Your Pulse On America: Live And Unfiltered
The Federal Reserve wants to see more evidence that inflation is easing before resuming interest rate cuts. The latest data presented a mixed picture. The central bank’s preferred inflation measure, released on Friday, climbed 2.6 percent in December from a year earlier, faster than its 2.4 percent rate in November and quicker than the central…
You can still get your tax refund sent to your checking account, say, and then use the money to buy digital I bonds via TreasuryDirect. What’s going away is the ability to fill out a special form with your tax return and have the paper bonds bought with your refund. The change was quietly announced…
The 119th Congress began, as it so often has in recent years, with calls from Republican politicians for wrestling down the national debt, which is near a record level relative to the size of the economy. But this time, the G.O.P. had company: Progressive economists and budget wonks, who have often dismissed finger-wagging about debt…
The path of interest rates over the next year doesn’t just affect the cost of mortgages and car loans. It also makes it more expensive for the federal government to borrow. And in recent years, that borrowing has become very expensive. Interest payments on government debt have risen from 1.2 percent of gross domestic product…
At the Federal Reserve’s final gathering of 2024, Chair Jerome H. Powell announced that the U.S. central bank was embarking on a “new phase” in how it would set interest rates. The Fed planned to “move cautiously” with cuts going forward, Mr. Powell told reporters at the time, reflecting officials’ thinking that they could afford…
At the Federal Reserve’s final gathering of 2024, Chair Jerome H. Powell announced that the U.S. central bank was embarking on a “new phase” in how it would set interest rates. The Fed planned to “move cautiously” with cuts going forward, Mr. Powell told reporters at the time, reflecting officials’ thinking that they could afford…
“The chief business of the American people is business.” That declaration by Calvin Coolidge has been shortened and simplified since that Republican president uttered it before an assembly of newspaper editors a century ago. But the notion that the business of America is business was on conspicuous display at President Trump’s inauguration. It may be…
Governments around the world are uncomfortably watching their borrowing costs rise, following the lead of the U.S. Treasury market. But even in a global rout in bonds, Britain stands out. British government bonds, known as gilts, are suffering a particularly harsh sell-off, as investors recoil from the country’s low economic growth, stubborn inflation and high…