India’s “quick commerce” bubble may be about to burst, said the CEO of Blinkit, an app that promises delivery of orders within 10 minutes.

Albinder Dhindsa issued the warning as some competitors in the market are running on losses. He believes his company will thrive, but there has been unrest, and Blinkit's riders took industrial action over pay and working conditions earlier in the year. The strike is just part of a wider crisis developing in India’s growing gig economy, where “speed trumps safety and workers are easily replaced”, said The Independent.

“The pendulum has already swung once from scepticism to exuberance,” Dhindsa told Bloomberg and believes he does not know when “correction” will come, but only that it will.

Dark stores

Blinkit allows customers to order groceries, fresh produce and daily essentials, which they expect to be delivered in around 10 minutes. To achieve this speedy turnaround, the platform relies on a network of “dark stores” – retail spaces that act as dedicated hubs for fulfilling online orders, rather than in-person shopping.

It forms part of India’s rapidly growing quick commerce sector, funded by investors attracted by the country’s “dense cities, lower cost of labour and ubiquitous digital payments”, said Bloomberg.

The company launched in 2013 as Grofers, but rebranded in 2021 as Blinkit, invoking the idea that service will happen “in the blink of an eye”. Acquired by the country's food delivery giant Zomato in 2022, it’s now active in many cities across India, delivering “everything from eggs to iPhones” to a client base of millions.

But, it has yet to turn a profit, hampered by “capital costs and supply chain complexity” as it pursues further expansion, including into rural areas.

Straightforward demands

Earlier this year, more than 150 Blinkit workers in the city of Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, went on a two-day strike to protest “unsafe working conditions, falling earnings, and retaliatory ID suspensions” (when gig platforms deactivate workers' accounts without due process or a means of redress), said The Independent.

The striking riders had “straightforward demands”, including “weather-appropriate uniforms and shaded waiting areas” alongside an end to a “punishing rule that effectively forces them to work the hottest hours of the day”.

They also want the company to “restore the original incentive pay structure”. They are paid on a per-order basis, with “fluctuating incentives”, with terms having “ been quietly changed over time”. Riders claim that they used to receive Rs 555 (£4.93) per 32 orders delivered, but now earn just Rs 448 (£3.98) per 43, which means they are “doing more work for less”.

In November, the Indian government introduced new labour laws so that the fleet of self-employed workers will now receive social security, but they still have no right to a fixed wage or paid leave.

The April strike was a “flashpoint” but not the last in what is becoming a “growing struggle” between “speed-driven platforms” and the workers holding up a gig economy that’s forecast to employ over 23 million Indians by 2029.

Americans may find themselves paying more for a bourbon neat these days. U.S. whiskey distillers throughout the liquor industry are facing financial hardship lately, and economic experts are pointing to the Trump administration’s tariffs as a major cause. This includes Jim Beam, whose troubles have led to a drastic step: closing its distillery.

What brands are being impacted?

The economic slump has affected several iconic American brands. This includes Jack Daniel’s, Old Forester and Woodford Reserve, which are all owned by parent company Brown-Forman. The company previously announced it was “laying off about 650 employees, or 12% of its workforce, in the face of declining demand,” said The New York Times. Several other whiskey brands, including Garrard County Distilling Co. in Kentucky and Uncle Nearest in Tennessee, have been placed into receivership in 2025.

But Jim Beam has taken perhaps the most extreme move by announcing it would halt production at the plant’s main distillery in Clermont, Kentucky, for an entire year. The brand will “pause distillation at our main distillery on the James B. Beam campus for 2026 while we take the opportunity to invest in site enhancements,” the company said in a statement. This marks a significant step for the country’s largest bourbon manufacturer, given that this distillery “produces about a third of the company’s annual output of approximately 26.5 million gallons,” said the Times.

How are tariffs causing these issues?

The ongoing challenges “straining the liquor industry” are “part of the fallout of Trump’s trade war,” said CBC News. These tariffs (and subsequent counter-tariffs from countries like Canada) led to a trade deficit as “overall exports of American spirits fell 9% in the second quarter of 2025 compared to the same period last year.” Boycotts of American alcohol brands have also contributed to this decline.

However, there are other factors afoot beyond tariffs; the statement put out by Jim Beam did not even mention tariffs. Another culprit is the skyrocketing supply of aging barrels. Kentucky has an “all-time high of 16.1 million aging barrels of bourbon in its warehouses,” said the Kentucky Distillers’ Association. Because these barrels are taxed by the state, Kentucky distillers paid a “$75 million tab in aging barrel taxes this year, a 27% increase from 2024 and an astronomical 163% increase over the last five years alone.”

Overall demand for whiskey and bourbon has decreased, which has now “caused an oversupply of whiskey,” said Bloomberg. Sales have slumped as “consumers rein in spending and drinking” during downward economic times. And much of the available product can’t even be sold right now — most of the 16.1 million barrels of bourbon currently being aged “won’t be ready to bottle until after 2030.”

Despite these other factors, Kentucky politicians seem to place the blame on the Trump administration’s shoulders. It is “hard to overstate just how devastating Trump’s tariffs are for America’s signature spirit,” said Rep. Morgan McGarvey (D-Ky.) in a post on X, referring to the Jim Beam closure. “Thousands of Kentuckians power the bourbon industry — we will all feel the impact of this.”

What happened

TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, said Thursday it had secured binding deals with three major investors to form a U.S. version of the popular video-sharing platform. Under the agreements, outlined by TikTok CEO Shou Chew in a memo to employees, Oracle, Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based MGX will each own 15% of the new venture, leading a consortium with 50% control of U.S. TikTok.

Who said what

The deal “marks the end of years of uncertainty” about TikTok’s fate in the U.S., The Associated Press said. Congress passed a law that “would ban TikTok in the U.S. if it did not find a new owner,” but after the platform briefly went dark in January, President Donald Trump, “without a clear legal basis,” signed four executive orders to stave off the ban while his administration sought new ownership.

ByteDance is set to retain a 19.9% stake in the new venture, while 30.1% will be owned by its affiliates and partners. It wasn’t clear who would own the last 5%, but Trump suggested in September that Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch would hold stakes, along with Oracle’s Larry Ellison. “Trump wants to hand over even more control of what you watch to his billionaire buddies,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said on social media Thursday.

What next?

Chew’s memo “suggested that the deal would close on Jan. 22, just one day before the latest deadline for TikTok to find a new owner,” The New York Times said. The Trump administration has to approve the deal, but “at this stage, I see no regulatory issues,” analyst Craig Huber told Reuters, especially since Trump was “very involved in putting the whole sale together from the beginning.”

SiriusXM’s subscriber base has been shrinking over the past few years, but the satellite radio corporation thinks it has found a solution: Howard Stern. The self-described King of All Media has been one of the company’s mainstays since his show joined SiriusXM in 2006. The brand is hoping that a new three-year deal Stern signed on Dec. 16 can keep new listeners tuning in.

What is the situation at SiriusXM?

In the third quarter of 2025, SiriusXM had 33 million subscribers nationwide, the company said in its earnings report. But this is “some 100,000 fewer than the year before,” according to The Associated Press. SiriusXM’s self-pay net subscribers — those who pay directly for the satellite subscription — also fell by 40,000 in the third quarter.

These figures show that it has been a challenging year for SiriusXM, which started 2025 by losing 303,000 self-pay subscribers in the first quarter. But not all was gloom for SiriusXM, as it also “reported third-quarter revenue of $2.16 billion, above analyst expectations but down 1% from the prior-year period,” said The Hollywood Reporter. This period additionally saw SiriusXM take in a “net income of $297 million, after reporting a net loss of $2.96 billion a year ago.”

How could Stern’s new contract help?

Stern announced that he re-upped his contract for three years, keeping him on the SiriusXM airwaves through 2028. “I’m happy to announce that I’ve figured out a way to have it all: more free time and continuing to be on the radio,” Stern said in a statement. Stern had previously pranked listeners by announcing his retirement, causing some to wonder if the 71-year-old would finally leave the airwaves.

Stern will be “continuing his radio reign despite commanding an audience that is far smaller than what he drew during his heyday,” said MarketWatch. Since Stern’s last contract, SiriusXM, and satellite radio in general, have seen a “slow but steady erosion of its subscriber base as listeners have switched to streaming-music platforms” like Spotify.

And while Stern’s listenership has been decreasing along with SiriusXM as a whole, he still commands a large chunk of the company’s platform: Stern’s show currently has a “mid-single-digit percentage of what he drew at his peak, which would put it somewhere around 1 million listeners per broadcast,” said MarketWatch, making him a valuable commodity. A 2020 report from Credit Suisse estimated that 15% of SiriusXM listeners would cancel their subscription if Stern ended his show, which at the time represented a “potential subscriber loss of 2.7 million.”

This all comes as competition for SiriusXM increases. Many audio companies have begun a television ad push as the businesses “seek new audiences and ad dollars and more creators embrace video,” said Axios. Two of the biggest players in the industry, Spotify and iHeartMedia, recently “signed deals to distribute some of their podcasts on Netflix.” But SiriusXM also still has other big properties under contract, including Alex Cooper of the Call Her Daddy podcast and the SmartLess podcast hosted by Will Arnett, Jason Bateman and Sean Hayes.

What happened

The U.S. gained 64,000 jobs in November but lost 105,000 in October, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday, and the unemployment rate climbed to 4.6%, the highest since 2021. Along with the net loss of 41,000 jobs, the department also revised August and September’s payroll numbers downward by 33,000 jobs. Wages grew an anemic 0.1% last month, the smallest gain since 2023. The October jobs report was delayed because of the government shutdown.

Who said what

“Taken together,” the data released Tuesday “point to one of the weakest American labor markets in years,” The Wall Street Journal said. Hiring has “clearly lost momentum,” The Associated Press said, “hobbled by uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s tariffs” and the “lingering effects” of inflation-fighting high interest rates.

The “economy is flashing new warning signs,” but October’s steep losses “reflected the exit of tens of thousands of federal workers who took a deferred resignation package earlier this year,” The Washington Post said. “All roads lead back to policy out of Washington, D.C.,” RSM chief economist Joseph Brusuelas told the Journal. “I’m not saying this is a harbinger of a recession, but we have some real challenges to the economy that we didn’t have one year ago.”

What next?

The delayed jobs numbers, and a separate Commerce Department report Tuesday that showed flat retail sales, “buttressed the Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates last week,” the Post said. After that meeting, Fed Chair Jerome Powell “warned that official statistics could be overstating job creation by 60,000 jobs a month.”

‘Can Jollibee beat American fast food at its own game?’

Yasmin Tayag at The Atlantic

Jollibee is “often described as the McDonald’s of the Philippines, but that doesn’t do the chain justice,” says Yasmin Tayag. It “now has about 80 locations across the United States,” and the “warm reception from the ‘mainstream’ — company parlance for non-Filipino Americans — has emboldened Jollibee to ramp up its expansion.” But Jollibee “doesn’t have to topple the fast-food giants, or re-create an era when fast food was a little more fun, to play a part in reshaping the American palate.”

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‘Never be honest in Hollywood — even if you’re Quentin Tarantino’

Dave Schilling at The Guardian

When “someone is brutally forthcoming with their true feelings about something or someone in Hollywood, it’s absolutely jarring,” says Dave Schilling. Quentin Tarantino has been “piercing the veil of Hollywood decorum for decades now, but it seems that he finally picked the wrong target” in Paul Dano. What “all of this makes clear is that no one is successful enough to be honest, and that you can be an acclaimed filmmaker and still be completely wrong about art.”

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‘In Trump’s regime, Catholics are among the most powerful — and deported’

Gustavo Arellano at the Los Angeles Times

This year “will go down as one of the best and worst years ever to be a Catholic in the United States,” says Gustavo Arellano. Catholics are in “positions of power in this country like never before.” But “people with a special devotion to Guadalupe, the overwhelming majority of whom are Latino — can’t even venerate her in peace this year because of Trump.” That’s the “sad irony of seeing Catholicism have such a prominent role in Trump’s second term.”

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‘The Brits can’t seem to move on from Brexit’

Iain Macwhirter at The American Conservative

It “will soon be 10 years since the referendum on British membership of the European Union,” but “Brits just can’t seem to let Brexit go,” says Iain Macwhirter. Why is the “British government apparently seeking to revive the intense culture war that followed the original Brexit vote?” The “division over Europe became part of the wider culture war between the pro-immigration liberal U.K. elites in academia, the media and big corporations, and the so-called ‘left-behinds.’”

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There’s money to be made in the business of extending lifespans, and this so-called longevity economy has become a flourishing part of the financial system. While humans have always looked for ways to live longer, recent health advancements alongside shifting demographics mean people are investing in the longevity economy like never before.

How much money is in the longevity economy?

Trillions of dollars are flowing into this economy. In 2020, just as the Covid-19 pandemic was surging, the longevity sector was valued at $15 trillion globally, according to market research from Data Bridge. It has been growing at a steady rate every year and is expected to have a value of $27 trillion by 2030, and some analyses have the longevity economy possibly reaching this mark by 2026.

This is due to several factors, most notably a shift “toward health span — the years we spend in peak physical and mental condition,” said Entrepreneur. Customer demand also plays a large role, as by 2034 the “U.S. will have more people over 65 than 18,” and one in six people globally will be over 60 by 2030. This is “not just demographics — that’s a new consumer majority.” Increasing health care costs also factor into the money being pumped into the economy, as “chronic diseases and mental health conditions already account for 90% of U.S. health care spending.”

What other factors make up the longevity economy?

There may be more to the longevity economy than many people realize. As “elders live longer and healthier lives and continue to actively participate in the global economy, possibilities open to potentially turn longevity into an asset for society,” said BBC News. In the U.S., it is estimated that by 2030, people over 55 “will have accounted for half of all domestic consumer spending growth since the global financial crisis.” In Japan, this figure will be 67%; in Germany, it will be 86%.

Demographics also play a large role. For the first time in history, the longevity economy “includes four generations of age 50 and older: the GI Generation (1901-1926); the Silent Generation (1927-1945); the Baby Boomers (1946-1964) and Generation X (1965-1980),” said the Los Angeles Daily News. But even though “populations may be aging in significant numbers, we can’t let the idea of ‘oldness’ and its implications stifle the way we think about economic opportunity,” Dr. Joseph Coughlin, the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s AgeLab, said to BBC News.

Even though “millennial demands are linked to the rise of the on-demand economy, older adults benefit immensely from its convenience,” Coughlin told BBC News. This has resulted in a slew of products and services surrounding the longevity economy. Most notable are tech entrepreneurs like Bryan Johnson, who is at the “forefront of the movement looking for new ways to reverse aging and extend health span, and live to age 150,” said Fortune. Also emerging is the invention of technologies like wearable aging clocks and more devices designed to keep you younger longer.

President Donald Trump’s tariff-driven trade war is not slowing down China’s export economy. Beijing this week reported a record $1 trillion trade surplus with the rest of the world in 2025, raising concerns about “growing imbalances” in the global economy.

The trillion-dollar milestone puts China’s well-known “dominance” of world trade “into even starker relief,” said The Wall Street Journal. While Trump’s tariffs have limited the country’s exports to the United States this year — plunging nearly a third in November compared to last year — China’s exports to Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America have “surged” significantly. The trend has “raised alarms around the world, especially in Europe,” whose automotive and luxury goods sectors find themselves threatened by “nimble Chinese competitors.”

