Economy
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As economic despair mounts, Russian official admits the country has had enough of Putin’s war on Ukraine. ‘We can’t even take one region’
Vladimir Putin is losing the Russian people as the economy and his war machine go in reverse amid withering Ukrainian attacks. On the economic front, Putin himself recently revealed that GDP contracted in the first two months of the year. And on the Ukraine front, Russian forces suffered a net loss of territory last month…
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Basic goods in Cuba are increasingly sold in U.S. dollars as economy collapses. ‘Everything is scarce here — everything — even that wretched bread’
José Luis Amate López hasn’t had a customer in almost two weeks, not counting the scrawny brown kitten that slinks around the bodega where he works in central Havana. The shelves once laden with goods during his childhood sat nearly empty in late April, with barely anything to offer the 5,000 clients who depend on…
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America got rich and got sad. A top economist says 2020 broke something that hasn’t healed
Sam Peltzman is, by his own description, “a fossil from the last millennium.” The Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business — one of the most cited economists of the past half century — he works without research assistants, answers to no grant…
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The US is in a league of its own when it comes to its debt burden, as rating agencies bemoan ‘long-running deterioration’ in fiscal governance
The U.S. is now unmatched in a regrettable category. Among rich and spend-happy nations that are globally seen as safe investments, the U.S. beats out the competition when it comes to the size of its debt burden, as the nation’s public liabilities have exceeded the size of its economy for the first time since World…
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Fed whisperer splits on Powell: A+ as steward, but ‘I don’t think you could give him high marks on the economy’
After 30 minutes of fielding questions, Jerome Powell put his glasses in his suit pocket, told reporters “I won’t see you next time,” and walked out of his 66th and final press conference as Federal Reserve chair on Wednesday. He didn’t linger for the journalists’ tepid applause. Many of those journalists in the room will…
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Interest on U.S. debt is becoming a top driver of future deficits, as the sheer size of past borrowing overwhelms the fiscal outlook
U.S. debt is expected to continue soaring in the coming decades not because of excesses committed by future lawmakers, although that’s certainly possible, but because interest payments on past borrowing will increasingly dominate spending. Americans got a reminder of that outlook as the U.S. crossed a grim fiscal threshold this week, when first-quarter data confirmed…
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Gen Z is rebelling against the economy with ‘disillusionomics,’ tackling near 6-figure debt by turning life into a giant list of income streams
What happens when a generation is raised on economic promises that never materialize? Gen Z may want to ask their older siblings, the millennials, how that turned out, as the Great Recession of 2008—and the ensuing “jobless recovery”—left millions of altered lives, if not dashed dreams, in its wake. But as the oldest Gen Zers…
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Trump says he’ll hike EU auto tariffs to 25%, jolting a world economy that really didn’t need it
President Donald Trump said on Friday that he will increase the tariffs charged on cars and trucks from the European Union next week to 25%, a move that could jolt the world economy at a fragile moment. Trump said in a social media post that the EU “is not complying with our fully agreed to…
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CEOs got an 11% pay raise in 2025. Workers got 0.5%
CEO pay is on the rise in 2025, and the pace of growth is leaving the average worker far behind, according to a new report. The leaders of some of the world’s biggest companies got an 11% pay bump last year, while the average worker globally got a measly 0.5% increase—that means CEO pay grew…
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By staying on the Fed’s board, Jerome Powell could be doing incoming Chairman Kevin Warsh a huge favor
Jerome Powell’s continued presence on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors after his term as chairman ends might be awkward for his replacement, but could also be a big favor for Kevin Warsh. On Wednesday, Powell diverged from long-standing tradition and announced he will remain on the board until the investigation into renovation of the…