‘The world cannot afford to fail women, children and adolescents’

Cyril Ramaphosa and Pedro Sánchez at Al Jazeera

In “too many parts of the world, giving birth still comes with more fear than hope,” say South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. The “true measure of global progress is not found in financial markets or summit declarations” but in “whether a woman survives pregnancy and childbirth, whether a child is vaccinated and nourished and whether an adolescent can grow up healthy.” No “woman or girl should be denied access to life-saving care.”

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‘Why everything feels more expensive’

Roland Fryer at The Wall Street Journal

A recent poll “found that 83% of Americans say it’s harder to buy a home than it was for previous generations,” and “they aren’t wrong,” says Roland Fryer. But the “explanation is more complicated than either side’s populists admit.” The “culprit is structural, not political.” Productivity gains “tend to concentrate in goods — cars, clothing, televisions, food — as technology steadily drives prices down.” Before “indicting the economy, consider what 50 years of growth actually delivered.”

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‘Why Trump’s stock trades are so exceptionally corrupt’

Michael A. Cohen at MS NOW

Donald Trump is the “most corrupt president in American history,” says Michael A. Cohen. In the “first quarter of the year,” he “made more than 3,700 financial trades,” and the “conflicts of interest and personal corruption are simply astonishing.” Even “if it’s true that Trump is not involved in these stock purchases, the mere appearance of a conflict of interest is why, in the past, presidents have avoided day trading.” With “Trump, there’s always a worse tale to tell.”

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‘During National Police Week and beyond, law enforcement officers merit respect’

Randy Robertson and Josh McKoon

During National Police Week, Americans “pause to honor the brave men and women who put on the badge and willingly place themselves in harm’s way to protect our communities,” say Randy Robertson and Josh McKoon. We “remember the officers who made the ultimate sacrifice,” but “today, law enforcement officers are being asked to do more with less.” We “also must recognize the burden carried by the families of law enforcement officers,” as “they make sacrifices, too.”

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What happened

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Kevin Warsh as Federal Reserve chair in a 54-45 vote, with only one Democrat joining Republicans. President Donald Trump has aggressively pressured the central bank to slash interest rates and made that a condition for his chair pick. But “hot inflation readings are clouding the path for the rate cuts Warsh advocated as he essentially campaigned for the job,” The Wall Street Journal said.

Who said what

Warsh will start his four-year chairmanship amid “resurgent inflation, public discontent with the economy and unprecedented attacks on the Fed’s independence,” Axios said. No Fed chair has “been confirmed by such a narrow margin,” said the Journal, reflecting Democratic concerns that Warsh will be Trump’s “sock puppet.”

The Labor Department reported Wednesday that producer prices jumped 1.4% last month and were up 6% from a year earlier, the highest wholesale inflation numbers in at least three years. With the jump in consumer prices, it’s clear “America’s inflation problem is getting worse, not better,” Axios said. The producer price numbers were “so far above expectations,” said Carl Weinberg at High Frequency Economics, they “will set off alarm bells at the Fed” and “in the financial markets, too.”

What next?

Warsh takes the reins from Jerome Powell on Friday. Powell’s decision to stay on as a Fed governor amid lingering criminal threats from Trump’s prosecutors “could prove awkward” for Walsh, who “has vowed to embark on ‘regime change,’” The New York Times said.

From Meghan Trainor and Zayn to the Pussycat Dolls, artists are canceling their concert tours because of unsold tickets. This so-called blue dot fever — taking its name from the blue dots that represent available seats in a performance venue’s seating chart — reflects a lack of affordability and the reduced power of nostalgia.

Why are seats not selling?

There are “signs that consumer tolerance for high prices is breaking and a correction is taking place,” said The Times. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the average ticket price “increased from $96.17 in 2019 to $106.07 in 2022, marking the first time it had crossed the $100 threshold,” said Pollstar. The price of concert tickets peaked in 2024 at $135.92. In 2025, the price “dropped 2.4% to $132.62, but it’s still more than either 2022 or 2023.”

Directly after the pandemic, there was “such pent-up demand that it was really easy to tour and everybody was making a lot of money,” said J.R. Lind, a senior writer at Pollstar, to The Times. Now, there’s a “little bit of coming back to earth.” With “inflation and rising fuel costs,” affordability is “going to start affecting concerts.”

“Sky-high ticket prices” are happening because of “three key factors,” said Rolling Stone. “Supply and demand, as reflected in the controversial practice of dynamic pricing, rampant scalping, and one dominant company, Live Nation, controlling every source of revenue, including beer, food, parking and Ticketmaster service fees.”

In addition, touring costs have become high. The national average for regular gas is at $4.56 a gallon, with California at $6.17. Diesel fuel averages $7.49 a gallon in California, which is “critical for the trucks that move staging, lighting and equipment between cities,” said the San Francisco Chronicle. “Those costs can quickly change the math for tours that depend on long-haul logistics.”

Are there cultural implications?

Along with the ticket prices, the cultural capital for many artists is dwindling. Artists are “getting booked into rooms too big for where they sit today,” Nathan Green, the CEO and co-founder of New Level Radio, said to Newsweek. Older artists banking on nostalgia are struggling most: Zayn, formerly a member of boy band One Direction, and the Pussycat Dolls, a girl group that was big in the early aughts, both recently canceled their U.S. tours.

In 2024, the “British band Oasis sold out its first North American tour since 2008 within an hour,” and “Coldplay, Hilary Duff and My Chemical Romance are among artists who have seen huge demand for live concerts despite the height of their popularity being two decades ago,” said Newsweek. Still, banking on old glory no longer works for everyone.

“Blue dot fever” disproportionately affects smaller or older artists. “Mega-stars and must-see tours continue to sell, while some arena and stadium runs find that streaming popularity, nostalgia or social media buzz does not always translate into thousands of $100-plus seats,” said the San Francisco Chronicle.

The problem could be helped by downsizing. “If the business goes back to booking artists into rooms they can fill, even if it means smaller venues and more nights, the show looks like a show again,” said Green. “The empty seats are a sign to every fan that the hype was bigger than the act.”

What happened

Consumer prices last month shot up 3.8% from a year earlier, the biggest year-over-year uptick since May 2023, the U.S. Labor Department reported Tuesday. The heated inflation was driven largely by a 28% year-over-year jump in gasoline prices tied to President Donald Trump’s war with Iran.

Who said what

The latest consumer price index underscored how “daily life in America is getting more expensive,” The New York Times said. Airfares were up 21% from a year ago and food prices rose 3.2%, with coffee prices jumping 19% and tomatoes up 40%. Trump’s tariffs are “still slowly filtering through to some goods,” The Wall Street Journal said, but the war “has presented a much quicker and more obvious shock that could be hard to reverse.”

Asked Tuesday if cost-of-living concerns were motivating his dealmaking with Iran, Trump said “not even a little bit.” His only concern is Iran’s nuclear program, he said. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”

What next?

In a separate report Tuesday, the Labor Department said real average hourly wages fell 0.5% from March to April, meaning “most workers are effectively taking a pay cut even as the White House touts its economic record,” The Washington Post said.

Andy Burnham might be the bookmakers’ favourite to replace Keir Starmer as Labour leader, despite his lack of a Westminster seat, but he certainly isn’t the bond market’s favourite.

In fact, gilt traders see the Greater Manchester mayor as the “biggest threat” of all the potential candidates, said the Financial Times. He troubled investors last year when he suggested the country should not be “in hock” to the bond market. Six out of 10 fund managers picked Burnham as the candidate that would “trigger the most negative market reaction”.

Burnham has said his comments on the bond market were misinterpreted, but the political project he espouses and the vision he offers for the country’s future – Manchesterism – remains highly divisive. Critics see it as “mostly vibes and boosterism” that “relies on a bottom-up localism” difficult to scale at a national level, said PoliticsHome. Others see it as our potential economic and political saviour.

What did the commentators say?

Manchesterism is a “horrifically overused phrase” about how my city “does things differently”, said Stephen Topping in the Manchester Evening News. But it’s true. Manchesterism is “‘place-based’ rather than party political”. It involves “public services working closer together, and in partnership with both the private sector and community groups, to ensure the benefits of a stronger economy can be felt by more people”.

The Greater Manchester region has become the UK’s fastest growing economy over the past decade, “at more than double the rate of the national average”. Devolution has been critical: the “trailblazer” deal struck in 2023 has allowed Greater Manchester to “take public control of key services” such as the bus network, which has improved living standards and boosted the local economy. Those who have worked closely with Burnham believe Manchesterism “could work in other parts of the UK”, though it would pose “a radical departure from the UK’s largely centralised economy”.

Burnham’s programme has begun “delivering affordability and economic dynamism” by “regaining public control” of essential services, said Mathew Lawrence, director of progressive think tank Common Wealth, in The New Statesman.

Energy, water, housing, transport and care are “domains of inelastic demand” and “existential need”. So market governance of the supply side “produces rent extraction” and underinvestment. The public “pays twice: through higher bills” and taxes to fund support. But public control of essentials eliminates the privatisation premium. “Rebuilding public provision is not the alternative to fiscal prudence. It is fiscal prudence.”

Manchesterism might be the “buzzword of the day”, but it’s simply people projecting their “pipe dreams” on to Burnham’s “blank canvas of soft-left localism”, said Daniel Johnson in The Telegraph.

“The irony is that 19th-century Manchesterism was more or less the opposite of what the Labour Party now thinks it means.” Manchester was “both the laboratory and the showcase of the Industrial Revolution”, the “citadel of free trade”. It had nothing to do with Burnham’s “municipal socialism”. His proposed solution to Britain’s economic woes is “a muddled melange of municipal meddling, including tax hikes and more borrowing”. What Britain needs is the 19th-century version, which Burnham doesn’t understand.

The vision of Manchesterism Burnham outlined in January is, in practice, an industrial strategy – and there is “nothing new about those”, said Christopher Snowdon in The Critic. Economists have long criticised them for “misallocating resources, crowding out private investment, picking losers, and forcing taxpayers to bail out industries that are only kept on life support for political reasons”. How, exactly, can Manchesterism “stop us being in hock to the bond markets” when Manchester City Council is “one of the most indebted in the country”.

What next?

Burnham is planning to reassure the bond market that his possible election to Labour leader would “not trigger a financial meltdown”, said The Telegraph. Sources say he is planning to endorse a pamphlet outlining a framework for Manchesterism, setting out how it could be rolled out across the UK and “the wider economic theory behind his ideas”.

But the uncertain national landscape, in which voters are moving both further left and further right, could make the success of Manchesterism “a challenge for anybody”, Sarah Longlands, chief executive of the Manchester-based Centre for Local Economic Strategies, told Manchester Evening News.

Manchesterism is still in its early stages, yet for all the benefits devolution has brought, Greater Manchester is still “a tale of two cities”, with a great income and opportunities divide exacerbated by the cost of living crisis. “Growth in Greater Manchester has to be for everybody – otherwise, what’s the point?” Longlands said.

What happened

The federal Court of International Trade on Thursday ruled against the 10% global tariffs President Donald Trump imposed in February after the Supreme Court struck down steep import taxes he had enacted under a different legal authority. Trump’s tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 are “invalid” and “unauthorized by law,” the trade court said in its 2-1 decision.

Who said what

Thursday’s ruling dealt “yet another legal setback” to Trump’s “efforts to wage a trade war without the express permission of Congress,” The New York Times said. But the court “only explicitly blocked” collecting the tariff from two small businesses and Washington state, finding that the other 23 states in the lawsuit hadn’t paid any relevant tariffs. Another reason the ruling’s “immediate impact might be limited,” The Wall Street Journal said, is that the tariff expires July 24, at “which point the administration plans to pivot to different tariffs” that are “more routinely used and seen as legally durable.”

What next?

The ruling “weakens” Trump on his “core economic initiative” a week before he meets with Chinese President Xi Jinping to discuss bilateral trade, The Washington Post said. It also “sets the stage for another protracted legal battle” over refunding the billions collected under another illegal tariff regime, Reuters said.

How big is true crime?

It’s a nationwide obsession. According to a recent study by Edison Research, some 230 million Americans, or about 67% of the population, consume true-crime content: documentaries, podcasts, YouTube videos, and books that delve into real-life murders, scams, and scandals. The genre’s popularity can be seen in last year’s top-5 most-watched documentary TV shows on Netflix. Four had a true-crime theme and the No. 1 series, American Murder: Gabby Petito, had more than 60 million views. On podcast charts, series such as Crime Junkie and the audio version of NBC’s Dateline routinely sit among the most downloaded shows. This demand for crime-related content has led media giants to heap cash on top producers: In 2022, Amazon paid more than $100 million for exclusive distribution rights to the hit podcast My Favorite Murder. For the loved ones of some of the victims covered in the shows, it’s traumatizing to see their real-life pain replayed for profit and entertainment. “I’m so tired of murder victims being used as cash cows,” said Charlie Shunick, whose 21-year-old sister Mickey was kidnapped and murdered in Lafayette, La., in 2012.

How did the genre become so popular?

True-crime stories have long been a subject of public fascination, from the penny dreadfuls of Victorian England to the murder-heavy newsmagazine shows launched in the 1980s and ’90s, such as Dateline and CBS’s 48 Hours. But it was an NPR podcast, Serial, that ushered in the modern true-crime craze. For the first season in 2014, host Sarah Koenig delved into the 1999 murder of Baltimore high schooler Hae Min Lee, finding weaknesses in the case that led to the conviction of her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed. He was freed in 2022. That Serial season was downloaded more than 300 million times, and its success spawned thousands of copycats and a vast community of true-crime fans. “Everybody loves a whodunnit,” explains criminologist Scott Bonn.

Who are true crime’s biggest fans? 

They tend to be white and female. Women make up 62% of listeners to true-crime podcasts and an oversize share of true-crime TV watchers. Some social scientists say women may be drawn to the genre because, in an often violently misogynist society, they want to pick up on survival skills. “If you are more fearful, you are more interested in knowing more about how these situations can occur,” said psychologist Dean Fido. Others say it’s simple human nature to be fascinated with taboo subjects like murder and rape—just as it’s natural to rubberneck at a car crash. But critics argue that true crime gives Americans a misleading picture of real crime. Serial killers, a favorite of the genre, are exceptionally rare. And true-crime creators disproportionately focus on white female victims such as Petito, 22. Her 2021 murder in Wyoming Bridger–Teton National Forest received extensive media coverage, unlike the more than 700 Indigenous women who had disappeared in the park over the previous decade.

What happens when a crime is spotlighted?

Sometimes, coverage results in a breakthrough. The case of 19-year-old Kristin Smart, who was murdered in her California Polytechnic State University dorm room in 1996, went cold until 2019 when Christopher Lambert, then a Cal Poly student, started a podcast, Your Own Backyard. Listeners sent in tips, and in 2022 former Cal Poly student Paul Flores was convicted of Smart’s murder. True crime can also reveal miscarriages of justice: Investigative podcast In the Dark helped free Curtis Flowers, a Black man from Mississippi who faced execution after being tried six times for the same crime. But critics say those shows are outliers, and that most of the genre is pure exploitation. Family members of the 17 young men murdered by Jeffrey Dahmer were outraged by Netflix’s hit Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, saying the streamer not only failed to consult them but also glamorized the serial killer. “We’re all one traumatic event away from the worst day of your life being reduced to your neighbor’s favorite binge show,” said Eric Perry, a cousin of Dahmer victim Errol Lindsey.

Are there other problems with the genre?

Independent sleuths can interfere with active investigations. After the suspected February kidnapping of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of Today co-host Savannah Guthrie, hordes of true crime livestreamers set up camp outside Nancy’s Tucson home. Police had to deploy extra patrols to manage the vloggers, one of whom had a pizza delivered to the crime scene. Those streamers typically don’t adhere to the journalistic standards of mainstream reporters. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos had to publicly refute allegations made by some streamers that members of Guthrie’s family were involved in Nancy’s disappearance, calling the claims “wrong” and “cruel.” Meanwhile, some psychologists warn that hardcore fans can become desensitized to violence. My Favorite Murder listeners, who call themselves “Murderinos,” can buy T-shirts featuring the hosts’ catchphrases, including “Stay sexy. Don’t get murdered.”

Can such shows keep our attention? 

There are some signs the industry is stagnating. While true-crime podcasts today account for 15% of all new podcasts released, that share is down 20% from 2022, according to industry journalist Frank Racioppi. And today’s most-listened-to true-crime podcasts are largely the same ones as those four years ago. But few experts think our fascination with true crime will fade anytime soon, because it runs so deep. Dr. Michael Mantell, former chief psychologist for the San Diego Police Department, notes that prehistoric humans painted “true crime” images of people killing one another on cave walls. “This is not something that’s new,” he said. “It didn’t start with Ted Bundy. This began 30,000 years ago.”

