debt

The resignation calls intensify Trump’s attempts to yield influence over the central bank.

United States President Donald Trump has called on Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook to resign, intensifying his effort to gain influence over the central bank on the basis of allegations made by one of his allies about mortgages Cook holds in Michigan and Georgia.

US Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte alleged in a post on X earlier on Wednesday that Cook had designated a condo in Atlanta as her primary residence after taking a loan on her home in Michigan, which she also declared as a primary residence.

Loans for a primary residence can carry easier terms than for second homes or investment properties. Pulte said the loans date to mid-2021, before Cook was appointed to the Fed by former President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate the following year. She is a native of Georgia and, at the time, was an economics professor at Michigan State University.

Pulte asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate, and Trump quickly amplified the allegation. The Department of Justice was taking the matter very seriously, a department official told Reuters.

“We’re also probing some property that she has in Massachusetts to see if there’s something there. But I don’t have anything yet on that,” Pulte said in an interview on CNBC.

Cook’s federally filed financial disclosure documents show three mortgages taken out in 2021, including a 15-year 2.5 percent loan on an investment property and two loans for personal residences, including a 30-year 3.25 percent mortgage and a 15-year 2.875 percent mortgage. The weekly average rate for 30-year loans during 2021 ranged between 2.9 percent and 3.3 percent, Mortgage Bankers Association data shows. Cook started at the Fed in 2022 and was reappointed to a 14-year term in 2023.

Spokespersons for the Fed and for Cook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Cook must resign, now!!!” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform, his latest remarks aimed at reshaping the makeup of the US central bank, a body designed to set benchmark interest rates independent of White House influence.

Trump has told aides he is considering attempting to fire Cook, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited a senior White House official and another person familiar with the matter.

White House at odds with the central bank

Cook is one of three Biden appointees to the Fed whose term extends beyond Trump’s time in office, complicating the president’s efforts to get more control by appointing a majority of its seven-member board.

Currently, two of the Fed’s remaining six board members were appointed by Trump: Governor Christopher Waller and Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman.

Trump has repeatedly blasted Fed Chair Jerome Powell over benchmark rates that he wants sharply reduced, calling for his resignation while acknowledging that the Fed’s unique status in US governance prevents him from firing Fed board members over monetary policy disputes.

Trump can name a new chair when Powell’s term ends in May, but claiming a majority on the board may take more time. Powell could continue serving as a governor until 2028, near the end of Trump’s term, should he buck convention and continue sitting on the board under a new chair.

Until Powell’s departure, Trump at this point has only one other seat to fill, vacated recently by the surprise resignation of former Governor Adriana Kugler. Earlier this month, Trump nominated Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Stephen Miran to serve out the rest of her term.

LYING in bed at night 68-year-old Melanie O’Reilly lay awake worrying about how she couldn’t afford to quit her £23,500 a year, 37.5-hour a week job working in a call centre. 

She was £13,000 in debt and knew she couldn’t afford to pay the £500 a month repayments to the bank – but she was desperately unhappy in her job.

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Her days were spent fielding angry calls from Hounslow residents complaining about council tax and housing benefit. 

She had moved from South Africa to England in September 2019 with no savings but found a job quickly due to her past career in office furniture sales. 

However, the pandemic hit and in October 2020 she was made redundant before struggling to find a job at a call centre in the local council in Hounslow, West London in February 2022. 

“I couldn’t stand it anymore. I was sitting there most days in full-blown migraine feeling like I had sandpaper in my eyes, until I couldn’t see the screen anymore,” Melanie, now 69, said.

“I had been very good at my job in South Africa, and I was excellent at sales.”

“Suddenly I was being micromanaged by a 26-year-old, who would count how many times I went to the toilet in a day, and tell me off if I took 31 seconds on a call instead of 30 seconds.

“The staff turnover was ridiculously high and it started to affect my physical and mental health.”

Melanie, who had previously worked as an insurance PA in London before the move to South Africa, was utterly fed up, and knew she had to retire – but had no idea how she could do so with her mounting debt.

She had lent her son and daughter-in-law, who had also moved to the UK, money for a deposit on a home in Colne, Lancashire – but then disaster struck. 

Suddenly her daughter-in-law was made redundant shortly after they had their first child, meaning they couldn’t pay Melanie back as quickly as they’d planned. 

Melanie was also dealing with the financial fall out of splitting from her partner and she took out a £15,000 personal loan and she had mounting credit card debt of £3,000. 

Worryingly one in three people approaching retirement now have debt, with the average over-65 borrower owing £17,000, according to Money Wellness. 

Financial anxiety among the 65 to 74 age group has more than doubled since 2021.

