Author: starbpo

It’s turning out to be the breakup of the decade in a Washington full of wealthy people and powerful figures. And everyone on the planet can witness it occurring. On Thursday, President Donald Trump and Elon Musk, his former close advisor and major political backer, started a savage public spat that may have long-term effects on the richest man in the world, the president, and the Republican Party as a whole. The two dodged almost everything, with Musk suggesting that the president should be impeached, Trump threatening Musk’s businesses, and Musk even bringing up accusations against Jeffrey Epstein. It’s turning…

One of the many measures in the Republican tax and spending megabill that was passed by the House of Representatives last month, which has more than 1,000 pages of text, is to stop the distribution of 1099-K tax forms to employees or vendors who make more than $600 annually. During a House hearing last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Republican Representative Carol Miller of West Virginia praised this specific provision. During the hearing on Wednesday, Miller informed Bessent, “Republicans have worked to restore the 1099-K threshold to the time-tested standard of $20,000 and 200 transactions by including my Saving…

New York House Republicans criticized Senate GOP leaders on Monday for allegedly supporting a plan to maintain the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions, which could jeopardize President Donald Trump’s signature tax bill before it even reaches the Senate floor. This move revealed a new Republican rift over taxes. The Senate Finance Committee will include a $10,000 cap as an initial “negotiating mark” in its legislative text later Monday, according to a story published by Punchbowl News on Monday. However, several Republicans in the House don’t like the gamble. Republican Representative Mike Lawler of New York wrote on…

This year, six electric cars made the top 10 for the first time in Cars.com’s long-running index, which evaluates cars based on criteria like domestic part sourcing and U.S.-based assembly. According to Cars.com, “knowing what’s made here and what that really means has never been more important.” This development coincides with the planned U.S. conversion to electric vehicles encountering some significant roadblocks. Having a “majority electric” top 10 for the first time is significant, but only to a certain extent, according to the main researcher for Cars.com’s 2025 American-Made Index. “I wouldn’t want to suggest that this is the turning…

Senate Republicans have released a comprehensive plan to restructure the Medicaid program, but policy analysts caution that the changes might cause hospital systems to suffer much more and lose even more coverage than the House of Representatives’ aggressive proposal last month. As part of the party’s larger effort to pass new tax and spending legislation supported by President Donald Trump, the Senate Finance Committee released the text, which reveals that the legislation intends to cut Medicaid spending by up to $1 trillion over ten years, or $200 billion more than the House version. Numerous healthcare researchers and providers were taken…

With three weeks to go before the possible return of the Trump administration’s “reciprocal” tariffs that hammered markets in April, the chief economist for Goldman Sachs, Jan Hatzius, is predicting those elevated import taxes won’t actually come back. Hatzius said Wednesday that he and his colleagues are “not building in the second stage of the ‘reciprocal’ tariffs,” noting that those levies have been subject to a pause that’s due to end July 9. “We expect that to continue to be pushed out,” Hatzius said, referring to more time for negotiations with U.S. trading partners, rather than the White House sticking…

Vaibhav Agarwal, head of product and innovation at Indxx, was misspelled in an earlier version of this story. As supply of the commodity are predicted to fall short of demand for a third consecutive year, platinum has outperformed its metals counterparts for the month and year to far. However, that’s not the only factor contributing to platinum’s exceptional price performance. As of Wednesday, the price of gold had increased 29% so far this year. According to Vaibhav Agarwal, head of product and innovation at global index provider Indxx, this has caused some investors to switch to platinum, calling the change…

Even though geopolitical shocks have a way of upsetting financial markets, Ukraine’s surprise attack, which has been called “Russia’s Pearl Harbor,” caught the oil industry off guard and caused an unanticipated spike in crude prices that some analysts predict will be short-lived. The weekend that OPEC+ announced its decision to accelerate its output rise for the third consecutive month coincided with the price increase. According to the Wall Street Journal, several analysts had predicted that oil would decline following that ruling, but that was before Ukraine’s drone raids on Russian air force sites damaged or destroyed Russian bombers needed for…

Although the importance and expansion of the U.S. nuclear energy sector in domestic power generation are addressed by the four executive orders recently signed by President Donald Trump, the country will face significant challenges in supplying the uranium needed to quadruple nuclear energy capacity in 25 years. “The overall message from these orders is very positive for the overall nuclear sector,” stated Jonathan Hinze, president of UxC, a marketplace intelligence and analysis company that focuses on nuclear fuels. The need for baseload energy supply in the United States is evidently increasing, particularly from hyperscalers like massive data centers and other…

With the industrial metal finally making a big move to catch up to gold’s gains, silver surged Thursday to hit its highest price in over 13 years, bringing the gold-silver ratio down to its lowest level since the Trump administration’s “liberation day” tariff announcement. According to Dow Jones Market Data, silver for July delivery (SI00) (SIN25) closed Thursday on Comex at $35.81 an ounce, the highest most-active contract finish since February 28, 2012. This year, it has gained almost 22% so far. According to Maria Smirnova, senior portfolio manager and chief investment officer at Sprott Asset Management, “the breakout has…