‘Tens of millions of Americans will never own a home — consequences will be severe’

John Mac Ghlionn at The Hill

Real estate “has been crushed for a second consecutive year — this time by a war in Iran that has sent mortgage rates soaring,” says John Mac Ghlionn. The market has “become a staring contest where nobody blinks, nobody moves, and the country suffers.” Homeownership has “long been the primary vehicle through which middle class Americans build wealth.” Take it “away, and you remove the single largest source of generational stability for tens of millions of households.”

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‘We lend military our loved ones. Least they can do is feed them.’

Rebekah Gleaves Sanderlin at USA Today

There’s an “unspoken contract the U.S. military makes with military families: Lend us your loved ones, and we’ll meet their basic needs,” says Rebekah Gleaves Sanderlin. But upon seeing photos of “meager and unappetizing meals purportedly being served to sailors deployed to the Middle East, people took notice.” The “mere fact that military family members suspect their loved ones’ basic needs aren’t being met is an indicator.” It “tells us they don’t trust leadership to care for their people.”

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‘The dark side of Gaza’s new fancy cafes and restaurants’

Eman Abu Zayed at Al Jazeera

Social media is “full of posts showing off photos and videos of fancy-looking cafes and restaurants in Gaza” but “these new establishments do not prove that normality is coming back to Gaza,” says Eman Abu Zayed. They are a “testament to its continuing genocidal abnormality.” The war “made some people in Gaza rich, especially those who engaged in illicit activities,” and “this wealth is now coming out in various forms, including luxury cafes and restaurants.”

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‘Trump’s ridiculous ballroom is no place for journalists’

Ana Marie Cox at The Nation

Trump has “been pushing for future White House Correspondents’ Association dinners to be held on his turf, at the still-mythical ballroom that the president tore down part of the White House to build,” says Ana Marie Cox. But “this is a solution to a problem that does not exist.” The “metaphor of watchful hospitality should be on everyone’s mind every time Trump or his cronies bleat about moving the correspondents’ dinner to his metastasizing monstrosity.”

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What happened

Pioneering no-frills budget carrier Spirit Airlines ceased operations on Saturday, citing sharply higher fuel prices and the collapse of a $500 million Trump administration bailout. “This is tremendously disappointing and not the outcome any of us wanted.” Spirit CEO Dave Davis said in a statement.

Who said what

The “proudly penny-pinching” airline had capped its “final, mad-dash scramble to save money” with tentative deals to emerge from bankruptcy, unveiled four days before the Iran war started, The Associated Press said. In the end, the “spike in jet fuel prices from the war was the last straw,” said Axios.

Spirit was “often skewered for its bare-bones service,” but its “corresponding dirt-cheap fares opened up air travel” to thousands and “helped shape how other airlines competed,” The Washington Post said. Even if “you never flew Spirit, you benefited” from its low prices, said The Wall Street Journal. “Competing airlines vigorously matched its fares,” and “one big reason major airlines” were “rooting against a government bailout” is that “one less pesky discounter gives them more pricing power.”

What next?

Spirit said customers who booked flights with credit or debit cards would automatically get refunded. Most other U.S. airlines offered discounted or “rescue fares” to Spirit passengers facing canceled flights.

Congratulations to Kevin Warsh, President Trump's preferred pick to be the new chairman of the Federal Reserve, said Hakyung Kim in the FT. He managed to get through an eagerly awaited grilling about his nomination by the Senate Banking Committee “without causing a Treasuries market meltdown”.

Risk of escalation

Warsh carefully “sidestepped multiple gotchas on his independence from Trump” – including the suggestion that he is “a human sock puppet”. But ultimately the world's most important central bank still faces a political deadlock, said DealBook in The New York Times.

Thom Tillis, a Republican committee member, has vowed to block Warsh's appointment unless the Department of Justice drops its investigation into the current chair Jay Powell's building renovations. Powell has refused to quit next month as scheduled unless his successor is in place; Trump has threatened to fire him. For the moment, investors “are largely ignoring the drama”. But any escalation “carries huge risks”.

Even if this soap opera is swiftly resolved, Warsh faces “a high-wire act” convincing investors that he's his own man, “without angering Trump”, said Nick Timiraos in The Wall Street Journal. An erstwhile inflation “hawk”, he auditioned for the job by constructing a case for the rate cuts Trump wants – arguing that an AI boom “would soon deliver a productivity surge”. Yet the Iran war has changed everything.

Regime change

When Trump picked Warsh in January (in part because of his “central casting” looks), markets were factoring in at least one or two cuts this year, probably more, said The Economist. But the soaring oil price pushed headline inflation to 3.3% in March (up from 2.4% the month before) and next month's data could be equally painful. Few now expect cuts this year. Moreover, Warsh's AI argument has always been “shaky”. If the technology really does make US workers more productive, “the correct monetary response might well be to raise interest rates”.

Warsh's most interesting views, which also potentially bring him into conflict with politicians and the markets, concern the Fed's balance sheet, said John Authers on Bloomberg. “He is loudly on record that it should be smaller” – meaning that the Fed should sell down some of the huge portfolio of bonds it took on to deal with the 2008 financial crisis and then the pandemic. “At the margin, that would mean less liquidity in the market, and higher bond yields.”

Yet we're no clearer how he might actually go about this, said Hakyung Kim. Warsh is proposing “regime change”. But “if you're going to rip up the current playbook, you'd better have a better one, and it's not clear that Warsh does”.

The S&P 500, the benchmark US stock index, hit a record high on Wednesday. This is being mirrored in other major stock markets across Asia and Europe, despite growing concerns over global fuel and energy prices as a result of the war in Iran and the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz.

“There’s a lot of risk out there and yet asset prices are at all-time highs,” Sarah Breeden, deputy governor of the Bank of England, told the BBC’s business editor Simon Jack. “We expect there will be an adjustment at some point”, she said. What “really keeps me awake at night is the likelihood of a number of risks crystallising at the same time”.

As Jack said: “It is unusual for a senior figure at the Bank to be so forthright on market movements.” With confidence fluctuating around peace talks, and reverberations in energy markets continuing, what has gone up could just as easily come down.

What did the commentators say?

“Nothing, it seems, can dent the almost inexplicable optimism coursing through financial markets,” said the ABC’s chief business correspondent Ian Verrender. In the past, stock markets would “shudder” and “tumble”, then spend a decade recovering from economic “calamity”; nowadays the recovery time is cut down to weeks, “if they bother to react at all”.

Investors are not “oblivious” to what is happening in the world, said Joe Rennison, financial markets reporter for The New York Times. They are just attuned to “what exactly the markets are measuring”, looking beyond the “immediate upheaval from the war” to concentrate on its “long-term effects on corporate profits”. Americans may be struggling to afford fuel for their cars, but companies have been “very profitable indeed” for “quite a while now”. Big tech is “riding a wave of enthusiasm”, and it is these bigger companies, like Microsoft and Meta, who have been shielded from the war and tend to influence the market more profoundly.

Although the market “rapidly rebounded – and then some” after Trump’s ceasefire announcement, having been on a steady slide for most of March, investors are “not simply taking Trump at his word” that the war is “almost over”. Instead, they are responding to the White House’s “apparent eagerness” to find an end to the combat. “Investors might not believe Trump, exactly, but they do seem to believe that the worst of the war has already passed.”

After “years of headline-driven volatility” and a “dip-buying mindset”, investors have learned not to “stay bearish for too long”, said Bloomberg. The current pattern echoes the “Ukraine-war playbook from early 2022, when an initial equities sell-off and commodity price surge” soon reversed to normal.

“It is never easy to price uncertainty,” said Tej Parikh in the Financial Times. Investors have long relied on “ebitda”, or earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, to ascertain the “core value of a business”. But it now appears they have changed their tune, relying on “earnings before Iran, tariffs and dubious announcements”.

What next?

Since the war in Iran began, analysts have “actually raised their expectations for upcoming profits” for S&P 500 companies, said The Associated Press. Major companies such as PepsiCo and GE Vernova have either “stuck by” or “raised” their revenue forecasts for the year, which were initially published before the start of the war. S&P 500 profits could “accelerate to 20% in the second quarter, and companies aren’t giving them many reasons to reconsider”.

Of course, the US stock market “can easily return to falling”. If US-Iran peace talks break down, or if oil supplies cause greater concern, Wall Street’s mood could “swing quickly back to fear”. If oil prices, in particular, stay elevated for long enough, that could “erode” profits and raise costs, not to mention “weaken the spending power” of consumers around the world.

President Lee Jae Myung warned earlier this month that the conflict in Iran represented a “war-like situation” for South Koreans. As oil reserves continue to dwindle, even if normal service in the Strait of Hormuz were to resume, it would take a long time for supplies to catch up.

The war is “serving as a significant turning point” for South Korea to shift to renewable energy, South Korea’s Minister of Climate, Energy and Environment Kim Sung-hwan told CNBC. We must undergo a “fundamental energy transition” and “turn this challenge into a blessing in disguise”.

Rising oil prices, and the weakening of the won against the dollar, are “dealing a double blow” to the Korean economy, said The New York Times. But reliance on oil has also highlighted the domestic tussle for green energy action in a divided South Korean system.

‘Draconian’ measures

The “brightly illuminated” satellite images of South Korea at night, compared to the “sea of blackness” in the North, have long been seen as a “wider triumph of capitalism and democracy”, said Christopher Jasper, transport industry editor, in The Telegraph. However, due to the Iran war, these lights could be extinguished “in a matter of weeks”.

Compared to fellow developed countries, South Korea is “almost uniquely lacking in natural resources”, relying on imports to meet “90% of its energy needs”. Around 70% of its crude oil shipments, in addition to 20% natural gas, come from the Gulf. The country has seen fuel prices increase by a fifth, a ban on driving one weekday in five for individuals, and calls to reduce shower times and to charge electric cars and phones only in the daytime. Much more “draconian” measures could be just weeks away.

South Korea must face a “difficult home truth”, said David Fickling in Bloomberg. Behind the “sleek modern society” is an “insatiable appetite for fossil fuels that’s undermining its economy”. But this appetite presents a climate and “strategic” threat. State utility Korea Electric Power Corporation’s (Kepco) “huge” generation plants provide “tempting targets for rocket attacks”, and its proximity to North Korea and China leaves the South exposed to mine threats, should the conflict expand.

A ‘catalyst’ for energy reform?

The fossil-fuel vulnerability highlighted by the war in Iran could be the “catalyst for a faster clean energy system”, said The Guardian. South Korea’s energy targets long predate the current war, aiming to generate 20% of electricity from renewables by 2030 and phase out coal by 2040.

As with most renewable energy, there must be the infrastructure to support it. The power generated by new energy is “colliding” with the grid’s capacity, meaning it is “in effect going to waste”. There is hope in the form of Kepco building high-voltage transmission lines to Seoul, but a decade-long wait and “resistance” from locals are taking the shine off the progress.

On top of the energy opportunities, this is a “fresh opportunity” to “strengthen Seoul’s hand” against North Korea, said Jenni Marsh in Bloomberg. According to Finance Minister Koo Yun Cheol, Middle Eastern countries are “lining up” to buy Korea’s missiles, with their 90% success rate and “affordable price tag” an attractive proposition for buyers. The crisis has also fuelled government investment into nuclear-reactor restarts to “maintain grid stability”. As North Korea’s Kim Jong Un “plays hard to get” with the US, and “refuses talks” with Lee, improving defence capabilities “looks like an increasingly smart option”.

President Lee’s “catnip” calls to transition to renewables due to the war in Iran have “no chance of being met”, said Fickling in the same outlet. For instance, Kepco has “effectively banned” all new generators in the “renewables-rich” east until 2032, all because its “crumbling grid is supposedly incapable of accepting new connections”. Decisions such as these will do “nothing to advance South Korea’s energy transition”. Society as a whole needs to fight against those who have kept them “hooked on polluting power”.

For weeks, the Trump administration has waged a brutal war on Iran. But now that Iran has successfully shifted the conflict’s nexus to the oil-shipping bottleneck in the Strait of Hormuz, the White House has a new plan to inflict maximum pressure: economic warfare, the “financial equivalent” of a bombing campaign, said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent during a White House briefing last week.

What did the commentators say?

Blocking Iranian ports and shipping lanes and pivoting from “kinetic to economic warfare” is an attempt to “end the conflict without a new U.S.-Israeli onslaught,” said CNN. Per the White House’s “rationale,” the “ruinous financial and humanitarian consequences” of being unable to ship and sell oil leave Tehran with “no choice but to accept U.S. terms” to end the conflict.

Although focused on Iran specifically, the administration’s threats stretch beyond the Islamic Republic to those who would do business with it. Countries that are “buying Iranian oil” or hold Iranian funds in their banks now risk “secondary sanctions, which is a very stern measure,” Bessent said on PBS News. Iranians themselves will feel the “financial equivalent of what we saw in the kinetic activities.”

Bessent’s threat came one day after his Treasury Department notified “financial institutions in China, Hong Kong, the UAE and Oman” that they are at risk of secondary sanctions for “allowing Iranian illicit activities to flow through their financial institutions,” said The Associated Press. The “argument being made to Trump” is that no matter if the Iranians think they can “weather the storm,” any inability to pay their “loyalists” could “pressure Iran to the table.”

Approximately one-third of the oil Iran exports through the Strait of Hormuz “directly funds the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” said The Foundation for Defense of Democracies Senior Fellow Miad Maleki on Fox News. Bessent’s threats will “shut down a lifeline that the regime desperately needs right now to keep its economy on some life support.”

Trump himself has been a “heavy user of financial sanctions” targeting “countries, individuals and companies,” The Washington Post said. At the same time, his administration seems to have been “caught unawares” when rivals like China and Iran “weaponized their economic advantages.”

While sanctions have long been the “instrument of choice for applying pressure on Iran,” the White House’s pivot toward “more kinetic forms of economic coercion” blurs the line between “financial restriction and military intervention,” said Harsh Pant, an international relations professor with King’s India Institute at King’s College London, at The Economic Times. “By physically interdicting maritime traffic” with its naval blockade, Trump is showing a willingness to enforce America’s “economic objectives through direct control of global commons.”

What next?

In many ways, the “damage” caused by economic weapons is already “sparking a response,” with nations that depend on the Strait of Hormuz “making plans to reduce their vulnerability to a future closure,” the Post said. But critics warn that attempts to impose other financial consequences on Iran could ultimately backfire on the United States and its allies. Much of the previous phase of war has “helped Iran’s economy,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), per the AP. Imposing further economic conditions is simply an attempt by Bessent to “mop up the mess that Donald Trump has created by initiating this war.”

The administration could still be making a “sound bet,” said CNN. Iran’s economy has been “shattered by sanctions” and could “quickly suffer critical food shortages, hyperinflation and a banking crisis” that would push Tehran to settle with the Trump administration. But this hope shared by “U.S. officials, conservative editorial pages and analysts” may ultimately “rest on an assumption” that has “led the U.S. astray in the Middle East” many times in the past.

What happens if two of the country’s largest airlines combine? It may not be a hypothetical, as American Airlines and United Airlines have reportedly discussed merging into one company. But experts say this move is likely to face antitrust scrutiny, and many are concerned about what a merger could do to airfares in a market already seeing rising prices.

What did the commentators say?

United CEO Scott Kirby has allegedly spoken with Trump administration officials about getting clearance for a merger. If United and American were to combine, it would “create an unprecedented concentration of power in the commercial aviation industry,” said CNN. The joint company would “control roughly 40% of U.S. capacity when the available seats are adjusted for miles flown.” This has aviation analysts worried about a potential monopoly.

The “idea that we would have one airline responsible for four out of 10 flights every day is beyond horrific,” William McGee, an aviation and travel fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project, said to CNN. But airline consolidation has long been a part of the aviation business, and the White House “has shown a warmth toward mergers in the industry,” said CNBC. Combining companies “allows carriers to better control capacity.” Consolidation could also create a lifeline for American, which has fallen behind United and Delta as it “struggled to capitalize on higher-spending customers who are driving major airlines’ revenue in recent years.”

The potential merger may create a problem for customers, with the “main concern” being “higher fares,” said MarketWatch. Fares have already been climbing due to fuel shortages from the war in Iran, and “your next plane ticket and the pile of unused miles sitting in your account could both take a beating” if United and American joined, said Money Talks News. The two airlines “overlap heavily in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington,” which means customers should “expect higher fares on a lot of the routes you actually fly.”

When it comes to the less-traveled routes, airline consolidation means “secondary hubs tend to get thinned out,” said Money Talks News. It would put “pressure on cities like Philadelphia, Phoenix and Charlotte — places where American currently runs big operations,” and locals would “pay for it in both schedule choices and ticket prices.” People who take advantage of frequent flier miles may especially lose out, as “when airlines merge, the combining loyalty programs almost always end up repricing awards — upward.”

