This Economy Isn't Making Anybody Comfy
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The tragedy hit in the year 2008. In retrospect, all the signals were there. Spending was spiraling out of control. Up to one in every 12 Americans was caught up in it. What was being sold as security left everybody fleeced. Slick marketing promised us flexibility, but we ended up trapped inside our investments. We all wanted a comfort zone, but many were left in the cold. And the results were hideous:
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The Hill
31 minutes ago
- The Hill
The post-Trump tax cliff
The Big Story While Republicans push to make expiring provisions in President Trump's 2017 tax law permanent, additional measures geared toward working-class Americans are being slated for expiration at the end of 2028. © The Associated Press 'It means that's going to be an issue in the next presidential race,' House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) said. The major expiring tax breaks in the House-passed version of Trump's 'big beautiful bill' are boosts in the standard deduction, the deduction for seniors, and the child tax credit, along with the cancellation of taxes on tips, overtime pay, and car loan interest. Budget hawks are saying this sets up a tax cliff in the legislation similar to the one Republicans are now trying to surmount, since most of the 2017 Trump tax cuts expire at the end of this year. 'There's a total tax cliff in there. There's about $1.5 trillion worth of taxes that expire in four years, five years, which means what? In five years, they'll just keep them going. This is why we end up with the same problem,' Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said last week. 'It is 100 percent a gimmick to have tax cuts that you're putting in place for four or five years,' he added. The legislation is likely to undergo substantial changes in the Senate, including a change in the accounting baseline that will allow trillions of dollars worth of deficit additions coming from the extension of previous tax cuts to be ignored. But senators are sounding open to maintaining the split between making the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) permanent and allowing the additional cuts for workers, families, retirees and consumers to expire. The Hill's Tobias Burns and Aris Folley have more here. Welcome to The Hill's Business & Economy newsletter, I'm Aris Folley — covering the intersection of Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. Did someone forward you this newsletter? Subscribe here. Essential Reads Key business and economic news with implications this week and beyond: Top earners to receive lion's share of income boost from GOP bill: CBO The top one-tenth of the U.S. income spectrum is set to receive the biggest annual boost to its wealth as a result of the House-passed Republican tax cut and spending bill, according to a new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), while the bottom three deciles are set to lose wealth and the fourth lowest decile will break even. House GOP approves first batch of DOGE cuts House Republicans voted on Thursday to claw back billions of dollars in federal funding for public broadcasting and foreign aid, locking in the first set of slashes made by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Senate votes to end debate on stablecoin bill, teeing up final vote The Senate voted Thursday to wrap up debate on a stablecoin bill, teeing up a final vote on the legislation that would establish regulatory rules of the road for the dollar-backed cryptocurrencies. Walmart heiress funds anti-Trump ad A billionaire Walmart heiress has again taken aim at President Trump — this time encouraging people to participate in protests against his second presidency while Trump holds a military parade in Washington on Saturday. The Ticker Upcoming news themes and events we're watching: In Other News Branch out with more stories from the day: Wall Street ticks closer to its record after Oracle rallies NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock indexes ticked higher on Thursday following another encouraging update … Good to Know Business and economic news we've flagged from other outlets: What Others are Reading Top stories on The Hill right now: Padilla forcibly removed from Noem press conference, handcuffed Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) was forcibly removed and then handcuffed after he interrupted a press conference Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem held in Los Angeles. Read more Republicans lay groundwork for 'total tax cliff' at end of Trump's term Congressional Republicans are laying the groundwork for a tax cliff at the end of President Trump's term in office. Read more What People Think Opinions related to business and economic issues submitted to The Hill: You're all caught up. See you tomorrow! Thank you for signing up! Subscribe to more newsletters here
Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Fintech Chime Climbs 37% in Debut After $864 Million IPO