That leaves Europe “squeezed between an ultra-competitive China and a protectionist America,” said Politico. China’s trade surplus “is untenable,” said French President Emmanuel Macron to the Les Echos financial newspaper. European companies were once big investors in China, he said, and now it is time for Chinese businesses to “create value and opportunities for Europe.” Europe could impose Trump-style tariffs on imports, Politico said, but Macron would prefer a “truce” with Beijing.

What did the commentators say?

China’s gigantic trade surplus reveals the difficulty that Trump and others will have “trying to rebalance global trade,” said Amy Hawkins at The Guardian. But it also demonstrates how much Beijing’s economic might is “still overwhelmingly reliant on foreign markets.” And it has raised fears that the country is now flooding non-American markets with “cheap goods that threaten local industry.” It is more likely, though, that those goods will “ultimately end up in the U.S.” after traveling through third countries to avoid Trump’s tariffs.

We could be looking at a “second China shock,” said Alexandra Stevenson at The New York Times. The first shock came two decades ago when American and European companies outsourced manufacturing to China while closing factories at home. The second will come now that China is “redirecting more of its exports to developing countries” that have “less control over how it unfolds.” And there could be “profound” social consequences like unemployment and unrest in countries like Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. “They’re going to need to brace for impact.”

What next?

The next developments may depend on whether the current trade “truce” between the U.S. and China can hold. Some observers believe the relative peace “may not last,” said CNBC. That failure — and a second effort by China to push its exports to other markets — “might compel Europe to impose more restrictive measures to protect its manufacturing sector,” said Jing Wang, a China economist at Nomura, to the outlet.

China’s economy will increasingly “ride on the strength of domestic demand,” said Bloomberg. For now, though, Beijing “faces a worsening economic picture” at home. There has been a slowdown in domestic consumption and investment is also falling. As a result, analysts believe that China will continue to rely on exports and take “only incremental steps” toward relying on its own people to be customers for the goods it makes.

‘Confession of a cheap imports enjoyer’

Jack Butler at The Wall Street Journal

Searching the “internet for tables, chairs, futons and bookshelves,” there are “great options. Almost none of them were made in the U.S. Many came from China,” says Jack Butler. It’s “okay that the U.S. isn’t a powerhouse producer of faux-marble tables and adjustable futons,” because it “does other things — high-end manufacturing, energy production, design — and it does them better than anyone else.” There are “better jobs for Americans than making cheap tables and chairs.”

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‘Benin’s real coup already happened under President Talon’

Tafi Mhaka at Al Jazeera

The attempted coup in Benin was the “visible peak of a deeper political crisis years in the making,” says Tafi Mhaka. In its “aftermath, order was restored, but not legitimacy.” Benin’s “real coup — the systematic overthrow of its democracy — had already occurred.” All the “attempted takeover did was to lay bare a political system that had already been undermined from within,” as “any illusion of democracy in the country disappeared.”

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‘Singapore’s latest antisocial scourge is pickleball’

Owen Walker at the Financial Times

There has been an “active pickleball-playing community in Singapore for at least three decades, but for years it was known as an old man’s game,” says Owen Walker. It has “become a lightning rod issue, pitching enthusiastic picklers against neighbors driven mad by the sport’s relentless ‘pock, pock, pock’ soundtrack.” In “entrepreneurial Singapore, the dilemma has prompted some to spot a business opportunity.” Other “cities enduring the same public backlash against the sport’s growing popularity could take note.”

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‘Netflix has three huge new problems with its Warner Bros takeover: Paramount, TikTok and Trump’

James Moore at The Independent

Netflix and Warner Bros. would be the “media merger of the century, so naturally, Donald Trump is sticking his oar in,” says James Moore. But the “deal is motivated as much by fear as it is Netflix’s desire to create an unstoppable media and entertainment supertanker.” Just as “Netflix revolutionized the viewing habits of the Millennials, and Gen X while we’re at it, so is it looking nervously at the Zoomers and Gen Alpha rapidly coming up behind them.”

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Investors are cooling on Ben & Jerry’s as the founders continue to be caught up in a spat with the ice cream brand’s owners.

The Magnum Ice Cream Company, which owns Ben & Jerry’s as well as Cornetto and Wall’s, completed a spin-off from parent firm Unilever this week and began trading on the European stock market as a standalone business, but its initial valuation was “significantly lower” than expected, said The Times.

Unilever, and now Magnum, have been embroiled in a “war of words” with Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the founders of Ben & Jerry’s. The pair have accused both companies of silencing the brand’s “social mission”, after they were told by Magnum boss Peter ter Kulve that they should “hand over to a new generation”.

‘Tug of war’ over activism

The “long-running legal spat” is about the “powers to define” Ben & Jerry’s direction, said Madeleine Speed in the Financial Times. Since the company was acquired by Unilever in 2000 for $326 million (£246 million), Cohen and Greenfield have become “increasingly vocal about their dissatisfaction with the direction of the brand”.

It has been an ever-present “tug of war”, said Sky News. Currently, Magnum is trying to remove the chair of Ben & Jerry’s independent board, stating that "internal investigations” reveal she “no longer meets the criteria”.

There were also fears that Ben & Jerry’s pro-Gaza activism would derail the spin-off from Unilever, said The Telegraph. Back in 2021, “tensions flared” as the ice cream brand announced it would halt sales in “occupied Palestinian territory”, followed by legal action from Ben & Jerry’s when Unilever “sold distribution rights in Israel and the West Bank to a local licensee”. Last November, Ben & Jerry’s claimed that Unilever had “tried to silence” its social mission by “blocking statements on the conflict in the Middle East”. In a prospectus for investors seen by The Telegraph, Unilever admitted that the political views of Ben & Jerry’s founders could “adversely impact the Group’s reputation, business, financial condition, and results of operations”.

Corporate activism is ‘melting’

When Unilever bought the brand in 2000, Cohen and Greenfield said the company “not only understood their social-mindedness but guaranteed that it could continue without interference”. However, the Trump administration’s “anti-diversity, America-first mindset” is at odds with the “feel-good, save-the-world, ‘kumbaya’ philosophy” that has long fuelled Ben & Jerry’s marketing, said Monocle. Corporate activism, particularly on the left, is “melting”.

Greenfield quit Ben & Jerry’s in September, after more than 50 years. Cohen is still involved and still “in the middle of a bitter feud”, said The Times. He “shows no sign of shrinking away” and will “continue to speak out”. At upcoming conferences, he will “take Unilever and Magnum to task”.

As for Unilever, it “believes it has acted reasonably”. It said it would have allowed Ben & Jerry’s calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, if the brand had “also condemned Hamas terrorism and called for the release of hostages”. It is “to be fair”, hardly “the only big company that shies away from antagonising the White House”.

‘I lost my friend to cancer. EPA rollbacks make more losses inevitable.’

Cynthia Palmer at Time

Stripping the Environmental Protection Agency of the “legal basis for controlling climate pollution would put floods, fires, and hurricanes on steroids,” says Cynthia Palmer. Many “chemical disasters last for years or decades, and can end in cancers and other serious illnesses.” These “moves would usher in a future of chemical leaks, explosions, and fires, melting pipelines, and other chemical disasters,” and it “takes only tiny amounts of these super-toxic chemicals to trigger life-altering and sometimes life-ending conditions.”

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‘The ambition gap is growing’

Beth Kowitt at Bloomberg

A “new study looking at the state of female white-collar workers confirms something many women have been feeling in their bones lately: the corporate ladder is not designed for them,” says Beth Kowitt. Women are “still just as motivated and committed to their work as their male counterparts,” but in the “last year, the workplace has become a more hostile place for women — not that it ever particularly embraced them.” It is “relentless and crazymaking.”

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‘Two barge failures, one outdated law’

Colin Grabow at Newsweek

A “barge carrying almost 200 containers from Florida to Puerto Rico ran aground recently,” and these “incidents expose a deeper and preventable weakness: vital U.S. supply chains have become overly dependent on slow, weather-sensitive barges rather than modern self-propelled ships,” says Colin Grabow. These “mishaps are symptoms of a supply-chain strategy warped by a century-old law that makes the most efficient vessels unaffordable.” America’s “supply chains are too important to be left tethered” to “outdated maritime policy.”

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‘Doctor shortage has RFK Jr. facing music of anti-vaccine noise’

Morgan Goheen at USA Today

The Trump administration “does not value infectious disease experts,” and “these attacks are coming at a time when the health care community is facing a huge infectious disease physician shortage,” says Morgan Goheen. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is “about to face the consequences of his rhetoric, and members of the general public will be casualties.” The “declines in the infectious disease training pipeline are going to have a devastating impact on our workforce.”

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Bugs Bunny could soon have a new boss: Netflix has announced an agreement to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming service and studios, potentially creating a new streaming powerhouse and drastically changing the entertainment landscape. But while Netflix and Warner Bros. are moving forward with their deal, another player, Paramount Skydance, has also announced a hostile bid for the company. All the while, President Donald Trump is weighing in on the possible merger, and regulatory questions remain in a deal that could alter Hollywood for good.

What did the commentators say?

Netflix’s potential $83 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery would “reshuffle the entertainment landscape, rounding up classics such ‘Casablanca’ and beloved HBO series ’Game of Thrones’ and ‘The Sopranos’ under the streaming service's umbrella,” said USA Today. Beyond an expanded library of content, combining Netflix with Warner Bros. would also create a massive, consolidated new customer base by “adding HBO Max’s nearly 130 million streaming subscribers to Netflix’s 300 million or so.”

The deal isn’t entirely unexpected; Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has “long coveted HBO programming,” and as far back as 2010 was “intent on getting some older HBO shows on its nascent streaming service,” said The New York Times. Fifteen years later, the potential deal has “set off concerns about the future of theatrical releases. It also left many questions about the future of the storied HBO brand.”

But even as Netflix claims the purchase is a done deal, Paramount has launched its own $108.4 billion competing bid. Paramount “repeatedly argued to the WBD board of directors that keeping Warner Bros. Discovery whole is in the best interest of its shareholders,” said CNBC. Paramount CEO David Ellison has long expressed interest in buying Warner Bros. The company is “really here to finish what we started,” Ellison, a close ally of Trump, told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” saying they “put the company in play.” Paramount has “accused Warner of ‘never engaging meaningfully’ with its six various proposals,” said NPR.

What next?

The dueling bids have “created a cupboard full of industry stakeholders” who “need to be pondering their next move,” said Forbes. Entertainment players from movie theater operators to various Hollywood unions have weighed in on the issue, as the “expected fallout will be enormous” no matter what company emerges victorious in the bidding war. Beyond the companies themselves, a “new regulatory scramble will ensue.”

The president has claimed the Netflix deal “could be a problem” due to antitrust laws. Trump has seemingly expressed interest in his ally Ellison’s Paramount buying Warner Bros., which currently owns CNN. Affinity Partners, a private equity firm led by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, is also part of Paramount’s bid, according to an SEC filing. Paramount is “telling WBD shareholders that it has a smoother path to regulatory approval than does Netflix,” said Axios, and “Kushner’s involvement only strengthens that case.”

The potential Netflix purchase has also “drawn criticism from bipartisan lawmakers and unions on concerns it could lead to job cuts and higher prices for consumers,” said Reuters. This is underscored by the fact that Trump has pledged to be involved in the transaction, and the “political dynamics may be further complicated by Warner Bros. Discovery’s rejection of Paramount, a studio with Trump connections, in favor of Netflix.”

A “viral” essay on household income has sparked debate over a polarizing question, said Julie Zauzmer Weil in The Washington Post: Just how many Americans are living in poverty? Michael Green, a Wall Street portfolio manager, argues in a Substack article that the federal poverty line— calculated for decades at three times the cost of a “minimum food diet,” and currently $32,150 for a family of four—is an egregious “lie.” That calculation made sense in the 1960s, writes Green, when “housing was relatively cheap,” health care was employer-provided, and “college tuition could be covered with a summer job.” But such expenses have skyrocketed, and a second income is now essential for many families, which means they must also pay out for child care. A household income of $136,500 is now the real “break-even point” for a family of four, Green calculates, which would mean most Americans are impoverished. While many economists slammed Green’s argument, it met with “effusive” praise online. “The most important thing most of us will read all year,” wrote one commenter.

Green’s treatise is “silly,” said Noah Smith in his Substack newsletter. There are serious issues with his calculations—for example, he uses average spending figures and treats them as minimum amounts. But on a more basic level, his claims are just “out of touch with reality.” Given that the median income for a family of four is $125,700, he’s claiming “more than half of American families are poor,” at a time when our middle class enjoys unprecedented “material luxury.” Americans today live in bigger houses, eat out more often, and have more leisure time than they did in the 1960s. In the real world, official measures show poverty fell from 19.5% in 1963 to 10.5% in 2019, said Michael R. Strain in National Review. And over the past 30 years, inflation-adjusted wages for “typical workers” have risen by 40%.

Putting the poverty line at $136,500 may be “absurd,” said Jacob Weindling in Jezebel, but there’s a reason Green’s essay resonated. Record housing prices have put homeownership out of reach for many young people, who feel “priced out of the so-called American dream.” An estimated 100 million Americans have medical debts, while college graduates’ salaries increasingly don’t “cover student debt servicing.” In short, people whose incomes look decent on paper are feeling a new “kind of precarity.” That may not technically constitute poverty, but the financial hardship grinding them down “is very real.”

The next financial capital of the United States may not be Wall Street, but Y’all Street. Texas has been priming itself to become a major hub for finance, with investors in the Lone Star State working to usurp a share of the stock market from New York City. And it appears these efforts may be paying off, as a slew of stock indexes are set to open in Texas in early 2026. While Wall Street still reserves its place as the epicenter of global finance, experts say Texas is making a play for the top.

A trio of stock indexes

As of now, at least three major stock indexes, the Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE), New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq have “announced plans to open stock exchanges in Dallas,” said the Texas Standard. The upstart TXSE plans to begin operations next year and begin trading by the end of 2026. The TXSE is “backed by more than $160 million from major investment firms,” said the University of Texas at Arlington. It is expected to “facilitate the listing of relatively smaller companies,” unlike Wall Street stock exchanges, which have strict requirements for corporations to be listed.

But the TXSE will have competitors, as the NYSE has “announced it would reincorporate its Chicago electronic exchange and move it to Dallas, branding it NYSE Texas,” said The Texas Tribune. And right alongside NYSE Texas, the Nasdaq is also making a move in the Lone Star State, launching a “new exchange building on Nasdaq’s existing presence in the state,” said The Dallas Morning News. The Nasdaq “already has more than 200 listed companies in the state, representing nearly $2 trillion in market cap.”

‘It’s no longer New York or nowhere’

All three of the exchanges are “electronic, and that means there won’t be any hectic trading floor in Dallas with brokers shouting out numbers,” said the Texas Standard. But their existence provides evidence that “Dallas and the overall Texas economy is rapidly growing,” and the “consumption market is also expanding” as more opportunities come to Texas, said Bulent Temel, an assistant economics professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, to the outlet.

