Speaker McCarthy ousted: Is GOP House ungovernable? | View caption Hide caption Yet today’s drama can be seen as the inevitable outcome of one of those promises Mr. McCarthy made back in January – allowing a single member to force a vote on removing the speaker. With just a four-seat Republican House majority, that put…
Is it time for your household to rein in its spending? The Washington Post reported that American consumers are increasingly falling behind on car loan and credit card payments, a “troubling signal of consumer stress” that is “most acute for lower-income earners” who mostly spent down the stimulus money they socked away during the pandemic.…
The Biden administration on Tuesday unveiled the first 10 drugs subject to Medicare price negotiations, promising billions of dollars in savings for the federal government and the nine million Medicare beneficiaries taking at least one of the popular medications. Medicare has been banned from directly negotiating lower drug prices since 2003, but the Inflation Reduction…
The disparity in the United States between those who have money and those who don’t is continuing to rise. In the first quarter of 2023, “69% of the total wealth in the United States was owned by the top 10% of earners,” according to Statista, while the “lowest 50% of earners only owned 2.4% of…
Workers at a major Tokyo department store went on strike on Thursday after talks with management over the planned sale of their company broke down, marking the first major walk-out the country has seen in decades. Some 900 workers at the flagship Seibu store in the bustling district of Ikebukuro are protesting the sale of Sogo &…
Here are three of the week’s top pieces of financial insight, gathered from around the web: The in-person work lunch returns The business lunch is back with a vengeance, said Ray A. Smith in The Wall Street Journal. With office occupancy rates during the workweek back above 50% for the first time since the pandemic,…
The smartest insight and analysis, from all perspectives, rounded up from around the web: “The Federal Reserve keeps taking, but nonetheless, this economy keeps on giving,” said Mitchell Hartman in NPR’s Marketplace. “The standard metaphor” for when the central bank has to raise interest rates to slow an overheating economy is that it takes away…
A recession impacts the middle and lower classes more than the wealthy. But during a “richcession,” it’s the “well-heeled who take a bigger hit than usual,” according to The Wall Street Journal’s Justin Lahar, who coined the term. At the beginning of the year, experts warned of a richcession, claiming that industries such as the luxury goods…
We’ve heard a lot about inflation in recent years, but we might not be as familiar with two terms that describe phenomena that could be partly driving it: greedflation and wageflation. “When inflation took off in 2021 in the U.S., so did corporate profits,” said The Wall Street Journal. This raised some eyebrows. But just as profit…
For many Americans enduring higher prices, easing inflation was on the wishlist for 2023 — and as of July, it’s looking like that dream just might come true. Inflation dropped to 3% in June, reaching its lowest level since May 2021 and marking the 12th month in a row that inflation has eased, based on the…