“I had the personal loan, but I was not behind in my payments and I just knew, ‘I’ve got to leave. I have to retire.

“If I don’t, I am going to have a breakdown’,” Melanie said. 

“I decided to retire and I did, in April 2024. I called up Lloyds Bank and I said, ‘I’ve got this personal loan with you and I know that a few months from now I’m going to end up not being able to pay you.’

“I knew I had to take preventative measures before I got behind in any of my payments.

“I was hugely concerned about how to get Lloyds Bank to agree to a reduced monthly payment. 

“I knew I couldn’t pay them back £500 a month, and I knew they wouldn’t negotiate a new loan with me because I was unemployed, as I was now retired with no real income.”

Lloyds put Melanie in touch with Money Wellness, one of the largest providers of debt advice and debt solutions in the UK.

Money Wellness provides free, confidential support to anyone struggling with money or debt, with support available online 24/7 or over the phone, so people can get help in the way that suits them best.

Melanie still owed £13,000 of the £15,000 personal loan. She called Money Wellness, and they asked her to draw up an income and expense statement.

Advisors went through her statement in detail, making allowances for everything from clothing to haircuts, and calculating how much she could afford to pay back each month to help Melanie put a debt management plan in place.

“They were so empathetic and professional,” Melanie explains.  

“We revised the budget down to a manageable figure that I could pay Lloyds Bank back and by the end of it, it felt like this was too good to be true.

“They took the burden of negotiations off my shoulders and it was all done seamlessly for me without me having to worry about anything.”

The adviser told Melanie that they would negotiate the figure she had to pay back directly with Lloyds Bank, to the extent of setting up a debit order.

“After the call, I sat back and wept,” Melanie remembers. 

“I was hugely concerned because when I was working at the council, I had people calling me up saying, ‘I’ve got the bailiffs at my door. They’re bashing my door down. What do I do?’

“I did not want to be in that position, and I knew that that is a reality that can and does happen.

“I did not want to go anywhere near being that person who’s got the bailiff bashing at your door. That is why I nipped it in the bud before it became a problem.”

From paying £500 a month back, Melanie now pays back £134 a month, with no added interest. 

She lives in a HMO in Burnley so she doesn’t pay utility bills or council tax and receives housing benefits and pension credit.  

Her repayments come from a small state pension, pension credit and housing benefits.

She receives £456.64 state pension, £451.56 pension credit and £368.20 housing benefit every four weeks.

She’d had to spend her small private pension on replacing her car after a car accident, and buying essentials like furniture. 

Money Wellness reviews her plan annually, adjusting the amount if her income changes.

Melanie feels positive about the future and says the debt advice she received from Money Wellness is “the best decision I ever took”.

“For so long, I’d sat with this worrisome burden, thinking ‘I need to retire but I’ve got this debt. What do I do?’ Then these angels from heaven stepped up and helped me,” she adds.

“I feel as though a mountain had been lifted off my shoulders.”

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe – When Lloyd Muzamba was critically injured in a car accident on the Harare–Bulawayo highway in 2023, he needed an urgent blood transfusion to save his life. Despite being admitted at Mpilo Central Hospital, the biggest public health facility in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland region, a shortage of supplies meant the doctors didn’t have enough for him.

In desperation, Muzamba’s family turned to their only other option – a nearby private hospital that sold them the three pints of blood. But at a cost of $250 per pint, Muzamba – who earned a $270 monthly salary and had no savings – could not afford it.

With time running out, the family had to make a plan. Eventually, Muzamba’s uncle sold a cow for $300 and asked other relatives to contribute the balance.

Two years on, the now recovered Muzamba says the incident has left him psychologically wounded, as he worries about other emergencies when people may need lifesaving blood.

“Three pints can be a small number; others might need more than that. But due to the costs involved, it becomes life-threatening,” said the 35-year-old, who works in a hardware store in Bulawayo.

“I could not get the blood without paying or making a payment plan. It was a painful experience for an ordinary Zimbabwean like me.”

Muzamba’s is not an isolated case.

With ongoing currency woes, rising costs of living and high levels of poverty, desperate Zimbabweans in need of care face life-threatening delays due to financial barriers. This includes blood shortages – despite supplies being free in public health facilities.

Tanaka Moyo, a mother of two in the capital Harare, also experienced the stress of needing to pay for emergency blood supplies during the delivery of her second child.

After excessive postpartum haemorrhaging, the 38-year-old street vendor needed four pints of blood.

Together with her husband, a security guard, she had struggled to raise money for the birth of their child. The sudden need for a blood transfusion was a shocking unplanned cost.