There has already been a “high tendency for spending money in Texas” due to an influx of businesses, Temel told the Texas Standard, which in turn can provide jobs in the financial sector. When it “comes to finance, it’s no longer New York or nowhere,” said Business Insider, and this goes beyond just stock exchanges themselves. There is also a “growing list of Wall Street names betting on Texas, drawn by low taxes, light regulations and a cheaper cost of living.” Banks and financial institutions like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Charles Schwab have all expanded Texas operations in recent years.

This “shift is a result of a diversified economy, a deep bench of talent and a policy environment built to support growth,” said Texas Capital Bank. Y’all Street is now “home to more than 380,000 financial professionals making deals, advising clients and building the next chapter of Texas business.” The surge in exchanges coming to Dallas shows that “momentum is accelerating as major firms expand operations, invest in new capabilities and tap into the region’s talent pool.”

The Gen Z workforce has long been called entitled or lazy, but the generation’s method of career movement may be a response to the unfavorable job market. Younger workers are embracing career minimalism, in which they move between job opportunities rather than strive for upward mobility. The method could provide more security, flexibility and fulfillment.

What is career minimalism?

We have “traded the rigid career ladder for the career lily pad,” said Morgan Sanner, a Gen Z career expert and the founder of Resume Official, at Glassdoor. Instead of climbing the rungs of a ladder, people are “moving toward opportunities that fit their needs in the moment rather than staying in one organization for decades,” said Forbes. This is especially the case among younger workers. Instead of having ambitions to move their way up in the workplace, 68% of Gen Z workers “wouldn’t pursue management if it weren’t for the paycheck or title,” said a survey by Glassdoor. With career minimalism, workers are “prioritizing security and expansion over elevation,” as a result of a “landscape of mass layoffs, AI disruption and widespread burnout.”

This flexibility is “more sustainable, more realistic and better suited to today’s workplace realities,” said Fortune. Career minimalism is also a “conscious shift away from overreliance on a single employer, toward firmer boundaries, alternative definitions of professional fulfillment and a portfolio of potential income streams for financial stability,” said Chris Martin, a lead researcher at Glassdoor, to Fast Company. “It’s not that Gen Z are rejecting work. They are rejecting an outdated version of work that has been sold to them.”

Several factors have encouraged the shift toward career minimalism, but the largest is the volatility of the job market. “The traditional career ladder promised workers pensions, stability and prestige markers as a reward for their long-term commitment,” said Martin. “The past few generations of workers have seen these promises broken or hollowed out, and Gen Z’s views have changed accordingly.” Increasing the breadth of work rather than focusing on moving up allows for “less dependence on geography,” plus it also “encourages diversification,” said Forbes. It additionally combats skill obsolescence, as industries are rapidly changing due to technological advances.

How is it changing the workplace?

Gen Z has also embraced the side hustle. Having a secondary job allows people to “diversify income streams without abandoning job security,” said Glassdoor. These gigs are no longer “viewed as distractions or fallback options,” and have become “central to Gen Z’s identity, offering creative, entrepreneurial or activist outlets that main jobs cannot supply,” said Fortune. Success “no longer demands that work eclipse every other aspect of life,” and many have “stable jobs for security, side hustles for passion and strict boundaries for sustainability.”

While Gen Z has become a kind of poster child for career minimalism, “millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers are adopting it for their own reasons,” said Forbes. Many are “rethinking what motivates them,” as “titles and promotions have lost some of their power, especially when they bring longer hours and more stress.” However, that does not mean that Gen Z is not seeking management positions at all. The Glassdoor survey found that Gen Z managers “understand that work-life balance isn’t a perk, it’s a necessity for sustainable performance.” Many workers expect flexibility from Gen Z managers as well.

Career minimalism “addresses challenges that affect professionals in every generation,” including “broken advancement systems, burnout, shifting career paths and the desire for autonomy,” said Forbes. “The future of work is becoming less about relentless climbing and more about choosing roles that reflect a person’s values, energy and goals.”

President Donald Trump says he has chosen the next chair of the Federal Reserve, but he is not yet naming names publicly.

Current National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett is widely expected to be the nominee, said Axios. Trump is not saying. “I’m not telling you, we’ll be announcing it,” he said to reporters. The next chair will replace Jerome Powell, who has “faced months of complaints and demands” from Trump to bring interest rates down more quickly, said Axios.

Powell’s term does not end until May, so he may have to spend the final months of his term with a “shadow chair” peering over his shoulder, said Fortune. Trump officials have signaled their desire to undercut Powell even if he remains in his position. With a shadow chair in place, “no one is really going to care what Jerome Powell has to say anymore,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to Barron’s last year. The question for Wall Street, then, is “will Powell or his successor hold more sway with the markets?” said Fortune.

What did the commentators say?

The likely choice of Hassett “appears to be about loyalty” to Trump, said John Authers at Bloomberg. Other possible nominees — including Bessent, as well as current Fed governor Christopher Waller and BlackRock executive Rick Rieder — might feel compelled to “establish themselves as independent from the administration.” But being seen as a Trump loyalist could also force Hassett to prove his independence to “win the confidence of markets.” For now, though, “markets aren’t freaking out at the prospect of a Hassett chairmanship.”

“Thank heavens” for Powell, said Brett Arends at MarketWatch. The latest numbers suggest the U.S. economy is “much stronger than people realized” even with the Fed chairman resisting Trump’s demanded rate cuts. If the president had gotten his way, the “likeliest scenario would be that inflation would be rocketing higher again.” Instead, the Federal Reserve has cut rates just twice this year and indicated another rate cut is unlikely in December. Americans should be grateful the current Fed chair has proven his independence and “refused to be intimidated” by Trump.

What next?

Hassett would have “closer ties to the sitting president” than any modern Fed chair, said Axios. That might mean a quick drop in short-term rates, but long-term rates may stay high if Wall Street comes to believe he is “simply doing Trump’s bidding, with little regard for inflation.” That notion “might be difficult for a pick like Hassett to shake.”

The next chair will face an unusually divided Fed board, said The Wall Street Journal. Fed chairs have ordinarily sought the “broadest possible consensus around rate decisions” and split votes have been rare. No longer. There is a “real prospect of three or more dissenting votes” at December’s meeting, whether Powell decides to pause rate cuts or continue them. “It’s not a slam dunk” that Trump’s choice will dictate policy as much as his predecessors, said Krishna Guha, a former New York Fed executive.

Labour has been accused of breaking another manifesto pledge after a last-minute U-turn watering down a key protection in its flagship Employment Rights Bill.

Changes to the proposed legislation included the government ditching plans to give workers the right to claim unfair dismissal from day one of a new job. The decision has been described as a “complete betrayal” by one Labour MP and leaves the bill as a “shell of its former self”, according to Unite general secretary Sharon Graham. But it is hoped the compromise will be enough to win over sceptical peers in the House of Lords and get the bill passed into law by next April.

What protections does the bill offer now?

Protection against unfair dismissal, which currently only comes into effect after two years in a job, will now kick in after six months – in line with most European countries. A compensation cap on successful unfair dismissal claims imposed by the Tories will also be lifted.

Other rights, such as the right to claim sick pay and paternity leave, and to apply for flexible working, will be enshrined from day one, and zero-hours contracts will be banned. The threshold for calling a strike will also be lowered, with a union requiring only a simple majority of members who voted rather than at least 40% of those eligible to vote as the current law dictates.

The enforcement of employment rights will be overseen by a new Fair Work Agency, which will have the right to inspect workplaces, issue fines and bring legal action on behalf of employees.

What has the reaction been?

The TUC’s general secretary Paul Nowak said the bill is “essential to better quality, more secure jobs for millions of workers across the economy”. But opposition politicians and business leaders have warned the new provisions are likely to have the opposite effect.

With unemployment already at a near five-year high, “employers have stopped hiring, in part because a rising living wage and steep rises in their national insurance charges have made it too expensive, but also because the looming legislation makes it too risky”, said Matthew Lynn in The Telegraph.

“The measures could cost firms £5 billion a year and risk being passed on to staff through smaller pay rises and hidden taxes which reduce wages over time,” said The Sun.

“No company can plan, invest or hire with this level of uncertainty hanging over them,” Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said. Even the tweaked legislation is still “terrible for economic growth” – a key mission of the Labour government.

What happens next?

Despite anger in some parts of the party over the changes, the focus among Labour MPs is “keeping the rest of the package intact”, particularly the end of zero-hours contracts, said The New Statesman.

Former deputy leader Angela Rayner, who led the passage of the bill through Parliament before she was forced to resign, reportedly plans to lay an amendment tomorrow to speed up the bill so it can be implemented as early as next year.

Several Labour MPs told The Guardian that they “fear that the climbdown by the government will embolden peers and critics of the bill to push for further changes”. “This can’t be the thin of the wedge and we won’t let it be,” said one.

How much have coffee prices increased?

The average retail price of a pound of ground coffee has rocketed more than 40% over the past year, pushed up by economic, political, and environmental factors. An intense drought in Brazil, the world’s top coffee producer, and heavy rains in Vietnam, the second-largest producer, reduced the supply of beans last year. Then in April, President Trump slapped so-called reciprocal tariffs on almost all of America’s trading partners, causing prices to spike even higher. Coffee futures reached an all-time high in October, and on grocery store shelves, ground coffee topped $9 a pound. In a country that gets through some 3.5 billion pounds of coffee a year, and where two-thirds of the population drink at least one cup a day, that’s hard to ignore. Chuck Smith of Rochester, Ind., was stunned when he picked up a 38.2-ounce tub of Maxwell House at his local Walmart and noticed its price had nearly doubled in a year to $21.44. “It really caught me off guard,” he said. It’s “ridiculous.”

Does the U.S. produce much coffee?

Not nearly enough to meet demand. In Hawaii, the only U.S. state with commercial coffee cultivation, some 650 small-scale farms grow about 3.8 million pounds a year of the Big Island’s prized, $30-per-pound Kona variety. A few million more pounds come from mountainous areas of Puerto Rico. But we remain reliant on countries in the so-called coffee belt, which stretches from the Tropic of Cancer—roughly 75 miles south of the Florida Keys— to the Tropic of Capricorn, which cuts through Australia. Arabica, the most popular coffee plant species, requires both humid tropical climates and the relative coolness of elevations above 3,280 feet. Because of those growing requirements, the U.S. runs a more than $1 billion annual deficit in the coffee trade. That wasn’t considered a problem until this spring, when President Trump declared U.S. trade deficits “an emergency” that required a sweeping regime of tariffs.

How steep were the tariffs?

Trump hit Vietnam and Colombia, which together account for nearly a third of U.S. coffee imports, with duties of 20% and 10%, respectively. Brazil, which accounted for a third of coffee imports last year, incurred even higher tolls, with the White House in July stacking a 40% tariff on top of a 10% reciprocal tariff because of the “drummed up” prosecution of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, a Trump ally accused of trying to stage a coup. Since then, Brazilian coffee shipments to the U.S. have sunk 55% and prices have rocketed up, adding to Americans’ affordability concerns. In mid-November, with a Fox News poll showing that 61% of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling the economy, the president scrapped tariffs on imports of coffee and hundreds of other grocery basics in a bid to reduce the cost of living. “The prices of coffee are a little bit high now,” Trump said. “They’ll be on the low side in a very short period of time.”

Will prices drop substantially?

Probably not, because there are factors beyond tariffs on coffee beans keeping prices high. Roasters, cafés, and grocery stores across the U.S. are also dealing with higher costs for wages, rent, and utilities. Inflation either raises “the product costs of goods sold directly, or the cost of living of our employees, who in turn need better wages,” said Steven Sutton, founder of gourmet coffee chain Devoción. “All these factors are factored into the final coffee prices.” Then there’s the fact that global demand for coffee is spiking while supplies lag. In China, where workers in the traditionally tea-drinking society are increasingly seeking something stronger, coffee consumption has surged 150% over the past decade. The country now goes through about 833 million pounds of coffee a year. Consumption of premium coffee is also rising in the big producers, including Brazil, Vietnam, and Indonesia. “So there’s going to be less available coffee to export,” said California-based importer John Cossette, “and that’s going to make it more expensive as well.” Growers, meanwhile, are not reaping the benefits of rising coffee prices.

Why not?

Because they’re having to pay more for fertilizer and for laborers, and are increasingly struggling to find pickers who’ll work in the fields for as little as $2 a day—a wage that helps growers keep their product competitively priced. “A lot of producers are starting to lose hope,” said Honduran farmer Moises Herrera. And there’s another threat to supplies: climate change. Rising heat, extreme downpours, and the spread of pests and diseases that thrive in hot and wet conditions are reducing the number of cool mountainsides where the highland bean can thrive. By 2050, according to multiple studies, more than half of all areas now suitable for coffee growing may no longer be able to support the crop.

Will our cups go empty?

Not necessarily, but we may have to become less picky about what we sip. Climate change could open new regions, such as northern Argentina and China’s Yunnan province, to coffee cultivation. But growers may plant less arabica, which has trouble thriving if average annual temperatures go above 73 degrees Fahrenheit, and rely more on lower-grade robusta, which can withstand higher temperatures. Farmers are experimenting with other hardy, lesser-grown coffee plants such as liberica, which is native to tropical Central Africa. Prices will likely continue to rise in the coming years—possibly at a slower pace— but coffee insiders say that’s unlikely to cause many Americans to kick their java habit. “People forget that coffee is a drug, a legal drug,” said Brian Phillips, who sources beans for Anthem Coffee Imports in Kansas City, Mo. “Coffee consumption is not slowing down by any means.”

Meta is in talks to shift part of its AI infrastructure to Google-made chips, instead of ones made by Nvidia, in a deal worth billions of dollars that could permanently upend the world of tech.

This has been a “rocky couple of weeks” for Nvidia, said Brent D. Griffiths in Business Insider. Following reports of the Meta deal, Nvidia was trading down by more than 3%, and “lingering doubts” about the company surrounding the AI bubble are beginning to “creep back in”.

What did the commentators say?

Nvidia customers have been crying out for “more competition” in the chip market, and one “may have been hiding in plain sight”, said Dina Bass in Bloomberg. Google’s tensor processing units (TPUs) were first released 10 years ago, and are ideally suited to generating responses to ChatGPT or Claude, said the outlet. They are “less adaptable” and “more specialised” than Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs), but crucially they offer a “less power-hungry” system at a lower cost. Google’s advancements “underscore how major AI names are embracing TPUs as they race to add computing power to cope with runaway demand”.

Google has “pierced Nvidia’s aura of invulnerability”, said The Economist. Until now Nvidia has seemed “unassailable”, as investors bid shares “into the stratosphere” to cement its market dominance. With this move, Google has shifted from one of Nvidia’s biggest customers, to its “fiercest competitor yet”. Though the technology is still catching up to the market-leader, Google’s chips cost between “a half and a tenth” as much as the Nvidia equivalent. That being said, while Nvidia “no longer looks as invulnerable as it once did”, its strength of product, and position in the market, “should not be underestimated”.

Nvidia must be “spooked” by the Google announcements if it is posting online to “defend itself”, said Eva Roytburg in Fortune. Nvidia asserted that it is a “generation ahead of the industry” and “the only platform that runs every AI model and does it everywhere computing is done”, on X. “It’s not hard to read between the lines,” said Fortune: Nvidia wants investors and customers to know that “it still sees itself as unstoppable”.

