Finance
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Goldman flags $100-plus Brent if Hormuz shut another month
Brent crude is set to average more than $100 a barrel through 2026 if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for another month, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. “The situation remains fluid,” analysts including Daan Struyven said in a note after the start of a two-week ceasefire between the US and Iran, noting comments…
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Claudia Sheinbaum wants Mexico to start fracking to get away from Trump’s natural gas. But she won’t call it that
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday announced plans to tap into unconventional natural gas deposits in an effort to lower her country’s reliance on foreign energy at a time when the Iran war is disrupting global energy markets. But Sheinbaum — a scientist and climate expert — notably avoided the term hydraulic fracturing or “fracking,”…
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First, Iran and Hormuz, second, China and Taiwan? The dangerous implications of a tollbooth on the open sea
To end the war with the United States and Israel, Iran is demanding the right to collect tolls in the Strait of Hormuz as a precondition for reopening the waterway vital to world oil supplies. Yet collecting tolls in the strait would violate a basic and enduring principle of international maritime trade: freedom of peaceful…
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‘Every time you see that power bill, you’re just sick’: Meet a West Virginian whose $900 electric charge is more than her fixed income
Every month, Rebecca Michalski takes a deep breath before opening her electric bill. She lives on a fixed income, and heating her small house this winter has been staggering: Her February charge was $940.08 — more than her check. It makes no sense. She turns the lights off during the day and only burns one…
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U.S. government is spending $88 billion a month in interest on national debt—equal to spending on defense and education combined
The problem with an increasing debt burden is that it costs more to maintain it: This is precisely the issue with which the U.S. Treasury is wrangling at present. As total U.S. national debt ticks over $39 trillion, the interest payments on that value are eye-watering: $529 billion for the first six months of the…
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Why Trump’s 2027 budget could be the document that triggers a debt crisis
America’s long-term budget outlook just got a lot scarier. If the bond vigilantes are already circling, and if they’re looking for more reasons to dump U.S. bonds and push Treasury yields to crisis levels, they need do nothing more than read the newly issued Budget of the U.S. Government for Fiscal Year 2027 (starting Oct.…
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The New York Times says it found Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin. Not so fast
The quest to unmask Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, has been going on for more than a decade now, and resulted in some embarrassing misfires. The most notorious came in 2014 when Newsweek magazine dropped a bombshell cover story claiming the Bitcoin inventor was a 64-year-old man named Dorian Nakamoto, hiding in plain…
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The Iran war is either concluding with the world worse off, or escalation is just delayed again
A fragile ceasefire agreement in the war began with bombs continuing to explode in Lebanon and contradictory statements about whether Iran will continue to control the critical Strait of Hormuz energy chokepoint. But the most likely scenarios moving forward involve either Iran exerting more control over global energy markets than it did before the fighting…
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Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin ETF began trading. An analyst put it in the top 1% of ETF launches
A slew of Bitcoin ETFs have hit the market since the products were first approved in the U.S. in 2024, but so far one sector has remained on the sidelines—major U.S. banks. That changed Wednesday with the launch of MSBT, a Bitcoin ETF offered by Morgan Stanley. The spot ETF, which features an industry low…
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How dual incomes and the tech boom turned the upper middle class into America’s biggest income group
The ranks of Americans that can add guac to their burrito bowl guilt-free have swelled. The upper middle class has become the largest income group in the US, according to a recent analysis by the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, highlighted by the Wall Street Journal. The report contends that the lower rungs of the middle…