Business

With inflation falling, unemployment low and the Federal Reserve signaling it could soon begin cutting interest rates, forecasters are becoming increasingly optimistic that the U.S. economy could avoid a recession.Wells Fargo last week became the latest big bank to predict that the economy will achieve a soft landing, gently slowing rather than screeching to a halt. The bank’s economists had been forecasting a recession since the middle of 2022.Yet if forecasters were wrong when they predicted a recession last year, they could be wrong again, this time in the opposite direction. The risks that economists highlighted in 2023 haven’t gone away, and recent economic data, though still mostly positive, has suggested some cracks beneath the surface.Indeed, on the same day that Wells Fargo revers...

A prominent Federal Reserve official on Tuesday laid out a case for lowering interest rates methodically at some point this year as the economy comes into balance and inflation cools — although he acknowledged that the timing of those cuts remained uncertain.Christopher Waller, one of the Fed’s seven Washington-based officials and one of the 12 policymakers who get to vote at its meetings, said during a speech at the Brookings Institution on Tuesday that he saw a case for cutting interest rates in 2024.“The data we have received the last few months is allowing the committee to consider cutting the policy rate in 2024,” Mr. Waller said. While noting that risks of higher inflation remain, he said, “I am feeling more confident that the economy can continue along its current trajectory.”Mr. Wa...

The Supreme Court is hearing arguments on Wednesday over whether to overturn a key precedent, one that has empowered executive agencies and frustrated business groups hostile to government regulation.The court, which has in recent years rejected precedents on abortion and affirmative action and struck down regulations addressing climate change, student loans and coronavirus vaccines, is considering the fate of a foundational doctrine of administrative law called Chevron deference.The doctrine takes its name from a 1984 decision, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the most cited cases in American law. Discarding it could threaten regulations in countless areas, including the environment, health care, consumer safety, nuclear energy and government benefit programs. It would...

The Biden administration has begun pumping more than $2 trillion into U.S. factories and infrastructure, investing huge sums to try to strengthen American industry and fight climate change.But the effort is facing a familiar threat: a surge of low-priced products from China. That is drawing the attention of President Biden and his aides, who are considering new protectionist measures to make sure American industry can compete against Beijing.As U.S. factories spin up to produce electric vehicles, semiconductors and solar panels, China is flooding the market with similar goods, often at significantly lower prices than American competitors. A similar influx is also hitting the European market.American executives and officials argue that China’s actions violate global trade rules. The concern...

Joelle Emerson’s D.E.I. consultancy, Paradigm, works with more than 500 companies. The growing backlash against D.E.I., she said, “is usually the first agenda item on every call.”Critics of D.E.I., or diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, have tried to scapegoat it for everything from regional bank failures to a panel’s ripping off a Boeing plane in flight last week. That debate gathered pace this month as three famous billionaires clashed over D.E.I.’s merits on social media: Elon Musk and Pershing Square’s chief executive, Bill Ackman, have attacked D.E.I. efforts as “racist,” while the investor Mark Cuban argued that they were “good for business.”The economy and political landscape have changed since 2020, when companies hired D.E.I. officers in droves amid a racial reckoning aft...

Cindy Camp is one of many Americans facing rising utility costs. Ms. Camp, who lives in Baltimore with three family members, said her gas and electric bills kept “going up and up” — reaching as high as $900 a month. Her family has tried to use less hot water by doing fewer loads of laundry, and she now eats more fast food to save on grocery bills.Ms. Camp would like to save money on energy bills by transitioning to more energy-efficient appliances like a heat pump and solar panels. But she simply cannot afford it.“It’s a struggle for me to even maintain food,” Ms. Camp said.Power bills have been rising nationwide, and in Baltimore, electricity rates have increased almost 30 percent over the last decade, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While clean energy systems and m...

The hack of a social media account used by the Securities and Exchange Commission is prompting both internal and external investigations into how the security breach occurred and whether anyone tried to profit from it, said the commission and several legal experts.The S.E.C. said in a statement on Wednesday that it was coordinating an investigation into the hack that occurred the prior day “with appropriate law enforcement entities, including the S.E.C.’s Office of the Inspector General and the F.B.I.”John Reed Stark, a former S.E.C. enforcement lawyer and regulatory consultant on cybersecurity, said the commission’s inspector general would need to investigate how a hacker was able to access the S.E.C.’s official account on X — formerly Twitter — to post a false message that the commission...