This may represent one of the “biggest threats” to Nvidia’s market dominance, but there is a long way to go until a “potential crack” materialises, said The Wall Street Journal. To challenge Nvidia, Google must start “selling the chips more widely to external customers”, which is not an easy feat.

What next?

The deal between Meta and Google could be worth “billions of dollars”, though this is not a fait accompli, as ongoing talks “may not result in one”, said The Wall Street Journal. Both Google and Nvidia are “courting potential customers”, offering “financing arrangements” to make the rollout of their chips a more attractive prospect. It is “still up in the air” how Meta would use these chips, either to train AI models or generate responses to queries via inference (which requires a lot less computational power than training).

“No one, including Google, is currently looking to replace Nvidia GPUs entirely”, said Bloomberg. The pace of AI development doesn’t allow it. There is a gap in the market for Google’s products, as companies look to “temper” the “dependence” on Nvidia to mitigate shortages, but ultimately, Nvidia’s GPUs are “better suited to handle a wider range of workloads” and more adaptable to wholescale change. The “best hope” for Google’s TPUs is that they form a part of the “basket of products required to power the growth of AI”.

Crypto is supposedly the currency of the future, but it is not doing so well presently. The sector has lost more than $1 trillion in value over the last few weeks.

The crypto industry is having a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad month,” said USA Today. Bitcoin has lost more than 10% of its value for the year, dropping from a high of $126,000 in October to under $90,000 last week. The drop in digital currency values is due to a “whirlwind of factors” that include shaky showings for artificial intelligence and technology stocks amid growing concerns about the overall economy. “No one can say” when the dust might settle.

“It was supposed to be crypto’s year,” said The Wall Street Journal. Since 2025 brought a “crypto-loving White House, Wall Street adoption and friendly legislation,” it seemed poised to erase the industry’s regulatory obstacles. Instead, the “sky-high expectations of a golden age” have foundered. Cryptocurrency’s original reputation was as an “antiestablishment asset” coming out of the Great Recession. Now the sector is trying to “go legit” but having trouble shedding its standing as the “deranged, foul-mouthed little sibling of Wall Street.”

What did the commentators say?

“Brutal” selloffs in the crypto sector happen “every few years, or whenever sentiment snaps,” said Emily Nicolle at Bloomberg. But those previous cycles did not match the “speed and scale” of crypto’s collapse in recent weeks. The difference this time is that crypto is now “woven into the fabric of Wall Street and the broader public markets.” That means its fate is now “tied to AI-fueled market optimism.” Amid growing fears of an AI bubble, though, it does not take much prompting to “spook investors into selling.”

Crypto in recent years has gone from an “object of mockery” to “broadly accepted, even encouraged” by mainstream financial institutions, said The Economist. That victory actually poses a problem. The “wider acceptance” has deepened crypto’s links to the broader financial markets, so that the “pain from a crypto crash will be felt more widely than in the past.” A government intervention seems remote, but “surprises can never be ruled out” in politics and in crypto.

What next?

Crypto believers see it as a “safe store of value against inflation and rising national debt,” said Marketplace. But the current instability comes amid “sticky inflation and a rising national debt.” The sector’s growing acceptance on Wall Street means your 401(k) probably includes some crypto stock. If the downturn lasts, that would produce “some knock-on effects on spending” in the broader economy, said Columbia Law School lecturer Todd Baker to the outlet.

There are now some fears of a “crypto winter,” said MarketWatch. But other observers say the sector is likely still in solid shape for the long term, thanks to its integration with financial markets. Banks like J.P. Morgan now accept crypto assets as collateral. We are not seeing a crypto winter, said Frontier Investments CEO Louis LaValle. “I think we’re watching bitcoin grow up.”

McDonald’s golden arches might as well be made of real gold and Burger King’s burgers may be reserved for kings. Fast food was once a cheap and accessible source of food, but now many lower-income Americans are being priced out of the restaurants. This is largely attributed to higher prices coupled with the high cost of living. At the same time, the gap between the wealthy and the poor is widening, making upward mobility difficult.

Why is fast food more expensive?

Across the country, prices are rising across the board, including at fast food restaurants. “Higher costs of restaurant essentials, such as beef and salaries, have pushed food prices up and driven away lower-income customers,” said the Los Angeles Times. The average price of a menu item at McDonald’s increased by approximately 40% between 2019 and 2024, according to a company fact sheet.

At the same time, consumer income is not keeping up with the cost of living. “You are seeing across the country that rents are at pretty high levels. You are seeing food prices are high, whether it’s in restaurants or grocery. You are seeing child care is high,” said McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski to investors. “There’s some significant inflation there that the low-income consumer is having to absorb.”

McDonald’s is not the only chain seeing fewer customers. Chipotle, Burger King and Wendy’s have also reported fewer lower-income patrons. So some restaurants have attempted to create value menus with cheaper items to bring back clientele.

President Donald Trump attended McDonald’s Impact Summit on Nov. 17 and praised McDonald’s for “recommitting to affordable options.” He also claimed that the Biden administration “started the affordability crisis” and that his administration is “ending it.” However, the Trump administration has played a significant role in making fast food more expensive. “Price hikes, in part due to the Trump administration’s tariffs, disproportionately affect lower-income Americans since they spend more of their incomes on goods than services, which are not directly impacted by levies,” said The Independent.

What are the economic outcomes?

Economic strain is not all equal. Over time, the U.S. economy has been turning more K-shaped. This means that the “high-earner cohort” is “doing better and better while others fall further down the economic ladder,” said NBC News. This has particularly affected those ages 25 to 30. This group is “facing several headwinds, including unemployment, increased student loan repayment and slower real wage growth,” said Chipotle CEO Scott Boatwright to NBC News. As a result, those who are not rich are opting to budget and eat at home. On the flip side, the global luxury conglomerate that includes brands like Christian Dior and Tiffany & Co. had a “better-than-expected quarter, sending its stock 12% higher,” said USA Today.

Affordability continues to be a major policy issue for Americans, and “discontent will continue to increase so long as they perceive affordability as an issue, even if economic indicators improve,” said Fortune. This will “not only keep lower-income Americans from spending but could also lead some to harbor anger that could drive workplace resentment.” That is to say, confidence in today’s economy is deep-fried.

It has been 14 years since Apple CEO Tim Cook replaced company founder Steve Jobs, a legendary figure, and then led the company to even greater financial heights. Now reports say Cook is contemplating retirement next year.

Apple is “stepping up its succession planning efforts” ahead of Cook’s possible retirement, said the Financial Times. Cook turned 65 this month and is looking to “hand over the reins” to a new company leader. The firm behind the iPhone has “very detailed succession plans,” he said in 2023 to singer Dua Lipa on her podcast. The transition comes at a critical time for the tech giant. While Cook has overseen a massive increase in its market valuation, from $350 billion to $4 trillion, the company has more recently “struggled to break into new product categories” and has fallen behind competitors in the artificial intelligence race, said the Financial Times.

Those challenges could prompt Cook to “think about stepping down and letting fresh young blood take over, said Macworld. So could challenges like the massive tariffs that President Donald Trump has levied on countries where Apple produces its products. But Apple is still experiencing “unprecedented success,” recently reporting quarterly earnings of more than $100 billion. That means his replacement “will have very big shoes to fill.”

What did the commentators say?

Cook has “actually been CEO of Apple longer than Steve Jobs ever was,” said M.G. Siegler at Spyglass. Jobs arguably set Cook up for his success. Cook “just needed to execute on the vision Jobs laid out,” but that should not diminish his accomplishments. After all, he was the “person best suited for that task perhaps in the entire world.” Now, though, its failures on AI show Apple is a company “clearly in need of some changes.” That makes it “pretty clear” Cook will retire soon. “It’s just a question of when.”

We are looking at the “twilight of the star CEO,” said Ben Berkowitz at Axios. Cook, along with Disney’s Bob Iger and Walmart’s Doug McMillon, are “stars of the business set” who are “preparing to leave the stage.” Their expected departures come at a “fraught moment for the American economy,” and involve companies that touch every aspect of life. The transitions at the top of these iconic corporations will complicate “what was already certain to be an uncertain 2026.”

What next?

The leak of Cook’s retirement plans looks like a “deliberate test of market reaction,” said 9to5Mac. Apple’s board would likely want to “gauge the response of investors” to Cook’s departure. Cook is probably “eyeing his retirement,” but his loyalty to Apple means he would “only leave at a point when the market is ready for it.”

John Ternus, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, is the “most commonly mentioned” name to replace Cook, said Fast Company. Cook will likely retain some involvement with Apple, perhaps on its board of directors. “I don’t see being at home doing nothing,” he said in January to the “Table Manners” podcast.

The UK’s unemployment rate hit 5% last week, the highest since the Covid-19 pandemic and higher than most analysts had predicted.

The Office for National Statistics figures, although in some dispute because of concerns over the quality of the data, indicate a weakening jobs market and slowing wage growth. Taking out the “skewed levels” of the pandemic years, the current unemployment rate is “the highest seen since August 2016”, said the BBC.

Two days after the unemployment numbers, it was revealed that GDP grew by only 0.1% in the third quarter of this year. The sluggish growth and rising unemployment rate are ringing alarm bells for economists about the risk that the UK will soon be entering a recession.

What did the commentators say?

To count as a recession, the economy has to have “two consecutive three-month quarters in negative territory”, said The Independent’s chief business commentator James Moore. In the first quarter this year, UK plc grew by 0.7%; in the second, by 0.3%. Now we’re “flatlining”.

And last week’s unemployment stats “caught most economists on the hop” – they “weren’t expecting anything quite as bad”. The jobs market “looks increasingly like a pile of industrial slag dumped in an area of outstanding natural beauty”.

Donald Trump’s state visit in September was accompanied by “a blizzard of announcements” on investment in AI, a “genuine vote of confidence in the UK economy”, said The Telegraph’s assistant editor Jeremy Warner. But outside of tech, there is “gathering gloom”; AI is “unlikely to save the UK” from “the growing drumbeat of an incoming recession”.

In September, a group of chief executives “fired warning shots at the Treasury”, said Christian May, editor-in-chief of City A.M. John Roberts, boss of British retail giant and FTSE-listed AO World, thinks “things are so bad he feels the UK is heading into recession”. The R-word is “a big call”, said May. More people are talking about stagnation – “an equally ugly phrase”. But the fact that we’re talking about recession at all is in itself “telling, and alarming”.

Fears of a recession are growing because all “the signals are lining up at the same time”, said Nigel Green, of the deVere Group, in the Daily Mail. “Weak output, higher unemployment and looming tax increases form a combination that investors cannot ignore.”

Britain’s economy is “in the dog house”, said The Economist. “Inflation is sticky, debts and deficits are high, and productivity growth is low.” Infrastructure and housing projects are “turning out to be a sorry disappointment” rather than drivers of growth.

But “some of the doomsaying is overdone”. Britain is not in a recession – yet. Its strengths, such as its universities, the English language, service sector, and the City of London, are “enduring”. In many ways, Britain “can look to continental Europe and count its blessings”.

What next?

No mainstream economist has “a fully blown UK recession pencilled in” for the coming year, said The Telegraph’s Warner. Recessions “generally require some sort of trigger” – although in this case it may not be necessary, given that the economy “seems instead to be simply dying”.

Office for National Statistics figures published today show the government has “inched a little closer to its 2% inflation target”, as inflation fell to 3.6% in October, down from 3.8% in September, said The Spectator. This “slight improvement offers limited relief” – “the real test” will be whether inflation falls to 2% by mid-2027, in line with Bank of England projections.

A further cause for modest optimism is that a December interest-rate cut is “all but nailed on, which will please mortgage borrowers”, said The Independent’s Moore. But tax increases will “inevitably attach a lead weight to Britain’s economic legs”. There’s “a lot riding” on next week’s Budget – “that R-word could at least be in play”.

“Buy when there’s blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own,” was the maxim of 19th-century banker Nathan Rothschild. But for investors who don’t share his appetite for risk, gold has always been considered the ultimate safe haven.

This appears to be more true today than ever as the price of the precious metal has soared 50% this year, far outpacing returns from equities. In October, the gold value hit $4,380 an ounce, an all-time record.

The rally has been largely driven by uncertainty – “whether that is geopolitical, economic or now there is the interest rate cycle entering people’s minds”, Ryan McIntyre, from investment management firm Sprott, told The New York Times.

What is driving the gold rush?

Each theory behind gold’s soaring price “rests on a different buyer: institutional investors, central banks and speculators”, said The Economist.

Institutions are attracted to gold as a store of value in times of crisis. Previous surges took place after the dotcom crash of the early 2000s, the financial crisis at the end of the decade, and during the Covid pandemic. This time round it is Donald Trump’s tariff war and fears of an imminent AI-stock crash that is driving investors to seek safety in gold.

Central banks, too, have increasingly sought protection “not against short-term meltdowns but longer-run changes”. According to the International Monetary Fund, central bank holdings of physical gold in emerging markets have risen 161% since 2006, with purchases going into overdrive in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Both China and Russia have ramped up switching their official reserve assets out of currencies such as the US dollar and into gold.

Finally, there is the recent US government shutdown. The prolonged stand-off increased “long” positions held by hedge funds on gold futures, meaning that speculators are “the most likely drivers of recent price movements”.

What does it say about the economy?

Citadel hedge fund founder and CEO Ken Griffin recently said the rising price of gold is an indication of something big. “That something is a loss of trust,” said The Telegraph. “A loss of trust first and foremost in US treasuries, but also in other G7 government bond markets, including the UK.”

Stress in the long-term bond markets combined with a devaluation of the US dollar, which suffered its biggest decline in more than half a century this year, “have unsettled alternative assets typically viewed as low-risk investments”, said ABC News.

“There’s no way you can interpret these exploding gold prices as a good sign – they're a warning sign,” said Paolo Pasquariello, professor of finance at the University of Michigan. “There’s clearly a case to be made that these high gold prices are a leading indicator of troublesome times ahead for the US economy.”

Will it end?

October’s sudden price decline, when gold dropped 10% before recovering, was “driven by a confluence of factors” that may prove a useful predictor of what might curb the rally, said Bloomberg.

A successful resolution of trade tensions between the US and China “could stop gold from resuming its record-breaking rally – as could a broader de-escalation of US tariffs”. A “continued dollar rally, a resolution to the legal proceedings against Fed Governor Lisa Cook, and a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine” could also take the shine off gold’s appeal to investors.

The Walmartification of French fashion is now complete, said Sophie Coignard in Le Point (Paris). To widespread Parisian disgust, one of our most glamorous department stores, BHV, is now officially home to the Chinese online juggernaut Shein: it was in this landmark building that the ultra-fast-fashion company opened its first-ever bricks and mortar premises last week.

Don’t look on this as “just another retail opening”, said James Tidmarsh in The Spectator. “It’s cultural surrender.” For more than a century, BHV has “embodied a certain Parisian ideal” of accessible luxury, craftsmanship and good taste. “Now it’s flogging throwaway polyester” stitched in exploitative Asian factories; that which, until now, was only available on Shein’s website alongside 600,000 other cheap goods. “It is proof that Paris, once the world’s fashion capital, is now renting out its soul to Chinese algorithms.”

