American Wealth Is at a Record High. Sentiment Is Low, and Falling.

America is more prosperous than ever. U.S. household net worth reached a new peak at the end of 2024. The unemployment rate has levitated just above record lows for three years. The overall debt that households are carrying compared with the assets they own is also near a record low. But even a land of […]

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Trump’s Tariff Agenda Bets on Americans Giving Up Cheap Goods

Follow the latest news on the Trump administration. President Trump’s sweeping tariffs are expected to raise the cost of cars, electronics, metals, lumber, pharmaceuticals and other products that American consumers and businesses buy from overseas. But Mr. Trump and his advisers are betting that it can sell an inflation-weary public on a provocative idea: Cheap […]

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Investigating a Sprawling Money Laundering Network

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. For months, Selam Gebrekidan, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, would stare at a maze of handwritten diagrams, drawings and charts on a wall inside her Hong Kong apartment. She was trying to […]

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Trump Family Starts Bitcoin Mining Venture in Further Push Into Crypto

Two of President Trump’s sons announced on Monday that they were investing in a new Bitcoin mining venture, an expansion of the family’s business interests in the crypto industry. Eric Trump and Donald Trump, Jr. said they would join forces with the Bitcoin mining company Hut 8 to create a firm called American Bitcoin. Bitcoin […]

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Stocks Sink as Trump’s Tariff Threats Weigh on Confidence

Stocks in Asia tumbled Monday as investors braced for a week of market tumult caused by an expected announcement of more tariffs by President Trump on America’s biggest trading partners. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index fell nearly 3 percent in early trading. Stocks in South Korea and Taiwan were down more than 2 percent. Stocks in […]

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Richard Carlson, Journalist Who Led Voice of America, Dies at 84

Richard Carlson, who won a Peabody Award for his investigative television reports about an automobile company’s brazen fraud — during which he also outed the company’s founder as a transgender woman — and who later ran Voice of America during the last years of the Cold War, died on March 24 at his home in […]

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In Tokyo, Rice Farmers Protest ‘Misguided’ Rules Fueling Shortages

In the United States, the affordability of eggs has prompted a national discussion — underscoring anxieties about the economy and the government’s role in addressing them. In Japan, there’s an equivalent: rice. Over the past year, Japan has grappled with a more than 200,000-ton shortage of its staple grain. Rice prices have skyrocketed, and supermarkets […]

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Can Barcelona Solve One of the Toughest Housing Crises in Europe?

In 33 years, Marga Aguilar never missed a rent payment on her apartment in a Modernist-style building in the heart of Barcelona. The owner of the building had always treated her and the other tenants as if they were family, and kept rents reasonable. But when the owner died recently, Ms. Aguilar, 62, got a […]

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