What next?

The details of the new proposed company are not yet clear. Any deal would “invite extraordinary scrutiny from regulators, labor unions and consumer advocates,” said Reuters. Prior governments have stopped smaller mergers in the past; the Biden administration “blocked JetBlue’s attempt to acquire Spirit Airlines, arguing it would eliminate ‌a low-cost ⁠competitor.”

The talks are also coming at a time when the Trump administration is “concerned about affordability issues,” and such a deal would “reduce choices and give the airlines more pricing power,” antitrust ⁠lawyer Andre Barlow told Reuters. “I would think this would get a rigorous review.”

‘Battle Creek, a Rust Belt icon, battles back as American manufacturing jobs decline’

Chicago Tribune editorial board

For “generations, the Kellogg food company and Battle Creek, Michigan, went together like corn flakes and milk,” but “after decades as an independent public company, Kellogg split in two,” says the Chicago Tribune editorial board. Like “many other small industrial cities across the Midwest, Battle Creek is diversifying beyond its roots,” and its “resilience in the face of change shows that, under pressure, the Rust Belt’s factory towns can carve out a future based on their long-time strengths.”

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‘Universities must reinvent themselves for the intelligent age’

Klaus Schwab at Time

For “more than a century, universities have been among humanity’s most transformative institutions,” but the “world they helped create is now changing at unprecedented speed,” says Klaus Schwab. In the “‘Intelligent Age’ defined by the rise of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, education cannot remain preparation for life.” It “must become a continuous condition of life,” as “our culture is moving irreversibly from learning for life to lifelong learning.” This “demands systemic change across national education systems.”

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‘Why aren’t Republicans thrilled by the fall in teen pregnancies?’

Arwa Mahdawi at The Guardian

The “teenage birth rate in the U.S. fell by 7% in 2025,” and “while this might seem like a positive development, it has been a cause of dismay among the MAGA-adjacent crowd,” says Arwa Mahdawi. Republicans “aren’t just content with overturning the right to a safe and legal abortion; they’re also quietly undercutting access to contraception.” What’s “next? The party of ‘family values’ rallying behind child marriage? Oh, wait, they’ve already ticked that one off.”

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‘The ever-shrinking JD Vance’

Edward Luce at the Financial Times

The vice presidency “was not designed to be fun,” says Edward Luce. But “being Trump’s number two brings unique discomfort.” Defending “policies that often turn 180 degrees overnight — from vowing to destroy a civilization, say, to announcing a new golden age — requires pure acrobatics.” JD Vance “is flailing,” and “he is thus no longer Trump’s obvious successor.” Even “were Vance to regain his place in the Trumpian firmament, there is no such thing as a Vance base.”

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The price of crude oil could rise to $150 a barrel under a US blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

Jorge Montepeque, managing director of oil traders Onyx Capital Group, said prices “should be $140, $150” if the naval blockade goes ahead, said The Telegraph.

The US blockade was due to begin at 3pm today UK time. Writing on social media, Donald Trump said that the US was going to start “BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz” and will “interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran”.

How will it work?

Under Trump’s plan, instead of having navy ships escort commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, US forces will board and potentially seize any vessels that pay Iran’s toll, a move that would effectively close the strait off entirely.

The US Central Command said that its forces would not impede the freedom of vessels travelling to and from non-Iranian ports. It also pledged that it would release additional information to commercial mariners.

The president warned that “any Iranian who fires at us, or at peaceful vessels, will be BLOWN TO HELL”, but “at some point” an agreement on free passage would be reached. He said that other countries would be involved in blockading the strait, but did not specify which. Keir Starmer said the UK would not join the blockade.

What will the effect be?

The consequences for the global economy could be serious. There’s “little clarity” about how the US navy will take control of the strait without “reigniting” the conflict with Iran and “causing another shockwave” in the money markets, said Michael Evans in The Times.

The blockade “might risk worsening a war-driven global energy crisis”, said The Washington Post. Although Iran would “potentially suffer the most economically”, it may also “come as a blow to the rest of the world”, particularly nations in Asia, which “rely heavily” on oil and gas from the Gulf.

So the president is “once again playing loose with the fortunes of financial markets and the global economy as he struggles to find a way out of the war”, said Australia’s ABC News.

As for Trump, the plan “reflects his hope” that he can repeat the “model of his intervention” in Venezuela, said the Financial Times. There, the US “seized” the then president Nicolás Maduro in a military operation after a naval blockade of the Latin American nation.

“You saw what we did with Venezuela,” Trump told Fox News. “It’ll be something very similar to that, but at a higher level.”

What did experts say?

Initially, Trump’s plan will only affect the small number of vessels that are still navigating the waterway, shipping expert Lars Jensen told the BBC. If the US does blockade the strait, it will “halt a very tiny trickle” of vessels and “in the greater scheme of things, it doesn’t really change anything”.

But three legal experts in the US said the blockade could violate maritime law. One of them suggested the blockade, which will be enforced militarily, would violate the current ceasefire agreement.

The blockade is a good “counterpoint” to Iran’s closure of the strait, Dennis Ross, the former senior US diplomat and Middle East negotiator, said on X. It puts “greater pressure on Iran” and “great pressure on China to pressure Iran”.

But Vali Nasr, a former US official and a professor at Johns Hopkins University, told the Financial Times that the plan will be “fine by the Iranians” because it “prolongs the chokehold on the global economy”.

Tehran might respond by shutting down the Bab el-Mandeb, a chokepoint off the coast of Yemen, said Nasr, and “then the US will have to deal with that”.

People who want to grab a once-trendy pair of shoes in person will have to go somewhere else: Allbirds announced it has closed all of its stores and struck a deal to sell its assets. The sell-off marks a massive fall from grace for the shoe company, which began as a direct-to-consumer fashion brand before opening brick-and-mortar locations. Allbirds is merely the latest DTC company to find itself drowning, and experts say its shuttering may point to larger problems with the business model.

From $4 billion to $39 million

Allbirds once represented the pinnacle of tech-bro fashion and became known as the “eco-friendly shoe company that won over Silicon Valley,” said the Los Angeles Times. The brand is best recognized for its high-end wool shoes that were “initially embraced by celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, who invested in the company in 2018.” Following a slew of successes with the DTC model, Allbirds “peaked at a $4 billion valuation when it went public in 2021.”

But the company’s remaining assets were sold in March for $39 million, representing only “1% of its peak market capitalization,” said Fortune. The 99% plunge in value was due to “major strategic missteps in trying to sustain its once meteoric growth.” A trend “doesn’t always translate to enduring brand value,” and in Allbirds’ case, the company “believed its growth would last forever, not quite understanding that its distinctive shoes were in fact a fad.”

However, the Allbirds C-suite is seemingly confident that things will turn around. Allbirds “has evolved into a lifestyle footwear brand known for modern design, innovative materials and unparalleled comfort,” Joe Vernachio, the company’s CEO, said in a statement. The sale “builds on the foundational work already completed and sets up the brand to thrive in the years ahead.”

Hit a ceiling

The collapse of Allbirds now has some people asking larger questions about the viability of DTC. Many of these companies “sought to build their customer bases through physical retail and banked on opening stores to boost balance sheets,” said CNBC. As “rents rise, physical retail loses its shine and being digitally native becomes more important, Allbirds and other DTC companies have begun to shift their focus” to a more online strategy.

Many of these early-2010s DTC brands are “suffering from slow sales,” said Marketplace. DTC wasn’t a completely new idea when it arrived, as the business model largely replaced mail-order catalogs. But the “internet refreshed the strategy,” as “anyone with an idea was relatively easily able to present it,” Mark Cohen, the former director of retail studies at Columbia Business School, told Marketplace. There is also a “dichotomy between coming up with a brilliant idea and then managing it brilliantly after it’s been noticed by consumers.”

Most brands “do need physical retail to grow their customer base,” Kevin Mullaney, the CEO of retail consultancy The Grayson Company, said to Marketplace. Yet many of these brands, including companies like mattress seller Casper and skincare brand Glossier, were caught “trying to do everything, everywhere, all at once. Meanwhile, the direct-to-consumer space was getting more competitive.” DTC is a “great concept, but it hit a ceiling,” Jessica Ramirez, a co-founder of the advisory firm The Consumer Collective, told Marketplace. Companies “can only go so far with concepts like that.”

As the war in Iran drives gas prices skyward, some U.S. consumers are considering electric vehicles as a cost-saving measure. The national average gas price is now over $4 per gallon (and in some states over $5), according to AAA, which means many Americans are understandably looking for less expensive transportation modes. But not all experts believe this sudden spike in gas prices will automatically lead to a surge in the EV market.

What did the commentators say?

Many drivers look to electric vehicles because they “assume their electricity prices won’t be affected by the crises” around the world, said The Associated Press. The fickle nature of oil prices means consumers with gas-powered vehicles are “more vulnerable to fluctuating prices that result from global conflict than those who charge their cars.” Electricity prices are “regulated and much less volatile than gasoline prices,” said Erich Muehlegger, an economics professor at the University of California, Davis, to the AP.

And some may have already reached the point where they want to switch. According to a 2022 AAA survey, “$4 a gallon is the threshold at which a majority of Americans will make changes to their driving habits or lifestyles,” said Vox. This is especially true in California, where the $5-per-gallon gas price means the state has “already passed the point at which EVs are the cheaper option.”

Drivers who switch to EVs can save up to $2,000 per year on gas, while hybrid drivers still see savings of up to $1,500, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. And while Congress “eliminated a federal tax credit that could close the price gap between new electric vehicles and cars that run on gasoline,” there are still some states that “offer credits, rebates or other financial support for electric car buyers,” said The New York Times.

However, potential savings in gas could be offset by an increase in energy costs. Electricity prices have been “increasing nationally for a variety of reasons, including surging power demand from new data centers,“ said the AP. Increased natural gas prices can also “increase the cost of generating electricity,” though these costs “haven’t risen as quickly or as much as oil prices have recently.” And the upfront sticker cost of an EV is “still more than that of a gasoline-powered vehicle.”

What next?

Other factors could preclude a spike in electric vehicle sales. It’s “unclear how long high fuel prices will last,” because they are largely dependent on the war in Iran, said Vox. The limited “availability of chargers for electric vehicles is another barrier to adoption.” Rising gas prices and a general economic downswing can also “put a damper on consumer confidence more broadly.”

For now, the EV market seems to be swinging upward for many car companies. March was Subaru’s “best month ever for electric vehicle sales,” the automaker said in a press release. Toyota Motor North America, which runs the U.S. operations of Toyota and Lexus, saw EV sales in March “up 2.5% on a volume basis and up 6.6% on a daily selling rate basis,” said the company, representing more than half of its total sales volume.

Oil prices jumped last night after Donald Trump said the Iran conflict was “nearing completion”. Despite the US president saying the attacks on Tehran would end in “two to three weeks” and America doesn’t “need their oil”, the markets were not soothed.

“A word – or social media post” – from Trump “used to spark big moves in prices”, said the BBC. Investors would leap on “signs” that things “could escalate or come to an end”. But now traders seem “to be growing more sceptical about the value of his comments”.

What did the commentators say?

At the outset of the conflict, oil prices were “sensitive to Trump’s comments” but his view of the war “seems to change hour by hour”, said Tom Saunders and Eir Nolsoe in The Telegraph. “His stream of often contradictory statements” have made many wonder “whether they can trust the messaging” coming from the US administration, and some traders have drawn back from the market, “leaving prices increasingly untethered from reality”.

However many solutions to the current global oil crisis Donald Trump comes up with, the oil market isn’t listening anymore – “and the price of oil keeps rising”, said Matthew Lynn in The Spectator. There’s simply no point in Trump “trying to talk the price of oil back down again. It just won’t work.”

His “Persian Taco” tactic “may have run its course”, said Eduardo Porter in The Guardian. “Making extreme threats” and then walking them back may “provide Trump with the illusion of agency” but he “no longer has control of events in Iran”. The markets are “figuring out” that it will probably be Tehran, not the US, that gets to decide when the conflict ends.

What’s next?

UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper is today chairing a virtual summit with almost three dozen nations, to explore measures to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. And Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said his government is determined to find a solution to the energy challenges, although “it will not be easy”.

And yet, “after nearly three weeks of this conflict”, the global financial system is “functioning without panic or alarming signs of stress”, said Zachary Karabell in the The Washington Post. “It’s important to distinguish between price movements” and stability. “The smooth functioning” of the financial system, “in the face” of crises like the oil shock, “gets little attention, probably because stability is not news”. But central banks, financial institutions and governments have “improved at monitoring” risks, and that should “at least provide some relief in a world full enough of fears”.

With oil and gas prices soaring and supply severely disrupted by conflict in the Middle East, households fear a corresponding spike in their energy bills and calls are coming for the government to act.

Keir Starmer today outlined government measures to “bear down on costs”. The prime minister pointed to Ofgem’s new energy price cap, which amounts to a 7% decrease in energy bills, as well as increases to minimum wages. Starmer also pointed to the £1 billion-a-year Crisis and Resilience Fund that will help vulnerable households with heating oil prices. But the best way to bring down costs for families is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Starmer stressed. That means “pushing for de-escalation in the Middle East”.

The price cap resets at the end of June – and according to forecasts, the next is set to increase by 18%. The Conservatives have called on the government to remove VAT from household energy bills for the next three years, while the Green Party said ministers should increase the tax on energy firms’ profits. Reform UK’s Robert Jenrick accused Rachel Reeves of “acting like a bystander” and not the chancellor.

What did the commentators say?

“The prime minister seems to be suffering from a dangerous degree of complacency in the face of the mounting energy crisis,” said The Independent in an editorial. While other countries’ governments implement measures to conserve energy and support families, such as Australia making some public transport free and Ireland cutting fuel duty, Starmer “has merely urged the British people to ‘act as normal’”. The government is “silent” on any plans it might have to “ameliorate prospectively crippling gas and electricity bills later in the year”.

The soaring price of fuel oil and petrol is playing out against “stagnating living standards” and a “succession of tax rises on work and employment”, more of which kick in this month.

Charities say this month’s increases to council tax, water, broadband and mobile phone tariffs are also “threatening to stretch many households to breaking point”, said the Press Association.

Businesses aren’t protected by the price cap, either. They’re set for “painful increases in their gas and electricity tariffs” as the situation in the Middle East “sends wholesale prices soaring”. Electricity costs have already increased by between 10% and 30% since the conflict began, while gas prices have soared by between 25% and 80%, according to energy analyst Cornwall Insight.

This April 1st is “no joke” for millions of families and small businesses, said the Liberal Democrats in a statement. We need an “urgent cost-of-living plan”.

But we can’t afford more state aid in the form of energy bill subsidies, said The Times. Reeves talks of “targeted” help, but with millions of pensions and welfare claimants, “that could be a very big target”.

The “ruinous spending” of lockdown “crippled this country’s finances”, which Liz Truss ignored when she proposed a universal cap to blunt the impact of the Ukraine war. Gilts “went into freefall” and Truss “was toast”. Since then, the bond market has “consigned Britain to the naughty step”.

Our national debt is at a “crippling 96%” of GDP, the servicing of which will cost £112 billion this year. Inflation and interest rates are set to keep rising, and recession is a “distinct possibility” if the war continues. The government “dare not increase the debt with another universal handout”. The bond markets “will not wear it”.

What next?

Reeves told BBC Breakfast that any support for energy bills would be based on household income, targeted at those who need it most, unlike the universal support rolled out in 2022. “I want to learn the lessons of the past because when Russia invaded Ukraine, the richest, the best-off third of households got more than a third of the support,” the chancellor said. “That makes no sense at all.”

The chancellor said it was “too early” to say who would get help, as demand for energy is at its lowest in the summer. But she “hinted help might not come” until autumn, said the broadcaster.

The Bank of England published its financial stability report today, its first since the US-Israeli war broke out. Domestically, the “economic outlook has deteriorated”, but the UK banking system “has the capacity to support households and businesses”, it said, “even if economic and financial conditions were to be substantially worse than expected”.

Much has been made of the closing of the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran war, given that the passage is a major lifeline for the global economy. But it is just one of five major waterways that play a significant role in world trade — several of which have their own history of conflicts.

Panama Canal

As the only entry in this list located in the Americas, the Panama Canal is a vital waterway for one main reason: It connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This shortcut lets ships “avoid the lengthy and hazardous voyage around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America,” said the International Trade Administration. Not forcing ships to circumvent an entire continent “contributes to the reduction of carbon emissions and helps mitigate the environmental impact of global maritime transportation.”