French is ‘addicted to fast fashion’

We French are supposedly scandalised by Shein’s arrival, said Erwan Seznec in Le Point. And certainly Shein’s grand opening was assailed by angry crowds protesting against the Asian giant’s vile labour and commercial practices. These are well documented: a recent investigation revealed extensive evidence of forced labour, with workers in some factories forced to work 18-hour shifts for just £0.03 an item. And the discovery that child-like sex dolls were being sold on Shein’s website resulted in a threat to ban the website in France unless they were removed.

Yet for all the “virtuous rhetoric” and the snobbery, the French are still “addicted to fast fashion”: every single respondent in a recent survey admitted to buying clothing from a fast-fashion brand this year, whether it were China’s Shein and Temu, or more traditional European players such as H&M and Zara.

And fully 35% of French shoppers – enticed by its “rock-bottom prices”, targeted algorithms and “discounting techniques” – admit to having bought something from Shein itself last year, said Stéphane Vernay in Ouest-France (Rennes). They’re no doubt familiar with the accusations of deplorable behaviour levelled against Shein... “but who cares? The urge to buy is stronger.” Shein’s tills in Paris were ringing last week, and it now plans to open five more locations in France.

‘We’re soon not going to have any industry left at all’

You’d have thought Europe’s politicians would be trying to shield our manufacturers from this onslaught, said James Tidmarsh. Not a bit of it. In France and in the UK in particular, they’ve opened the door to the Chinese: they’ve handed our textile industry to companies such as Shein; they’ve opened our roads to carmakers such as BYD and MG – and they call it “progress”. Progress? Our manufacturers just can’t compete with these regulation-skirting companies. “We’re soon not going to have any industry left at all.”

Only the US president has clocked this “unprecedented trade offensive”, said Gaëtan de Capèle in Le Figaro (Paris). Trump has already “built a wall imposing a 100% tax on parcels from Shein and its acolytes”; shipments to the US have dropped 40% as a result. Yet for all “its unrivalled regulatory nit-picking”, Brussels won’t be able to halt the influx for another few years – by which time countless homegrown businesses will have gone to the wall.

Retirement, at least in some form, may be possible sooner than you expect and could happen many times during your professional career. As people live longer and spend more years working, many have opted to pursue “microretirement” or take extended breaks from work without pay. This gives people a chance to rest but can also hold them back from career advancement and future stability.

What is microretirement?

Microretirement is a trend where people take regular breaks from work, usually lasting weeks or even months, with plans to return to their jobs after. This time can be used for relaxation, travel or some personal project or passion. These breaks are “not your standard PTO,” because “they’re intentional, unpaid time to rest and recharge,” said Fast Company. Microretirements can take many forms, including quitting a job and only finding a new one once you are ready to work again, “setting up a plan with your employer that allows you to take unpaid frequent work breaks” or “taking breaks from your business if you’re a business owner.” This is different from quiet vacationing, in which people still appear to be working while on a trip or out of the office.

The trend has grown popular across all age groups, and only 21% of employees worldwide describe themselves as engaged in their jobs in 2024, according to Gallup’s State of the Workplace Report. Gen Z has particularly taken to it, “using microretirement to avoid burnout, find greater fulfillment in their work and enhance their overall well-being,” said Fast Company. This is largely because of that generation’s emphasis on the work-life balance. It also makes “sense from a health perspective to do adventurous travel while you’re in peak health,” said The Independent. On the other hand, “taking a break in mid-life or later has some obvious perks, including the likelihood of better financial stability.”

Should you do it?

The concept of taking extended breaks from work is not new; professors and tech professionals have been known to take sabbaticals, for instance. Now, an “increased lifespan may be turning that luxury into a necessity for others who work much longer than previous generations,” said Forbes. “As we live and work longer, retirement can feel so far away,” said Michael Edwards, the managing director of Explore Worldwide, to The Independent. “There’s a sense of ‘why should I wait?’ None of us know what the future holds and for many, retirement might feel too late to do the sort of traveling we have our heart set on.”

There are some downsides to microretirement, especially concerning a person’s financial future. Taking time away from a job can “affect your earnings, investments and funding your retirement,” said Fast Company. It can additionally affect potential career growth. You “could also be seen as a job hopper to some decision-makers within the labor market,” said Kenyetta Nesbitt-Simmons, a senior partner at HR consultancy firm Simmons HR & Talent Advisory, to Fast Company. This may pose a particular problem in competitive fields where a microretirement could be seen as slacking off.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has abandoned plans to increase income tax in the Budget on 26 November, and will instead focus on a range of smaller tax-raising measures.

The U-turn – leaked mere days after briefings about a plot to challenge Keir Starmer – comes after new Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts decreased the size of the economic “hole” Reeves needs to fill. This means she no longer feels under pressure to break Labour’s manifesto and put up income tax rates.

What did the commentators say?

The OBR told the chancellor that the hole in the public finances is now “closer to £20 billion than the £30 billion originally expected”, said Steven Swinford and Mehreen Khan in The Times. Reeves promptly ripped up the manifesto-busting plan she knew would “aggravate mutinous” Labour MPs and “fuel anger among voters”.

Downing Street officials “insisted” the Budget re-write was not a “response to the leadership crisis that has engulfed Keir Starmer” this week, said George Parker, Anna Gross and Sam Fleming in the Financial Times. But the chancellor’s about-turn has had an immediate effects on the markets, with gilts having their “worst one-day sell off since September” when the news broke.

When Reeves finally delivers the Budget, she will probably favour a “smorgasbord” approach, raising money from multiple avenues, including levies on gambling and taxes on expensive properties. She is also expected to “extend a freeze on personal tax thresholds” for a further two years, pushing more people into higher tax brackets as their wages rise.

“Rachel Reeves is Queen of the U-turn,” said Harvey Jones in the Daily Express. “She was forced to backtrack” on scrapping the winter fuel payment” and “caved on” over proposed cuts to the “ballooning” benefit bill. In fact, she has been made “to correct everything from her CV and childhood chess achievements to claims she didn’t know she needed a licence to rent out her property”.

“It is a mess,” said Matthew Lynn in The Telegraph. The Budget is “turning into a shambles”. In a week of “in-fighting, plotting and leaks”, the chancellor is being “buffeted” by political events, instead of controlling them. The proposed “series of minor tax rises” to try to stay within the fiscal rules shows that her preparation has “descended into a farce”.

What next?

A gap of £20 billion is “still a big number”, said Pippa Crerar in The Guardian. In addition to freezing income tax thresholds, we should expect “taxes on salary sacrifice schemes” and even a “fuel duty equivalent for electric vehicles”.

Talk of a new “exit tax” on entrepreneurs leaving the country has dwindled somewhat, said Swinford in The Times, but, if it is brought in, it could have a “significant impact on investment and growth”, particularly “in the artificial intelligence and broader tech sectors”.

What happened

The U.S. Mint in Philadelphia Wednesday stamped what the Treasury Department said were the final pennies, ending production of the one-cent coin after 232 years. President Donald Trump had ordered the Treasury to stop producing pennies in February, but the government provided no guidance on how to handle the phaseout, leaving stores and banks scrambling as supplies ran low over the summer.

Who said what

“When it was introduced in 1793, a penny could buy a biscuit, a candle or a piece of candy,” The Associated Press said. “Now most of them are cast aside to sit in jars or junk drawers.” But the real impetus for their demise was cost: Each penny costs 3.69 cents to make. “God bless America, and we’re going to save the taxpayers $56 million,” U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach said before hitting a button to strike the final penny.

The penny’s demise ends a “years-long farce of the government producing coins that cost more to make than they are worth,” The Washington Post said in an editorial. But Trump “did not have the legal authority to cancel penny production unilaterally,” and beginning the process with Congress, as stipulated in the Constitution, “would have facilitated solutions for the problems inherent in eliminating a coin” nearly as old as the U.S.

What next?

The estimated 250 billion pennies still in circulation remain legal tender. The final five pennies minted Wednesday were part of a batch of 232, each “marked with an Omega symbol to signify the last of their kind,” that will be auctioned off next month, Reuters said.

The American dream feels increasingly out of reach. The average age of first-time home buyers is now 40, and home prices have skyrocketed for years. President Donald Trump is offering a purported solution: the 50-year mortgage.

Trump’s proposal “could meaningfully reshape a housing market where 30 years is the norm,” said CBS News. The extended term is a “potential weapon” for “ensuring the American Dream,” said Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte. Spreading house payments out over a half-century would offer buyers “lower monthly payments” but with the significant downside of a “dramatic increase in the total cost of the loan” thanks to interest payments, said CBS. Homebuyers would also “build equity far more slowly than those with shorter loans.” There are skeptics across the political spectrum. Fifty-year mortgages are “not the best way to solve housing affordability,” said Joel Berner, a senior economist at Realtor.com.

What did the commentators say?

“The idea is ridiculous,” said Michael Tomasky at The New Republic. Thirty-year mortgages let “typical homeowners” pay off their loans “by the time they’re in their mid to late sixties.” That, in turn, lets those owners use the rising value of their homes as a “nest egg” for retirement. Extending those payments by 20 years would erase that advantage. “Could you imagine having to make mortgage payments until age 85?”

A 50-year mortgage “isn’t the worst idea ever,” said Jonathan Lansner at The Orange County Register. “Few borrowers” hold onto 30-year mortgages for their full terms, either refinancing them or paying the loan off early. There is “no reason” to think longer-term loans would behave differently. If that is the case, “why shouldn’t a buyer grab a few years of savings?” Those savings could amount to a “few hundred bucks” monthly for most buyers. “That’s real money to new homeowners.”

One downside is that homeowners who sell before paying off their mortgages “will get less of the home’s value” under a 50-year loan, said Allison Schrager at Bloomberg. That seems to be a likely issue, because most owners “only live in their homes for less than 20 years.” But the tradeoff — lower payments now, lower return later — may be “worthwhile” for “someone who needs or wants a lower monthly payment.”

What next?

The share of first-time home buyers has dropped to a “record low” of 21% of all home purchases, said The National Association of Realtors. That reflects a housing market “starved for affordable inventory,” said NAR’s Jessica Lautz. This means today’s buyers are “building less housing wealth and will likely have fewer moves over a lifetime as a result."

Where Trump’s proposal goes next is unclear. Right-wing Influencers, including Laura Loomer, Mike Cernovich, Christopher Rufo, Sean Davis and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), “blasted the idea” as “bad politics and bad policy” that could “raise housing costs in the long run,” said Politico. The president remains committed to making it “easier and more affordable” to buy a home, said a White House spokesperson.

The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index, considered the benchmark for confidence in economic conditions, fell to 50.3 this month, marking a nearly three-and-a-half-year low. This 29.9% drop from last November could signal that Americans are wary of spending their money.

What did the commentators say?

With the “federal government shutdown dragging on for over a month, consumers are now expressing worries about potential negative consequences for the economy,” Joanne Hsu, the director of surveys of consumers at the University of Michigan, said in a statement. This did not appear unique to any one demographic, as the “decline in sentiment was widespread throughout the population, seen across age, income and political affiliation.”

The consumer sentiment data “confirmed what economists describe as a K-shaped economy, where the higher-income households are doing well and lower-income consumers are struggling,” said Reuters. There are concerns about the “labor market,” as both the University of Michigan and the New York Federal Reserve showed that “respondents expected the jobless rate to increase in the coming year and anticipated a tough time finding work if they were to become unemployed.” The Federal Reserve’s probability that unemployment will be higher in a year rose 1.4 points to 42.5%, the third monthly increase in a row.

But just because consumer sentiment is down doesn’t necessarily mean the economy is in a slump, experts say. Deteriorating sentiment “would suggest weak consumer spending, the economy’s main engine, but the correlation between the two is weak,” said Reuters. And most spending that is occurring is “being driven by higher-income households, as lower-income households are bearing most of the brunt of a sluggish labor market and higher prices from tariffs.”

Some people in these brackets are feeling unsure, though, according to the data. The “higher-income households are also less optimistic than they were at the start of the year,” said The Wall Street Journal. The lone exception seemed to be among people with large stock portfolios, who “posted a notable 11% increase in sentiment, supported by continued strength in stock markets,” Hsu said.

What next?

While the U.S. Senate has passed a controversial bill to end the government shutdown, the bill has yet to be rubber-stamped by the House. Amid the shutdown crisis and plummeting confidence, some analysts still feel it’s too early to ring the warning bells. While “sentiment does matter, over the past few years, we’ve seen consumers spend irrespective of how they’re feeling about things,” Mark Mathews, the chief economist of the National Retail Federation, said to Barron’s. Consumers are “sentimentally weak but fundamentally sound.”

Most people’s balance sheets “are in a good place” for now, and “disposable income and wages have grown at a steady pace, giving households confidence to keep spending,” Mathews said to Barron’s. A “record-breaking bull run and soaring housing prices have also contributed to the resilience in spending, especially for upper-income consumers.”

The death of industrialist Gopichand “GP” Hinduja, head of the Hinduja family who topped the Sunday Times Rich List 2025 with a net worth of over £35 billion, has made public a long-running family feud.

The Hinduja dynasty has been “riven by a decade-long 'Succession'-style feud”, said John Arlidge in The Times. With the two remaining brothers, Ashok and Prakash, taking control in the interim, major questions over how “power, control and money should pass from one generation of the family to the next” are still unanswered.

‘Publicity-shy’

The second of four brothers running a business empire, GP ran the Hinduja Group since the death of his older brother Srichand (“SP”) in 2023. Since it was founded in 1914 by their father Parmanand, trading carpets, tea and spices to the West, it has grown to 11 sectors (including healthcare, banking, IT, trading, media and real estate), operating in 48 countries with up to 250,000 employees.

Though the “publicity-shy” Hinduja Group may not be a household name, its UK and global reach is profound, said Josh Spero, Chris Kay and Krishn Kaushik in the Financial Times. GP and his older brother transformed the family’s “modest trading operation” in India and Iran, into a “major”, global “conglomerate”.

GP was a “very vocal champion” of closer economic and political ties between his ancestral homeland of India and naturalised country the UK, said The Hindu. He would often address gatherings in London to “exhort” businesses to “invest in the booming Indian market”.

‘Embroiled in controversy’

“The family has had to endure publicity – all of it bad – since the feud erupted”, with the dispute “likely to get worse” after a period of mourning, sources close to the family told The Times. The fighting within the family has become so intense that the “total legal fees are said to have reached £20 million”, with “one wing of the family communicating with the others via lawyers”, said the outlet.

The unrest began when GP’s elder brother Srichand claimed sole ownership of Hinduja Bank, which is based in Switzerland, which “shattered” the “sense of family harmony”, said Rory Tingle in The Daily Mail. The struggle intensified as Srichand developed dementia, with a High Court judge raising concerns that the family had “failed to arrange adequate care for him”.

The surprising initial request undermined the “age-old” motto of “everything belongs to everyone and nothing belongs to anyone” held within the family, said Benjamin Stupples in Bloomberg.

