President Donald Trump has been announcing that gas prices are way down — or, as CNN put it, his “imaginary gas price has fallen.” He reportedly has said that “three states” had seen gas prices drop to $1.98 a gallon. That’s not even close to being true, but there are deeper questions. Gas prices are down year over year and up from the beginning of the year. One’s a normal seasonal change. The other, even though it’s good for consumers, it’s a likely bad sign for the economy. Where Gas Prices Sit According to AAA’s gas price monitor, there is…

Yesterday was a rough one for Jack Dorsey, the billionaire CEO of Block, which makes credit card readers and point-of-sale software for small businesses and owns popular banking app Cash App. During Block’s first quarter earnings call for 2025, the company announced that gross profit grew just 9%, compared with the 11% it had predicted, falling about $30 million short of expectations. Block also shrunk its previous full-year 2025 forecast for gross-profit growth from 15% to 12%. The results are a stark contrast to Block’s expansion over the prior two years, when gross profit rose 25% in 2023 and 18%…

It almost goes without saying that the constantly shifting tariff proposals coming out of the Trump administration over the last several weeks have thrown global supply chains into chaos. With new duties hitting imports and international trade tensions flaring, companies are facing spiking costs, vanishing vendors, and increased security risks that are already testing resilience across industries. Whether you’re a small business owner, or just trying to keep your own budget and investments stable in a tumultuous market climate, here are 10 ways to rethink your vendor mix or money strategy. Each is inspired by a real-world innovator thriving amidst…

How The GOP Student Loan Plan Would Reshape Student Loan Forgiveness And Kill The SAVE Plan Student loan borrowers counting on student loan forgiveness via former President Joe Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education plan (more commonly known as the SAVE plan) will likely see it effectively vanish, not by a court order, but by an act of Congress. House Republicans have unveiled a sweeping proposal, the Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Plan, which includes an end to the SAVE plan. The GOP student loan plan proposes shifting all existing income-driven repayment options into a single, new plan via budget…

The job report for April showed 177,000 new positions — 33% higher than the median forecast of 133,000 from economists polled by Dow Jones. The unemployment rate was 4.2% and average hourly earnings increased by 3.8% year-over-year. Employment figures for February and March were revised down by 58,000 positions. The larger gains were in healthcare, transportation and warehousing, financial activities, and social assistance. Federal government employment declined but much less than the Trump administration and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) suggested. Most Jobs Numbers Seemed Stable Month-Over-Month Much of the basis jobs data showed little or no change between March…

A student loan borrower advocacy organization is raising alarm bells over Republican plans to remake the federal student loan repayment system, warning that if it’s enacted, the reforms could dramatically raise costs for working families who carry student loan debt. Earlier this week, a key House committee passed a sweeping bill intended to slash government spending associated with federal student aid programs. The legislation is one piece of a much broader effort by Republican lawmakers to extend and expand tax cuts through a process called budget reconciliation. The costs of those tax cuts, which could be several trillion dollars, would…

House Republicans this week unveiled sweeping legislation to remake the federal student loan system. Nearly every element of the federal student aid system, from grants to aid disbursement to repayment plans and loan forgiveness programs, would be impacted if the plan is enacted. And buried deep in the bill is a major change that would cut off a popular federal student loan forgiveness program for medical residents and interns. “This bill set forth by Committee Republicans not only would save taxpayers over $330 billion but also bring much-needed reform in three key areas: simplified loan repayment, streamlined student loan options,…

Since 2013 the first Thursday in May has been designated as World Password Day, a day intended to remind us of the critical importance of password security Recently a study by market research company Gitnux found that 60% of Americans use the same password for multiple online accounts. This is particularly problematic because if the password is compromised, such as in a data breach of one account, all of the other accounts using that same password which may include sensitive accounts such as online banking become vulnerable. While passwords are still the coin of the realm for account access and…

There is a scramble among economists and analysts to explain the real annualized 0.3% decline in U.S. GDP. A slight contraction is the description, along with various explanations of why it happened and is likely to be temporary. Whether that is true or a form of professional and existential self-calming is to be seen. What Happened To GDP In Q1 Economists originally expected the 0.3% fall in GDP to be a 0.4% gain — a swing of 0.7 percentage points. The fourth quarter of 2024 had realized an annualized gain of 2.4%. That was a swing of 2.7 percentage points.…

A key House committee passed the Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Plan on Tuesday, a Republican bill that is part of the party’s broader effort to enact President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda of extending massive tax cuts paid for by slashing government spending. If the bill is ultimately enacted through the budget reconciliation process, it would fundamentally remake the entire federal student loan repayment system by cutting off or pushing out loan forgiveness and forcing millions of borrowers into more expensive repayment plans. “Today, the Education and Workforce Committee passed the Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Plan—a vital portion of…