(Bloomberg) -- Chime Financial Inc. rose 37% in its trading debut after pricing its shares above the marketed range to raise raising $864 million in the year's sixth-biggest US initial public offering. Shuttered NY College Has Alumni Fighting Over Its Future Trump's Military Parade Has Washington Bracing for Tanks and Weaponry NYC Renters Brace for Price Hikes After Broker-Fee Ban Do World's Fairs Still Matter? NY Long Island Rail Service Resumes After Grand Central Fire The financial technology firm's shares opened trading Thursday at $43 after selling for $27 in the IPO, rising as much as 66%. The shares closed at $37.11 in New York trading, giving the company a market value of $13.5 billion. Accounting for employee stock options and restricted stock units, Chime has a fully diluted value of about $15.8 billion based on its filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. That fully diluted value is a sharp drop from Chime's $25 billion valuation in a 2021 funding round. 'We don't focus on short-term fluctuation of the stock — even if it goes up today, I'm sure there's going to be other days that won't be as great,' Chime Chief Executive Officer Chris Britt said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. 'We remain focused on the long term.' There's been a modest rebound in US IPOs in the wake of President Donald Trump's April 2 tariff announcement that spurred several companies to hit the pause button on their listing plans. The average first-day jump for new offerings has been about 25% this year for US IPOs that raised at least $100 million — the most since 2020. In all, almost $27 billion has been raised in 156 IPOs on New York exchanges since Jan. 1, compared with $19 billion in 92 listings at this point last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. At least two other significant IPOs are set to price next week before what is shaping up to be a summer lull in the US. Caris Life Sciences Inc. is seeking to raise as much as $423.5 million, while Slide Insurance Holdings Inc. is planning an offering of up to $340 million. Chime's investors include affiliates of DST Global, Crosslink Capital, Len Blavatnik's Access Industries, General Atlantic, Menlo Ventures, Cathay Innovation and Iconiq, the filings show. After the IPO, Chime co-founders Britt and Ryan King will continue to hold more than 70% of shareholder voting power in aggregate. Shawn Carolan, a Menlo Ventures partner and Chime board member, said he's relieved there was a reprieve in the markets following the tariff-induced volatility in April. 'All capital markets were like, 'Holy cow, what does this mean,' Carolan said, noting that Chime delayed its IPO. The company's strong debut Thursday indicates that now 'the markets are healthy,' he said. San Francisco-based Chime sold 26 million shares and its investors sold 6.1 million in the IPO, after marketing them for $24 to $26 each. The offering attracted investor orders for more than 20 times the available shares, Bloomberg reported earlier Thursday. The company, which doesn't hold a bank charter, works with Bancorp Bank and Stride Bank to offer consumers bank-like services. Chime generates revenue from the payments that customers make on their branded debit or credit cards. 'Payments volume and payments revenue for us has been highly resilient,' Britt said in a separate interview with Bloomberg. Chime had 8.6 million active users as of March 31, 82% more than it had three years earlier, according to the filings. During the year ended March 31, Chime handled $121 billion in transactions. The membership has an average age of 36.2 years old, and 55% are female. Chime's marketing includes a deal with the NBA's Dallas Mavericks for its logo to appear on the team's jerseys. The IPO is being led by Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., while 11 other banks are also working on the offering. The company's shares are trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol CHYM. --With assistance from Ed Ludlow, Caroline Hyde and Matt Turner. (Updates with closing share price in second paragraph.) American Mid: Hampton Inn's Good-Enough Formula for World Domination New Grads Join Worst Entry-Level Job Market in Years The Spying Scandal Rocking the World of HR Software US Tariffs Threaten to Derail Vietnam's Historic Industrial Boom The SEC Pinned Its Hack on a Few Hapless Day Traders. The Full Story Is Far More Troubling ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Errore nel recupero dei dati Effettua l'accesso per consultare il tuo portafoglio Errore nel recupero dei dati Errore nel recupero dei dati Errore nel recupero dei dati Errore nel recupero dei dati
Yahoo
39 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Apple Targets Spring 2026 for Release of Delayed Siri AI Upgrade
(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. has set an internal release target of spring 2026 for its delayed upgrade of Siri, marking a key step in its artificial intelligence turnaround effort. Shuttered NY College Has Alumni Fighting Over Its Future Trump's Military Parade Has Washington Bracing for Tanks and Weaponry NYC Renters Brace for Price Hikes After Broker-Fee Ban Do World's Fairs Still Matter? NY Long Island Rail Service Resumes After Grand Central Fire The company's Siri team is aiming to bring the revamped voice assistant to market as part of an iOS 26.4 software update, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The long-promised changes will allow Siri to tap into consumers' personal data and on-screen activities in order to better fulfill queries. Apple's '.4' updates — known as 'E' on the company's internal software development schedule — are typically released in March. That was the case with iOS 18.4 this year and iOS 17.4 in 2024. But an exact date hasn't been set internally for the software, beyond a spring time frame, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the work is private. Apple, in response to a request for comment, said it hasn't announced exact timing for the new Siri features. It reiterated earlier statements that the upgrades are planned for the 'coming year.' The timeline could still shift depending on whether new snags emerge. If the next several weeks of development work proves promising, the company could consider giving a preview of the features when it launches the next iPhones in the fall, one of the people said, though no final decisions have been made. The upgrade has been a long time coming. Apple originally introduced the next-generation Siri features