Every financial crisis has a villain that nobody saw coming. In 2008, it was mortgage-backed securities. In March 2020, it was prime money market funds, which saw investors pull billions in days as panic spread through the system. Now, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank...
Consumers enjoyed a break from price increases during the holiday shopping season. But now, companies have begun raising prices once more, and at higher levels than usual, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Monday (Feb. 16). As the report points out, many companies typically increase...
The latest inflation data released Friday (Feb 13) point to a continued easing of price pressures, particularly in categories that define household necessity rather than discretionary spending, offering consumers incremental but tangible relief. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 2.4% year over year in January,...
The consumer in the United States is no longer one market. It’s two. And corporate earnings calls are increasingly where the split shows up first. On one side are premium brands and travel players reporting that affluent customers are still spending freely. “The strength in...
Foreign exporters paid a growing share of the cost of new tariffs in 2025, though U.S. importers continued to pay for most of that cost, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said Thursday (Feb. 12). The share paid by foreign exporters was 6% from January...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ January employment report, released Wednesday (Feb. 11), delivered the kind of headline that suggests calm. Payrolls rose by 130,000 and the unemployment rate held at 4.3%. On its face, that’s a labor market that’s still adding jobs, but no longer...
Prediction market Kalshi recorded $1 billion-plus in trading volume on Super Bowl Sunday. That’s a daily record high, CEO Tarek Mansour said in an interview with CNBC Tuesday (Feb. 11). The company, which lets users purchase event contracts for the outcomes of things like sporting and pop culture events, elections and...
Flat retail sales at year end ran counter to the growth momentum many analysts expected upon the release of the latest report on Tuesday (Feb. 10). Instead, the data offered a clearer view into how consumers are navigating constrained budgets by choosing carefully where spending...
Households’ perceptions of inflation and the labor market improved slightly in January, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said Monday (Feb. 9). When considering inflation, households’ short-term expectations improved while their medium- and long-term expectations remained unchanged, the New York Fed’s Center for Microeconomic...