President Donald Trump has pushed for the U.S. to gain full control of the canal, but the “facts are that Panama has managed the canal incredibly well,” said the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The “revenues generated by the canal are important for Panama, representing about 4% of their GDP. They represent less than 1/10,000 of the U.S. GDP.”

Strait of Hormuz

The strait, which cuts between Iran, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, is one of the “world’s busiest oil shipping channels,” said BBC News. It is used by almost all of the world’s major oil companies, and in 2025, about “20 million barrels of oil and oil products passed through the Strait of Hormuz per day,” equivalent to nearly $600 billion of energy production per year.

The recent closure of the waterway could impact more than just gas prices, as the strait is also a “vital channel for imports to the Middle East, including food, medicines and technological supplies,” said BBC News. If it is not reopened soon, the ripple could “go far beyond the region, affecting energy markets, maritime transport and global supply chains,” said the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development.

Strait of Malacca

Like the Panama Canal, the Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia is a passage between two oceans: the Indian and the Pacific. It represents “one of the most strategically, economically and politically significant maritime chokepoints in the world,” said The National Bureau of Asian Research. The strait is important to the nations around it as well as “great powers with interests in the Indo-Pacific.”

But climate change is leading to “increasing heavy rainfall and extreme flood heights” around the strait, said a study from World Weather Attribution. This could threaten the strait’s “densely populated regions,” particularly near heavily populated countries like Sri Lanka.

Suez Canal

The Suez Canal is the “only place that directly connects the waters of Europe with the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the countries of the Asia-Pacific,” said CNN, making it an essential waterway for cargo. If the canal didn’t exist, ships in the region would have to “traverse the entire continent of Africa, adding hefty costs and substantially extending their journey times.”

An example of the canal’s importance was seen in 2021, when a cargo ship became stuck across the waterway, cutting off the shipping lane. Any disruptions “can have outsized impacts on global commerce and energy markets,” said the Atlantic Council, given that over $1 trillion goods are transported through the Suez annually.

Turkish Straits

The two Turkish Straits hold “strategic importance as the only waterway connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea,” said Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But crossing these two straits, the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus, is not easy, as “strong currents, sharp turns and unpredictable changes in weather conditions make it all the more difficult to navigate safely.”

During a war, the straits also become vital due to a 1936 treaty regulating their passage, which “states that, at times of conflict, ‘vessels of war belonging to belligerent powers shall not pass through the Straits,’” said Arab News. The implication of this treaty has often demonstrated Turkey’s “ultimate say over any warship if it deems its movement to be a security threat.”

“It’s not easy to topple a $30 trillion economy,” said Alicia Wallace in CNN.com. But if the war in Iran keeps driving fuel prices higher, things will soon “start getting dodgy” for America. With Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz stopping the export of oil from many Gulf Arab states, and missiles and drones raining down on oil and natural gas facilities across the Middle East, the International Energy Agency warned last week that the world is facing the biggest energy crisis in history.

The U.S. is already feeling the shock waves. Oil has rocketed by roughly 30% to about $100 a barrel. Gasoline has hit a national average of $3.98 a gallon—up by a dollar since February—and is over $5 in California, Washington, and Hawaii. Understandably, some 45% of Americans say they are “extremely” or “very” concerned about gas prices, according to an Associated Press poll. For a “first glimpse” of where we may be headed, “look at Asia,” said Alexandra Stevenson in The New York Times. In a region that relies on Middle Eastern energy, gas stations in Thailand and Vietnam are posting “Sold Out” signs. People in India are hoarding cooking gas. Asian airlines have canceled thousands of flights, after the price of jet fuel more than doubled—and all this after only one month of a conflict “with no clear end in sight.”

The war is also “driving the world toward a food crisis,” said Heather Stewart in The Guardian. Hormuz is a “key choke point” in the global supply of urea, a nitrogen-based fertilizer that’s made using natural gas, and sulfur, “a by-product of oil and gas refining and another critical fertilizer ingredient.” Once farmers get hit by the “double whammy of higher energy bills and more costly fertilizer,” it could push some 45 million people around the planet into “acute hunger,” according to a U.N. estimate. Americans won’t starve, said Max Zahn in ABCNews.com, but they will pay more for everything “from groceries to smartphones.” A third of the world’s helium travels through the strait; that gas is essential for the production of microchips used in phones, AI servers, and almost all electronics. The chaos in the Middle East is also pushing up the cost of plastics, which are made of petrochemicals, and aluminum, because the region is home to several key smelters.

There is some “good news” for Americans, said John Cassidy in The New Yorker. Thanks to decades of tightened emissions standards—so detested by President Trump—our economy is “far less energy-intensive” than it used to be, with “every dollar of GDP created” requiring only half the energy it needed back in 1980. As long as the war ends soon, many economists think the U.S. can probably “scrape through this year without a recession.”

It’s already too late, said The Economist in an editorial. Even if fighting stopped today, it would take at least four months for oil facilities in the Middle East to restart production and process back-logged crude into usable fuel, and for markets and prices to regain “some semblance of normality.” And that’s a best-case scenario, said Rogé Karma in The Atlantic. If fighting escalates instead, Iran could reach for the “doomsday option” it previewed last week, when it responded to an Israeli strike on its largest natural gas field by attacking a Qatari facility that produces 20% of the world’s supply of liquified natural gas—causing natural gas prices to spike 35% in Europe. If there are more such attacks on energy infrastructure in the target-rich Middle East, our current energy crisis may become a global “economic catastrophe” that we’ll be living with for years.

Given the current uncertainty, the Bank of England’s decision to hold interest rates at 3.75% last week was “the only one possible”, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. “Policymakers are as clueless on the length of the war, and the cost of energy six weeks or six months from now, as stock market investors.” So why did the London bond market throw such a wobbly?

UK borrowing costs soared to their highest level since the 2008 financial crisis on the day after the Bank’s meeting, with the yield on benchmark 10-year gilts surging to 5%, “deepening a three-week long rout”, said the Financial Times. Two-year gilts – the part of the market most sensitive to interest-rate moves – were also pummelled.

Britain has been hit hardest in the global bond sell-off since the outbreak of war, because our dependency on imported energy means spiking oil and gas prices “quickly feed through to broader inflation”. When combined with flatlining growth and rising household borrowing costs, the risk of recession is plain.

‘The spectre of stagnation’

Perhaps last week’s turmoil was “a weird overreaction” to the Bank’s hawkish new tone, said Katie Martin in the same paper – rather than interest rate cuts this year, we are now contemplating hikes. But “the spectre of stagnation stalks the land”. The market has stabilised, but “in aggregate, more than £100 billion has been erased from the market value of UK government bonds in a matter of weeks”, said Stuart Fieldhouse on The Armchair Trader.

“UK rate expectations have been on a remarkable journey in barely a month,” said Chris Beauchamp at IG. “A full 100 basis points rise in rates is now expected for this year.” The bad news for consumers and business is compounded by the implications for the Government of “a fiscal squeeze”. If there’s further escalation in the Middle East, “this may be just the beginning of the crisis”.

The ‘Maradona Effect’

As data on demand weakness becomes evident, the Bank of England won’t want “to compound the damage with higher interest rates”, said Karen Ward of J.P. Morgan in the Financial Times. I suspect it is deploying the “Maradona Effect”, named after the footballing legend whose greatest skill was feinting. Conveying a very hawkish signal about the outlook for rates may obviate the need to actually raise them.

The Bank “faces an acute dilemma”, said Roger Bootle in The Telegraph. As we learnt in 2022, the issue at stake is what happens to inflation after the initial, oil-induced spike. The case for higher rates is to ward off “second-round effects” and stop inflation becoming embedded. “The art of central banking lies partly in not overreacting, but also in not taking action too late.”

Valued at approximately $3 trillion, the private credit industry is showing signs of distress as investors rush to withdraw their money from their funds. Much of this shift is attributed to outside stressors like geopolitical issues and the rise of AI technology. While many are concerned about what this uncertainty means for the economy, others view it as a way for the industry to reset.

What is going on with private credit?

Private credit firms “essentially act as banks but without all the regulations that force actual banks to mitigate risk and make their balance sheets public,” said CNN. “When these ‘shadow banks’ issue loans, the terms are known only to the parties involved.” The uncertainty has led the industry into rocky waters, as it is “facing an investor exodus and heightened scrutiny of its risky practices,” said The New York Times.

Investors in private credit “often don’t know what they’re holding,” said CNN. Rather, they invest based on the market. When larger forces, including “higher interest rates, inflation, a war in the Mideast choking energy flows” and “a collective fear of AI decimating entire sectors of the global economy” increase uncertainty in the market, “people understandably start trying to reduce their risk exposure. And they start trying to get their money back.”

During the past few weeks, business development companies, which are “funds with stakes in the alternative asset,” have “been gripped by a widespread sell-off,” said the Financial Times. Two of the biggest private credit firms, Apollo Global Management and Ares, announced in response that they were “limiting the amount of money investors can withdraw from their funds to existing thresholds,” said Axios.

While this is not yet a death song for private credit, it is not a good sign for what is coming: Banks also invest in private credit, which could spell disaster. If “private credit sours, big banks that lent to the industry would lose money,” said CNN. “Those banks could be forced to tighten lending across the board, including to everyday consumers and small businesses,” a similar pattern to what happened in 2008.

What does this indicate?

Requests for withdrawals, also called redemption requests, are expected to “continue to increase in the coming quarters,” John Cocke, the deputy chief investment officer of credit at Corbin Capital Partners, said to Bloomberg. “In benign environments, there’s lots of liquidity and new subscriptions to satisfy redemptions.” However, “in times of perceived stress, inflows slow to a trickle and thus significantly more clients are asking for liquidity than providing it.”

The private credit industry has been growing significantly since the 2008 financial crisis. For years, these funds “performed better than most other debt funds, and they have been billed as relatively safe investments,” said the Times.

But investors have become concerned about whether the firms “have been valuing their loans appropriately,” especially without the strict regulations banks have, said the Times. A big reason for this is that a “large chunk of private credit loans have been made to software companies, an industry that has come under pressure from the swift rise of artificial intelligence firms.” If AI is “really as apocalyptic” as many say, then a “lot of companies could end up going out of business and defaulting on loans,” said CNN.

The withdrawal requests show that the market “cannot be sustained on the promise of higher yields alone,” said the Financial Times. This is the chance for the industry to increase its efforts to “boost transparency and data-sharing across jurisdictions to better monitor risk.” Unfortunately, while there is hope that private credit will rise from the ashes, the industry is “so interconnected with the economics of everything," Laks Ganapathi, the CEO and founder of Unicus Research, said to Axios. People must be prepared, said CNN, in case “tremors go from rattling your cupboard to swallowing your house.”

With oil markets in flux, suspending an early-20th century law might help stabilize energy prices. President Donald Trump certainly hopes so: Last week he signed a 60-day waiver from employing the Jones Act, a law that requires U.S.-flagged vessels be used to carry goods and passengers if they’re traveling between American ports. The law was created to protect the domestic shipping industry, but detractors say it hobbles trade and creates more problems than it solves.

Fewer ships, higher prices

The Jones Act was passed after World War I to “rebuild U.S. shipping after German U-boats decimated America’s merchant fleet” during the war, said The Associated Press. Advocates say the law protects national security and homegrown jobs, but those in opposition say sidelining foreign competition has “driven up the cost of carrying cargo domestically.” Presidents can waive the law during crises, and Trump is using that power for one reason: U.S.-flagged ships are “generally more expensive to operate,” and those added costs fall heavily on places like Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico that rely on overseas shipping.

Trump’s pause will allow foreign tankers to transport oil and gas between ports in the United States. That should “lead to lower transportation costs and increased supply” and eventually lower gasoline prices by 10 cents per gallon, Christopher Niezrecki said at The Conversation. It could be “months, not days or weeks,” before drivers notice the benefits at the pump, however, and that is likely only if Trump extends the waiver’s duration. “Fuel prices would fall more steeply” if the law is fully repealed.

American shipbuilding “has shrunk” despite the law’s best efforts, said Marketplace. The U.S. now has only 55 tankers legally qualified to carry oil and gas between domestic ports. Trump’s interruption of the Jones Act will “dramatically expand the universe of ships available” to do that work, said Cato Institute’s Colin Grabow to the outlet. Places like California, Florida and the Northeast will benefit most from the waiver, said Marketplace, “because those areas rely on ships instead of pipelines.”

Significant costs

The law does have defenders among American shipbuilders and vessel operators. There is “nothing more America First than the Jones Act,” Jennifer Carpenter, the CEO of the American Waterways Operators, said at DC Journal. Repealing it would allow foreign companies to “undercut American companies on labor costs” and hollow out the domestic industry, which raises national security concerns. Without the law, America’s “most sensitive cargo” would be transported between U.S. ports “by foreign mariners, including Chinese shipmen who ultimately answer to the Chinese Communist Party.”

Those against the law hope Trump’s waiver is “the beginning of the end of the Jones Act,” The Washington Post said in an editorial. A South Korean-built tanker costs $170 million less than one made in the United States, and “it costs millions more to operate every year thereafter.” The law has failed to save American shipbuilding but has imposed “significant costs.” Those are “much longer-running issues than anything having to do with the war in Iran.”

If the price of oil continues to rise, it could trigger a “steep and stark” global recession, said Larry Fink, CEO of US financial giant BlackRock. There will be “profound implications” for the world economy if Iran “remains a threat” and oil prices hit $150 a barrel.

The BlackRock boss has a “unique insight into the health of the global economy”, said the BBC’s business editor Simon Jack, because of his investment management company’s colossal “size and spread”, controlling assets worth £11 billion across the world.

What did the commentators say?

“The Iran war is metastasising into a global economic calamity,” said the Financial Times’ editorial board. Until now, financial markets have been “lulled by the belief that the conflict would not last long” but, as hostilities enter a fourth week, the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, “lasting damage” has been inflicted on critical energy infrastructure in the region, and “the worst-case scenarios for investors and policymakers are coming into view”.

If this crisis continues, “no country will be immune to the effects”, said Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency on Monday. The global economy faces a “major, major threat” as the Iran war has a worse impact on energy prices than the twin oil shocks of the 1970s and the Russia-Ukraine war.

“Prepare for the price of oil to reach $200 a barrel,” said Ebrahim Zolfaqari, spokesman for Iranian militias last week. And what seemed then “like bravado” is now “closer to becoming reality”, said Jesus Servulo Gonzales in El Pais. Were prices to rise above $150, let alone near $200, there would be “an inflationary crisis”: “the world would become poorer, and economic activity would grind to a halt until the situation recovered”.

The current oil-price “ructions” would have “to get much worse” to trigger a global recession but “less happily, they will almost certainly further stoke popular anger over the cost of living”, said The Economist. The price of Brent Crude is currently around $100 a barrel (it was $60 at the start of the year); two months at $140 “would push parts of the global economy” into a slump. Consumer confidence is already “close to an all-time low in America and scarcely higher elsewhere”, given many countries “seemed primed” for an economic downturn “even before the Middle Eastern chaos began”.

In the US, “many economists believe” the country “will scrape through this year without a recession”, said John Cassidy in The New Yorker. “But this is simply guesswork.” Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell has said the surge in oil prices is “an energy shock” that has created so much uncertainty, “we just don’t know” what will happen.

What next?

We urgently need to get the Strait of Hormuz opened, oil market expert Rory Johnston told The New Statesman. It’s “too important” to the global economy to remain closed. The most likely path “is that the Trump administration and Israel pull back on their attacks in Iran, and Iran says, OK, we’ll re-allow” tankers down the waterway. But even if the strait “reopened to 100% of its prior flow” today, it would take two to three months “to renormalise the global system”.

Under the “doomsday scenario”, in which the strait stays closed indefinitely, “we’re not talking recession; we are talking depression”.

While the stock market continues to pad the bottom lines of many of the world's richest people, 2026 has been a challenging year for the Gulf royal families who hold three spots in our ranking of the world's ten richest families. These clans spent years building close relationships with President Donald Trump, including controversial business partnerships like a sprawling, Trump-branded luxury hotel and resort in Oman, a $1 billion skyscraper development in Dubai and multiple projects including a golf course in Saudi Arabia. With these deals, the ruling families of the small, militarily weak Gulf monarchies hoped to tie their countries so close to the president himself that he would feel obliged to consider their security and economic interests in American regional policy.

