Business & Economy

Priya Kanth

Senior Business & Economy Reporter, Trestlewire

B.A. Economics, University of Delhi; M.S. Finance, NYU Stern · Chicago, IL

Stories: 56
Latest: October 30, 2026

I was an equity research analyst for five years and have been a financial reporter since 2000. I covered the end of the dot-com bubble from a markets desk, spent the autumn of 2008 reading bank filings at two in the morning in Chicago, and have written about every Federal Reserve rate cycle since. The lesson from all of it is short: the number comes first, and the story is the explanation for the number.

I studied economics at the University of Delhi and finance at NYU Stern. I trust a data release. I do not trust an adjective.

Stories by Priya Kanth

Business

Alphabet and Amazon spent $127 billion on capex in one quarter. Wall Street punished one far harder

Alphabet's free cash flow turned negative again and Amazon's trailing figure hit negative $42.4 billion. A 3 percent search miss, not the spending, separated the stock reactions.

Oct 30

Business

The Fed Held at 3.75-4% on a 10-2 Vote, With Two Officials Wanting a Hike. Core CPI Is 2.6%

Lisa Cook cast her first dissent and Beth Hammack, who also dissented in July, her latest, both for a quarter-point increase. Headline inflation is 3.7 percent, but core is 2.6, and traders put December hike odds at 82.6 percent.

Oct 29

Business

Income Tax Receipts Rose $189 Billion in Fiscal 2026, Corporate Fell $71 Billion. Paychecks Explain 57 Percent

Treasury data shows withholding added $107.6 billion of the individual increase. Payments outside withholding added $95.8 billion, and corporate refunds rose 79 percent.

Oct 28

Business

Fed's Debit Fee Cap Is 21 Cents. Its Own Data Put Processing Cost at 4.1. An Appeals Court Just Struck the Rule Down

The Eighth Circuit ruled the Fed let fixed costs into Regulation II's flat cap and ordered a rewrite. Covered banks collected an average of 23 cents a swipe in 2023.

Oct 27

Business

The Viral 43% Wage Share Is Not a New Low: It Was 42.1% in 2025, Same as 2013

A chart claiming wages hit their lowest share of U.S. income since 1929 is topping Reddit. BEA's annual data shows a 9.5-point slide from 1970 to 2013, then a flat floor.

Oct 26

Business

Amex's 10-Q Calls Its $336 Million Restructuring 'Efficiency.' The CFO Called It AI Prep

The filing says a $982 million asset-sale gain paid for efficiency initiatives. The AI framing and the 5% headcount figure come from the CFO's interview and press accounts.

Oct 25

Business

Black Unemployment Jumped a Full Point to 7.0 Percent as Participation Rose 0.9 Points

The rate is 1.94 times the white rate, but it is lower than a year ago, and more Black adults started job hunting in September than found work.

Oct 24

Business

McKinney barber school started by salon owners who were tired of retraining licensed hires

Expert Barber Beauty Academy in McKinney was started by salon and barbershop owners who kept retraining licensed hires. Students now practice on walk-in clients under an instructor.

Oct 23

Business

Jobless Claims Hit 194,000 While Payrolls Stall: Almost No Firing, Almost No Hiring

Claims sit near a 57-year low, but September payrolls rose only 29,000 and 822,000 earlier job gains have since been revised away, by one tally.

Oct 23

Business

Meta Calls It a 2-for-1 Split. It Is a Non-Voting Share Class, Announced as Free Cash Flow Hit Negative $2.12 Billion

Meta's third-quarter revenue rose 26 percent to $64.60 billion, but capital spending of $34.91 billion topped operating cash flow. The new Class C stock lets it raise equity without diluting Zuckerberg's 56.1 percent vote.

Oct 22

Business

San Francisco Rents Are Up 25.4 Percent by Zumper and 2.6 Percent by BLS. The Gap Is Who Is Moving

Zumper's asking-rent data and the BLS rent index for the Bay Area metro measure different renters. The mayor's emergency package targets only one of them.

Oct 21

Business

Builder Confidence Fell to 29, a 14-Year Low, and the West Dropped 10 Points to 20

The NAHB index hit its lowest reading since June 2012 as 43 percent of builders cut prices, the highest share in the 2020-2026 period. The 30-year mortgage rate sits at 7.40 percent.

Oct 20

Business

China's Treasury Holdings Fell to $590.7 Billion. Canada and Belgium Gained $60 Billion, Which Covers Only Part of It

Reported holdings are down $109 billion in a year, but Japan's fell by more, and Treasury says its data track custodians, not owners.