“My husband ran around and borrowed money from a microfinance institution. The interests are steep and conditions stringent, but he had to act quickly,” said Moyo.

“At the hospital, they insisted the blood was free – but it was not available.”

Plaxedes Charuma, a gynaecologist in Bulawayo, says “postpartum haemorrhage is the leading cause of maternal mortality”. The prevalence of the condition means that hospitals should always have supplies on hand to deal with maternal blood loss emergencies that arise, health experts say.

According to the Community Working Group on Health (CWGH), a network of civic health organisations in Zimbabwe, the country faces a high demand for blood transfusions, and those most affected are pregnant women.

“About half a million pregnancies are expected in Zimbabwe, and in some of these, there is excessive blood loss, requiring transfusion of at least three pints of blood,” said Itai Rusike, CWGH’s executive director.

“Maternal mortality in Zimbabwe remains unacceptably high,” Rusike told Al Jazeera. “Timely blood transfusion prevents maternal deaths, which in Zimbabwe stands at 212 women dying per every 100,000 live births.”

‘Free blood for all’

Generally, there are two major types of blood transfusions: allogeneic and autologous. Autologous transfusion refers to self-same blood donation by an individual for their own use later. Allogeneic transfusion, which is the most common in Zimbabwe, involves administering blood donated by one person to another who matches their blood type.

The National Blood Service Zimbabwe (NBSZ) is the body that oversees blood donation and distribution in the country. It operates as an independent not-for-profit entity, but it is mandated by law to collect, process and distribute blood throughout Zimbabwe.

While the Ministry of Health and Child Care is permanently represented on its board of directors, NBSZ functions independently of hospitals and government health institutions. It is not present in every facility, but maintains decentralised distribution from five regional centres: Harare, Bulawayo, Gweru, Masvingo and Mutare.

Historically, patients in Zimbabwe paid for blood, but over the years the government worked on lowering costs – from $150 a pint in 2016 and prior to $50 by 2018.

The government then went a step further in July that year, deciding that blood would be made free at all public health institutions.

“The free blood for all move is going ahead as planned and mechanisms have already been put in place to finance the move, and come July 1 [2018], blood will be available for free,” said then-Minister of Health and Child Care Dr David Parirenyatwa during the June 2018 World Blood Donor Day celebrations.

However, despite the policy, hospitals continue to face shortages.

This May, there was a critical lack of blood in public hospitals, a situation that threatened the lives of thousands of people, the Ministry of Health and Child Care said in a statement. Al Jazeera contacted ministry spokesperson Donald Mujiri to ask about the shortage and the implementation of the free blood policy, but he did not respond to our requests for comment.

NBSZ, meanwhile, said that May’s shortage was due to operational and systemic challenges that disrupted its ability to carry out routine blood collection activities.

“Without timely financial support, we faced constraints in mobilising outreach teams, securing fuel, and procuring essential supplies,” Vickie Maponga, NBSZ communications officer, told Al Jazeera.

“Additionally, the crisis was exacerbated by a seasonal dip in donations, particularly from youth, who make up over 70 percent of our donor base.”

These shortages regularly result in patients on the front line needing to buy blood at private clinics. In most cases, the patient is physically transferred to the private facility for the transfusion, where they pay the costs. In some cases, the patient pays and the private hospital sends the blood to them in the public hospital.

Crucial blood donations

The World Health Organization (WHO) aims to ensure that all countries practicing blood transfusions obtain their blood supplies from voluntary blood donors.

The NBSZ told Al Jazeera that a sustainable blood supply in Zimbabwe depends on cultivating a culture of regular, voluntary donations, particularly among the youth and underserved communities.

The service has a mobile outreach model, through which it brings blood donation drives directly to schools and communities. To further engage the youth, Maponga said they also started a club that “encourages young people to commit to donating blood at least 25 times in their lifetime”.

“We also integrate blood donation awareness into school programmes and partner with tertiary institutions to maintain continuity post-high school,” she said.

Ivy Khumalo, 32, is one of those who has been donating blood since she was in high school. But she says the lack of blood donation centres around her now limits her ability to give as an adult.

“As a school child, it was [first started] as a result of peer pressure, but I found it fascinating,” Khumalo said. “It was only when I was an adult that I made a personal decision to continue donating out of love to save life and help those in need.”

But since moving from Bulawayo to Hwange, she said, donating blood has become expensive as the nearest centre is in Victoria Falls, over 100km (62 miles) away.

NBSZ says it routinely deploys mobile blood drives around the country. It also says it offers donors incentives.