Most notably, GP was “embroiled in controversy” in 2001 after it was revealed he had written to Peter Mandelson, then the secretary of state for Northern Ireland, about “obtaining a UK passport for his brother Prakash”, said Lauren Almeida in The Guardian. The brothers had “donated £1 million through their charitable foundation” towards the Millennium Dome, a project that Mandelson was overseeing. Mandelson resigned, but was later cleared following an inquiry.

The Hindujas also faced allegations over international arms policy, said Ishani Sarkar in Style. The family was involved in the “so-called Bofors scandal”, which was a “major weapons-contract political scandal between India and Sweden”. However, the allegations made against the family were dismissed by the Delhi High Court in 2005.

Most recently, the family has faced serious accusations from abroad, said Imogen Foulkes of the BBC. The third Hinduja brother, Prakash, and his wife, son and daughter-in-law, were sentenced to jail by a Swiss court last year for “exploiting staff” in their “Geneva villa”. The family is appealing the charges.

What happened

Tesla shareholders Thursday voted in favor of a pay package for CEO Elon Musk that clears the way for him to become the world’s first trillionaire. The $1 trillion package “consists of 12 tranches of shares to be granted if Tesla hits certain milestones over the next decade,” said CNBC, and could expand Musk’s stake in the company from about 13% to 25%.

Who said what

This is the “largest payout ever awarded to a corporate leader,” said Bloomberg. The deal is “designed to motivate the world’s richest man” to refocus on the EV company, said The Wall Street Journal. “Even though his far-right political rhetoric” has “hurt” the brand this year, said Reuters, Tesla’s future success “hangs on Musk’s vision of making vehicles that drive themselves, creating a robotaxi network across the U.S., and selling humanoid robots.”

What next?

Musk told shareholders at Thursday’s annual meeting that he plans on “massively increasing vehicle production” and ramping up production of Tesla’s Optimus robots “faster than anything’s ever been ramped up before in human history.”

Tesla’s board has approved a $1 trillion pay package for CEO Elon Musk on the condition he meets a series of performance targets over the next decade. “It’s not just a new chapter for Tesla,” said Musk. “It’s a new book.”

The decision was met with “cheers and chants” at the company’s annual shareholders' meeting, said CNN. Musk does not receive a salary but, assuming the “lofty” targets are met, the shares in the package would be worth $275 million a day, “dwarfing any other executive pay package in history”.

‘Miracle man’ or ‘erratic leader’?

For Musk, the central requirement of the deal is to raise the value of Tesla from around $1 trillion to $8.5 trillion. Additional stipulations mean the achievement “won’t be easy”, said Sky News. Musk will also need to deliver 20 million Tesla vehicles over the next decade, which is “double the number churned out” since 2013.

What’s more, he needs to “roll out” one million AI-powered robots “despite the fact it hasn’t released a single one so far”. And most importantly, he needs to provide a “succession plan” for his chief executive role. But “even if Musk falls short of some of these targets, he could end up earning a lot of money”.

Many investors see Musk as a “miracle man capable of stunning business feats”, making him indispensable to the company, said The Guardian. Despite Musk’s turbulent venture into US politics and rifts with Donald Trump destabilising Tesla’s sales, including a 50% decline in Germany, he will always be seen by his supporters as the man who brought them from the “brink of bankruptcy” to “one of the world’s most valuable companies”.

Despite 75% of the shares voting in favour of the proposal, the package was not without its opponents among the shareholders, said ABC News. Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund has been “raising concerns about its scale and potential risks”. In a separate statement, the fund expressed reservations about the “total size of the award, dilution, and lack of mitigation of key person risk”.

A ‘winner-takes-all version of capitalism’

The timing of this deal shows the “split screen” of “strikingly different lessons about” who deserves wealth in America, said The New York Times. The Tesla vote comes just two days after New York elected the “tax-the-rich candidate as their next mayor”.

While Musk champions a “winner-takes-all version of capitalism”, Zohran Mamdani’s dominant result in New York serves as a “reminder of the frustrations many Americans have with an economic system”. For Musk’s political detractors, he could soon become a “foil” to exploit the “divide in American business and politics”.

The scale of Musk’s remuneration, if achieved, is “staggering”, said The Guardian. It “exceeds the GDP of entire countries, including that of Ireland, Sweden and Argentina”. Critics of the deal point out the danger of concentrating power in “one erratic leader” who has blindly “ignored the challenges the company has faced”.

You may have to get your coffee somewhere else for a while, as a major union representing Starbucks’ employees has announced its members are prepared to walk off the job if they do not reach a new contract. The union represents only a fraction of Starbucks stores in the U.S., but the labor movement has been described as the company’s biggest yet — and it could have a significant impact on Starbucks as the holiday season approaches.

Why are Starbucks employees preparing to strike?

The employees are looking to “secure a contract after years of sporadic and unsuccessful talks,” said Bloomberg. If they do not secure a contract, the employees are set to strike in more than 25 cities across the U.S. starting Nov. 13. The walkout is being coordinated by Starbucks Workers United, which represents “employees at about 550 of the chain’s roughly 10,000 company-run U.S. stores.” Thousands of baristas voted to authorize the strike, with “92% voting in favor.”

The pro-strike vote “comes after six months of Starbucks refusing to offer new proposals to address workers’ demands for better staffing, higher pay and a resolution of hundreds of unfair labor practice charges,” said Starbucks Workers United in a press release. The unionized employees are “ready and willing to go on the biggest strike we’ve ever been on,” said Silvia Baldwin, a Philadelphia barista representing Starbucks Workers United in negotiations, to Bloomberg. If “Starbucks wants to avoid that, they can settle with us.”

The striking employees are also “prepared to escalate if they don’t see new proposals and substantial progress toward finalizing a contract that addresses pay, hours and staffing," Starbucks Workers United said. The coffeehouse’s “failure to listen to and support their own baristas is moving them to take drastic action, which could include striking over unfair labor practices.”

What comes next?

The strike’s start date of Nov. 13 is the company’s “upcoming Red Cup Day, a major holiday promotional event,” said The Seattle Times. This event has previously been a “target of the union’s strikes. Last year, a strike took place across five days and shuttered around 60 stores.” Red Cup Day is typically “one of the company’s busiest days of the year,” said The Associated Press, and if the strike were to continue, it could have major implications for the holiday season.

The unionized employees have made additional pay demands a major sticking point, but Starbucks has denied that their wages are too low. The company offers a payment package “worth on average $30 per hour for hourly partners,” Starbucks said in a press release, though the union has disputed this. “We already give them the best job in retail. We have the lowest turnover in the industry — it’s below 50%,” said Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol to CBS News. “We also have the best benefits in the industry, and we actually have the best wages in the industry.”

But union members have fought back against this characterization. “Our fight is about actually making Starbucks jobs the best jobs in retail,” said Jasmine Leli, a Starbucks barista from Buffalo, New York, in a statement to CBS. “Right now, it's only the best job in retail for Brian Niccol.” A “fair union contract and the resolution of hundreds of unfair labor practice charges are essential to the company’s turnaround.”

Don’t even look for a 9 to 5 in Silicon Valley, said Danielle Abril in The Washington Post. Job seekers in the hotbed of artificial intelligence today have to be willing to devote themselves to the “996” cause, shorthand for the new standard work ethic in the all-out AI race. The term comes from a Chinese corporate work expectation (outlawed in 2021) that employees should toil at the office “from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., 6 days a week.” A typical Silicon Valley job listing today now reads something like this: “Amazing salary, hacker house in SF, crazy equity, 996.” A few companies are even taking it further. Sonatic, a San Francisco–based AI startup, recently “posted a job opening that requires in-person work seven days a week,” with perks that include “free housing, free food delivery, and a free subscription to the dating service Raya”—not that employees will have much time to use it.

AI researchers are “now millionaires” but are too busy to “spend their new fortunes,” said Bradley Olson and Meghan Bobrowsky in The Wall Street Journal. The pressure to “keep pace with a seemingly endless cycle of disruption” is so intense that work is being done at all hours. Corporate credit-card transaction data from the expense-management startup Ramp has shown a spike in delivery orders in San Francisco on Saturdays between noon and midnight. “Several top researchers compared the circumstances to war.” San Francisco’s “grindcore culture is back and grindier than ever,” said Rya Jetha in The San Francisco Standard. “996” is the “talk of the town.” Look no further than the co-working space StartupHQ, where each floor is home to roughly 10 startups, “desks are littered with half-drained cans of Celsius, and DoorDash couriers stream through the lobby in a near-constant rotation.” But some founders insist that “no one is working 12 hours straight every single day,” and “996” is “more of a mindset that work is your life, rather than a rigid routine.”

“996” isn’t the way for any company to get ahead, said Gautam Mukunda in Bloomberg. “Going all the way back to experiments with British ammunition factories during World War I, management researchers have shown, time and time again, that extending hours past 40 to 45 per week decreases productivity.” Overworking “kills the curiosity and creativity that innovation depends on.” This, however, is taboo in image-conscious Silicon Valley. The “tyrannical boss who drives the team to the breaking point” has become practically iconic. “Championing the 996 grind is a great way to signal to investors, rivals, and even employees the seriousness and importance of your work.” The venture capitalists writing checks to these types of leaders ought to reconsider what they are rewarding.

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That old saying has taken on a new label in 2025. America’s economy is increasingly “K-shaped.”

The term is used to describe when “wealthy consumers do well and spend freely” while folks in lower tax brackets “struggle and scrimp,” said Morning Brew. Evidence of a K-shaped economy is “popping up everywhere.” The richest Americans are now enjoying the fruits of a “booming stock market” and a steep rise in home values, while everybody else is increasingly challenged by a “shaky job market, high interest rates, and/or inflation.” That could cause “social and political instability,” said University of Michigan economist Betsey Stevenson.

What did the commentators say?

This phenomenon creates ripple effects throughout the economy. Everybody has to buy “deodorant and soap and toothpaste,” said Numerator’s Leo Feler to Marketplace, but middle-income Americans are pulling back on “things like toys, electronics, sporting goods, apparel.” There are signs the gap will only widen. A new report says the wealth of America’s 10 richest billionaires “ballooned by $698 billion” in the last year, said The Daily Beast. America’s economic policies are “driving inequality to new heights,” said Oxfam America.

“Consider the burrito,” David Goldman said at CNN. Chipotle last week cut its earnings forecast for the third consecutive quarter because the chain’s “core customers” of younger, lower-income consumers are “starting to skip the guac” and cutting back on their spending. Big companies are seeing the divide: Coca-Cola is seeing “growth in its high-end brands” like Topo Chico, Smartwater and Fairlife, but is “cutting sizes (and prices)” on lower-end brands to drive sales among struggling lower-income customers. The damage will be difficult to repair. America’s two-tier economy has been “increasingly bifurcated for quite some time.”

There is “room” for the argument that a K-shaped economy is “no bad thing,” said John Authers at Bloomberg. Poorer Americans would “benefit from lower interest rates from the Federal Reserve,” which would then strengthen the “wealth and spending of the affluent.” Certainly, the overall stock market has not been dragged down by the struggles of car loan companies and fast food chains like Krispy Kreme. From a macro-economic view, “bad times for the poor don’t matter so much if they’re outbalanced by gains for the wealthy.”

What next?

The American economy is at “risk of wobble” as lower-income consumers struggle, said Reuters. Corporate earnings will be tested as “rising healthcare costs, the potential loss of federal food benefits and a wobbly job market outlook” affect the earning power of “less affluent” American households. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is taking notice of the K-shaped economy as he looks to the future, particularly as “rising auto loan defaults and intense bargain shopping” offer signs of distress.

A recent Moody’s report found that the top 20% of earners are responsible for America’s economic growth, said Fortune. Economists are worried. “We are losing the middle class,” said Ohio State University’s Lucia Dunn to the outlet.

While most Americans may think of being a school crossing guard as a relatively safe profession, it appears that this is not the reality. A new investigation has shed light on just how deadly being a crossing guard can be, with hundreds of people injured and even killed on the job over the past decade. Experts also say there are gaps in how these statistics are gathered, meaning crossing guard injuries may be underreported.

How dangerous is it to be a crossing guard?

The investigation was helmed by The Associated Press alongside Cox Media Group television stations across the country. It found that during the last 10 years at least “230 school crossing guards across 37 states and Washington, D.C., were struck by vehicles,” said the AP. Nearly three dozen of these crossing guards were killed. The AP compiled this data from “incident and accident reports requested from nearly 200 police departments,” but it still represents “only a portion of guards injured and killed nationwide.”

Often, the drivers involved in these incidents received very little punishment: More than “70% of drivers who hit crossing guards received just traffic tickets or no charges at all,” said WSB-TV Atlanta, one of the stations that worked on the investigation. And the drivers regularly didn’t stop: As many as 40 of the 230 accidents were hit-and-runs, and “in at least six of those, law enforcement was never able to identify the driver who fled the scene.”

There are problems when it comes to tracking this data, and a “full accounting is impossible,” said the AP. There are no federal agencies that keep a comprehensive list of crossing guard accidents, and “only two states have made a serious effort to track crossing guard safety: New Jersey and Massachusetts.” Crossing guard protection “remains a patchwork of state and local policies.”

What can be done about this?

Certain states are looking at solutions through legislation. Some hope that “improved technology could eliminate the need for crossing guards to direct traffic,” said WSOC-TV Charlotte, which also worked on the investigation. There are also efforts being made to “give towns and school districts more authority to make safety changes, like lowering speed limits.”

In “2025, there are alternatives to having somebody standing out there holding up a sign and waving it,” South Carolina State Rep. David Martin (R) said to WSOC-TV. School districts “should have resources and the power to be able to do that instead of going through the government.”

Other communities are working on implementing additional safety measures. To assist with a lack of crossing guards in the Seattle School District, officials are using “community help, flashing crosswalk signs and trying to reroute traffic away from schools,” said KIRO-7 Seattle, another investigative partner.

But this still hasn’t made the job of a crossing guard any less deadly. Crossing guards and school flaggers “were in the top fifth of deadliest jobs” in 2023, said the AP, citing the most recent year with available data. This death rate is “on par with power line installers and air transportation workers.” A crossing guard is also the “only occupation in that top fifth that interacts with children daily.”

Nigel Farage today sought to position Reform UK as the “party of alarm clock Britain” championing both business and workers.

In a speech in the City of London this morning, the former stockbroker said the country was being “led by human rights lawyers, not entrepreneurs”, and blamed a “political class who are not business people” of wasting the “opportunities to deregulate and become more competitive” offered by Brexit.

Promising to balance the budget, and that the party would “never borrow to spend” if it came to power, “marks the first time Reform has articulated something resembling a fiscal rule”, said the Financial Times. It also raises serious “questions over the spending cuts or tax increases needed to achieve this goal, as well as the precise definition of the pledge itself”.

What did the commentators say?

This is a “big moment” for Reform, said Matthew Lynn in The Spectator. Headline-grabbing promises made at the last election such as lifting the income tax threshold to £20,000, scrapping inheritance tax on estates of less than £2 million, and taking water companies back into public ownership, are set to be junked.

In their place the “new-look ‘Nigel from Accounts’” is promising “a far more sober approach to the public finances”. But still “don’t be fooled: this doesn’t mean that Reform is abandoning the economic radicalism that the UK desperately needs if it is to break out of its doom loop of stagnant growth and rising taxes”.

