The financial news that actually matters
The Senate Banking Committee voted 13-11 on May 1, 2026, to advance Kevin Warsh’s nomination as chair of the Federal Reserve, with every Republican voting in favor and every Democrat opposed. It was the first purely partisan committee vote for a Fed chair in the institution’s 113-year history, and it sets up a full Senate…
The U.S. Treasury just gave savers a reason to log into TreasuryDirect. As of May 1, 2026, newly purchased Series I savings bonds earn a composite annual rate of 4.26%, the highest yield the government has offered on I bonds since the 5.27% rate set in November 2023. That rate applies to any bond bought…
Smoke was still rising over the port of Fujairah on the morning of May 28, 2026, when tanker captains in the Gulf of Oman began rerouting. Hours earlier, a coordinated Iranian barrage of cruise missiles and armed drones had slammed into one of the UAE’s largest oil export terminals, igniting fires visible from commercial shipping…
A round-trip flight from Fort Lauderdale to Detroit on Spirit Airlines used to run about $120 in the off-season. That fare no longer exists. Neither does the airline that offered it, at least not in any form most travelers would recognize. Spirit’s financial collapse across 2024 and 2025 ripped more than 200 routes and roughly…
Three Indian nationals were near the Fujairah oil terminal complex on the Gulf of Oman when Iranian missiles struck on May 4, 2026. Debris injured all three. A separate armed drone ignited a fire at a storage tank in the sprawling facility, which handles what industry sources estimate to be roughly 42 million barrels of…
The April jobs report drops Thursday and economists expect the weakest hiring since the pandemic — 50,000 jobs vs. 178,000 in March Somewhere around 50,000. That is the number economists at major banks and research firms are penciling in for April’s nonfarm payroll gain, according to consensus surveys compiled by Bloomberg and Reuters. If the…
Six Iranian boats sit at the bottom of the Strait of Hormuz after a U.S. Navy confrontation that may have just killed a ceasefire the White House announced barely a month ago. President Trump has refused to say whether the deal still holds. And roughly one-fifth of the world’s seaborne oil, the crude that becomes…
American warships began escorting oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz on May 4, 2026, the first day of a presidentially ordered operation that has already drawn a sharp warning from Tehran: any U.S. interference in the waterway violates the ceasefire between the two countries, and Iran reserves the right to respond. The stakes are…
Three dates in the next three weeks could decide what you pay on your mortgage, what your savings account earns, and whether your 401(k) glides or lurches into summer. On April 29, 2026, the Federal Reserve held its benchmark interest rate steady. The same day, the Senate Banking Committee advanced Kevin Warsh’s nomination to replace…
A family of four booking round-trip flights from Chicago to Orlando for Memorial Day weekend will find fares hovering around $2,400 on many routes, up from roughly $2,000 at the same time last year. That is not a premium cabin or a last-minute splurge. That is economy, booked weeks in advance, on a corridor millions…