Oct 19

Business

Net Interest Hit $1.05 Trillion in Fiscal 2026, Up 8.4 Percent. September Put Medicare Back Ahead of It.

Treasury's final statement shows interest took about 19 cents of every revenue dollar and equaled 53 percent of the $1.99 trillion deficit. Revenue grew 3.2 percent.

Oct 18

Business

Producer Prices Rose 1.3 Percent, More Than Double the Forecast. Core Is Up 5 Percent While Consumer Core Is 2.6.

The September jump in wholesale prices went beyond gasoline. Seller margins and services rose too, and producer inflation now runs far ahead of consumer inflation going into the Fed's October 28 meeting.

Oct 16

Business

Pay Rose 0.1 Percent in September. Prices Rose 0.6. Gasoline Did Over Half the Damage.

Real hourly earnings fell 0.5 percent in one month and are down 0.7 percent from a year ago. Core prices, outside food and energy, rose 0.3 percent for the second straight month.

Oct 15

Business

Kroger's 3,000 Cuts Hit 37 Percent of Corporate Staff but 0.7 Percent of Workers. Sales Grew 0.2 Percent.

The grocer has not said how many of the roles AI replaces or what the cuts save. Its September filing shows slowing sales and an earnings forecast that did not move.

Oct 14

Business

Median Family Income Rose 7 Percent. The Share of Families Behind on Loan Payments Rose From 12.2 to 19.6.

The Fed's 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances found income gains at the middle and bottom, and the highest late-payment share in its table of surveys back to 2013. Wealth gains went mostly to families that already held assets.

Oct 12

Business

Consumer Sentiment Sits Near a Record Low. Half of Top Stockholders Still Plan to Spend as Usual.

The Michigan index hit 46.3 while jobless claims sat near a 57-year low. The survey's own spending table shows the gap runs through who owns stock: 50 percent of top holders plan to spend as usual, against 18 percent of non-owners.

Oct 11

Business

The Deficit Hit $2.0 Trillion. Net Interest Ran Ahead of Both Medicare and Defense Spending.

The Congressional Budget Office put fiscal 2026 at $218 billion worse than 2025. Through August, corporate tax receipts were down 24 percent and interest costs passed $1 trillion.

Oct 10

Business

Tariffs Added 2.9 Points to Goods Inflation by February, the NY Fed Finds. The Rate Fades, the Price Level Stays.

A New York Fed paper estimates tariffs raised annual inflation in 67 goods categories by 2.9 points at the February peak. Its own projection has that effect near zero by August, while prices stay about 2 percent higher.

Oct 9

Business

The AI Visibility Tool Built for Main Street, Not the Fortune 500

Optimize My GEO started as a hands-on agency for local clients and became software that measures how often AI assistants recommend a business, then writes the fixes. It is aimed at the small and mid-sized businesses enterprise tools skip.

Oct 8

Business

The 10-Year Treasury Yield Hit a 24-Year High. Freddie Mac Called the Housing Market Supported.

Benchmark yields matched levels last seen in 2002, pushed up partly by AI-era debt issuance and a Fed still signaling another hike. Freddie Mac's 30-year mortgage rate climbed to 7.28 percent the same week, and Realtor.com says that has already added more than $200 to a typical buyer's monthly payment.

Oct 8

Business

The Fed Is Cutting Bank Supervision From 12 Districts to 5. Bowman Says the Old System Let Examiners Dodge Blame.

Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman tied the overhaul directly to Silicon Valley Bank's 2023 collapse, and the plan also raises a community-bank asset threshold frozen since 2011.

Oct 7

Business

A Fresno Big Mac Costs 21 Percent More Two Miles Away. A New Lawsuit Says the Algorithm Is Why.

A proposed class action filed October 2 in federal court in Chicago accuses McDonald's of using one AI pricing system across nearly 14,000 U.S. restaurants to coordinate prices rather than compete on them.

Oct 6

Business

Lorie Logan Wants the Fed to Raise Rates 50 More Basis Points. The Market Just Priced Out an October Hike.

Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan, one of three officials who pushed for a September rate increase before the rest of the committee agreed, said on October 1 that the Fed needs to go another half point further. A day later, a weak September jobs report cut the odds of an October hike from near 70 percent to under 20 percent.

Oct 5

Business

Anthropic Wants a $2 Trillion IPO. Its Last Private Round Priced It at $965 Billion.