One area the party appears willing to challenge the status quo is on the pension triple lock. The policy of raising the UK state pension each year by whichever is highest out of inflation, average earnings or 2.5% has “trapped Britain’s two main parties since 2012 in a bind that, for some, has come to symbolise the paralysis of the state”, said Politico’s Dan Bloom.

While economists have long argued this has become unsustainable, successive governments of both main parties have shied away from touching it in fear of angering older voters.

Reform, by contrast, has been “remarkably open” about whether the triple lock would survive, said Bloom. While any decision appears a “long way off”, when Farage does make up his mind, “he has the power to radically alter the political landscape in the UK – and set a new bar for insurgent parties across Europe telling hard truths that the centre cannot”. But saying that, “he would also come under ferocious attack”.

Another major spending area the party appears ready to start a fight over is reforming public sector pensions to bring them more in line with those offered by companies.

When spending is “under control” and borrowing costs down, said Farage, “then, and only then, will I cut taxes to stimulate growth”.

What next?

There is a belief among Reform insiders that the economy is “only going to worsen before the next election,” said The Times, which will mean the Tories “having to abandon many of their promises to cut taxes”.

Farage may choose to keep his cards close to his chest until then, but he is “at least trying to signal a more traditional coding when it comes to the economy, entering the financial stability battleground on which elections are routinely fought”, said Politico’s London Playbook.

“On that front, the insurgent is straining to sound a little more like the opponents he’s trying to banish”.

Right on cue, Labour last night attacked Reform’s claim to be “on the side of working people, whilst also promising to slash the public services they rely on”, saying Farage’s plan would mark “a return to austerity, pure and simple”.

Meanwhile, Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, said Farage has committed to “extra welfare spending and a huge expansion of the state”, adding it is “impossible to take Reform seriously on the economy when their promises disintegrate after five minutes”.

Herein lies both the danger and opportunity for Reform as it looks to hone its offering to voters on both the left and the right.

Officials were “understandably chuckling at the opposing attacks from each angle – but there’s a serious point here”, said London Playbook. “Each new bit of detail that Farage fleshes out will give his rivals, and the public, more to unpick him on.”

They call it the Great Freeze. That’s how some analysts describe the U.S. job market recently — a “low-hire, low-fire” environment where workers who have jobs are not losing them but finding a new job is difficult. But a thaw may be coming.

A “slew” of “large-scale layoffs” may be a sign that the labor market is “starting to tip over,” said Axios. Amazon announced it will slash 14,000 jobs, UPS said it was cutting 48,000 positions, and Paramount said it was laying off 1,000 workers. The unemployment rate had hovered around 4% for more than a year, but that “apparent stability” has concealed “change beneath the surface.” Now, companies appear ready to “take advantage of the potential of AI to transform work.” This could mean fewer jobs for humans.

The massive layoffs suggest the job market’s “current state of suspension has changed for the worse,” said MarketWatch. While companies are still comfortably profitable, they are waiting on the “dust to settle” from tariff negotiations, the government shutdown and the corporate adoption of AI. Amazon’s layoffs could be the tipping point. “We may see others join the fray,” said John Challenger, the CEO of career-services firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

What did the commentators say?

The job market “could get ugly,” Dan DeFrancesco said at Business Insider. “About 20 more Amazon-sized layoffs” would upend the labor market. That scenario is “not out of the realm of possibility” because “companies are known to follow the lead of their bigger peers.” Meta’s 2022 layoff of 11,000 workers led to a much larger wave of tech sector job cuts. American companies have recently been in a “holding pattern,” but if they start to let workers go without replacing them, the “somewhat resilient job market could start to show some real cracks.”

“The labor market is undeniably going through a transition,” Adam Hardy said at Money. Young workers are “canaries in the coal mine” since they are often the first to feel job market instability, and “young workers and recent college grads aren’t doing so well” at the moment. AI is often blamed, but there are other factors. Right now, there are “more graduates than there are jobs that require grads.” That’s a challenge that predates the rise of AI by “several years.”

What next?

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a quarter point this week to “shore up the softening job market,” said NPR. On top of private sector layoffs, the federal government has already cut about 100,000 jobs this year. American employment “may well be shrinking already,” Fed Governor Christopher Waller said earlier in October.

Bad news for the job market might be good news for graduate programs. “Applications are on the rise” at law schools and MBA programs, said Fortune, with law school applications up 3% over last year. Gen-Z job seekers are buying “more time to figure out what’s next” instead of “facing the bleak job market head-on.”

“Labour promised not to increase income tax, not to increase National Insurance and not to increase VAT. Does the prime minister still stand by his promises?” That was Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch’s opening salvo at Prime Minister’s Questions this week.

The answer from Keir Starmer was eyebrow-raisingly non-committal, stating only that the government would “lay out” in the Budget its plans to “build a stronger economy” and “deliver a better future for our country”.

That Budget is still a month away but there are widespread reports that Rachel Reeves is considering a manifesto-busting move to increase the top 45p rate of income tax rate or to lower the threshold at which people have to start paying it.

What did the commentators say?

Come the Budget, the Chancellor faces “a terrible choice”, said Martin Wolf in the Financial Times. Either she must “cut spending that people want and raise taxes that people feel they cannot afford” or she has to “allow explosive rises in public debt”. That, in short, is “the plight of Rachel Reeves”.

With the Office for Budget Responsibility expected to deliver a further £20 billion-plus blow to public finances by downgrading its productivity forecast, the chancellor has limited options. She is under pressure from many within her party to increase spending, rather than cut it, and has already confirmed she will not borrow more to balance the books.

To avoid breaking Labour’s manifesto pledge, Reeves could impose some wholly new taxes. She has been “holding discussions over a raft of” possibilities, said David Maddox and Caitlin Doherty in The Independent. These are said to include a 1% mansion levy on properties worth over £2m, a gambling tax and a bank profits levy. There is also talk of further capital gains reforms, and “ending tax relief on pensions”.

But raising money in this way risks causing “unnecessary amounts of economic damage” and adding “needless complexity to the system”, Isaac Delestre of the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank, told the paper.

There is a “persuasive case for ignoring the Labour manifesto”, said Adam Smith in The Telegraph. Raising income tax will “demonstrate that the government is serious about getting a grip on public finances” and it will be rewarded by the bond markets with a “multibillion-pound fall in government borrowing costs”. It will “be less damaging to GDP than any further raids on business taxes” and the increased revenues will “help the Bank of England tackle inflation”.

What next?

Economists and Treasury mandarins may be lining up to agree that there’s a “powerful case” for a small income tax rise, said Smith in The Telegraph, but it would be “a misjudgement so grave, it would destroy Reeves’ career and this government”.

“Promises made” must be “promises kept”, said The Guardian’s editorial board. If not, “it will be terrible for politics”, said Lewis Goodall on his Substack. “Backtracking on one of the only promises about which voters might be aware” would mean it’s “game over for the party”.

Breaking the income tax manifesto promise would “come with a colossal political hit”, said the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason. But such is the state of the economy, “some within the party” are telling Reeves “to go for it” anyway.

President Donald Trump has pushed an “America First” platform since taking office, but some farmers — many of whom voted for Trump — are starting to feel that he has not kept his promise. This sentiment is particularly strong among beef farmers, since Trump has pledged to sharply increase imports of beef from Argentina, leaving many rural laborers with complaints. This issue is compounded by the continually rising cost of beef in the U.S.

Why is Trump importing Argentinian beef?

His plan is part of an effort to reduce the price of beef. These price hikes have become a “major part of the 3.1% increase in food prices over the past year,” said The Hill. Beef in particular has increased 15% year-over-year because of a “combination of environmental factors and tariffs imposed in Trump’s trade war.” To combat this, Trump announced plans to “quadruple beef imports from Argentina.”

This will involve raising the “tariff rate quota on Argentine beef to 80,000 metric tons,” which “will let the country ship more of its beef to the U.S. at a lower rate of duty,” said Reuters. But there may also be another motive, as it is “likely another move to support Argentina’s economy and its embattled president, Javier Milei,” said the Wisconsin State Farmer.

How have American farmers responded?

Trump’s decision has led to “feuding with some of his most loyal supporters,” said The Hill, including congressional Republicans and GOP farmers who support him. The president has “centered his economic agenda on reducing the U.S.’ reliance on cheaper foreign products and boosting domestic production of goods and food,” something farmers say his Argentinian beef plan goes against.

The plan caught “many cattle producers off guard,” and may not actually affect the cost of beef in the U.S., experts say, per the High Plains Journal. When considering the “likely imported volume, possible changes in imports from other countries and probable duration of increased Argentina-based imports collectively, I expect very little change in national beef or cattle prices to follow,” said Glynn Tonsor, professor in the department of agricultural economics at Kansas State University, to the Journal.

Industry lobbyists also panned the decision. Trump’s Argentinian plan is a “misguided effort to lower the price of beef in grocery stores,” the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association said in a press release. The “efforts to manipulate markets only risk damaging the livelihoods of American cattlemen and women, while doing little to impact the price consumers are paying at the grocery store.” Trump has retorted that cattle ranchers “don’t understand that the only reason they are doing so well, for the first time in decades, is because I put tariffs on cattle coming into the United States,” the president said on Truth Social.

But many farmers don’t seem to buy into Trump’s premise. “ It feels like a slap in the face to rural America,” said Destinee Weeks, a cattle rancher in Oklahoma, to NPR. “It makes you feel invisible and overlooked.” Other farmers agreed. “Everything that the president is messing with and interfering with affects my farming operation,” John Boyd Jr., a cattle farmer in Virginia and the founder of the National Black Farmers Association, said to NPR. “I’m opposed to Argentina getting anything else from the United States.”

In Washington DC last week, Rachel Reeves “started laying the groundwork for a painful Budget”, said Hugo Gye in The i Paper.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund, the Chancellor “adopted a strategy of doom and gloom”, confirming that both tax rises and spending cuts are on the table for 26 November, to help reverse an estimated £22 billion black hole in the public finances. Reeves blamed a likely growth downgrade by the Office for Budget Responsibility on Brexit, and warned that “those with the broadest shoulders should pay their fair share”.

‘Sitting on their assets’

Having already gone after non-doms and private schools, Reeves clearly believes the wealthy can be squeezed a bit more before the pips squeak, said Fraser Nelson in The Times. Problem is, we currently have a tax system “where the top 100 super-taxpayers contribute almost as much as the North Sea oil industry; where the top 0.1% pay more income tax than the entire bottom 50%”. The wealthy are already contributing their fair share – “and the fair shares of many others”.

Actually, in some ways the well-off are criminally “untaxed”, said Vicky Spratt in The i Paper. The UK’s vast property wealth – which has increased by almost £3 trillion in a decade – is hardly touched by the taxman. Homeowners who rode the historic house-price inflation wave through the 2010s have become “incredibly rich”. Reforming property taxes is the obvious answer. What’s wrong with asking them to contribute a small amount of the wealth they attained simply “by sitting on their assets”, when those on lower incomes are struggling to choose whether to “heat their homes, eat or pay rent”?

‘Electoral suicide’

A property tax is one option; Reeves is also reportedly looking at targeting pensions and cash Isas. But even if the Chancellor does choose to soak the better off, it still won’t be enough, said Andrew O’Brien on UnHerd. The Treasury now “needs huge amounts of cash”: the NHS alone has a £37 billion capital shortfall; we need another £17 billion just to fill potholes. It would be quicker and fairer to “stick this all on income tax”, where an extra 4p would raise around £30 billion a year. Unfortunately for Reeves, that would break a manifesto pledge, so it would be “electoral suicide”.

All options are painful, said Chris Blackhurst in The Independent, but the worst situation is the one we have now: a Treasury with a “tin ear” that feeds us a “drip, drip” of threats about November’s Statement – while also claiming to be kickstarting economic growth. In reality, businesses are putting decisions on hold, and the wealthy are eyeing the exits; “Britain is at a standstill”. All of this, and “the Budget is still over a month away”.

It often seems that economists are perpetually warning us about the next U.S. recession. One influential analyst says an economic slowdown is already a fact of life for many Americans.

Twenty-two states are “now experiencing persistent economic weakness and job losses that are likely to continue," said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, to MarketWatch. The overall American economy is “on the precipice. Government data released before the shutdown showed the “broader economy was in pretty good shape,” said MarketWatch, but some are skeptical. The gross domestic product might be rising, said Zandi, but the “job market is weaker.”

Other observers are warning of a bifurcated “K-shaped economy,” said CNBC. Wealthy Americans are “engaging their purchasing power,” but lower- and middle-class consumers are struggling with “rising costs on daily essentials like groceries and gas.” Meanwhile, “unofficial signals” like rises in missed car payments and women leaving the workforce are offering “early warning signs about what is to come,” said Quartz.

What did the commentators say?

“This moment feels much like late 2007 and early 2008,” said Ball State University economics professor Michael J. Hicks at The Indianapolis Star. For a time during that period, the economy felt stable “even as we entered recession.” Today is similar. While the gross domestic product is still rising, driven by the AI boom, “nearly every other measure of economic activity has stagnated or is in deep decline.” The United States may already be in recession. But “we don’t feel it yet.”

The U.S. economy is in a “weird place right now,” said economist Paul Krugman at his newsletter. Policymakers are “flying blind” because of the government shutdown and unemployment is “relatively low by historical standards.” And Americans “feel very bad about the economy,” with consumer sentiment surveys rivaling the lows of the Great Recession. One problem is that President Donald Trump’s “wildly erratic policies” are creating “huge uncertainty” for businesses and consumers. We may not be in a recession yet, but the “frozen state of the U.S. economy has already made life much worse for many workers.”

What next?

The government shutdown is “complicating the Fed’s ability to help the economy,” said CNN. The Federal Reserve “relies heavily on official economic statistics” from the government to make decisions about interest rates to help goose or slow down the American economy, but the shutdown has “effectively cut off access to that data.” The available information is not great, though, with August data showing the “weakest pace of hiring since 2010.” The Fed is expected to announce its latest policies at a meeting on Oct. 29.

Americans are not happy with all of this. A new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute shows that most voters — including nearly 30% of Republicans — gave the president “low marks on the economy,” said Axios. That dissatisfaction could “test the durability of Trump’s support.”

Donald Trump has targeted the “economic equivalent of Russia’s crown jewels” with a new wave of sanctions, said Sky News.

The president has slapped fresh restrictions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, in response to what he calls Vladimir Putin’s “lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine”.

What did the commentators say?

The new measures, which target Russian giants Rosneft and Lukoil, as well as more than 30 subsidiaries, “aren’t just any sanctions”, said Sky News, they’re a “punch to the gut of Moscow’s war economy”. They’re “no slap on the wrist” because oil is “Russia’s bloodstream”, and Trump “just cut off the blood flow”, said the broadcaster.

The timing is significant too, said the BBC, because the new measures were announced “just days after the UK sanctioned the same two Russian oil companies”, and European Union countries have issued new measures that ban the import of Russian liquefied natural gas from 2027.

Putin’s “tactical triumph didn’t last long”, said The New York Times – last week “it looked as if the Russian president had outmanoeuvred his adversaries yet again” by making a “deftly placed call” to Trump that “scuttled any expansion in American support for Ukraine”. But yesterday “Russians awoke to new American sanctions against their oil industry”.