Yet the potentates and princes who courted Trump and lavished his business empire with new investments were not consulted before he launched a massive campaign of airstrikes against Iran on February 28, 2026. Despite hopes for a swift decapitation of the Iranian clerical regime, the war has dragged on for months, with Iran succeeding in halting almost all shipping traffic transiting a vital economic chokepoint, the Strait of Hormuz. That blockade, which was later joined by an American naval blockade of ships leaving Iranian ports, has ground the economy of the Persian Gulf to a halt and done untold billions of dollars in damage to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

While it is impossible to estimate the impact of the war on the net worth of these ruling families, there is no question that this list may see significant movement and change if their economic positions continue to slide. The Iran conflict has also been disastrous for the Ambani family of India, given the importance of their petrochemical interests, which have been drastically impacted by the spike in energy prices worldwide. As for the rest of the world's wealthiest families, they are likely benefitting from the resilience of the stock market, which dipped in the early stages of the conflict but has mostly shrugged off warnings from economists about potential damage to the global economy stemming from the extended closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Today, indices like the Dow Jones Industrial Average sit at or near their all-time highs, as the AI-driven economic expansion continues in spite of headwinds from the war.

Our list only looks at families where the wealth is already intergenerational; this means that we exclude, for example, the family of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, given that his phenomenal riches have yet to be passed down to heirs. The economic boom driven by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs that began in the late 20th century created an entirely new class of moneyed elites, most of whom did not start out in life with anything like the riches they have now. Many of them, like Oracle founder Larry Ellison, are also still alive. As a consequence, this list is likely to evolve when individuals from the current cohort of elderly billionaires, like investor Warren Buffet, pass away and distribute their fortunes to their children and extended families.

The Walton family ($521 billion)

Sam Walton opened his first discount variety store in Bentonville, Arkansas, in 1962 and turned it into a retail empire "by buying up low-cost goods and selling them at lower prices than his competitors," said Fox Business. Today, Walmart operates more than 10,500 stores in 19 countries, and Walton's heirs are worth $513.4 billion. There are now three Waltons — Jim, Rob and Alice — who are worth more than $100 billion each, and their largesse "largely stems from the Walmart shares given to them by their father," said Business Insider. One of the family's heiresses, Christy Walton, made waves when she "promoted a planned nationwide protest against President Trump by placing a full-page advertisement that ran in the New York Times" in June 2025, bucking a trend of the country's wealthiest elites seeking to curry favor with the president.

The al-Nahyan family ($335.9 billion)

The discovery of oil in the 1960s set off a "breathtaking transformation" of the United Arab Emirates from a society of subsistence "date farmers, camel herders and pearl fishermen" to one of the richest countries in the world, said The New York Times. The al-Nahyan family is the hereditary monarchy of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, which has increased its natural resource wealth with its pioneering sovereign wealth fund, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA). Among many other endeavors, the ADIA purchased a stake in the city of Chicago's parking meters in 2008, and now the "revenue from these meters has reportedly reached over $150 million annually — all flowing to the investor group led in part by ADIA," said Driven Magazine. Adding to the good times is the fact that the United Arab Emirates "has become a hub for the Trump Organization's international expansion," said Forbes, and in 2025 alone the president and his family "entered into at least nine agreements with ties to the gulf nation — some involving government entities in the country, many stemming from business relationships developed there."

The Emirates, and the al-Nahyan family, have much at stake following the descent of the Persian Gulf into war in February 2026, having turned the country into a commercial, banking and aviation hub. In particular, attacks are undermining the country's position in the global economy and threatening its long-term growth, even if total revenue losses from exports have been modest. "Businesses linked to travel and hospitality in Dubai are reporting sharp declines in bookings, alongside cancellations and reduced footfall," said the BBC, threatening jobs and economic stability.

The Al-Saud family ($213.6 billion)

Perhaps the only family in the world with a country named after them, the Al-Saud dynasty completed their conquest of the Hejaz (now Saudi Arabia) in the 1920s. While this wasn't clear then, over the years Saudi Arabia would come to control "about 20-25% of all the world's oil reserves while producing about 10-15% of the world's daily oil consumption," said Epicenter. Because the "family contains as many as 15,000 extended members," it is challenging to "accurately assess the wealth of the House of Saud," said Investopedia. The Saudis also threw themselves into the movie business in 2025, and the country's "sovereign wealth fund now backs some of Hollywood's biggest deals, including a $24-billion financing package for Paramount's $78-billion Warner bid," said The Los Angeles Times.

Saudi Arabia, like many Gulf countries allied with the United States, has been subject to retaliatory attacks following President Trump's decision to launch a regime decapitation strike against Iran in 2026. Yet unlike some other countries in the Gulf, the country's total revenues are up since the war began, partly because leaders "invested years ago in oil pipelines that go around the strait, an expensive form of insurance that is paying off," said The New York Times.

The al-Thani family ($199.5 billion)

Another family of Gulf royalty has turned natural resource wealth into a multifaceted and growing portfolio. "No ruling dynasty in the Arab Gulf has played a seemingly weak hand with more skill" than the al-Thani family, said Manara Magazine. The country's diplomatic and investment strategies are all about "building Qatar into an international brand that can underpin its existence and the family's longevity," said Bloomberg. Former Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani is a superyacht enthusiast who owns the Katara, a "$400 million mega yacht" that "comfortably accommodates up to 34 guests in 14 cabins serviced by 95 crew members," said the South China Morning Post. The family is so flush that Qatar "gave America a $200 million jet that could eventually be used as Air Force One" in May 2025, said Politico.

Iran has also targeted Qatar for retaliation following the Iran war outbreak, and severely damaged a major Liquid Natural Gas facility on March 18, 2026, with uncertain consequences for the country's economic future. Consequently, "about 17% of Qatar's LNG export capacity was knocked out by Iranian strikes, causing an estimated $20 billion in lost annual revenue," said Forbes, suggesting that the family fortune could now be considerably lower than $199.5 billion.

The Hermès family ($184.5 billion)

Thierry Hermès was the "sixth child of an innkeeper," said Vanity Fair, who "went to Paris an orphan, proved gifted in leatherwork and opened a shop in 1837." He and his descendants built a luxury fashion empire that has survived world wars, multiple French regime changes, and an era of globalization that has led to dizzying change and competition. The luxury brand's business model is the polar opposite of Walmart, which presumably would not have much luck selling scarves that cost $4,125 each. Sales remained strong in 2025 despite a price hike in the U.S. "aimed at passing on the burden of tariffs to its clients," said Reuters. While Hermes stock tumbled along with many other continental luxury brands when President Trump issued a threat of new tariffs against eight countries in the European Union in January 2026, they recovered when the president appeared to walk back his stance a few days later. You likely won't see beneficiaries of this vast fortune listed among the world's very richest people, though, given that the family's wealth is spread over more than 100 heirs.

The Koch family ($149.5 billion)

The Kochs began their ascent to the top of the global wealth hierarchy when Fred Koch "used his training in chemical engineering to develop an improved method of turning oil into petrol" and built oil refineries in Stalin's Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany, said the BBC. His son Charles was "groomed as Koch's successor, becoming president of the family business after his father died in the 1960s" and diversified the family's interests into "energy, chemicals, agriculture, finance and electronics, producing everything from toilet paper to steak." The Kochs spent more than $49 million in the 2024 election cycle, donating almost exclusively to Republicans and sending $40 million alone to the right-wing SuperPAC Americans for Prosperity Action. The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), a conservative group funded in part by Koch family money, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in April 2025 contesting the legality of the president's new tariff regime. When those tariffs were overturned in a landmark February 2026 Supreme Court decision, the NCLA indicated it was looking into challenging the legal basis of the Trump administration’s next round of tariffs.

The Mars family ($148.2 billion)

You may never have heard of the Mars family, but you've almost certainly eaten its candy. The family's company, Mars Inc., based today in Virginia near the CIA's headquarters, "was founded in 1911 when Frank Mars started selling candy out of his kitchen in Tacoma, Washington," said Forbes. The family's vast confectionery empire includes Halloween staples like Snickers and M&Ms and operates 135 factories in 68 countries, employing more than 140,000 people. These bonbon barons do not enjoy the limelight and are known as a "reclusive dynasty of billionaires who spend a good deal of time on a remote ranch in Wyoming," said The Guardian. Amid the global upheaval over tariffs, the Mars empire was well-positioned to benefit from the Trump administration's changing, given that the company claims to "make 94% of its U.S. products locally," said Yahoo Finance. Still, the price of the company's Halloween-themed candy variety packs rose 12% in 2025, meaning that "working families will keep getting spooked at the checkout line," said The Century Foundation. The Mars family, however, will be just fine.

The Bettencourt Meyers Family ($92.1 billion)

Françoise Bettencourt Meyers is considered the wealthiest woman in the world and is the heiress to the fortune first amassed by the founder of cosmetics empire L'Oréal, Eugène Schueller. She plays a "pivotal role in preserving the family fortune" through her role as a L'Oréal board member and "serves as the chairwoman of the family's lucrative holding company, Téthys Invest," said Yahoo Finance. In recent years, L'Oréal has consolidated its control over the global cosmetics industry by acquiring competitors like the Australian luxury brand Aesop, hair care company Color Wow and cologne brand House of Creed, among many others. Bettencourt Meyers is "known to play the piano for several hours a day and has written two books — a five-volume study of the Bible and a genealogy of the Greek gods," said the BBC. She has two sons with her husband Jean-Pierre Meyers, Jean-Victor and Nicolas, and rarely engages with the press. In 2025, Jean-Victor Meyers succeeded his mother as vice chairman of the L'Oréal board of directors.

The Ambani family ($89.2 billion)

The Ambanis are the richest family in Asia, and their empire, which includes oil and gas, telecommunications and retail businesses, has a "valuation that is equivalent to 10% of India's Gross Domestic Product," said The Independent. It all started in 1958, when Dhirubhai Ambani launched a company based in Gujarat, India, that "began as a small firm trading commodities like spices and polyester yarn" and gradually expanded to make Reliance Industries a "global powerhouse," said People. Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani's wealth has taken a major hit in 2026, in large part from the conflict in Iran.

"Oil prices have been extremely volatile, moving with each of Trump's frequent statements on the war, making it difficult even for Asia's now second-richest man to stay ahead of the turbulence," said the Financial Times. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the Ambani family's wealth has declined by $18.5 billion this year alone.

The Wertheimer family ($74.6 billion)

In 1925, "Pierre Wertheimer, and his brother Paul struck a deal with Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel" to create "Société des Parfums Chanel with the aim of selling and producing Chanel beauty products," said Business Insider. That history means that the Wertheimer family's "destiny has been intertwined with the world's second-largest luxury brand for a century," said Women's Wear Daily. The Wertheimers are oenophiles in an era of declining wine-drinking and have acquired a large luxury wine empire, including Domaine de l'Ile on the island of Porquerolles in Provence, as well as three estates in Bordeaux and St. Supéry Estate Vineyards and Winery in California's Napa Valley, said Wine Spectator.

Industry sources speculate that current Chanel owners Alain and Gérard Wertheimer are preparing to hand the reins to their 39-year-old nephew Arthur Heilbronn, who has "taken on management positions overseeing his and his relatives' real estate, banking and media investments" in recent years, said Business Standard. If so, that would be "another quiet move in a succession symphony that's decades in the making," said Yahoo Finance.

‘Girls’ sports are getting more physical’

Alexandra Moe at The Atlantic

Physical contact in “women’s sports remains controversial,” but girls “seem to be more interested than ever in contact,” says Alexandra Moe. At U.S. high schools “last academic year, more girls played on teams for wrestling than field hockey, gymnastics or dance.” Girls’ “participation in such sports is growing so quickly in part because it’s starting from a small denominator,” and may “appeal to a rising cultural sense that women and girls can — and should — bulk up.”

Read more

‘Meta’s smart glasses are a privacy risk invisible to Chicagoans’

Yunus Emre Tozal at the Chicago Tribune

Meta’s “smart glasses problem is a legibility problem,” says Yunus Emre Tozal. Walking through a city “today, you cannot tell who around you is recording.” This is “not a hypothetical privacy risk. It is an active data pipeline running through one of the most documented failures of AI labor ethics on record, operating at scale in every city where 7 million pairs of glasses are being worn.” This is “not a privacy feature. It is a design decision.”

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‘The era of US dominance in economic warfare is over’

Nicholas Mulder at the Financial Times

Iran’s “threat to shipping in the Gulf is widely seen as an asymmetric retaliation against the U.S. and Israel,” says Nicholas Mulder. But Iran “has actually replicated a tactic that America has long practiced in its use of sanctions: it has turned a key chokepoint in the world economy into a weapon to compel its adversary to de-escalate.” America previously “had an effective monopoly on major sanctions,” but the “end of the unipolar era in economic warfare” is here.

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‘Ukraine and the EU need a fresh start’

Ivan Nagornyak and Fredrik Wesslau at Foreign Policy

Four years “after Ukraine applied for membership in the European Union, one conclusion is inescapable: The EU’s normal model for enlargement is not fit for purpose,” say Ivan Nagornyak and Fredrik Wesslau. The EU’s “accession process — rigid, technocratic and slow — was designed for peacetime, not for a country fighting a war of survival and rebuilding a shattered economy.” But “any interim model for Ukraine must be a stepping stone to full membership, not a substitute.”

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In the immediate aftermath of Poland’s Communist collapse, the country was considered one of the most economically dire in Europe — but the status quo has changed in a major way. Poland now has the 20th largest economy in the world, the country’s statistics agency announced last week, marking its highest-ever global ranking. Experts say there are a variety of factors that led to Poland becoming Europe’s new economic gem.

What did the commentators say?

Poland entered the top 20 economies by leapfrogging Switzerland; it reported more than $1 trillion in economic output for 2025, with its gross domestic product increasing 3.6% year-over-year, according to Poland’s statistics agency. This is a far cry from the early to mid-1990s, when Poland “rationed sugar and flour while its citizens were paid one-tenth what West Germans earned,” said The Associated Press.

But in “35 years — a little less than one person’s working lifetime — Poland’s per capita GDP rose to $55,340 in 2025, or 85% of the EU average,” said the AP. One of the most important factors in Poland’s economic growth was “rapidly building a strong institutional framework for business,” economist Marcin Piatkowski of Poland’s Kozminski University told the AP. This includes the creation of antimonopoly agencies and regulatory bodies, ensuring that Poland’s economy “wasn’t hijacked by corrupt practices and oligarchs, as happened elsewhere in the post-Communist world.”

Poland was also given significant help from the European Union both “before and after it joined the bloc in 2004,” said the AP. Once Poland became an EU state, it got additional funding as a result of its membership that “helped modernize Polish industry and expand an increasingly digitalized services sector,” said The Wall Street Journal. Above all, Polish business leaders “do not feel intimidated or constrained by any lingering sense of inferiority,” Dominik Kopiński, a senior adviser at the Polish Economic Institute, told Deutsche Welle. They “take opportunities when they see them and, more importantly, they are trailblazing for other companies.”

What next?

Even as Poland enjoys economic prosperity, not everyone is convinced that it will last. The country has a low birth rate and an aging society, meaning that “fewer workers will be able to support retirees,” said the AP. Wages in Poland are “lower than the EU average,” and “while small and medium enterprises flourish, few have become global brands.”

The country “must also contend with rising public debt,” said the Journal. Poland’s budget deficit of 6.8% is “significantly higher than the 3% benchmark for EU member states.” If Poland wants to continue climbing the economic ladder, its government will “need to rein in spending and raise taxes in order to ease debts over the coming years.” But there is also some good news, as Poland’s private-sector debt “remains low by EU standards.”

There is also the possibility of Poland leaving the EU, which could create further economic turmoil; dubbed ‘Polexit,’ Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has accused “right-wing opposition parties of steering the country toward leaving the bloc,” said Politico. “Polexit is a real threat today!” Tusk said on X. If his country left the EU, it “would be a disaster for Poland. I will do everything I can to stop them.”

With everything from housing and groceries to gasoline and home and car insurance becoming increasingly expensive, both red and blue states are trying to find ways to address Americans’ hardships. State officials and policy think tanks are offering income and property tax rebates, raising wages and enacting structural reform, with varying success.

California

The biggest problem in the Golden State is housing affordability, and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is urging the state government to find an answer. Newsom has told “lawmakers they should pass a law to stop institutional investors from buying homes in bulk,” said The Associated Press, which also noted that California has about 40,000 affordable homes ready for construction.

But the state’s pro-housing laws “do a whole lot more than just make it easier to build housing: [they] preserve local autonomy, pay high construction wages, guarantee that new units are accessible to low-income renters,” said The Atlantic. In an effort to “accomplish every objective and accommodate every interest, all at once, California set up its housing agenda to fail.”

Florida

Polls show that affordability is top of the mind for Floridians, but “you wouldn’t necessarily know it if you were in the state’s Capitol,” said the Miami Herald. Efforts from lawmakers to “drive down insurance and utility rates failed,” and they have not “agreed on a way to lower property taxes.”

These property tax cuts nonetheless remain a top issue for Floridians, with a potential $18 billion in cuts on the line. If lawmakers do come to a deal on slashing taxes, it “would have to be approved by voters in November by a 60% margin,” said WFLX-TV Palm Beach.