“Regular donors who meet specific criteria such as having made at least 10 donations, with the most recent within the past 12 months, qualify for free blood and blood products for themselves and their immediate family members … in times of medical need,” explained Maponga.

However, for keen donors like Khumalo, the effort to reach a far-off donation site is a barrier to entry.

“In such circumstances, it is no longer a free donation as I spent money going there. In the end, most of us decide to stay home despite the passion for blood donation,” she said.

CWGH’s Rusike says the NBSZ and Ministry of Health and Child Care must urgently devise innovative and sustainable ways to increase the number of eligible blood donors.

“The government should utilise the Health Levy Fund of 5 percent tax on airtime and mobile data as it was set up to specifically subsidise the cost of blood and assist public health institutions to replace obsolete equipment and address the perennial drug shortages in our public health institutions,” he said. “That money should be ring-fenced and used for its intended purpose in a more accountable and transparent manner.”

Promises and shortages

Authorities say that as of mid-2025, Zimbabwe’s national blood supply is showing good progress, and NBSZ has already collected over 73 percent of its half-year target (the 2025 annual target is 97,500 units).

The blood service also says the Ministry of Health and Child Care plays a central role in both subsidising and overseeing the cost of blood within the public health sector.

“Since 2018, this [free blood policy] is made possible through a government-funded coupon system, which absorbs the full cost of $250 per unit, resulting in zero cost to the recipient [in public hospitals],” said Maponga.

The NBSZ maintains that it operates on a cost recovery basis. It says the entire chain of collecting, processing and distributing a pint of blood costs $245. The agency charges $250, making a $5 profit per pint.

However, prices at some private facilities can reach as much as $500 per pint, Zimbabweans say. This has sparked heated debate on social media, as the high cost remains far out of reach for many people.

“NBSZ does not have regulatory authority over how those institutions price their services to patients,” said Maponga, explaining that while blood itself is donated freely, the journey from “vein to vein” involves a complex and resource-intensive process.

Observers, however, say more can be done to lower the costs of blood transfusions.

“At closer look, the whole chain of blood transfusion can cost less than $150 by strategically deploying available resources, use of financial donor stakeholders like corporates, and also holding the government accountable to fund the whole process,” said Carlton Ntini, a socioeconomic justice activist in Bulawayo.

The issue of free blood in the public hospitals is noble, Ntini said, but without full implementation, it remains a false hope and only benefits the “lucky” few, as shortages are the order of the day.

“In reality, any amount above $50 per pint of blood will still be high to Zimbabweans, and it’s a death sentence,” he said.

Meanwhile, for patients, the cost of essentials only adds to an already stressful situation.

Muzamba was fortunate in that his family did not claim back the money they gave him for his blood transfusion. But Moyo and her husband struggled to settle their $1,000 loan debt, which escalated to $1,400 after interest.

“It psychologically drained me more than the physical pain as I wondered, ‘Where would I get such money in this economy?’” said Moyo. “The government must own up to its promises – it’s not only about being free, but must be accessible.”

President Trump is once again floating the idea of firing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, ostensibly in objection to excessively high interest rates. But this debate is not about monetary policy. It’s a power play aimed at subordinating America’s central bank to the fiscal needs of the executive branch and Congress. In other words, we have a textbook case of “fiscal dominance” on our hands — and that always ends poorly.

I’m no cheerleader for Powell. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he enthusiastically backed every stimulus package, regardless of size or purpose, as if these involved no trade-offs. Where were the calls for “Fed independence” then? And where were the calls for fiscal restraint after the emergency was over?

Powell failed to anticipate the worst inflation in four decades and repeated for far too long the absurd claim that it was “transitory” even as mounting evidence showed otherwise. He blamed supply-side disruptions long after ports had reopened and goods were moving.

And as inflation was taking a stubborn hold, Powell delayed raising interest rates — possibly to shield the Biden administration from the fiscal fallout of the debt it was piling on — well past the point when monetary tightening was needed.

If this weren’t the world of government, where failure can be rewarded — and if there had been a more obvious alternative — Powell wouldn’t have been invited back for another term. But he was. And so Trump’s pressure campaign to prematurely end Powell’s tenure is dangerous.

I get why with budget deficits exploding and debt-service costs surging, the president wants lower interest rates. That would make the cost of his own fiscal agenda appear more tolerable. Trump likely believes he’s justified because he believes that his tax cuts and deregulation are about to spur huge economic growth.

To be sure, some growth will result, though the effects of deregulation will take a while to arrive. But gains could be swamped by the negative consequences of Trump’s tariffs and erratic tariff threats. No matter what, the new growth won’t lead to enough new tax revenue to escape the need for the government to borrow more. And the more the government borrows, the more intense the pressure on interest rates.

