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US wholesale price data for April points to easing inflation pressures
WASHINGTON (AP) — Wholesale prices in the United States rose modestly last month, the latest sign that inflationary pressures may be easing more than a year after the Federal Reserve unleashed an aggressive campaign of steadily higher interest rates. From March to April, the government’s producer price index rose just 0.2% after falling 0.4% from February to March, held down by falling prices for food, transportation and warehousing. Compared with a year earlier, wholesale prices rose just 2.3%, the 10th straight slowdown and the lowest figure since January 2021. Lower energy prices helped slow the annual inflation rate. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core wholesale inflation rose 0.2% from March and 3.2% from 12 months earlier.
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IRS takes steps to protect identity of workers in effort to deter personal threats
WASHINGTON (AP) — In an effort to deter threats aimed at IRS employees, the agency said Thursday it will start limiting workers’ personal identifying information on communications with taxpayers. The change begins next month. The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration said in a report this week that it was “concerned that taxpayers and anti-government or anti-tax groups with malevolent intent may use the Internet or social media to track down and identify IRS employees, their families, their homes, and personal information to threaten, intimidate, or locate them for physical violence.” The IRS said it will remove workers’ first names from communications, leaving their last names and respective Mr., Ms., or a gender-neutral title.
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Elon Musk says he’s found a woman to lead Twitter as new CEO
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Elon Musk said Thursday he has found a new CEO for Twitter, or X Corp. as it’s now called — and it’s a woman. He did not name her but said she will be starting in about six weeks. Musk, who bought Twitter last fall and has been running it since, has long insisted he is not the company’s permanent CEO. The Tesla billionaire said in a tweet Thursday that his role will transition to being Twitter’s executive chairman and chief technology officer. In mid-November, just a few weeks after buying the social media platform for $44 billion, he told a Delaware court that he does not want to be the CEO of any company.
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Average long-term US mortgage rate falls to 6.35% this week, lowest level in 5 weeks
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The average rate on a long-term U.S. home loan is down to the lowest level in five weeks, welcome news for house hunters facing a market constrained by persistently high prices and a near-historic low number of homes for sale. Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the average rate on the benchmark 30-year home loan inched down to 6.35% from 6.39% last week. The average rate a year ago was 5.30%. The average benchmark rate has now edged lower seven of the last nine weeks since reaching a high for this year of 6.73% in early March.
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Stock market today: Wall Street edges lower following inflation data, drops for Disney, banks
NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street edged lower Thursday, weighed down by a sharp drop for The Walt Disney Co. and flaring fears about the health of some U.S. banks. The S&P 500 lost 7.02 points, or 0.2%, to 4,130.62, with two out of every three stocks in the index falling. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 221.82, or 0.7%, to 33,309.51, while the Nasdaq composite rose 22.06, or 0.2%, to 12,328.51. Disney was one of the heaviest weights dragging on the market. It dropped 8.7% after it said it lost streaming subscribers in the U.S. and Canada last quarter, surprising analysts.
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Weekly US jobless claims highest since 2021, but companies avoid risk of being caught short-handed
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits last week rose to its highest level in a year-and-a-half, though jobs remain plentiful by historical standards even as companies cut costs as the economy slows. Applications for jobless aid for the week ending May 6 rose by 22,000 to 264,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s up from the previous week’s 242,000 and is the most since November of 2021. The weekly number of applications is seen as roughly representative of the number of U.S. layoffs. Many employers appear to have put a premium on retaining workers after some of them were caught short-handed by the rapid post-COVID-19 economic recovery.
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Tesla shouldn’t call driving system Autopilot because humans are still in control, Buttigieg says
WASHINGTON (AP) — Tesla shouldn’t be calling its partially automated driving system Autopilot because the cars can’t drive themselves, the top U.S. transportation official says. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says he’s concerned about Tesla’s marketing of the system, which is under investigation by his department in connection with crashes that have caused at least 14 deaths. “I don’t think that something should be called, for example, an Autopilot, when the fine print says you need to have your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road at all times,” Buttigieg said in an interview with The Associated Press. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, an agency within Buttigieg’s department, has sent investigative teams to more than 30 crashes since 2016 in which Teslas suspected of operating on Autopilot or its more sophisticated automated Full Self-Driving system have struck pedestrians, motorcyclists, semi trailers and parked emergency vehicles.
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Why Biden is wary of using the 14th Amendment to address the debt limit crisis
WASHINGTON (AP) — If the fight with Congress over raising the government’s debt limit is such a dire threat, why doesn’t President Joe Biden just raise the borrowing ceiling himself? It’s theoretically possible, but he’s skeptical. The administration has been searching for possible ways to allow the U.S. to keep borrowing if Congress can’t come to an agreemen t. One potential option Biden and his advisers have been looking at: Would he have the power to go around lawmakers by relying on the Constitution’s 14th Amendment in a last-ditch move to avert default? Maybe. Biden hasn’t ruled it out, but he sees it as a problematic, untested legal theory to ensure the country can meet its financial obligations.
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The S&P 500 fell 7.02 points, or 0.2%, to 4,130.62. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 221.82 points, or 0.7%, to 33,309.51. The Nasdaq composite rose 22.06 points, or 0.2% to 12,328.51. The Russell 2000 index of smaller companies lost 14.81 points, or 0.8%, to 1,744.71.
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