Georgia

Unlike Florida, the Peach State has been able to get one-time income and property tax rebates passed through its legislature. Georgia lawmakers also followed that up by introducing “four more affordability measures, this time aimed at insurance costs,” said The Augusta Chronicle.

The legislation addresses the rising price of car insurance and “aims to curb excessive insurance industry billing and profits, increase what's covered and punish drivers for inadequate insurance,” said the Chronicle. Another proposed state bill would “restore regular cost-of-living adjustments for Georgia state retirees,” said WALB-TV Georgia.

Illinois

Beyond working on balancing the state’s budget, lawmakers in the Capitol are focused on passing “legislation that brings down costs for households, that brings good jobs, grows wages and opportunities,” Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch (D) said to The State Journal-Register. Legislators are also “pushing for ‘real structural reform’ surrounding affordability” following a report that grocery costs in Illinois rose by $1,781 last year.

Child care costs have been especially vexing for Americans, and one notable proposition would “create back-to-school sales tax holiday periods to lower the cost of living for Illinoisans, especially those supporting children,” WIFR-TV Rockford said. If the bill passes, it would also “require retailers to clearly label sales tax holiday items.”

New York

New York — and New York City, in particular — is known for having one of the country’s highest costs of living, and legislators have worked on raising wages to battle this. At the beginning of 2026, New York raised its state minimum wage to “$17 downstate and $16 upstate,” said Fox 5 New York. And starting in 2027, the minimum wage “will adjust annually based on the Consumer Price Index.”

Even higher wage hikes are being pushed in the Big Apple. A recent proposal in New York City means “minimum wage could climb to $30 per hour in the coming years,” said CBS News. This would be a significant rise from the current $17 minimum wage in the city and would see the $30 mark reached by 2030.

What happened

The Senate on Thursday approved bipartisan legislation aimed at making housing more affordable and accessible. The bill, sponsored by Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), passed 89-10. The legislation’s “roughly 40 provisions” encourage local governments to expand housing development, make it easier to build and finance modular and manufactured housing, remove regulatory barriers and bar institutional investors from buying single-family homes, with exceptions, CNN said. “Taken together, it’s one of the most significant housing initiatives in three decades.”

Who said what

“The age of affordability is now and the solution to affordability is, in fact, us,” Scott said before the vote. “We need more housing of every kind,” Warren said, and this bill “will help drive down prices.” The housing vote “marked a rare moment of bipartisanship” in a “deeply divided” Congress, Reuters said, and it allows lawmakers in both parties to “campaign for re-election this year by highlighting efforts to ​ease the burden of high living costs.” But first it has to pass the House, which approved a narrower housing bill in January.

Legislation “aimed at making housing more affordable should be a slam-dunk for Republicans’ affordability message,” but instead it’s “exposing GOP disarray on the very cost-of-living issues voters care most about,” Politico said. President Donald Trump, who pushed for the institutional investor ban, could “step in to break the impasse” between Senate and House Republicans, but he told House Republicans this week “that nobody cares about housing issues.”

What next?

Trump has “indicated his support” for the Senate bill, The New York Times said, but he has also “cast considerable doubt in recent days on its chances of enactment,” saying he won’t sign any legislation until Congress sends him strict voting restrictions unlikely to pass in the Senate.

The U.S. war on Iran has driven up gasoline prices, alarming drivers around the world and spurring renewed interest in electric vehicles. Gasoline prices are rising “and so are searches for EVs,” said InsideEVs.

The Iran crisis has thrown global oil markets “for a loop,” which has increased gasoline costs by 50 cents a gallon over the last month. Online searches for electric vehicles, both hybrids and full EVs, have “jumped over the last week.” Most of that gain came from “full EV searches.” A similar spike in oil prices and EV searches occurred when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Will the crisis in the Middle East “finally mean that people will want EVs?,” Matt Hardigree said at The Autopian. The end of tax credits for electric cars has produced a drop in EV sales, dropping by half from 12% of all vehicle sales in 2025. Automakers have “largely cut production” of EVs, and the EVs that remain on the market are “super cheap,” as dealers try to unload inventory. But a “prolonged period of higher energy prices” could change that dynamic. Come summer, “there might be fewer affordable EVs and higher energy prices.”

The road to energy independence?

Electric vehicles “are not the answer to oil shocks,” Kevin D. Williamson said at The Dispatch. Look to China, where oil consumption is increasing despite the proliferation of cheap and abundant EVs, because “there are many things you can do with oil other than refine it into gasoline and diesel.” Imported oil fuels the country’s growing petrochemical industry, which makes plastics and other products. Back in the U.S., commuters with “relatively short daily drives” might benefit from EVs, but that “would not have the effect of lowering U.S. oil consumption.”

Reduced oil demand “can lead to less conflict and more energy independence,” Jameson Dow said at Electrek. Most oil is used for transportation, and “more than half of that goes into the engines of the approximately 1.5 billion personal vehicles on the road today.” That is a “global overreliance” on a single resource, giving “massive amounts of control and wealth” to the countries that use it.

Fuel price security

American carmakers are bracing for “ripple effects” from the war, said The Detroit Free Press. They will face new challenges “if this stretches out and causes extended disruption to oil supplies,” said Sam Abuelsamid, the vice president of market research for Telemetry. General Motors, however, “might be in a good place with its electric vehicle lineup."

“I’m sure glad I bought an EV and solar panels,” Ryan Cooper said at The American Prospect. The stereotype is that electric vehicles are for “environmentally conscious liberals.” But they are also “much cheaper to operate than gas cars.” In a world with roller coaster gas prices, EVs offer “fuel price security,” which is easier on the wallet.

What happened

The Trump administration on Wednesday said it was opening investigations into alleged unfair trading practices by 16 major U.S. trading partners, including China and the European Union, as President Donald Trump tries to resurrect sweeping global tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court. The investigations, based on Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act, will look at “excess capacity” in manufacturing, said U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer in an announcement. Other targets of the investigation include Mexico, Japan, South Korea and India.

Who said what

The new investigations give the administration “an avenue to rebuild a credible tariff threat against trading partners to keep them negotiating and implement trade deals” after Trump’s earlier tariffs were thrown out, Reuters said. “The policy remains the same,” Greer told reporters. “The tools may change depending upon the vagaries of courts.”

Section 301 investigations “typically take several months or even years, but Greer said his team would aim to complete the probes by mid-July,” when Trump’s temporary 10% tariffs — under Section 122 of the 1974 law — expire, The Wall Street Journal said. Greer “didn’t specify how high the new tariffs would be, saying he would not prejudge the investigations.” The Section 301 tariffs are “meant to address specific and legitimate unfair trade practices,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said. “They should not be used to drag the United States back into a cost-raising, broad-based tariff regime.”

What next?

Greer said his office expects to open a second Section 301 investigation today targeting forced labor involving about 60 nations. The Trump administration “is required to carry out an investigation and hold consultations and hearings before it can impose those import taxes,” The New York Times said. But the inquiries “will almost certainly result later this summer in permanent new taxes on U.S. imports,” The Washington Post said.

Next time you go to a seafood restaurant, you may have trouble ordering one of the ocean’s delicacies. Maine’s lobster industry declined for the fourth-straight year, state regulators said this month, in a continuing drop that marks a 17-year low for the state’s lobster haul. This has led people in the state lobster business to sound warning bells, given that the vast majority of lobster in the United States comes from them.

Why is Maine’s lobster industry having trouble?

Lobster fishers have been forced to “grapple with soaring business costs, inflation and a changing ocean,” said The Associated Press. Increasing prices fueled the significant decline in Maine’s lobster industry last year. Maine fishermen caught a total of 78.8 million pounds of lobsters in 2025, compared to more than 110 million pounds in 2024, said the Maine Department of Marine Resources in a press release. It was the lowest statewide haul since 2008.

The principal cause is a large drop in the number of fishing expeditions in the state. Maine lobster harvesters “took over 21,000 fewer fishing trips in 2025 than in 2024, a nearly 10% decline in fishing effort,” Carl Wilson, the commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources, said in the press release. These fishermen were forced to take fewer trips because “rising bait, fuel and gear prices made many trips economically unviable,” said the Portland Press Herald. Shifting climate patterns also play a role, causing a “late molt that limited access to the soft-shell lobsters that feed Maine tourists.” Delays like these can lead to a much less bountiful harvest.

How will this decline impact the larger industry?

Experts fear that the decline of lobster fishing in Maine could have ripple effects for the nationwide industry. At least 80% of the country’s lobster is caught in Maine, according to the state’s lobster marketing website, though other sources claim this figure is as high as 90%. But the evolving lobster industry is shifting the “economics of a fishery that has long dominated Maine’s working waterfront,” said the Press Herald.

Fishermen also “operate across a bunch of micro-economies now experiencing boom, bust or something in between,” and Maine has become one of the last bastions for lobster due to the “near extinction of once-robust lobster fisheries in Rhode Island, Connecticut and Ireland,” said Bloomberg. Diners across the country may also be finding it harder to stomach the price of a restaurant lobster as fishing for them becomes more difficult.

Not all is lost, though. While the industry in Maine faces the aforementioned “challenges from climate change, regulation and increased fishing,” said Bloomberg, it is also “booming elsewhere on the back of high prices and Chinese demand.” This is particularly true in Canada, which “now has triple the lobster catch of the U.S. — and even processes 40% of Maine lobsters.”

Lobster fishing has also always been a generational business, and that isn’t likely to go away. “My youngest son didn't go to college, and now my oldest son wants to come home and go fishing,” Sonny Beal, a member of the board of directors at the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, told Marketplace. “You can’t raise these guys fishing and being on the ocean and expect them not to do it when they get older.”

President Donald Trump spent the last year launching trade wars and pressuring the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, challenging the resiliency and foundations of the U.S. economic system. The Iran war is fast becoming another test of America’s economic stability.

Trump has been “living dangerously” with a series of “risky economic gambles” and “mostly getting away with it,” said Politico. That is because the U.S. economy is a “consumer-driven powerhouse that seems hard to crush.” (The public does not necessarily agree: A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll shows just 35% of Americans approve of Trump’s economic leadership.) But the attack on Iran is becoming an “acute economic risk situation,” triggering market jitters.

Worries about stagflation are “rising on Wall Street,” said Axios. Climbing oil costs, combined with last week’s “lousy jobs report,” are “driving the concern.” The crisis in the Middle East is “pushing up energy and food costs, lifting inflation and squeezing growth,” said Bloomberg strategist Skylar Montgomery Koning. Those forces could create “exactly the kind of stagflationary environment” that economic experts fear, said Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee.

What did the commentators say?

“Trump’s ‘warflation’ has just begun,” Catherine Rampell said at The Bulwark. Roughly a “fifth of the world’s oil” passes through the Strait of Hormuz but “shipping traffic through the strait has virtually stopped.” That is “turbocharging” gasoline prices, plus markets for liquid natural gas, aluminum and fertilizer are also affected. Trump is probably not trying to raise prices for Americans already consumed with concerns about affordability, “but if he were, it’s not clear how much he’d be doing differently right now.”

The war-driven oil shock “probably won’t derail the economy,” Greg Ip said at The Wall Street Journal. While those with “long memories smell stagflation” reminiscent of 1970s instability, the odds are against both stagflation and recession. The U.S. has become “less energy dependent” on foreign oil, consuming less gasoline while becoming a “net exporter” of petroleum and liquid natural gas. That, along with an AI-assisted “productivity renaissance,” has created resilience that “should help sustain growth and cushion cost pressures.”

Trump’s decision to wage war on Iran is a “military, diplomatic, environmental and humanitarian disaster,” Jeet Heer said at The Nation. Trump may be “indifferent to the human costs of war,” but the “economic shock” is “another matter.” Rising oil prices and leery markets could spook the president into pulling back from the conflict. “The fear of losing money is a powerful incentive.”

What next?

The Iran war is “becoming the world’s latest economic headache,” said The New York Times. World leaders are “scrambling for ways” to limit the damage, considering “tapping their national stores of oil” to increase the available supply and keep prices from rising too high. Officials say the price pressures should be short-lived, though. Gas prices will “drop dramatically once the objectives of Operation Epic Fury are achieved,” said a White House spokesperson.

‘Andrew Tate doesn’t get the point of books’

Joel Halldorf at The Atlantic

“Digitization” is the “latest innovation in reading,” but while the “gains in information are undeniable, the costs to attention, contemplation and reflection are no less profound,” says Joel Halldorf. Digital pages are “cluttered with distractions” and “embedded links invite readers to move on mid-sentence.” The “erosion of deep reading weakens our capacity to grasp complex ideas,” which “reshapes the public square, allowing brief snippets of emotionally charged content to crowd out nuance, and algorithms to reinforce preferences and prejudices.”

Read more

‘Trump’s bragging about the economy doesn’t match reality — and Americans notice’

Philip Bump at MS Now

Fox News “released new polling last week that showed Americans broadly remain skeptical of Trump’s leadership as president,” says Philip Bump. “That includes his handling of what was once his strongest issue: the economy.” Now, “only 33% of Americans approve of his handling of the cost of living.” This has “been a lingering problem for Trump”: His “administration’s insistence” that “‘affordability’ is an invented issue or that an economic boom is imminent simply doesn’t match Americans’ actual experience.”

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‘Don’t trust this $4 solution for getting a prescription’

Joseph V. Sakran and Rahul Gorijavolu at The Washington Post

In Utah, an “artificial intelligence platform called Doctronic is renewing prescription medications for patients without physician involvement,” say Joseph V. Sakran and Rahul Gorijavolu. If “AI can handle” medication renewals for “stable chronic conditions,” it “could free up doctors.” But the kind of “chronic conditions” in question “evolve silently. Blood pressure medications become insufficient; diabetes medications require adjustment.” Safety concerns “have been broadly expressed,” and the “window to act” is now — “before autonomous AI prescribing expands.”

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‘Carney confirms: When Washington whistles, Ottawa salutes.’

Andrew Mitrovica at Al Jazeera

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney once “spoke about restraint,” says Andrew Mitrovica. “He urged the world’s most powerful governments to resist the easy seduction of reckless escalation.” But “Carney has backed” the war on Iran, which “bears all the blatant trademarks of the impulsive thinking Carney claimed to mistrust.” Perhaps the “calculation in Ottawa is that loyalty today will purchase goodwill tomorrow.” That “reflects a remarkable misreading of United States President Donald Trump’s brass-knuckled political instincts.”

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What is a K-shaped economy?

It’s a term used by a growing number of economists to describe the two-lane scenario they see playing out in the U.S., in which higher-income
households on the upward arm of the K see their wealth increase while lower-income families are squeezed by stagnating incomes and rising prices. At a broad level, the economy appears healthy, with unemployment hovering at just over 4%, inflation edging down from a pandemic-era peak of 9.1% to about 2.5%, and stock markets hitting record highs. President Trump says Americans are living in a “golden age,” but many don’t feel it. Most industries are in a hiring freeze. Borrowing costs remain high. Inflation remains above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. And because the top 10% of Americans own 87% of stocks, few people have directly benefited from soaring share prices. Fed data shows the share of wealth held by the richest 1% hit nearly 32% last year, the highest since records began in 1989. The worry with income inequality “is not just where we stand now,” said Beth Ann Bovino, chief economist at U.S. Bank, “but also whether ongoing developments will worsen the situation.”

When did this start?

Rising wealth inequality has been a fact of American life since the 1980s. But it accelerated sharply during the Covid-induced 2020 recession, when white-collar professionals remained employed and worked from home—saving money that would have been spent on commuting, vacations, and more—while mass layoffs at restaurants, hotels, and factories pushed unemployment to 15%. Inequality shrank somewhat when the economy reopened and demand surged, with many now short-staffed companies lifting pay for traditionally low-income jobs. In 2023 and 2024, inflation-adjusted wages for the bottom quarter of workers climbed at 3.9% a year, outpacing the top quarter’s 3.1%. “We had that kind of two-year period where the bottom was catching up,” said Dario Perkins, an economist at consultancy TS Lombard. “Since then, the economy has cooled down again.” Hiring has dropped over the past year, as have pay hikes—for some. After-tax wage growth ticked up 4% year on year for higher-income households, according to a new Bank of America report, but climbed just over 2% for middle-income families and 1.4% for lower-income families. For many in the middle and lower tiers, simply staying afloat now feels like a struggle.

Why is that?

