Only 22% of American high school seniors performed at the proficient level in math in 2024, and only 35% did so in reading, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the federal assessment known as the Nation’s Report Card. Put the other way, roughly 78% of 12th graders are not proficient in math...
Intro Fourteen years ago, Greece was the country investors would not lend to. In March 2012, Greek 10-year bonds yielded close to 40%, and the country was effectively shut out of normal market borrowing. France, in the same month, raised 10-year money at under 3%. Today the order is reversed. In mid-September, Greece’s 10-year government...
Four forces are pressing on the companies that make America’s chips, candy, soda and boxed meals at the same time. Weight-loss drugs are cutting appetites. Federal changes have removed millions of people from food stamps. States are banning soda and candy purchases with the benefits that remain. And manufacturers are cutting prices to win back...
A homeowner who bought a house 15 years ago and never sold it has realized no gain. No cash has changed hands. Yet every year, the local tax bill is calculated against what the house would sell for today. In Washington, taxing gains before an asset is sold is one of the most contested ideas...
Two Miles, Two Prices In Fresno, California, a company-run McDonald’s sold a Big Mac for $5.69 in September. Another company-run store two miles away charged $6.89 for the same sandwich, a 21% premium, according to a Reuters price check of the McDonald’s app. Reuters could not confirm that software caused the gap. But its Sept....
Introduction In November 2025, Moody’s Ratings warned that 2026 would be the year one in six private colleges could no longer cover day-to-day costs with the cash their operations bring in. Nine months into that year, most of the evidence points the same way, though not everywhere. The agency projected that 16% of private institutions...
Introduction The Department of Homeland Security said on Sept. 25, 2026, that it is “reducing your rent,” crediting immigration enforcement for falling rents in states that cooperate most with ICE. In a post on X, the agency said Texas accounted for about a quarter of ICE arrests in July and posted the country’s sharpest rent...
New York’s mobile sports betting tax is usually reported as a win for the state and its schools. Two numbers rarely appear alongside it: what bettors lost to produce that revenue, and whether schools actually receive more money because of it. The first can be calculated directly from the tax rate. For the widely cited...
Intro On Sept. 16, the Federal Open Market Committee raised its policy rate a quarter point. The decision, approved unanimously 12-0, brought the target range to 3.75%–4% and marked the first hike since July 2023. Updated projections showed a strong majority of officials expect another increase before year-end. Two weeks earlier, that outcome was not the...
More than a thousand employees of the companies building the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence signed a public statement on July 28 asking the United States government to help build the tools to slow them down. The signatures ran to the top of the industry: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI Chief Scientist Jakub Pachocki, Meta...