Visa and Mastercard reached a 38 billion dollar settlement with U.S. merchants to end a two-decade dispute over credit card swipe fees. The deal lowers interchange rates and adds new flexibility for businesses while allowing both companies to deny wrongdoing. If approved, it could reshape how payment fees are managed across the U.S. retail and financial sectors.
Bitcoin has always inspired bold predictions. From early adopters who viewed it as a revolutionary form of money to institutional investors who see it as digital gold, debate over its ultimate value remains fierce. As of now, Bitcoin trades in the low six figures, far from the million-dollar price targets long promised by its most devoted believers.
The United States faces a growing financial challenge as corporate debt reaches record highs alongside a surge in AI investments. This article examines how rising borrowing and AI-driven market enthusiasm could combine to create risks for economic stability, exploring data, market trends, and policy responses shaping the future.
In 2025, LA County implemented a 3% rent cap to combat rising housing costs. This new policy limits annual rent increases for rent-controlled properties, impacting tenants, landlords, and the broader housing market.
America’s middle class is grappling with skyrocketing living costs, job insecurity, and crushing financial burdens. Explore the heart-wrenching realities millions of families face as they struggle to keep up with rising expenses and uncertain futures.
The year 2024 proved to be an exceptional one for gold, as the yellow metal defied expectations and delivered impressive gains. By the end of the year, its price had surged by nearly 27%, marking one of its best performances of the century. This rally was the largest since 2010, with gold reaching a peak of $2,790 per ounce in late October before settling at around $2,626.80 by December.
The official poverty measure declined to 11.1% in 2023 from 11.5% in 2022. At the same time, the supplemental poverty measure, an alternative way to measure poverty introduced in 2011, increased to 12.9% in 2023 from 12.4% a year earlier.
A whole “beyond GDP” movement has emerged over the last several decades, arguing that we should adopt a new way of measuring the wealth of nations. There is an ongoing debate about the best alternative, and many indicators have supporters, such as gross national happiness and the genuine progress indicator.
The Road was especially popular in the US. This was helped by Reader’s Digest publishing a shortened edition in 1945, introducing Hayek to a non-academic audience of some 9 million households. He was seized upon by conservatives opposing Franklin D Roosevelt’s interventionist New Deal.
AI-powered robo-advisers, such as Betterment and Vanguard in the US, and finance app Revolut in Europe, are now democratising investment. These tools are making professional financial insight and portfolio management available to everyone. But although there are plenty of advantages to using robo-advisers, there are downsides too.
Rejected by the toy industry at first, Barbie is now one of America’s most trusted brands. “She” – the 11.5 inch blonde doll, but also her brand persona – generated worldwide sales of around US$1.5 billion (£1.3 billion) in 2022, and has a brand value of US$590 million.
The Fed issues as much dollars as needed by writing the new trillions on its balance sheet. As long as this system continues working, hyperinflation is very unlikely to happen.
Next time you read a story about a rise in pay, try to see if it reports the wage data in nominal or real terms, and if it includes fringe benefits too.
The main components of the cost you pay to borrow money are a benchmark rate, credit risk and how much profit a lender wants to make.
The UK continues being home to the large majority of the EU millionaire bankers. About 3,567 of them live in the UK, whereas only 390 live in Germany, 233 in France and 201 in Italy.
Americans will spend US$8.8 billion on Halloween candy, costumes and decorations this year, including half a billion dollars on costumes for their pets.
The intended closure of Ford’s Bridgend engine plant in 2020, with the loss of 1,700 industry jobs, has sent shock waves through Wales.
New research estimates that $420 billion in corporate profits is shifted out of 79 countries every year. This equates to $125 billion in lost tax revenue.
The world should be inspired by Swedish culture, with more fika, more time for leisurely reading about non-work topics, and more lagom towards jobs.
Over one million UK SMEs, around a quarter of the total, were concerned about how Brexit would affect the success of their business.
Millennials have racked up over US$1 trillion of debt. Yet, in comparison to previous generations this group is significantly more fiscally conservative.
Hawke and Keating were a dynamic duo of creative economics leadership. They reformed all aspects of Australia’s struggling economy.
Germans not only save more than their UK counterparts, but the deep rooted national habit has more implications for Germany than those numbers would reveal.
Benefits, particularly those that employees deem necessary or exceptionally valuable, enable employers to exercise surveillance over workers.