It’s partly because the cost of many essentials has climbed faster than wages, a fact not reflected in headline inflation figures. Prices are collectively up about 25% since 2020, but residential electricity rates are more than 30% higher on average than in 2020—and up by more than 100% for some who live near power-hungry AI data centers. National home prices rocketed 55% in that period, with the median house price hitting $432,700 in mid-2025, which has boosted the wealth of those who own property but put homeownership out of reach for many who don’t. The cost of owning a car—everything from sticker price to maintenance to insurance—has accelerated more than 40%, while groceries are up 30%. About a quarter of Americans today live paycheck to paycheck, spending more than 95% of their income on necessities. “The people claiming prices are lower are not actually buying their own groceries,” said Vanessa Jones, a nurse in Davenport, Iowa, who works two jobs and recently declared bankruptcy after being swamped with medical bills following a cancer diagnosis. As the divide between wealthy and lower-income consumers grows, many businesses are rethinking their target audience.

What are companies doing?

Some are refocusing on premium products. It’s a sensible shift considering that a recent Moody’s Analytics report found the top 10% of earners, those making at least $251,000 a year, account for just over 49% of consumer spending, up from 43% in 2020. Spending on luxury fashion climbed 8% year on year in 2025, and sales of first- and business-class tickets are now propelling revenue and profit for Delta Air Lines, CEO Ed Bastian said in October. Lower-end consumers, he added, are “clearly struggling.” Coca-Cola announced in an analyst call late last year that its earnings were being boosted by high-end brands such as Smartwater. Walmart, meanwhile, is pitching itself at the store of choice for overstretched Americans. In November, then-CEO Doug McMillon told analysts that “upper- and middle-income households are driving our growth”—a sign that Whole Foods or Target shoppers are increasingly trading down and seeking bargains at the discount retailer.

Is the K-shaped economy here to stay?

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, thinks so. “This is not a cyclical or temporary phenomenon,” he said. It’s “structural.” Analysts worry that the boom in artificial intelligence could deepen the divide, with the soaring stock of firms such as AI chipmaker Nvidia benefiting a small sliver of the population but not generating many new jobs. “What we see at the very top is an economy that is sort of self-contained,” said Peter Atwater, an economist at the College of William & Mary, “between AI, the stock market, the experiences of the wealthy.” Then there’s the fear that AI could wipe out many entry-level and white-collar jobs, which would super-charge inequality. An economy based only on top earners, many experts agree, is not sustainable: If layoffs intensify and middle- and lower-income Americans cut back spending, the earning of Big Tech firms—which make up about 32% of the S&P 500’s value—would sink. “You’re talking about the bottom of the K essentially pulling down the top,” said Perkins. There’s also the risk of political unrest, which has accompanied previous periods of dizzying technological change and income stratification. In a K-shaped system, “the top gets insulated enough to become careless,” said venture capitalist Josh Tanenbaum,
while “the bottom gets desperate enough to become combustible.”

For the past week, oil and gas traders have watched as a long-feared “worst-case scenario” played out in energy markets, said Bloomberg. Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil and gas production flows, “has all but ground to a halt”, while Iranian missile and drone attacks have forced the closure of the world's biggest liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility in Qatar, along with Saudi Arabia's largest oil refinery.

Real and present threat

It used to be thought that all bets would be off for the global economy in such a scenario. And yet, while prices have surged higher, the scale of the moves has been far smaller than in previous crises. “We're still a long way from ‘oil shock' territory,” said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. The jump in prices to around $80/barrel is nowhere near the highs of $125 seen shortly after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “A gas shock, however, looks a real and present threat.” European wholesale prices hit the stratosphere – jumping by 50% on two consecutive days, before falling back – as QatarEnergy halted production, taking “20% of the world's LNG offline at a stroke”.

UK gas (which hit 114p a therm) on Monday, would have to go to 250p – and stay there for a while – to match the intensity of the 2022 energy crisis, said Pratley. “But suddenly it is not unimaginable.” We may only import 2% of our gas from Qatar (Britain is mainly dependent on Norwegian pipeline imports and its own North Sea supplies), but a tighter market would see Asia and Europe compete more aggressively for LNG cargoes, pushing up prices across the board.

Guessing game

“The irony is that the US is largely insulated from a global gas price shock because of its own domestic production,” James O'Brien of D.Trading told Bloomberg. The pressure “hits allies first and hardest”. Trump won't feel the domestic energy pain he would with, for instance, a gasoline spike.

One reason why the reaction of the oil market has been comparatively tame is that traders are “second-guessing” Trump, said Malcolm Moore in the FT. “The White House has a strong incentive to keep a lid on inflation” ahead of midterm elections in November. Historically, oil shocks have often preceded recessions. “But the world has changed.” Developed economies are “far less oil intensive” than in the 1970s, “and much less dependent” on the Middle East. The US is the world's largest producer – and now has command of Venezuelan reserves too. What happens to prices in the longer run is contingent on “the biggest unknown”, said The Economist: how long the war lasts. It could yet cause “the biggest oil shock in years”.

What happened

A coalition of two dozen Democratic-led states on Thursday sued President Donald Trump at the U.S. Court of International Trade, arguing that the 10% global tariffs he imposed after the Supreme Court struck down his earlier sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs are similarly illegal. The lawsuit was filed a day after a judge on the trade court ordered the Trump administration to start refunding the more than $130 billion collected under the nullified tariffs.

Who said what

Trump imposed his new tariffs, which he plans to raise to 15%, using the never-before-invoked Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. “The president has once again exercised tariff authority that he does not have — involving a statute that does not authorize the tariffs he has imposed — to upend the constitutional order and bring chaos to the global economy,” the lawsuit said.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai said Trump was using his legal authority to address America’s ”large and serious“ trade deficit, and the administration ”will vigorously defend” the tariffs in court. The legal question is whether Section 122’s reference to “fundamental international payments problems” — originally meant to address a 1960s crisis tied to gold-backed dollars — applies to modern trade deficits. “They are not the same thing at all,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said. “The president either doesn’t know the difference or he doesn’t care,” but “he is breaking the law” either way.

What next?

The states want the trade court to “declare the new tariffs illegal” and “refund states the cost of the new tariffs while they were in effect,” Politico said. “The focus right now should be on paying people back,” said Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield.

The YIMBY, or Yes in My Backyard movement, has been steadily growing based on a simple principle: To solve the housing crisis, simply build more affordable houses. But while the YIMBY train of thought has been making waves in many areas, particularly in cities with high levels of homelessness like San Francisco, some economists think the movement has outgrown its lifespan. Others think it has more to give.

‘Supply and demand will lower prices for everyone’

The basic idea behind YIMBYism is that houses should be built in “dense, transit-accessible neighborhoods,” and eventually the “laws of supply and demand will lower prices for everyone,” said Julie Z. Weil at The Washington Post. But the concept does not just apply to lower-income houses. Some YIMBYs believe that “even the construction of high-priced luxury housing will improve housing affordability” because the people who live in these upscale buildings will “no longer be competing for another apartment that will become available for a lower-income renter.”

The YIMBY model has worked in places like New Haven, Connecticut, a “mostly poor, majority-minority, post-industrial city whose population is a double-digit percentage below its midcentury peak,” said Henry Grabar at Slate. Any type of housing reform that works in New Haven and “in San Francisco has got to be good — but also a kind of lowest common denominator in the complex politics of the city.”

These models have largely worked because YIMBYs “are united around a coherent goal, even if they differ in the details,” said Grabar. Many also feel YIMBYism doesn’t go far enough. After “neighborhood and small business groups sued San Francisco over a housing plan they said went too far, a coalition of housing activists is filing their own suit, arguing the city’s plan doesn’t go far enough,” said Adhiti Bandlamudi at KQED-TV San Francisco.

‘Brutal political realities’

Some people view the YIMBY movement as an unrealistic and unmanageable goal for the modern U.S. housing market. There are some “brutal political realities that the YIMBY movement has to contend with,” said Greg Rosalsky at NPR. Despite many millennials and Gen Zers being stuck in a renter’s economy, about “66% of American households own their homes.” People who own homes are “more likely to be civically engaged,” which some argue works against YIMBYism.

America’s “land use regulations have created processes that empower small and privileged groups of neighbors to stop and delay new housing development,” Katherine Levine Einstein, a political scientist at Boston University, told NPR. The homeowners who “participate in the crucial local political and regulatory meetings that govern new housing supply” are “way more likely to be older” and “much more likely to oppose development” of new houses.

Other homeowners argue that deregulation won’t incentivize builders to put up more homes. “If I get richer in a city, I’m not going to demand more units of housing,” Schuyler Louie, the author of a paper on YIMBYism for the National Bureau of Economic Research, said to the Post. “I’m going to demand a nicer house, which is going to increase the price without actually increasing the demand for units.” This “uneven demand growth,” said a research paper from UC Berkeley, UCLA and the University of Toronto, is the “primary driver of declining affordability in recent decades.”

The US Supreme Court has finally stood up to President Trump, said David Frum in The Atlantic. Last week, it quite rightly struck down the tariffs that have been the signature initiative of his presidency. “A tariff is a tax.” A president who imposes them without Congress’s permission is “on his way to becoming a tyrant”.

‘Lashing out’

The move is “a long-run positive”, said Alan Beattie in the FT, but at the cost of short-term uncertainty all round. After the ruling, the US president behaved like “an enraged toddler lashing out after his favourite toy is taken away”, damning the Supreme Court justices and promising new tariffs.

The “smart play” after the legal defeat would be “to take an off-ramp”, said The Wall Street Journal. Instead, the White House “dusted off Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 as a work-around”, enabling Trump to impose tariffs of at least 10% across the board for up to 150 days (possibly rising to 15%). What happens after that is anyone’s guess, bar the prospect of an “unending Trump tariff mess”.

“Certain trading partners don’t look too clever right now,” said Beattie: principally the UK, whose 10% early deal with Trump may now be redundant. On the other hand, it was “an excellent day” for America’s most defiant partners, China and Brazil, whose imports to the US will now cost much less.

Endless litigation

The ruling certainly gives Beijing “a stronger hand” ahead of forthcoming high-stakes talks with Trump, said DealBook in The New York Times: “any decision that removes a tactical weapon from the Trump administration’s hand is welcome news in Beijing”. Potential refunds are another big issue.

Companies such as Costco, Toyota, Goodyear and Alcoa have already sought to reclaim levies; others will follow. Indeed, some economists reckon “a refund windfall” could kickstart “a huge economic stimulus”. Up to $175 billion is on the table, said Irwin Stelzer in The Sunday Times. But Trump is defiant – promising endless litigation for those claiming the tariffs back. The real winners in all this are lawyers.

Whether or not the refunds get paid, there are huge financial implications to this ruling, said Bloomberg. The US government’s fiscal calculations – already dubious – “have now been torn up”. Even the most “expansive” alternative measures are unlikely to bridge the $250 billion a year in expected tariff revenues. If Trump’s efforts to reimpose tariffs by other means are rejected by the Supreme Court – a clear possibility – who knows what he might do to intimidate the justices? In a worst-case scenario, Trump’s setback might become “a fiscal emergency (real, not imagined), an economic body blow and a constitutional crisis all in one”.

American workers are staring down a terrible labor market. It’s so bad that job postings are at their lowest level since the depths of the pandemic.

The demand for new hires “continues to wane,” said CNN. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week that there were just 6.54 million job openings in December, the “lowest level since September 2020.” That leaves “slim pickings” for U.S. workers looking to find a new job, said NerdWallet’s Elizabeth Renter, per the network. And economists are cautious about how tariffs, immigration policy and artificial intelligence will affect the job market going forward. “The hiring recession isn’t going to end anytime soon,” said Heather Long, the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, in a commentary.

The pandemic is not the only point of comparison. Layoffs in January were the highest since the 2009 financial crisis plunged the U.S. economy into the “steepest downturn since the Great Depression,” said CNBC. American companies announced more than 108,000 layoffs for the month, more than double from a year ago. That signals that employers are “less-than-optimistic about the outlook for 2026,” said workplace expert Andy Challenger in an analysis. Workers are feeling negative, too. Consumer confidence is at its “lowest level since 2014,” said The Associated Press.

What did the commentators say?

Republicans have an “economy problem,” said Karl Rove at The Wall Street Journal. President Donald Trump is not helping himself with a “triumphal tone” that suggests the economy is “booming.” That makes struggling Americans “feel unseen and abandoned.” Trump and the GOP should emphasize their record on tax cuts, but they should also “stress there’s more to be done” through deregulation and deficit reduction. If they are to survive this year’s midterm elections, Republicans “need a better economic message” than what they are currently delivering.

The U.S. is in a “jobless boom,” said Long at Vox. The stock market is reaching “record levels” and economic growth is above 4%. But the “K-shaped economy” is delivering the benefits to the upper end of the income scale while the “bottom 80% are just getting by.” The end of the post-pandemic hiring boom is a factor, but so is Trump’s trade wars and the rise of artificial intelligence. The current economic trends are likely to continue. The country is poised for a “hot growth year” but “hiring could remain anemic for a while.” And that could “mean trouble for Republicans” in November.

What next?

The hiring slowdown is concentrated in “manufacturing, professional and business services,” said NBC News. A Wednesday report from ADP Research found that job growth, where it exists, is happening mostly in “education and health services.”

The job numbers are a “warning sign for Trump’s economy,” said Politico. The president’s approval ratings have been “battered by affordability, inflation and labor market anxieties,” and these are intensified by fears that AI-driven “future growth could leave workers behind.” That could complicate White House messaging that has framed the current economy as the “dawn of a new Golden Age.”

Climate change has led to a marked decrease in salaries across the country, including in places that haven’t experienced significant temperature changes. The problem is likely not limited to the U.S. and is expected to worsen without intervention.

Heating costs

Global warming has cut incomes in the U.S. by 12% since 2000, according to a study published in the journal PNAS. “A lot of the real cost comes from how temperature changes across the whole country ripple through prices and trade,” Derek Lemoine, an economics professor at the University of Arizona and a lead author of the study, said in a statement.

Climate change has a substantial effect on the economy. Heat “reduces productivity, lowers crop yields and changes how people spend money,” said ZME Science. These events “feed into the price of goods and shipping across state lines.” And temperatures in “California or Iowa can influence income in Arizona,” said Lemoine.

Temperature was used as the metric of measurement because it can be “tracked everywhere and provides a consistent way to link climate change to economic activity,” said the statement. Nonetheless, there are “uncertainties,” said the BBC. The “true income hit could plausibly sit anywhere from 2% to 22%, according to the study’s confidence interval.” The study also excluded losses from “specific extreme weather events, such as hurricanes or wildfires.”

It only tracked temperatures in the U.S. and not the global impact, but similar trends are likely present in other countries. “What does not change, though, is that climate change has caused losses of at least several percent,” Lemoine said to the BBC. “These losses are driven by how it altered weather elsewhere in the country, not by how it altered a county’s local weather.”

Domino effect

While temperature can affect national trade routes, it also “affects workers’ productivity, agricultural yields and how people spend their time,” said the BBC. All could “affect income directly and could affect the prices of traded goods.” In addition, the shift can influence the supply of natural resources, which directly correlates to prices. “Recognizing economic losses that have already occurred illustrates the importance of resilience planning for businesses,” said Lemoine.

Understanding how climate change has impacted the economy can help determine what actions can be taken. “If you want to decide where to direct adaptation resources, you have to know what’s already happening on the ground,” said Lemoine. “Measuring the current economic effects of climate change helps businesses and policymakers understand where risks are emerging right now.” And the risks are only expected to increase. The global economy could also be significantly altered and likely already has.

A similar type of risk analysis should continue. Agencies could “update estimates like this regularly, making climate damage a standard economic indicator reported alongside employment or inflation,” said ZME Science. Climate change is “pervasive,” said Lemoine. “Climate adaptation must mean more than just protection against local weather.”

The value of the U.S. dollar has been steadily declining, but one person who doesn’t seem worried is President Donald Trump. On the contrary, he has been lauding the dollar’s fall as a positive change for the American economy. “I think it’s great,” Trump said to reporters last week. The president has repeatedly stated that a declining dollar is good for U.S. businesses. But with the dollar recently hitting a value of 95.56, a four-year low, some economists are sounding warning bells.

‘Interferes with his priorities’

Trump’s main argument is that having a weaker dollar breeds more competition among American businesses, and in his view, a “strong dollar, like higher interest rates, interferes with his priorities: faster growth, reshored manufacturing and a smaller trade deficit,” said The Wall Street Journal. This is an idea Trump has had since his first term. “I think our dollar is getting too strong,” and “that’s hurting — that will hurt ultimately,” Trump told the Journal in 2017.

A weaker dollar could provide “near-term benefits to the U.S. economy,” as a “lower currency also boosts exports, without the uncertainty and distortions that tariffs entail,” said the Journal. This occurs even as the weakening currency, combined with Trump’s sweeping tariffs, can “discourage imports.” Historically, Trump has also felt that the dollar “appreciated when the U.S. economy outperformed.”

