Author: News Room

The path of interest rates over the next year doesn’t just affect the cost of mortgages and car loans. It also makes it more expensive for the federal government to borrow.And in recent years, that borrowing has become very expensive.Interest payments on government debt have risen from 1.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2015 to an estimated 3.2 percent in 2025, according to the Congressional Budget Office, topping the previous highs from the 1980s. That’s $952 billion — more than the budget of the Department of Defense.According to the nonpartisan budget scorekeeper, interest payments are forecast to continue rising,…

In technology, many entrepreneurs get only one defining act. Liang Wenfeng, the founder of DeepSeek, is already on his second.The engineer, described by colleagues as introspective, first made his mark in China’s investment world in the late 2010s, cofounding a hedge fund that used artificial-intelligence models to deliver strong returns and attracted billions of dollars in capital.Buoyed by profits and wary of Beijing’s tightening grip on speculative trading, Mr. Liang pivoted in 2023. He poured money into artificial intelligence, betting on A.I. chips and assembling a team to build China’s answer to the Silicon Valley front-runner OpenAI.Now, just two years…

The Food and Drug Administration has upgraded a recall of 6,344 bags of Lay’s Classic Potato Chips to its highest level of severity, warning of potentially serious or even deadly consequences from consuming the product. But if you’re not getting your chips in Oregon or Washington State, you have little to worry about.Frito-Lay issued the initial recall last month of some of its 13-ounce bags of Lay’s Classic Potato Chips because they could contain “undeclared milk.”On Monday, the Food and Drug Administration upgraded it to a Class I recall, according to the agency, which is a warning that consumption of…

The Federal Reserve is set to stand pat at its first gathering of 2025, pressing pause on interest rate cuts as policymakers take stock of how the world’s largest economy is faring.After lowering interest rates by a full percentage point last year — starting with a larger-than-usual half-point cut in September — central bank officials are at a turning point.A strong labor market has afforded the Fed room to move more slowly on reducing rates as it seeks to finish off its fight against high inflation. Officials see the economy as being in a “good place” and their policy settings…

Howard Lutnick, a wealthy donor who President Trump has picked to lead the Commerce Department, will face questioning about his financial holdings and potential conflicts of interest in a nomination hearing before the Senate Wednesday.Mr. Lutnick is the chief executive and chairman at Cantor Fitzgerald, a Wall Street brokerage, and holds executive positions at BGC, another brokerage, and Newmark Group, a commercial real estate firm. Mr. Lutnick has promised to resign the positions if nominated.Through Cantor and his other firms, Mr. Lutnick has acquired executive positions and holdings in a stunning array of companies. Financial disclosures filed by Mr. Lutnick…

Frontier Airlines on Wednesday said that it offered to buy Spirit Airlines three years after the failure of a previous proposed deal. Frontier valued its stock and cash offer at more than $2.1 billion, far less than the $2.9 billion deal that the airlines had announced in early 2022.Spirit abandoned the earlier agreement in favor of a counteroffer from JetBlue Airways, which was eventually blocked in court by the Justice Department last year. After a string of setbacks, including a failure to renegotiate its debt, Spirit filed for bankruptcy in November.This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Rachel Reeves, Britain’s top finance official, on Wednesday laid out plans to revive the country’s flagging economy, including supporting the addition of a third runway at Heathrow Airport, after her first budget rocked business confidence.An additional runway is “badly needed” to increase trade and investment, Ms. Reeves said in a speech to business executives. The debate about whether to expand the airport, which would be one of the largest infrastructure projects in Europe, has been running for more than two decades. “As our only hub airport, Heathrow is in a unique position and we cannot duck the decision any longer,”…

When a small Chinese company called DeepSeek revealed that it had created an A.I. system that could match leading A.I. products made in the United States, the news was greeted in many circles as a warning that China was closing the gap in the global race to build artificial intelligence.DeepSeek also said it built its new A.I. technology more cost effectively and with fewer hard-to-get computers chips than its American competitors, shocking an industry that had come to believe that bigger and better A.I. would cost billions and billions of dollars. But A.I. experts inside the tech giant Meta saw…

Jordan Jacobs, an investor at the venture capital firm Radical Ventures, has spent the last few days fielding half a dozen calls from his firm’s investors. All of them wanted to know about DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence app that topped the app stores over the weekend. DeepSeek had created a powerful A.I. model with far less money than most A.I. experts thought possible, upending many assumptions underlying the development of the fast-evolving technology. To calm the panic, Mr. Jacobs said he explained to his investors that Radical Ventures had long invested in more efficient A.I. models, similar to the…

As President Trump argues the acquisition of Greenland is key to the economic security of the United States, he is flanked by wealthy investors who have eyed the island as a potentially lucrative venue for mining metals and minerals.Among them is his commerce secretary nominee, Howard Lutnick, who has a financial stake in the island’s mining promise through an investment his financial firm, Cantor Fitzgerald, holds in a company called Critical Metals Corp., securities filings show. Critical Metals plans to start the mining process as soon as 2026, according to company executives.Mr. Lutnick, whose Senate confirmation hearing is scheduled for…