Financial related news.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government last week reported that consumer prices rose 0.3 percent from January to February, decelerating from a 0.4 percent increase the previous month. Compared with 12 months earlier, though, prices rose 2.5 percent in February, up from a 2.4 percent year-over-year gain in January. Excluding volatile food and energy costs, [...]
NEW YORK — In a virtuous cycle that's only helped investors, fees keep dropping for mutual funds and exchange-traded funds. Last year, investors in stock mutual funds paid an average of 42 cents in fees for every $100 they had invested. That's down from 44 cents the year before and from $1.04 in 1996. Fees [...]
Consumer confidence held steady this month even as Americans wrestle with higher prices and feel less optimistic about the short-term future. The Conference Board, a business research group, said that its consumer confidence index ticked down to 104.7 in March from a revised 104.8 in February. The index measures both Americans' assessment of current economic [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Education Department said it has discovered a calculation error in hundreds of thousands of student financial aid applications sent to colleges this month and will need to reprocess them — a blunder that follows a series of others and threatens further delays to this year's college applications. A vendor working [...]
NEW YORK — Workers across different industries are increasingly receiving some or all of their income via apps. They include tutors, graphic designers, hair stylists and all kinds of independent and self-employed workers, along with merchants who sell products online through Etsy, eBay, Amazon and other sites. Tax law, though, is still catching up when [...]
WASHINGTON — IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel has a message for high-wealth tax cheats who are wrongly deducting private jet travel and otherwise shorting the government on their taxes: Pay your fair share so "others aren't shouldering the burden of funding our government." He also has a thought for ordinary taxpayers putting off the inevitable with [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Across the country, many people are anticipating the Federal Reserve's first cut to its benchmark interest rate this year: Prospective home buyers hope for lower mortgage rates, Wall Street traders envision higher stock prices and consumers are looking for a break on credit-card rates. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and his fellow [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Wholesale prices accelerated again in February, the latest sign that inflation pressures in the economy remain elevated and might not cool in the coming months as fast as the Federal Reserve or the Biden administration would like. The Labor Department last week said that its producer price index — which tracks inflation [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Consumer prices picked up last month, increasing 0.4 percent from January to February, higher than the previous month’s figure of 0.3 percent, according to new figures from the Labor Department. Compared with a year earlier, consumer prices rose 3.2 percent last month, above January’s 3.1 percent annual pace. Excluding volatile food and [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Chair Jerome Powell earlier this week reinforced his belief that the Federal Reserve will cut its key interest rate this year but that it first wants to see more evidence that inflation is falling sustainably back to the Fed's 2 percent target. Powell noted that inflation is slowing for both goods and [...]