026, according to the Energy Information…