Brian Cheung

The cost of living is a top campaign issue, and the city’s program could offer potential solutions. But the approach has critics, too.

The annual change has been anticipated by market observers who fear the Federal Reserve should have cut rates sooner.

New rules around real estate fees are taking effect after a landmark settlement in March. Buyers and sellers are gaining negotiating power in exchange for new costs and paperwork in some cases.

In the mission to harness sustainable energy, the U.S. is behind when it comes to offshore wind energy. The Biden administration has set benchmarks to hit by 2030, yet the industry is lagging far behind. Brian Cheung reports on how one boat could carry the key to unlocking more green energy.

Phoenix is closer to winning the war on inflation than most other cities. And its recent experience bears out what economists and the Federal Reserve have insisted for months but struggled to pin an accurate timeline on: When rents come down, overall inflation usually does, too. Consumer prices in Phoenix rose 2.6% from April 2023 to last month, slower than the 3.4% national pace or that of any other metro area tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Inflation in the city has held beneath 3%…

Pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University yelled “disclose, divest, we will not stop” as they broke into Hamilton Hall earlier this week, demanding the school drop any investments in companies doing business in Israel. But shedding those stakes first requires identifying them, and even that step — disclosure — can get tricky fast, higher education finance experts say. Many large university endowments are murkily set up with thousands of individual funds that have their own rules on how t…

Tesla’s stock jumped about 8% in after-hours trading Tuesday after the electric vehicle giant reported its steepest annual revenue drop in over a decade. Despite softer sales and a growing chorus of skeptics about CEO Elon Musk’s focus on the company, investors cheered its vow to “accelerate the launch of new models,” likely including more affordable ones like the long-awaited low-cost Model 2. “They need to adjust to a new environment,” Dan Ives, managing director at Wedbush Securities financia…

Law enforcement agencies across four states were left scrambling following reports of major 911 outages that saw millions unable to contact authorities late Wednesday. Many of the outages — reported in Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota and Texas — were restored by the late evening, but the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday said its investigation is just getting started. “When you call 911 in an emergency, it is vital that call goes through. The FCC has already begun investigating the 9…

Artists and computer scientists are testing out a new way to stop artificial intelligence from ripping off copyrighted images: “poison” the AI models with visions of cats. A tool called Nightshade, released in January by University of Chicago researchers, changes images in small ways that are nearly invisible to the human eye but look dramatically different to AI platforms that ingest them. Artists like Karla Ortiz are now “nightshading” their artworks to protect them from being scanned and repl…

Donald Trump’s media company is set to make its debut on the stock market Tuesday, a development that could generate a windfall for the cash-strapped former president. His stake in the firm — Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social — is worth billions. But that is wealth on paper, and a number of things would have to happen to allow him to cash out on that stake and address some of his financial issues, including the mounting legal bills in his criminal cases and a…

More than a year out from the most brutal round of tech layoffs since the dot-com bubble burst, workers are reckoning with the loss of what some saw as airtight job security in an industry that’s still downsizing. The tech industry recorded about 34,000 layoffs in January, the most in a single month since January 2023, when almost 90,000 people were let go, according to the job-loss tracker layoffs.fyi. While the latest cuts in Silicon Valley aren’t as deep as those early last year, tech remains…

Households are hitting pause on their tub-to-shower conversion plans and buying new shower curtains instead. After a pandemic-era renovation craze, the nation’s two largest home improvement retailers say customers are spending less on big projects in favor of cheaper do-it-yourself fixes. Lowe’s said this week that it’s seeing shoppers cut back on kitchen and bathroom purchases and becoming more cautious about buying big-ticket appliances. “Those who did engage in home improvement activities too…

Until recently, Brooke Benson considered herself a Panera Bread loyalist. For the past 12 years, the 40-year-old Orlando, Florida, resident said she’d make three to four trips there every week — an estimate her husband said was closer to four or five — to get her favorite soups. But after the outpost of the restaurant chain near Benson’s home raised its price to $8.79 for the same bowl of soup that had cost $7.09 three years ago, she said she was done. “I actually have been looking at soup at al…

Young adults’ wealth is growing, but they’re still living and spending in the here and now. Many feel they don’t have a choice. The net worth of Americans ages 18-39 surged by 80% from the start of 2019 to the third quarter of last year, Federal Reserve Bank of New York research shows, blowing past the rates for older generations. But much of the gains are from investments that climbed alongside stock markets and largely don’t translate into disposable income. And while many millennials (ages 28…

Taxpayers are facing higher costs to file their returns this year. Some will find relief from a new government tool. Many won’t. The costs of tax return preparation and other accounting fees rose 8.3% — steeper than the current 3.4% inflation rate — between November 2023 and the same month the year before, the latest federal data show. That category reflects the growing costs of using DIY tax software and of hiring an accountant. Many tax preparation firms, like other employers, have had to offe…

Nearly everyone, from the Federal Reserve to big-bank chiefs, thought a recession was likely to hit last year. Instead, 2023 delivered better-than-expected economic growth and falling inflation — welcome news for Wall Street investors and 401(k) holders alike. All three major stock indexes closed higher on Thursday after new federal data showed the United States’ economy grew by an estimated 2.5% over the course of 2023, defying widespread predictions that gross domestic product would rise by a…

Retailers are now in the throes of processing billions of dollars in returned holiday gifts, but many of those items aren’t going back on shelves. Instead, they’ll be bundled off to warehouses and sold in auctions for a fraction of their sticker prices. More than 15% of the $966 billion in purchases nationwide this past holiday season will be returned, the National Retail Federation estimates. Many of those goods will be scooped up by liquidators in the “reverse supply chain” business, an indust…

New government data showed prices notching a monthly decline for the first time since April 2020, adding to an improving picture on inflation as the new year looms. The Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index (PCE), one of two major readings on inflation, fell by 0.1% between October and November, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said Friday — the first monthly decline in more than 3 1/2 years. Combined with other recent data showing disposable personal income and consumer sentiment rising,…

Americans are heading into 2024 more optimistic about the health of the economy than they have been in months. The Conference Board reported Wednesday that its Consumer Confidence Index, a measure of how Americans feel about business conditions and the United States’ job market, rose to 110.7 in December, up from 101.0 in November. A component gauge of consumers’ expectations for the next six months saw the largest one-month jump since July. The upticks are especially noteworthy since consumer s…

President Joe Biden’s landmark climate law is driving outsized clean energy funding into low-income, less-educated and fossil fuel towns, according to a new analysis the Treasury Department is set to release Wednesday. An estimated 81% of investments in clean projects since the Inflation Reduction Act’s passage last year have been in counties with below-average weekly wages, and 86% are flowing into those with below-average college graduation rates, according to the report seen by NBC News. In a…