Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Wednesday discussed the Fed’s plans for its balance sheet. That’s the list of all the assets it owns, and it is huge: $4.5 trillion worth. The plan is to slowly shrink that down by a few billion dollars a month, starting soon. Here’s how the Fed came to own […]
The Federal Reserve raised interest rates about a quarter percent today, but yields on 10-year Treasury notes have been trading just around their 2017 lows — about 2.21 percent. That’s the interest rate paid to the borrower of these notes. Yields rise when traders expect inflation to increase, and, therefore, interest rates climb. So what […]
Under consideration in the House of Representatives today: a big Republican platform item. Specifically, the rollback of Dodd-Frank financial regulations. This comes in the form of a bill called the Financial Choice Act. Here’s what’s in the bill and what could become law. Click the audio player above to hear the full story.
The gross domestic product of South Africa, one of Africa’s largest economies, contracted nearly a full percent between the last quarter of 2016 and the first quarter of this year. Some blame President Jacob Zuma for the country’s lackluster performance. Click the audio player above to hear the full story.
Schools around the country are beginning to close down for the summer. But in Puerto Rico, many schools, almost 180 of them, will not reopen in the fall. The mass closure comes as the commonwealth faces an ongoing economic crisis and tens of billions of dollars in debt. Click the audio player above to […]
Shares of Google parent Alphabet flirted with $1,000 today, and Amazon finished up at $1,011. In the past, when a company thought its stock was getting a little too expensive, it would do a split. That would reduce the price of each share by raising the number outstanding. That basically made the stock more accessible […]
