Economics

Trump says everyday Americans deserve a chance to buy higher-risk ‘alternative’ investments. Critics say this could lead to big losses for small investors

Years of steadily climbing coffee prices have some in this country of coffee lovers upending their habits by nixing café visits, switching to cheaper brews or foregoing it altogether.

Coffee prices in the U.S. were up 18.3% in January from a year ago, according to the latest Consumer Price Index released on Friday. Over five years, the government reported, coffee prices rose 47%.

Virtually all coffee consumed in the U.S. is imported. Though tariffs affected some imports of coffee in 2025, they ultimately were removed. Climate issues — drought in Vietnam, heavy rain in Indonesia, and hot, dry weather in Brazil — are blamed for reducing yields of coffee crops and driving up global prices.

Wendy’s is closing several hundred U.S. restaurants and increasing its focus on value after a weaker-than-expected fourth quarter.

The Dublin, Ohio-based company said Friday that its global same-store sales, or sales at locations open at least a year, fell 10% in the October-December period. That was worse than the 8.5% drop expected by analysts polled by FactSet.

U.S. same-store sales fell even further in the fourth quarter. Wendy’s said late last year that it planned to close underperforming U.S. restaurants, but it gave more details about those closures Friday.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis from North Carolina suggested Thursday he could support a compromise that would allow the Senate Banking Committee to start hearings on Kevin Warsh, Donald Trump’s nominee to chair the Federal Reserve.

“What I heard being floated could be an off-ramp,” Tillis told reporters Thursday after a meeting of Senate Republicans. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has suggested that the banking committee, rather than the Justice Department, investigate cost overruns on the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two Washington, D.C., office buildings, according to other senators at the meeting.

Tillis said last month that he would block any consideration of Warsh or any other Trump nominees to the Fed until the DOJ drops a criminal investigation of Fed chair Jerome Powell over his testimony last summer about the renovation. Tillis on Thursday reiterated that view in comments on the Senate floor.

Last year, people in the U.S. made an estimated $4.7 billion selling their plasma. Donation centers are popping up in middle-class neighborhoods, including suburban strip malls and college towns.

Exclusive: António Guterres says world’s accounting systems should place true value on the environment

The global economy must be radically transformed to stop it rewarding pollution and waste, UN secretary general António Guterres has warned.

Speaking to the Guardian after the UN hosted a meeting of leading global economists, Guterres said humanity’s future required the urgent overhaul of the world’s “existing accounting systems” he said were driving the planet to the brink of disaster.

“We must place true value on the environment and go beyond gross domestic product as a measure of human progress and wellbeing. Let us not forget that when we destroy a forest, we are creating GDP. When we overfish, we are creating GDP.”

For decades, politicians and policymakers have prioritised growth – as measured by GDP – as the overarching economic goal.

I see posts, telling that worker's productivity has increased over the years. While you might think this is good news, it is actually very bad news for us - slaves. We are slaves, we need the rich to need us. When we work efficiently, they don't need us any more. 1 person can do 10 people job, the rest 9 will be hungry, because the only way to own something is to work. They don't let you live happily without the fear of hunger, while not working because there isn't job for everybody, because why would they? They prefer dumping the food to trash, instead of giving it to us. They prefer houses staying empty, while we are begging for a house.

So, we need more ways to create the need for us. This is the only solution that works for us. Demolishing things might be one way, slowing down production can be other way.

The best way? Redistributing wealth. But I dont know how that will happen.

Amazon shares sunk more than 9% on Friday after the company’s hefty spending forecast surprised investors who were already wary that the artificial intelligence boom is at risk of becoming a bubble.

The e-commerce company on Thursday was the latest tech giant to announce plans for a massive increase in capital expenditures, after Google parent Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta all signaled they expect their spending sprees to continue.

Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta reported about $120 billion in capital expenditures in the fourth quarter alone. That figure could exceed more than $660 billion this year, the Financial Times reported, which is higher than the gross domestic product of countries like the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and Israel.

Pizza Hut plans to close 250 U.S. restaurants in the first half of this year as its parent company considers a sale of the chain.

Yum Brands said Wednesday it’s targeting underperforming Pizza Hut restaurants in its system. Pizza Hut has more than 6,000 locations in the U.S.

Louisville, Kentucky-based Yum Brands said in November it was conducting a formal review of options for Pizza Hut, which has struggled with outdated stores and growing competition. The chain’s U.S. same-store sales, or sales at locations open at least a year, fell 5% last year, Yum said.

Applications for jobless aid for the week ending Jan. 31 rose by 22,000 to 231,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s significantly more than the 211,000 new applications that analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet had forecast.

Applications for unemployment benefits are seen as representative of U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market.

A number of high-profile companies have announced job cuts in the past year, including UPS, Amazon and Dow just last week.

US job openings dropped to the lowest level in more than five years in December and data for the prior month was revised lower amid a softening in labor market conditions at the end of 2025.

Job openings, a measure of labor demand, decreased by 386,000 to 6.542m by the last day of December, the lowest level since September 2020, the labor department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or Jolts report, on Thursday.

Data for November was revised down to show 6.928m job openings instead of the previously reported 7.146m. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 7.20m unfilled jobs. Hiring increased by 172,000 positions to a still-low 5.293m in December.

States and financial bodies using modelling that ignores shocks from extreme weather and climate tipping points

Flawed economic models mean the accelerating impact of the climate crisis could lead to a global financial crash, experts warn.

Recovery would be far harder than after the 2008 financial crash, they said, as “we can’t bail out the Earth like we did the banks”.

As the world speeds towards 2C of global heating, the risks of extreme weather disasters and climate tipping points are increasing fast. But current economic models used by governments and financial institutions entirely miss such shocks, the researchers said, instead forecasting that steady economic growth will be slowed only by gradually rising average temperatures. This is because the models assume the future will behave like the past, despite the burning of fossil fuels pushing the climate system into uncharted territory.

For most of the past two decades, the majority of electric vehicle-related investments have gone to Republican-led districts, especially in the Southeast.

With the industry pulling back from electric cars and trucks, the fate of those investments is now an open question.

Jiang Xueqin, born in 1976, is a Chinese-Canadian educator, writer, historian, and geopolitical theorist based in Beijing. He is recognized for his work in education reform in China, advocating for creativity, critical thinking, and global citizenship. He holds a degree in English literature from Yale College and has held significant positions in Chinese educational institutions, including Shenzhen Middle School and Peking University High School. His writings have been published in various prominent media outlets, and he's a researcher at Harvard's Graduate School of Education and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

He also hosts the YouTube channel, Predictive History, where he analyzes geopolitical developments using historical structures and game theory, drawing inspiration from Isaac Asimov's concept of psychohistory. I’ve compiled 2 of his most important video lectures related to economics:

1. This video explores the evolution of the global economic system.
2. This video traces the evolution of global financial systems in more detail and their impact on empires.