Some seem to be fine with this economic stance, as trading floors are “abuzz with talk of the ‘debasement trade,’ a broad term for bets on the deterioration of American financial exceptionalism,” said The Economist. Another reason some economists aren’t panicking is that the dollar is “not actually all that weak,” as its real exchange rate (which accounts for inflation discrepancies between countries) was, in 2025, “13% above its average of the past 30 years.”

‘Signifies diminished confidence’

Trump may not have a problem with a weakened dollar, but most economists feel differently. A weak dollar is “not the weather, it’s the barometer,” said Steve Englander, a researcher at U.K. bank Standard Chartered, to CNBC. A weaker currency “reflects the fact that something’s going wrong, either domestically or internationally, and the currency weakness is sort of an escape valve.” Having a weak dollar also “signifies diminished confidence in the U.S. as foreign investors grow wary over the country’s fiscal outlook,” said CNBC.

Since the dollar has been doing well for a long time, many people might be “unable to process the scenario of a weakening dollar and a strong U.S. economy,” said Stephen Jen, founder of asset management group Eurizon SLJ Capital, to Bloomberg. If the dollar’s slide continues, it could mark the “beginning of the next leg lower in the dollar, and many may not be prepared for it.”

And the dollar’s fall has largely been Trump’s own doing, as it has been “driven, in part, by concerns about Trump’s unpredictable, and often unorthodox, approach to economic policy,” said NPR. Having a weaker dollar can also make items overseas more expensive, a “major issue given that the U.S. has traditionally imported more from abroad than it exports.” As the dollar continues to drop, alternative assets like gold, which has risen nearly 8% year to date, are “outperforming as a safe haven for investors,” said Fortune.

Located around Yokohama train station, there is an “especially unique watering hole”, specifically designed for customers who are contemplating quitting their jobs, said Japan Today.

At Tenshoku Sodan Bar, the bartenders are all trained counsellors, who offer impartial advice which you wouldn’t find from high-pressured friends and family, or unrelenting bosses who demand round-the-clock loyalty.

Though “job-hoppers” are still much less frequent in Japan than in Western countries, they are “on the rise”, said The Economist. The concept of a one-company-for-life worker – or “salaryman” – is “eroding”, as younger generations have “started to question this way of working”.

‘Resignation angst’

One “niche but increasingly popular” industry which helps workers break out from the “salaryman” cycle is “proxy quitters”, said The Washington Post. For a fee of up to ¥50,000 (£235), dissatisfied employees can hire someone to quit their job for them.

The service has boomed since the pandemic, with employees’ reasons including that they have been “bullied or harassed at work”, lack the nerve to confront their boss, or simply don’t know how to quit, as it is so rarely done. Nearly one in 10 Japanese companies have “received resignations via proxy quitters”, according to a 2024 survey by Tokyo Shoko Research.

This rise in proxy quitters has revealed a “darker side of Japan’s work culture” to the rest of the world, said CNA. Bosses often have “disproportionate power over employees”, which leads to the expectation of “long hours and unpaid overtime”. Workers are bound by the concept of “messhi hoko” – or “self-sacrifice for the public good” – which is “ingrained” in the Japanese working culture. The expectation to prioritise company needs over personal ones is often cited as one of the culprits for Japan’s declining birth rate. At its most extreme, it can “even be fatal”: the term “karoshi” refers to the phenomenon of “death by overwork”.

Proxy quitting services have emerged as a “direct answer” to these “intricacies of Japanese tradition and social conventions”, but their legality operates in a “grey area” and some employers argue they are “exceeding their authority”, said Leo Lewis in the FT. Even without legal challenges, however, the industry could peter out on its own. Predicated on “resignation angst” and a rigid workplace hierarchy, as office culture evolves, “demand will evaporate”.

Increased ‘leverage’

Evidence suggests that more and more people are defying traditional taboos and choosing to switch jobs, said The Japan Times. According to government data, around 940,000 people switched from one full-time employment to another in 2023, compared with 750,000 in 2018.

Changes in demographics are now working to young people’s favour, said The Washington Post. With a falling birth rate, “rapidly aging” population and “shrinking” workforce, employees wield considerably more leverage. Younger generations are less accepting of the excessively long days which are a “hallmark of Japanese corporate culture”. What was once the “revolutionary idea” of quitting for better terms is now a much more frequent possibility.

The numbers support this, said CNA. In the annual survey undertaken by the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 26.4% of young employees said they would “change jobs if given the chance”, while 7.6% planned to be self-employed in future.

Younger workers are also now more likely to claim the benefits which their employers are legally obliged to provide, said The Economist. “The share of men taking paternity leave has jumped from 2% of those eligible a decade ago to 30% in 2023.” More labour fluidity has caused Japan’s rigid payment structures to loosen, with salaries catching up with the rest of the world due to workforce demands. Though employers may be bracing for the impact of an influx of young, empowered workers, it could also “inject dynamism into Japan’s ossified institutions”.

‘Aviation safety demands action — one year after midair collision near Washington National’

Jason Ambrosi at Newsweek

The “anniversary of the deadly midair collision between a military helicopter and a commercial airliner near Washington National Airport is not an abstract memory — it is a somber reminder that we must always do more to advance safety,” says Jason Ambrosi. Aviation safety is “built through vigilance and constant advancement,” and “each layer of protection exists for a reason.” Congress “must strengthen — not stall — the proven safety practices that protect passengers and crews every day.”

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‘America needs better economic intelligence’

Noosheen Hashemi at Time

The United States is “competing economically with China without a clear picture of where it is winning, losing, or falling behind,” says Noosheen Hashemi. China “measures economic competition relentlessly,” but the U.S. “relies on backward-looking indicators such as trade balances and foreign direct investment flows.” Those “still matter, but they capture only a fraction of how power is built in a digital economy.” The U.S. “needs modern economic intelligence to match modern economic statecraft.”

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‘“Looksmaxxing” young men are carving up their faces. Being ugly is a lot easier.’

Dave Schilling at The Guardian

Within the “fetid petri dish that we call the internet, looksmaxxing has taken hold with a subsection of otherwise functioning individuals,” says Dave Schilling. To “be a looksmaxxer is to purposefully carve up your face, inject steroids into any willing orifice, and occasionally using crystal meth to suppress your appetite.” Trying to “chase perfection is difficult, requires thousands and thousands of dollars of disposable income, and hurts quite a bit.” That “sort of perfection is not actually possible.”

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‘Trump’s Greenland pursuit has left NATO damaged’

Gregory W. Slayton and Sergei Ivashenko at the National Review

NATO is the “most successful military alliance in the history of the world,” say Gregory W. Slayton and Sergei Ivashenko. President Donald Trump’s “recent threats to annex Greenland have broken this trust.” NATO allies are “now talking about a NATO without its cornerstone — that is, without America. That is a road we, as Westerners and as Americans, do not want to go down.” If “America First really means America Alone, our nation’s and our world’s future is bleak.”

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President Donald Trump threatened a massive new trade war against Europe in his bid to acquire Greenland. And the financial markets immediately tanked. Then on Wednesday, he backed down.

Trump dropped his tariff threats after meeting with European leaders in Switzerland, said CNN. NATO leaders agreed to a “framework of a future deal” on Greenland, Trump said on Truth Social. “I think it puts everybody in a very good position,” he told reporters. But the preliminary agreement came the day after “bond yields spiked and stocks sank” as investors registered the alarm over Greenland and raised fears of a surge in “Sell America” trading, said Politico. Some observers saw an old pattern at play in the president’ s sudden backpedaling. Trump is “being mocked for another ‘TACO’ (‘Trump always chickens out’) moment,” said CNN, likely because he was “spooked by the result of his own actions.”

The Greenland adventure has investors newly wary, said the Financial Times. The president’s unpredictability is “chipping away at the credibility of U.S. institutions,” said Altaf Kassam at State Street Investment Management. Others are more willing to stick it out, confident in the long-term trajectory of the U.S. economy. “We have seen plenty of bluster from Trump before,” said Mark Dowding at RBC BlueBay Asset Management.

What did the commentators say?

The “Sell America” trade is “not as bad as it sounds,” said Madison Mills at Axios. Investors are not worried that the “American economy is crashing” because of Trump’s actions. Rather, they think they can “make more money abroad.” That is true because of profits, not global tensions: International stocks “outperformed the S&P 500 in 2025,” making them more lucrative to stockholders. But financial realities should keep investors attached to the United States. “There is no alternative to U.S. Treasury bonds in terms of liquidity, safety and scale.”

Investors are “struggling” to adjust to the “fundamental shifts in the world’s geopolitical tectonic plates,” said Jamie McGeever at Reuters. How can the markets price in the “end of NATO and the U.S.-Europe alliance” or the rise of a “multi-polar world” divvied up between the U.S., Russia and China? Financial markets had maintained “relative calm” in the face of all that instability. This week’s market sell-off, though, was a sign that the “calm is fracturing.”

What next?

Europe is quietly lining up its weapons for the next trade war, if it comes. The continent owns $8 trillion of U.S bonds and equities, making Europe the “world’s biggest lender to the U.S.,” said Fortune. If Trump is willing to disrupt longstanding alliances in pursuit of his aims, said Deutsche Bank’s George Saravelos, it is “not clear why Europeans would be as willing to play this part.”

Wednesday’s news seemed to calm the markets, said CNBC. Tuesday’s “Sell America” trading “reversed on Wednesday,” with the Dow Jones Industrial Average surging nearly 600 points after Trump announced the Greenland deal.

President Donald Trump wants to make it more affordable for Americans to go into debt. The president says banks should cap credit card interest at 10% for a year — an idea that elicits some applause from borrowers and a lot of consternation from finance companies.

Trump’s proposed cap could “save Americans billions of dollars,” said Axios, but banks “warn of consumers losing access to credit.” The idea has drawn support from progressives like Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) but also conservatives like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). Banking lobbyists have “freaked out,” however. The proposal emerges as card rates have jumped to “record levels,” hitting highs of 21% during the last quarter of 2025. Banks say an interest rate cap will result in less credit and the demise of rewards programs. That would “drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives,” said the Consumer Bankers Association.

What did the commentators say?

Industry groups say the cap would spark a “severe pullback in lending” because it would make credit cards unprofitable, said Reuters. The Electronic Payments Coalition said more than 80% of credit card accounts would be “closed or severely restricted.” But credit card profit margins “are absolutely massive,” said Brian Shearer of the Vanderbilt Policy ​Accelerator. “There really is some fat to cut."

Credit companies have “behaved as loan sharks,” said Cheryl K. Chumley at The Washington Times. In the recent past, cards “capped at around 12%,” but that was before banks started “soliciting college students as customers” before they started earning real money. As a result, Americans are “ensnared” in debt and the “only clear winners have been the banks.” A cap would force lenders to tighten lending standards and only issue cards to people who can afford the payments. “The truth is some people just shouldn’t have credit cards.”

There is a reason credit cards “carry high rates when granted to risky debtors,” said Charles C.W. Cooke at the National Review. Interest rates are “inextricably tied” to the risk of lending money to people less able to afford debt payments. A cap would mean fewer Americans would be able to get credit cards and customers “who exhibited even a modest pattern of delinquency would have their accounts canceled on the spot.” That might produce the populist affordability backlash that Trump is trying to avoid, from angry Americans suddenly unable to get credit. “It is difficult to overstate how badly this idea would backfire.”

What next?

The financial industry is girding to fight Trump’s proposal, said CNBC. “We owe that to shareholders,” said JPMorgan Chase CFO Jeremy Barnum. Otherwise JP Morgan and other banks will be forced to “reduce the supply of credit,” he said, which would be bad for the “wider economy.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) have both “voiced skepticism” about Trump’s idea, said Politico. A bill to cap interest rates is “not something I’m out there advocating for,” said Thune. But a floor vote on the proposal is probably coming at “some point.”

‘You know what might help us sleep better? Fewer scary studies about lack of sleep.’

Vinay Menon at the Toronto Star

Don’t “read studies about sleeping if you want to get a good night’s sleep,” says Vinay Menon. Science has “tricked us with a false promise: thinking about sleep will help us sleep. It does the opposite.” At a “time when the world has entered a chaos moon phase, the last thing your brain needs is an internal narrator freaking you out.” There “should be a moratorium on all sleep studies until the news isn’t so disturbing.”

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‘America’s a la carte economy is making everyone feel poorer’

Beth Kowitt at Bloomberg

The U.S. has an “a la carte economy, with an add-on, up-sell or ‘optimization’ around every corner,” says Beth Kowitt. Companies have “gotten smart to the practice of unbundling: break down the cost of a product or service into its component parts, advertise the lower sticker price, and then spin the additional costs to consumers as a perk that offers customization and freedom.” But this is “exacerbating the deepening sense among many in this country that they can’t keep up.”

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‘Stephen Miller wants us to fear him’

Arwa Mahdawi at The Guardian

If “you want to understand what’s happening in the U.S. right now, and what is likely to happen next, don’t just focus on Donald Trump. Rather, pay close attention to Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller,” says Arwa Mahdawi. Miller is the “driving force behind the Trump administration’s most extreme policies.” What “people like Miller want most of all is for us to fear them; that’s why they’re all so obsessed with talking about strength and force and power.”

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‘Working more doesn’t make you more productive’

Joe O’Connor and Jared Lindzon at Time

Historically, the “worker who logged the most hours at work was an organization’s most valuable employee. But that isn’t necessarily the case anymore,” say Joe O’Connor and Jared Lindzon. As “AI promises to transform how we work, and the four-day workweek movement gains steam, it is time to admit once and for all that working more does not make you more productive.” Amid an “emphasis on hours over outcomes, workers are under constant pressure to forgo their rightfully earned time off.”

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It’s astonishing how quickly the flames of protest have spread across Iran, said Ara. On Sunday 28 December, a couple of small protests in central Tehran, one outside the Alaeddin mobile phone centre and another by the Sabzeh Meidan currency exchange, led shopkeepers in the grand bazaar to close their doors in solidarity, and in a matter of days the unrest had spread like wildfire across the country.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the powerful military force that underpins the regime and controls somewhere between 20% to 40% of Iran’s economy, has reacted with severity, using bullets, water cannon and tear gas against the demonstrators; at least 35 people have been killed and some 1,200 protesters arrested.

Expression of the ‘political fracture’

The spark for all this was yet another sharp fall in the exchange rate, said Middle East Eye. The depreciation of the rial, the Iranian currency, has been a constant feature of life under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but since Israel’s strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities in June, the rial’s fall has accelerated mightily: it has lost 40% of its value, making it hard for Iranians to import many essential goods. And adding to the hardship has been a hike in petrol prices: Iran has some of the cheapest petrol in the world, but mounting economic pressure has obliged the regime to cut back on the massive subsidy for it.

Such setbacks are just the latest reflection of deeper economic woes, brought about partly by international sanctions, but also by the grotesque economic mismanagement and corruption of Khamenei’s theocratic regime, said Sanam Vakil in The Sunday Times. People’s “household savings have been wiped out; real wages have collapsed; large segments of the middle class have been pushed into precarity”. That is why the present unrest shouldn’t be seen as a “simple reaction to the economic crisis”, said Pegah Moshir Pour in La Repubblica . What we are seeing is an expression of the “political fracture” that for decades has run through Iranian society, but only burst into the open in September 2022, when mass protests broke out over the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested by the morality police for not wearing her hijab properly.

Indeed, many Iranians are now expressing their frustration at the “entire system”, said Maryam Sinaiee in Iran International. They’ve no faith in the president, Masoud Pezeshkian, and his promises of economic reform. They know he is merely a figurehead, that the real power lies with the 86-year-old Supreme Leader Khamenei, who has been in power since 1989, controls the IRGC and holds billions of dollars worth of Iranian properties and companies. This is why so many of the protesters’ slogans – some have openly chanted “Death to the dictator” – are targeted not at the exchange rate but “at the theocratic system itself, and its supreme leader”.

‘Disorganised and leaderless’

After Israel’s military strikes in June, analysts thought Iranians might “rally behind their regime”, said The Wall Street Journal. They couldn’t have been more wrong. And what makes these protests “all the more remarkable” – protests that have been concentrated not in Tehran but, most unusually, in the smaller cities outside it – is the fact that the authorities have ramped up their repression since the summer. They’ve rounded up 21,000 “suspects” and increased the number of executions: somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 are believed to have taken place.

But let’s not get carried away, said The Economist. The protesting crowds are not nearly as large as those of three years ago; the protest movement itself is “disorganised and leaderless” and the opposition is “adrift”. So the most likely outcome of all this is that the demonstrations “will fizzle out or be crushed, much like past rounds”. But, then again, Donald Trump has told Tehran that it will get “hit hard” if it kills any more protesters, and that the US is “locked and loaded and ready to go”. And given what has happened in Venezuela, you can never be sure.