at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June of last year. The idea was to modernize the voice assistant — first introduced in 2011 — which hasn't kept pace with chatbots and other AI tools. The technology in the works also includes a system called App Intents that allows Siri to more precisely control applications and in-app actions across Apple devices. If the latest release timing sticks, Apple will have gone nearly two years between announcing the new Siri and delivering it to customers. It's been an especially high-profile delay because the capabilities were part of the iPhone 16 marketing last year — despite the new Siri not being close to ready. Internally, Apple's AI and marketing teams have pointed fingers at each other. The engineering side has blamed marketing for overhyping features, while marketing maintains it operated on timelines provided to them by the company's AI teams, according to people with knowledge of the matter. There also remains a debate over how much AI functionality Apple should be building itself and how much it should push off to partners like OpenAI. And the company has held internal discussions about buying smaller AI-related startups. Within Apple, the original goal was to have the Siri features ready in the fall of 2024, alongside the new iPhone. The target then shifted to spring 2025. The company had privately expected a rollout as part of iOS 18.4, before moving the target again to May with iOS 18.5. By March, the company postponed the features indefinitely, saying at the time they wouldn't arrive until sometime in the coming year. The delays stemmed from engineering snags that kept the technology from working properly a third of the time, Bloomberg News reported earlier this year. A key technical challenge: Siri's brain was essentially split in half for iOS 18. Apple used an existing system for common tasks, such as setting timers and making calls, and a newer-generation platform for upgraded Siri features. Combining the two architectures led to bugs, necessitating Siri to be rebuilt entirely. The issues set off a firestorm within Apple, leading to the company's senior vice president of AI, John Giannandrea, being stripped of all consumer-facing product oversight. That included his management of Siri and Apple's secretive robotics unit. At the company's latest developer event this week, Giannandrea kept a low profile. It was a shift from the previous year, when he spoke in a number of press interviews about the Apple Intelligence platform and the company's AI work. He's also become less influential internally, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Some executives believe he should be squarely focused on underlying AI research, which is seen as his strength. He continues to oversee development of large language models — the basis of generative AI — and testing of AI technology. Engineering for the voice assistant was taken over by Vision Pro headset creator Mike Rockwell and software engineering chief Craig Federighi. Both executives played key roles in the company's latest software announcements at WWDC. Rockwell is now leading work on Siri LLM, the internal name for the new underlying system to power the service and enable the delayed features. While Apple announced a sweeping design overhaul for all of its platforms this week, it didn't introduce major in-house AI features beyond opening its large language models to developers and adding live translation to calls and text messages. It also didn't introduce or demonstrate Siri features, though Federighi did address the delay. 'This work needed more time to reach our high quality bar, and we look forward to sharing more about it in the coming year,' he said at the beginning of the roughly 90-minute presentation. Federighi and other executives also sought to downplay the company's struggles in AI, saying that the postponed Siri features were just a part of a broader push and that success in AI will be determined over the next several years. The reality, though, is that the delays have already had repercussions. The technology was part of a planned smart home hub that has now been pushed back as well, keeping Apple from moving into a new product category, Bloomberg has reported. The home hub is a screen-based device that can be affixed to walls or placed on a desk. The operating system for the product relies heavily on the new Siri features — and the software delays forced Apple to indefinitely postpone a hardware release that had been set for March. The larger concern is how Apple's still-nascent push into AI will affect future hardware categories. The company wants to launch smart glasses next year featuring AI-enhanced cameras that can scan the surrounding environment. But as of now, it's still reliant on OpenAI and Alphabet Inc.'s Google for image analysis. For further in the future, the company has been working on an even more ambitious Siri revamp. This would turn the assistant into an always-on device copilot that's more conversational. Apple also has teams exploring a chatbot-like app dubbed Knowledge that can tap into the open web. The chatbot project is being led by Robby Walker. He previously ran the team developing Siri, until it was removed from his responsibilities during the shake-up earlier this year. That has spurred concerns within the company over whether his team is up to the latest challenge, Bloomberg has reported. American Mid: Hampton Inn's Good-Enough Formula for World Domination New Grads Join Worst Entry-Level Job Market in Years The Spying Scandal Rocking the World of HR Software US Tariffs Threaten to Derail Vietnam's Historic Industrial Boom The SEC Pinned Its Hack on a Few Hapless Day Traders. The Full Story Is Far More Troubling ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Sign in to access your portfolio
