Breaking News

Money & Markets

California Dems to investigate cause of high gas prices

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — With California drivers paying more than $6 for a gallon of gas and state officials deadlocked for months over how to provide relief, lawmakers in the state Assembly on Monday announced they would investigate oil companies they say are “abusing a historic situation to suck profits from Californians’ wallets.” Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon announced a bipartisan committee to investigate gas price gouging, with plans to question oil companies, regulators and economists to find out why California’s gas prices are consistently the highest in the ...

Fed’s aggressive rate hikes raise likelihood of a recession

WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has pledged to do whatever it takes to curb inflation, now raging at a four-decade high and defying the Fed’s efforts so far to tame it. Increasingly, it seems, doing so might require the one painful thing the Fed has sought to avoid: A ...

Wall Street tumbles on fears for economy as more rates rise

NEW YORK — Stocks tumbled on Wall Street Thursday as worries roared back to the fore that the world’s fragile economy may buckle under higher interest rates. The S&P 500 fell 3.3 percent in a widespread rout to more than reverse its blip of a 1.5 percent rally from a day before. Analysts had warned of more big swings given deep uncertainties about whether the Federal Reserve and other central banks can tiptoe the narrow path of hiking interest rates enough to get inflation under control but not so much that they cause a recession. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 2.4 percent ...

Beauty icon Revlon files for bankruptcy

NEW YORK — Revlon, a cosmetics maker that broke racial barriers and dictated beauty trends for much of the last century, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The company has been a mainstay on store shelves since its founding 90 years ago in New York City, overseeing a stable of ...

Fed attacks inflation with its largest rate hike since 1994

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve intensified its fight against high inflation on Wednesday, raising its key interest rate by three-quarters of a point — the largest bump since 1994 — and signaling more rate hikes ahead as it tries to cool off the U.S. economy without causing a ...

Biden focuses on workers as high inflation remains a risk

PHILADELPHIA — President Joe Biden told the largest federation of labor unions on Tuesday that he’s working to rebuild the U.S. economy around workers, an attempt to draw a contrast with Republicans who have increasingly attracted blue-collar votes. “We should encourage unions,” ...