What Core Inflation Is — and Why the Fed Watches It Over Headline
Core inflation strips food and energy prices from the index, producing the smoother series the Federal Reserve treats as the better guide to underlying price pressure.
Lena Fischer
Core CPI Climbed 2.5% in July, Excluding Food and Fuel
Core inflation strips out food and energy to track the underlying trend. Here is what it measures, how it differs from headline CPI, and why the Federal Reserve tracks a different index entirely.
Lena Fischer
How Deposit Insurance Limits Work
The $250,000 limit applies per depositor, per bank, per ownership category — a rule that legally multiplies coverage across accounts and is routinely misread.
Lena Fischer
How the Consumer Price Index Is Actually Calculated
The CPI is built from about 94,000 monthly price quotes weighted by household spending surveys, and its known limits — substitution, coverage, shelter lag — are published with it.
Editorial Staff
Retail Sales Fall 0.6% in July as Inflation Holds at 3.4%
Consumer spending posted its sharpest monthly drop in more than a year, even as annual retail sales growth continued to outpace headline inflation, government data show.
Editorial StaffAnalysis & Opinion
CEO Exits Fall 26% as Firms Cut Management Layers Instead
Boards are keeping chief executives in place while companies strip out the management tier beneath them, new turnover and workforce data show.
37% Top Tax Bracket Doesn't Apply to All Income
IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32 sets the 2026 federal income tax brackets, and the mechanism behind them trips up more taxpayers than the numbers themselves.
BLS Prices Nearly 80,000 Items to Build the CPI
The Consumer Price Index comes from monthly price checks on roughly 80,000 items across dozens of U.S. areas, weighted by a separate survey of household spending.
Owners' Equivalent Rent Carries 25.8% of the CPI
A quarter of the U.S. consumer price index tracks a rent no homeowner pays. Here is how the Bureau of Labor Statistics builds the number, and why it lags market rents.
Economy
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Fed Cuts Rates Half a Point, First Reduction Since 2020
Editorial StaffConsumer Confidence vs. Consumer Spending: Which Predicts
Americans routinely tell surveyors the economy is terrible and then keep spending — and the 2022–2025 cycle proved the mood-spending gap can last years.
Lena FischerMarkets
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Core CPI Rose 2.5% Year Over Year in July
Editorial StaffHow the Consumer Price Index Turns 80,000 Prices Into One Number
The BLS combines roughly 80,000 monthly price quotes with Consumer Expenditure Survey weights to produce the CPI, which rose 0.1% in July 2026 as core inflation climbed 0.2%.
Valentina SokolovRetail
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Federal Law Sets a Five-Year Floor on Gift Card Expiration
Henrik LarsenBuy Online, Pick Up In Store, Explained
BOPIS turns the store into the fulfillment node — cheaper than delivery for the retailer, faster for the shopper, and the rare e-commerce feature where both sides win.
Henrik LarsenFinance
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How Bank Failures Get Resolved by the FDIC
Gabriela MontoyaHow Grace Periods and Balance Transfers Work
The grace period makes card interest optional for full payers; the balance transfer makes it negotiable for revolvers — both are rules written in the disclosure, not favors.
Gabriela MontoyaBusiness News
More in Business News →
Why Companies Go Private in Leveraged Buyouts
Lena FischerDividend Yield vs. Dividend Growth
The yield tells you what the stock pays now; the growth rate tells you what it will pay later — and the second number decides whether a high yield is income or a trap.
Lena FischerConsumer Price Dashboard
Explore the data · BLS.gov cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from BLS.gov.