Finance
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U.S. extends waiver on Russian oil sanctions to ease Iran war shortages, just days after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ruled it out
The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday extended its pause on sanctions on Russian oil shipments to ease shortages from the Iran war, days after Secretary Scott Bessent ruled out such a move. The so-called general license means U.S. sanctions will not apply for 30 days on deliveries of Russian oil that has been loaded on
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The $6 billion Vatican Bank was beset by scandals, disastrous investments—and ties to the Mafia. How Pope Francis tried to fix it
Although he was billed as an anti-capitalist by some, one of Pope Francis’s key accomplishments was a financial endeavor: his reform of the scandal-plagued $6 billion Vatican Bank. Francis, who died nearly a year ago at age 88, sought to reform the bank and the Holy See (the central government of the Catholic church and
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Air Canada suspends all summer flights to New York’s JFK airport on Iran-surging fuel price
Air Canada will suspend service to New York’s JFK International airport over the summer as the war in Iran creates jet fuel shortages that have sent prices soaring. Canada’s flag carrier said Friday that service from Toronto and Montreal to JFK will cease June 1 and resume Oct. 25. Service to the New York metropolitan
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From drought to demand: Biotech IPOs roar back with Kailera and Alamar
Yuling Luo rang the Nasdaq closing bell Friday having taken his first company public in a massively oversubscribed round. The Alamar Biosciences CEO’s IPO was one of two back-to-back blockbuster biotech offerings this week, a clear signal that investors are willing to open their wallets for life sciences companies again—under the right conditions. On Thursday,
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‘We should absolutely be concerned about non-college-educated men today’: higher rents, living at home, falling out of the labor market
Men are nearly twice as likely as women to be living with their parents, and a new study says it’s particularly harmful for non-college educated men, who are less likely to hold jobs compared to their college-educated counterparts. As rents have surged across the country, more and more men are moving home, and once there,
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Trump’s big housing market solution is dead on arrival, UBS says—its model is Texas from 25 years ago
The Trump administration’s grand plan to fix America’s housing affordability crisis leans heavily on deregulation, and Wall Street is increasingly unified in its skepticism that it will actually work. In a new research note published Thursday, UBS analysts assessed the Economic Report of the President, which laid out the administration’s most detailed housing strategy to
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The ultra-wealthy have a new favorite status symbol: From a $14.5 million guitar to an $812,500 bottle of wine, rare collectibles are on a tear
John Kapon knew that the bottle of 1945 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti up for sale at his New-York based wine seller’s auction last month was going to do well. After all, it was one of only 600 bottles of the burgundy produced in a year marked in history as end of World War II, and
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Oil is back to early war days, S&P 500 jumps to all-time high
Oil prices dropped back to where they were in the early days of the Iran war, and U.S. stocks raced to another record Friday after Iran said the Strait of Hormuz is open again for commercial tankers carrying crude from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide. The S&P 500 leaped 1.2% to an all-time high
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Something is different about Trump’s $1 trillion war on Iran and its stress on the national debt, Harvard Kennedy scholar says
German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant argued in his 1795 essay Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, that nations should conduct themselves in a particular way with wars and debt: “National debts shall not be contracted with a view to the external friction of states.” In other words, to maintain peace, don’t finance wars with debt. Nearly
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Half of Iran’s workforce faces unemployment risk as the U.S.-Israel war’s ‘hidden target’ was the labor market, economist says
The U.S. and Iran have observed a ceasefire for nearly two weeks, but the economic toll is only starting to become clear and could have drastic consequences. The U.S.-Israeli bombardment has damaged more than 125,000 residential and civilian buildings, while over 20,000 industrial units have been destroyed, according to Hadi Kahalzadeh, a former economist at Iran’s Social