Money & Power

AP reports that U.S. prices have risen faster than paychecks over the prior 12 months, with fuel, groceries, health care and housing costs putting pressure on households ahead of the November midterms. It combines reported prices and economic indicators with interviews in competitive districts.

The strongest household example is the reported cost of filling a Ford F-150: about $100, up roughly $30 from a year earlier. The story also reports diesel-price effects on farm and shipping costs and describes the political pressure from tariffs and the Iran war.

Reuters reports that household wealth in the United States rose 16.5 percent, or roughly $26 trillion, from the end of the Biden administration through the second quarter of 2026, but the least wealthy half of households received less than $500 billion of that gain. The top 1 percent was the only group to increase its share of national wealth over the period.

At the same time, tariffs, energy shocks, elevated mortgage rates, and fast-rising prices for salient goods are squeezing households that rely primarily on wages. Schneider includes important counterevidence: lower-income spending has held up better than a simple K-shaped narrative predicts, and New York Fed research has not yet found a broad household-credit crisis.

Anthropic's IPO filing shows that 47 percent of its 2025 sales—$2.16 billion—flowed through the cloud marketplaces of Amazon and Google, which are simultaneously investors, computing suppliers, distributors and potential competitors. Anthropic paid those marketplaces $351 million in fees.

The filing reports $4.6 billion in 2025 revenue, more than $8 billion in operating losses, $54.6 billion in non-cancelable hosting and compute commitments at year-end, and more than $417 billion in longer-term commitments by early 2026. Two customers each accounted for 12 percent of revenue, making the prospectus unusually concrete about the dependency structure beneath the AI boom.

ProPublica examines how the U.S. income-tax system treats wages and increases in asset wealth differently, allowing extremely wealthy asset owners to experience enormous gains in economic resources while reporting comparatively little taxable income. The investigation presents this primarily as a consequence of legal realization rules rather than simply illegal evasion.

Using confidential IRS records and Forbes wealth estimates, the reporters calculate that the twenty-five richest Americans gained an estimated $401 billion from 2014 through 2018 while paying $13.6 billion in federal income taxes. ProPublica calls that a 3.4 percent true tax rate, a measure that includes unrealized appreciation and is not the same as a statutory effective-income-tax rate. The analysis also documents the buy, borrow, die strategy while acknowledging the limits of wealth estimates and the distinction between taxes legally owed and broader questions of tax design.

The Bank of England explains that most money in a modern economy is created when commercial banks make loans. A new loan creates a matching deposit in the borrower’s account; banks are not simply lending out money previously deposited by savers, and the process is not a mechanical multiplication of central-bank reserves. When borrowers repay principal, that bank-created money is extinguished.

Banks cannot create money without limit. Lending is constrained by profitability, capital and liquidity requirements, the demand and creditworthiness of borrowers, and monetary policy. The article also explains how central banks influence money creation through interest rates and, in unusual conditions, through asset purchases such as quantitative easing.

Lina Khan argues that modern antitrust law's emphasis on short-term prices and consumer welfare can fail to detect the power of dominant digital platforms. Amazon's strategy of prioritizing growth over near-term profit, she writes, allowed the company to sustain losses, price below cost and expand across markets in ways that a price-centered test may interpret as beneficial even while the underlying market structure becomes less competitive.

The article examines the power Amazon gains by operating both a marketplace and the infrastructure on which other businesses depend, including access to seller data and the ability to favor its own products and services. Khan considers two responses: restoring a structural approach to antitrust that limits conflicts and market concentration, or treating dominant platforms as common carriers with duties of neutrality and nondiscrimination.

Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman set out how a progressive annual tax on very large fortunes could be designed for the United States. They address the central implementation questions: which assets and liabilities count, how difficult-to-price holdings would be valued, how the tax would interact with existing income and estate taxes, and how reporting and enforcement could limit avoidance and evasion.

The authors argue that modern information reporting, including the reach of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, gives the United States tools that earlier European wealth taxes lacked. They estimate that a well-enforced tax could raise substantial revenue and reduce wealth concentration, while acknowledging that the result depends heavily on valuation rules, enforcement capacity and the behavioral response of wealthy households—assumptions that other economists have challenged.

Pew Research Center pairs Federal Reserve wealth statistics with a nationally representative survey of 5,166 U.S. adults conducted August 24–30, 2026. The report examines income and wealth inequality alongside how Americans explain those gaps and what they think should be done.

The wealth divide remains substantial, but the report notes that the gap was wider in 2016 than in 2022. Its survey captures both measured economic patterns and public views, offering a snapshot of how people understand distribution and opportunity.

Carl Shapiro and Ali Yurukoglu review evidence on competition in the United States across market concentration, markups, business dynamism and other measures. They find that aggregate indicators do not support a simple, one-word verdict about the whole economy: conclusions differ by measure, time period and market.

The review argues for looking closely at how competition works in particular industries rather than treating firm size or concentration alone as decisive. The evidence raises important questions about market power while leaving meaningful uncertainty about the broad trend.

Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority proposed lower access fees and fewer technical barriers for rival contactless payment services using Apple’s iPhone technology. The CMA says contactless payments now account for 39% of UK payments, while more than 60% of adults use a digital wallet. The proposal would let competitors access the NFC and secure-element functions; a consultation runs to November 17 before a final decision.

The CMA’s published proposal, its market figures and Apple’s response define a direct test of whether the smartphone platform owner can set access conditions in a fast-growing payment market. Apple argues that its current approach protects sensitive card credentials and that a mandated alternative may lower privacy and security protections; the proposal is not a final order, and privacy/security tradeoffs require technical assessment.

GAO's state-level analysis finds private health insurance markets remained concentrated in 2024 compared with 2011, with most enrollees choosing among a small number of insurers. Its interactive data lets readers compare individual, small-group and large-group markets across states.

The report also records a countertrend: individual-market concentration eased somewhat between 2020 and 2024. Concentration can weaken consumer choice and bargaining, but the report describes market structure rather than estimating the causal effect on premiums or care quality.

The report assembles data from proprietary sources to trace U.S. private equity since the 1980s. Its account describes a shift from corporate raiding toward acquisition of Main Street businesses, industry consolidation, and “shadow ownership” through complex holding structures.

The authors argue these roles can reduce the visibility and contestability of ownership, especially where the same firms acquire competitors or essential local businesses. The report provides a structural map of private equity’s reach rather than a firm-by-firm finding of unlawful conduct.

Finkelstein and Skinner revisit the long-standing finding that U.S. regions with higher medical utilization often do not achieve better population health. They synthesize newer evidence showing that both provider-side supply and patient-side demand shape regional spending, complicating the older conclusion that high-spending areas simply contain easily removable waste.

The authors find substantial productivity variation across providers but much less certainty about why entire regions differ. Their policy conclusion is disciplined: large efficiency gains may be possible, but achieving them requires identifying the organizational and market mechanisms that produce better health rather than assuming spending cuts alone will reproduce high-performing care.