Anthropic's confidential prospectus shows a $42 billion net loss and $4.6 billion in 2025 revenue. Billionaire investor Chamath Palihapitiya says the real number is closer to $1 trillion.

Oct 4

Business

Fed Hike Odds for October Fell 45 Points in a Week. December's Odds Barely Moved.

Prediction markets cut the odds of an October 28 Federal Reserve rate increase from 63 percent to 18 percent after employers added just 29,000 jobs in September. December's hike odds still sit at 73 percent, the same month the Fed's own policymakers projected one more increase.

Oct 3

Business

Paramount Sold $41 Billion in Bonds. They Lost Value in One Day.

The debt behind Paramount Skydance's $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery priced at par on September 30 and traded at 95 cents by Thursday afternoon. The sale landed directly in the worst quarter for Treasury yields since 1994.

Oct 2

Business

Inflation Cooled to 3.4 Percent in August. Treasury Yields Hit a 24-Year High the Same Week.

A government methodology change did most of the work on the Fed's favorite inflation number. Bond investors are not buying the all-clear: the 10-year Treasury yield just hit its highest level since 2002.

Oct 1

Business

The US Banned $967 Million in Canadian Goods. 87 Percent of It Is Alcohol.

The ban took effect September 29 under a Depression-era statute no president had used to block imports outright before this year. It covers about a quarter of one percent of last year's trade with Canada, but a Quebec motorcycle maker and a small Ontario distillery are the ones absorbing it.

Sep 30

Business

S&P Cut Lucky Strike to B-Minus Over 8.6x Leverage. Dave & Buster's Posted a Loss the Same Week.

A credit downgrade and a surprise quarterly loss landed three days apart this month at two entertainment chains. Paired with a sector-wide bond distress ratio of 6.7 percent, the numbers point to consumers cutting leisure spending before it shows up in official retail data.

Sep 29

Business

The Fed Wants Stablecoin Reserves to Mature in 93 Days. Redemptions Get Two.

Two rules proposed September 24 would force Fed-supervised stablecoin issuers to hold reserves in cash and short-dated Treasury bills while promising customers their dollars back within two business days, a liquidity match regulators are building in from the start.

Sep 28

Business

DoorDash's Average Underpayment Was $7.70. The Bill Came to $131.5 Million.

New York City's Department of Consumer and Worker Protection announced a $131.5 million settlement with DoorDash on September 22, covering more than 260,000 delivery workers underpaid, unpaid, or paid late since 2022. DoorDash blames technical bugs. It is the largest settlement of its kind in city history, breaking a record set nine months earlier.

Sep 27

Business

California's Oldest Winery Quadrupled Its Profit. It Still Filed for $37 Million in Debt.

Gundlach Bundschu cut its workforce nearly in half and grew earnings four times over since 2023. The declaration its CEO filed in bankruptcy court says the real problem was a $11.6 million purchase made two months before COVID, not the export boycott squeezing other California wineries.

Sep 26

Business

Nonbank SBA Lenders Default at Nearly 15 Percent. The Agency Hasn't Inspected Them Since 2023.

A federal watchdog found two lending companies responsible for most of $1.3 billion in defaulted SBA loans, while SBA disputes its own inspector general's numbers and hasn't run a safety exam on these lenders in over two years.

Sep 25

Business

New Grads From AI-Exposed Majors Are Earning 13 Percent Less. Economists Can't Agree Why.

A Census Bureau working paper and a separate Dallas Fed study both tie the pay gap to a major's exposure to automation. A Stanford Review analysis blames the Fed's rate hikes and a 2022 tax rule instead. Tulane graduate Jack Zemke needed an AI side project, not a diploma, to get noticed.

Sep 24

Business

A National Chain Flew a Rep to Charlotte to Buy This Restoration Company. The Owners Said No.

As private equity rolls up independent restoration operators nationwide, Statewide Restoration turned down a buyout to stay family owned, betting hands-on service still beats scale.

Sep 23

Business

The Fed Hiked Rates 12-0. Two Months Earlier, the Vote Was 9-3 Against It.

The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate to 3.75-4 percent on September 16, its first increase since 2023. The move reverses a July vote where three regional bank presidents were outvoted for wanting the same increase early. Chair Kevin Warsh left his own rate projection blank for the second straight meeting.

Sep 23

Business

Target Collected a $994 Million Tariff Refund. Small Importers Are Still Waiting on Thousands.

The Supreme Court voided 2025's IEEPA tariffs in February, opening up roughly $166 billion in refunds. Companies with a customs compliance staff are collecting fast. Businesses without one are stuck in line.