The sale of oil and gas accounts for about a quarter of the Russian budget, and Moscow’s oil industry is already under pressure from increasingly long-range strikes by Kyiv. So the measures “take aim at the heart of the Russian economy” and deal a major blow to Putin’s “effort to cajole” Trump into “forcing Ukraine to capitulate to Russia’s main demands”.

Actually, the sanctions are “not a maximal blow,” Daniel Fried, a former US assistant secretary of state for Europe, told Atlantic Council, and there may need to be tougher US actions, such as “joining Europe in lowering the price cap on Russian oil, enforcing the oil price cap by putting sanctions on the Russian shadow fleet of tankers, and sanctioning ports that service them”.

But the measures are still a “strong move” and they could “put even more downward pressure on Russian oil revenues” by pushing Moscow to further discount its oil and “forcing purchasers to consider alternative sources of oil”.

What next?

Some experts in Russia said that the new measures would have a “muted impact”, said The New York Times. Moscow has “become adept at evading restrictions” by using “hundreds of old vessels uninsured by Western companies” and by processing transactions “through buffer companies in third countries”.

So although oil prices “rose sharply” yesterday, the sanctions’ “potential potency” may “ultimately depend on how the penalties are enforced and how energy buyers react to them”.

In response to the move, four Chinese state oil companies have suspended purchases of Russian seaborne oil. Indian refineries have also announced that they will slash imports of Russian crude to comply with the new sanctions. If these cancellations “prove permanent”, Russia “faces a serious economic hit”, said The Telegraph.

‘“No Kings” protests were peaceful — and even patriotic’

William A. Galston at The Wall Street Journal

The “administration’s supporters seem to believe that if you criticize Trump, you must ‘hate America,’” says William A. Galston. But the No Kings rallies “were almost completely violence-free,” and “Democrats are basking in the success of a peaceful and disciplined national protest against Trump.” But rallies are “no substitute for the patient, continuing effort needed to translate these sentiments into votes.” We’ll soon “find out whether the No Kings rallies were a false dawn for Democrats.”

Read more

‘The myth that Mamdani will cause New York City’s richest to leave’

Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein at The American Prospect

A “common rejoinder to Zohran Mamdani’s campaign promise to fund social programs with higher taxes was that the rich would leave New York if taxed too highly,” says Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein. But the “truth of the matter is closer to the opposite: Wealthy individuals and their income move at lower rates than other income brackets, even in response to an increase of personal income tax.” The “non-flight of the rich is as true in the rest of the United States.”

Read more

‘You’re getting “screen time” wrong’

Ian Bogost at The Atlantic

Screen time is “not a metric to optimize downward, but a name for the frenzy of existence in an age defined by screens,” says Ian Bogost. You “may try to limit the time that you or your children spend with screens, and this may bring you minor triumphs.” But you “cannot rein in screen time itself.” To “recognize that fact — and to understand how it happened — is a small, important step toward salvation.”

Read more

‘Think you can’t afford to run an ethical business? You can’t afford not to.’

Gordon McLaughlin and Frank Sasso at USA Today

For “business education — our future leadership pipeline — the time is now to seize the day and fill the gap of values-based leadership,” say Gordon McLaughlin and Frank Sasso. Ethics and “values-based leadership is frequently a single elective subject in college.” With “mounting demand for principled decision-making, MBA programs have an excellent opportunity to drive integration of ethics further into curricula and to weave ethics into culture.” Companies “must invest in embedding ethics” into training.

Read more

With trick-or-treating just around the corner, many parents are feeling the pain when budgeting for Halloween this year. Inflation means many elements of the holiday are becoming more expensive, with everything from children’s costumes to candy to decorations costing more. Many experts attribute a significant portion of the blame to the tariffs implemented by the Trump administration.

Traditions and treats

Dressing up and getting candy are two hallmarks of Halloween for kids, but both of these things have seen price hikes in 2025. The average “cost for a 100-piece bag of candy is $16.39 in 2025, up more than $2 from last year, and 78% since 2020,” according to a study from the financial institution FinanceBuzz. This is “more than triple the national rate of inflation” of 25% during the same time period.

There was a slight dip several years ago when the “cost for a bag of Halloween candy increased by less than $1 year-over-year from 2020 to 2022,” said FinanceBuzz. But since then, the price has “gone up by more than $2 per year over the last two Halloweens.” And those who plan to pass out candy will “shell out an average of $70 for it” this year, said a report from LendingTree. At least 31% of Halloween spenders even “report going into debt by overspending” for the holiday.

Chinese tariffs are having a tangible effect on costume prices, as “90% of Halloween products contain at least one component made overseas,” said CNN. As a result, this year's Halloween costumes “will cost a little more, and you’ll see less variety.” Halloween companies are also feeling the hurt. “We’re all kind of on edge, but we’re trying to stay positive,” Chris Zephro, the president of costume manufacturer Trick or Treat Studios, told CNN.

How to save

There are ways to save money this Halloween, despite the rising costs. One option is purchasing costume pieces separately in advance. “I’d rather just do it ahead of time, little by little,” parent Reyna Hernandez said to CNN. Similar tactics can be used for purchasing candy, experts say, as many “warehouse clubs tend to offer the best per-piece value” for candy in bulk, said Reuters.

It can also help to set a “candy budget” for trick-or-treaters, such as giving out “one piece per kid early in the evening — extra for familiar faces and especially creative costumes,” said Reuters. This is especially important given that “chocolate makers are passing along earlier cost spikes via higher shelf prices and smaller package sizes.” For parents who can’t afford store-bought costumes, there are some other options. Many ”do‑it‑yourself outfits made from household items remain a popular fix, with sewing kits, glue guns and a dash of imagination turning everyday clothes into festive costumes,” said NBC affiliate KNDU-TV.

You can also look to social media, as TikTok “bursts with quick displays of DIY Halloween costumes that are practical, creative and undeniably fun,” said KNDU-TV. And many plan to celebrate the holiday despite rising prices. “Even in challenging economic times or with price adjustments, people are leaving room in their budgets for chocolate and candy,” said Carly Schildhaus, of the National Confectioners Association, to CBS News, “especially at these special candy moments like the Halloween season.”

What happened

Warner Bros. Discovery said Tuesday it was fielding “unsolicited interest” from “multiple parties” and had initiated a “review of strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value.”

The announcement was the “first acknowledgement of a (metaphorical) ‘For Sale’ sign hanging from the iconic WB water tower,” The Hollywood Reporter said.

Who said what

The media giant, home to iconic brands like HBO and DC Studios, said earlier this year it planned to split into two separate companies, one focused on streaming and studios and the other on cable. But “it’s also been fielding takeout interest from the newly merged Paramount Skydance,” said CNBC. “Netflix and Comcast are among the interested parties,” too, but it is “unclear how serious” that interest might be. Warner Bros. Discovery shares rose 11% following Tuesday’s announcement.

A purchase of WBD by the Larry Ellison–backed Paramount Skydance “would place CNN and CBS, two legacy news brands, under the same roof,” The Washington Post said. A merger that big, The Associated Press said, “could attract antitrust scrutiny — but like other recent mega-mergers and proposed transactions, could find success under the Trump administration.” WBD earlier this week rejected a second takeover bid from Paramount, which had been trying to “pre-empt a potential bidding war” for WBD’s studio and streaming unit, The Wall Street Journal said.

What next?

Despite setting off a “media free-for-all,” WBD is “dual-tracking,” preparing for its planned split next year while entertaining its “come-and-get-it pitch” to rivals, Semafor said. CEO David Zaslav “has told associates that he wanted to proceed with the split,” the Journal said.

China is dramatically tightening its control over the rare earth minerals crucial to making high-tech products, in what US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called “a global supply chain power grab”.

Beijing’s latest flexing of international economic muscle comes just weeks before Xi Jinping is due to meet Donald Trump in South Korea. The US president has hit back by threatening 100% tariffs on all products from China but it’s clear Beijing’s “chokehold on rare minerals” will be its “key bargaining chip” in the upcoming trade talks with Washington, said the BBC.

What are rare earths?

Rare earths are a group of 17 metallic elements with similar characteristics. They are key – and largely irreplaceable – components in electronic products, robotics and green technologies. Despite their name, they are abundant in the Earth's crust but they’re difficult and hazardous to extract and purify.

“You may not be familiar” with the names of these elements, said Ayesha Perera, the BBC's Asia editor, but “you will be very familiar with the products that they are used in”. Yttrium and europium, for example, are used in the manufacture of television and computer screens, cerium is used for polishing glass and refining oil, and neodymium is used to make the strong magnets in loudspeakers, computer hard drives, EV motors and jet engines.

Rare earths are also widely used in the semiconductors that are the building blocks of our digital world. Almost anything with an on/off switch will have dozens, even hundreds, of semiconductors inside.

What has China done?

China has a virtual monopoly on extracting and, especially, refining rare earths. According to the International Energy Agency, it controls 61% of production and 92% of processing. This means it has the capacity to decide which companies in the world can and cannot receive supplies of rare earths.

Beijing already had restrictions in place on the less common “heavy” rare earths that are crucial to defence industries but its latest move will require all foreign companies to have the Chinese government’s approval for export of even small quantities of all rare earths – and those companies must explain what the intended use is. Beijing has been clear export licenses may well not be granted, particularly for those related to semiconductors or artificial-intelligence development.

Chinese nationals and Chinese companies will also be banned from working with foreign companies on the extraction and processing of rare earth minerals without government permission.

Some of these new restrictions are already in place, with others due to come into force in December.

What does this mean?

These new restrictions “mark a nearly unprecedented export control” that could "disrupt the global economy”, giving China “more leverage” in trade talks and “ratcheting up pressure on the Trump administration”, said The Wall Street Journal.

As well as being “an escalation” in the US-China trade war, it “threatens the supply chain” for the semiconductors that are “the lifeblood” of the world economy – powering phones, computers, electric vehicles, solar panels and the data centres used to train AI models.

Beijing, however, has accused Washington of “stoking panic” and making “grossly distorted” remarks on the matter.

It feels like old times, but not in a good way. Financial experts around the world are warning of an impending 1929-style financial market crash brought on by trade wars, large national debts and overbuilding in the AI sector.

“We will have a crash,” financial journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin told CBS News. Sorkin is promoting a new book, “1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History — and How It Shattered a Nation,” about the market collapse that sparked the Great Depression. But other voices are also sounding alarms. World markets are “susceptible to a disorderly adjustment” thanks to economic and political uncertainty, said G20 risk watchdog Andrew Bailey on Monday, per Reuters. Bank of England officials warned last week that the AI bubble driving tech stocks may soon burst, said CNBC. And JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon is similarly concerned about a “major market correction,” said Fortune. “Buckle up,” said International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva last week, “uncertainty is the new normal and it is here to stay.”

Echoes of 1929?

The 1929 crash was the “definitive stock-market collapse,” said David Champion at Harvard Business Review. The 1920s were beset with trade protectionism, anti-immigrant fervor and new technologies that were upending “traditional livelihoods.” The question is whether finance executives have “absorbed the lessons of history by now.” After all, the echoes of 1929 in today’s economic landscape seem clear. “Once you start looking for similarities, you see them everywhere.”

“The numbers just don’t make sense” when it comes to AI, said journalist Derek Thompson in his newsletter. Tech companies are spending $400 billion on artificial intelligence this year, which is more in inflation-adjusted terms than was spent on the entire Apollo moon program over a decade, yet it is “not clear” that those companies are “prepared to earn back the investment.” American consumers, after all, currently spend only $12 billion a year on AI services. Investors are still pouring money into tech, though. That looks like an “obvious economic bubble.” Bubbles pop, and “none of the typical rules for sensible investing can explain what’s going on with stock prices right now.”

Scary, but rare

Tech companies may be overinvesting in AI, but that does not mean investors should worry about a “contagion across the broader economy,” said Axios. The boom in tech investment is from “big, stable companies with the balance sheets to support their spending.”

Observers could be over-reading the signs of trouble. Bubble bursts are “memorable. They are colorful. They are scary,” said economic analyst William Goetzmann at The Wall Street Journal. But bubbles are also “much rarer than their presence in the public imagination.” Since 1887, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 10% in a day just four times, and two of those were in 1929. But investors are always expecting the next disaster. Research shows they typically put odds of an imminent crash at 10-to-20%, which is “much greater than history suggests.”

France’s attempt to bring its spiralling debt under control has sparked a political crisis that has seen off a series of prime ministers and left Europe’s second largest economy teetering on the brink.

At a moment when “the very sovereignty and freedom of France and Europe are at stake”, the country finds itself “paralysed by chaos, impotence and debt”, veteran political commentator Nicolas Baverez told the BBC.

How bad is the debt crisis?

The French economy “appears strong at first glance”, said The New York Times. Before Donald Trump’s tariff war, “growth was slow but steady and employment was picking up” but “behind the scenes, outsize government spending and falling tax receipts strained finances”.

In absolute terms, France now holds the highest consolidated national debt in Europe, currently at around €3.4 trillion, according to the country’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies. Its debt-to-GDP ratio – 113% – is surpassed in the EU only by Greece and Italy, which were at the heart of the European debt crisis a decade ago.

How did the debt get so high?

France has long been among the most “spendthrift” countries in the EU relative to its economic output, said CNN. Social welfare, like pensions and unemployment benefits, represent the largest chunk of expenditure, but the state also funds some “unusual benefits”, such as financial support to families employing a nanny for children under six. “We do reimburse a lot of things that we basically can no longer afford to reimburse,” said Alexandra Roulet, a former economic adviser to Emmanuel Macron.

These commitments, combined with huge public spending to soften the blow of the Covid pandemic and the energy crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine, alongside the rising cost of government borrowing, has contributed to a massive increase in debt over the past two decades: from 60% of GDP at the start of the 2000s to a projected 125% by 2030.

The cost of servicing the national debt alone is estimated to be €67 billion this year, more than the budgets of “all government departments except education and defence”, said the BBC.

“In short, debt service is rising because the debt itself is rising,” said Le Monde. This means that “to cover its ongoing deficits year after year, the state has had to increase its borrowing. The interest that must be repaid accumulates, which further increases the debt and creates a vicious cycle.”

What will happen next?

While deficit-reducing measures such as attempts at pension reform have been met with mass protests through the Macron presidency, much of the current paralysis stems from the president’s disastrous decision to call a snap election last summer, resulting in a divided parliament and an intransigent opposition.

François Bayrou, who made attacking the deficit the central plan of his government, was forced to resign as prime minister last month after failing to pass €44 billion in spending cuts, which included scrapping two public holidays.

The resignation of his successor Sébastien Lecornu last week, followed by his rapid reinstatement, has “raised doubts over whether the 2026 budget – including much-needed debt-cutting reforms – can be passed in time”, said CNN.

France is still not at “immediate risk”, said Le Monde. The possibility of an intervention by the International Monetary Fund, which has been touted by some even within the government, seems “highly improbable”.

The best-case scenario is that “the country’s inherent strengths – its wealth, infrastructure, institutional resilience” – will allow it to weather what may prove a temporary storm, said the BBC. “But there is another scenario: that it emerges permanently weakened, prey to extremists of left and right, a new sick man of Europe.”