NASA has released images of Hurricane Laura in the south and of the California wildfires, which bring the scope of the weather events into focus.
And both are connected to climate change, according to Paul Ullrich, associate professor of regional and global climate modeling at the University of California Davis.
Next month, Vanguard will transition its $125.3 billion Prime Money Market Fund into a government money market fund and rename it the Vanguard Cash Reserves Federal Money Market Fund.
Prime fund investors will be eligible for lower fees, as Vanguard will reduce the investment minimum for its Prime Admiral Shares from $5 million to $3,000, effective Aug. 27.
Vanguard isn’t alone. Northern Trust also closed a money market fund earlier this year.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed that Congress will get President Donald Trump’s income tax returns from the next Treasury Department secretary if Democratic nominee Joe Biden is elected to the White House.
Trump, who is seeking reelection, has refused to release his income tax returns to the public, despite other presidents having done so for the past four-plus decades.
As the government rushed out stimulus checks to millions of Americans this spring, some were disappointed to find the payments fell short of what they expected.
Now, the IRS is making catch-up payments. This week, it added 50,000 people who had money withheld because of their spouse’s unpaid child support to the list of people who will get catch-up payments.
Mortgage applications to purchase a home rose 4% last week from the previous week and were a remarkable 21% higher than a year ago, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
That was the ninth consecutive week of gains and the highest volume in more than 11 years.
The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages decreased to 3.30% from 3.38%.
Tempus was formed to help identify cures for a variety of illnesses, from cancer to depression and now Covid-19.
The health-care company conducts genomic tests and analyzes clinical data in a patient’s electronic health-care records, anything from medical imaging to a doctor’s handwritten notes.
Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb is on the Tempus board of directors, and the company is valued at $5 billion by investors.
“When you get down into the weeds of this market, what you see is that there are a lot more losers than there are winners,” CNBC’s Jim Cramer said.
“That’s the nature of the Covid economy, and now that there’s no one in Washington willing to play gardener, maybe it’s only a matter of time before the weeds overrun the entire patch,” the “Mad Money” host said.
“We have a bizarre situation where some companies are doing very well,” Cramer said, “but a lot of other companies are getting crushed.”
Indonesia’s currency, the rupiah, is the worst-performing Asian currency so far this year partly due to investor concerns over its central bank helping to finance a larger government deficit.
The “debt burden sharing” arrangement involves the central bank buying 397.6 trillion Indonesian rupiah ($26.97 billion) worth of government-issued bonds to fund increased spending to fight the coronavirus.
The program has been likened to an unconventional tool called quantitative easing, which has until recently been used only by major central banks in developed economies such as the U.S. and Europe.
Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy, recorded its first economic contraction in more than two decades as it struggles to contain the coronavirus outbreak.
Digital lending start-up Blend raised $75 million in fresh funding at a valuation of almost $1.7 billion, a jump of more than 70% from its previous round a year earlier, CNBC has learned.
Refinance application volumes jolted more than 1,000% higher in March, and purchase applications climbed by more than 100% every month since May, according to company figures.
The Series F funding round was led by Canapi Ventures, a fintech VC fund that is backed by the banking industry and led in part by Gene Ludwig, a former U.S. regulator who founded the Promontory Financial Group.
The start-up, launched in 2013 with a free-trading model, has been mimicked by incumbent brokerage firms including Charles Schwab, Fidelity and TD Ameritrade.
Retail brokers are seeing record new account openings this year despite the pandemic.
In May, Robinhood brought in $280 million of fresh capital, boosting its valuation to $8.3 billion, even after its trading technology stumbled badly during the coronavirus crash.