Sep 22

Business

Data-Center Spending Overtook Home Building for the First Time in Q2

Real spending on data centers and other information-processing equipment hit 752 billion dollars in the second quarter, edging past the 748 billion spent on housing, the first time that has happened in a series the government has tracked since the early 1950s.

Sep 21

Business

Angle Health's $600 Million Raise Is Really a $200 Million Raise

The small-business health benefits startup hit a $2.7 billion valuation this month, but $400 million of the headline figure is a tender offer buying out existing shareholders, not new cash for the company. A quieter number in the same release, a premium gap of 5 to 7 percent versus an 18 percent industry median, matters more to actual employers.

Sep 21

Business

US and China Discuss Tariff Cuts on $30 Billion in Trade Before Trump Hosts Xi

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met China's Vice Premier He Lifeng in New York on September 20, four days before a Washington summit, with a trade truce, AI guardrails and rare earths all on the table and expectations for a breakthrough low.

Sep 20

Business

Diesel Hits a Record $6.43 a Gallon as the Strait of Hormuz Stays Shut

The nationwide average broke a four-year-old high on September 18, gasoline is up $1.53 since the Iran war began, and Bank of America says a durable deal before the midterms is unlikely.

Sep 20

Business

Lennar's Margins Slide to 15.8% as Housing Incentives Hit 12% of Sale Price

The homebuilder's third-quarter results show what it now costs to keep selling houses: a 52 percent profit drop, a 9 percent order decline, and a CEO who says almost half of prospective buyers cannot qualify for a mortgage.

Sep 20

Business

Trump Has Made 28,700 Stock Trades Since Taking Office, More Than All of Congress Combined

In 17 months, the president's investment accounts logged more individual stock trades than the entire House and Senate combined, a pace a former Bush administration ethics lawyer calls a financial conflict of interest.

Sep 20

Business

The S&P 500 Is Up 27.6% Under Trump's Second Term. It Was Up 32.4% at This Point Under Obama.

Twenty months into Trump's second term, the S&P 500, Dow, and Nasdaq are all ahead of where Biden's market stood but behind both Obama's and Trump's own first term, according to Axios. A near 20 percent April 2025 tariff selloff and a sharp earnings rebound explain most of the gap.

Sep 20

Business

Saudi Stocks Fell 0.3% and Qatar's Fell 1.1% After Houthis Claimed They Hit Riyadh

Gulf markets opened lower Sunday after Yemen's Houthis said they struck sensitive targets near the Saudi capital with missiles and drones. Brent crude has already climbed from near $96 to above $103 a barrel since April as the wider Iran war has spread into Yemen and the Red Sea.

Sep 20

Business

Stocks Plunge After Trump Unveils Sweeping Tariffs on Nearly Every U.S. Trading Partner

NEW YORK, April 3 - U.S.

Apr 3

Business

Chinese AI Model DeepSeek Rattles Tech Stocks as Nvidia Loses a Record Amount of Market Value in One Day

NEW YORK, Jan.

Jan 27

Business

Silicon Valley Bank Shut Down by Regulators, FDIC Takes Control in Largest U.S. Bank Failure Since 2008

SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 10 - Silicon Valley Bank was closed by California regulators on Friday and placed under the control of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the largest U.S.

Mar 10

Business

Ever Given Freed From Suez Canal After Six Days, Traffic Starts to Move

SUEZ, Egypt, March 29 - The container ship Ever Given was freed on Monday after six days wedged across the Suez Canal, ending a blockage that stopped traffic through one of the world's busiest waterways and left hundreds of vessels waiting at either end.

Mar 29

Business

UK Votes to Leave the EU, Pound Plunges to Lowest Level Since 1985

LONDON, June 24 - Britain voted to leave the European Union, ending 43 years of membership, and sent the pound sharply lower against the dollar in overnight trading.

Jun 24

Business

Facebook Prices IPO at $38 a Share, Closes Barely Above Offer After Nasdaq Delay

MENLO PARK, Calif., May 18 - Facebook began trading on the Nasdaq on Friday, closing its first day as a public company at $38.23 a share, barely above its $38 offer price after a delayed start and a late day rush to keep the stock from falling below it.

May 18

Business

S&P Strips U.S. of Top AAA Credit Rating for the First Time, Citing Weak Debt Plan and Politics

NEW YORK, Aug.

Aug 6

Business

Lehman Brothers Files for Bankruptcy as Wall Street Braces for the Fallout

NEW YORK, Sept.

Sep 15