One thing is for sure: The pressure Trump and his people are exerting on the Fed is a push for fiscal dominance. The executive branch wants to use the central bank as a tool to accommodate the government’s frenzy of reckless borrowing. Such political control of a central bank is a hallmark of failed monetary systems in weak institutional settings. History shows where that always leads: to inflation, economic stagnation and financial instability.

So far, Powell is resisting cutting rates, hence the barrage of insults and threat of firing. But now is not the right time to play with fire. Bond yields surged last year as investors reckoned with the scale of U.S. borrowing. They crossed the 5% threshold again recently. Moody’s even stripped the government of its prized AAA credit rating. Lower interest rates from the Fed — especially if seen as the result of raw political pressure — could further diminish the allure of U.S. Treasuries.

While the Fed can temporally influence interest rates, especially in the short run, it cannot override long-term fears of inflation, economic sluggishness and political manipulation of monetary policy driven by unsustainable fiscal policy. That’s where confidence matters, and confidence is eroding.

This is why markets are demanding a premium for funds loaned to a government that is now $36 trillion in debt and shows no intention of slowing down. But it could get worse. If the average interest rate on U.S. debt climbs from 3.3% to 5%, interest payments alone could soar from $900 billion to $2 trillion annually. That would make debt service by far the single largest item in the federal budget — more than Medicare, Social Security, the military or any other program readers care about. And because much of this debt rolls over quickly, higher rates hit fast.

At the end of the day, the bigger problem isn’t Powell’s monetary policy. It’s the federal government’s spending addiction. Trump’s call to replace Powell with someone who will cut rates ignores the real math. Lower short-term interest rates will do only so much if looser monetary policy is perceived as a means of masking reckless budget deficits. That would make higher inflation a certainty, not merely a possibility. It might not arrive before the next election, but it will inevitably arrive.

There is still time to avoid this cliff. Trump is right to worry about surging debt costs, but he’s targeting a symptom. The solution isn’t to fire Powell — it’s to cure the underlying disease, which is excessive government spending.

Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate.

Believe it or not, France has had a form of social security since the 1600s, and its modern system began in earnest in 1910, when the world’s life expectancy was just 32 years old. Today the average human makes it to 75 and for the French, it’s 83, among the highest in Europe.

Great news for French people, bad news for their pensions.

Because people are living longer, the math to fund pensions in France is no longer mathing, and now the country’s debt is nearly 114% of its GDP. Remember it was just a couple of years ago when protesters set parts of Paris on fire because President Emmanuel Macron proposed raising the age of legal retirement from 62 to 64. Well, now Prime Minister Francois Bayrou has proposed eliminating two national holidays, in an attempt to address the country’s debt.

In 2023, before Paris was burning, roughly 50,000 people in Denmark gathered outside of Parliament to express their anger over ditching one of the country’s national holidays. The roots of Great Prayer Day date all the way back to the 1600s. Eliminating it — with the hopes of increasing production and tax revenue — brought together the unions, opposing political parties and churches in a rare trifecta. That explains why a number of schools and businesses closed for the holiday in 2024 in defiance of the official change.

This week, Bayrou proposed eliminating France’s Easter Monday and Victory Day holidays, the latter marking the defeat of Nazi Germany. In a Reuters poll, 70% of respondents didn’t like the idea, so we’ll see if Paris starts burning again. Or maybe citizens will take a cue from the Danes and just not work on those days, even if the government decides to continue business as usual.

Here at home, President Trump has also floated the idea of eliminating one of the national holidays. However, because he floated the idea on Juneteenth — via a social media post about “too many non-working holidays” — I’m going to assume tax revenue wasn’t the sole motivation for his comments that day. You know, given his crusade against corporate and government diversity efforts; his refusal to apologize for calling for the death penalty for five innocent boys of color; and his approval of Alligator Alcatraz. However, while I find myself at odds with the president’s 2025 remarks about the holiday, I do agree with what he said about Juneteenth when he was president in 2020: “It’s actually an important event, an important time.”

Indeed.

While the institution of slavery enabled this country to quickly become a global power, studies show the largest economic gains in the history of the country came from slavery’s ending — otherwise known as Juneteenth. Two economists have found that the economic payoff from freeing enslaved people was “bigger than the introduction of railroads, by some estimates, and worth 7 to 60 years of technological innovation in the latter half of the 19th century,” according to the University of Chicago. Why? Because the final calculations revealed the cost to enslave people for centuries was far greater than the economic benefit of their freedom.

In 1492, when Christopher Columbus “discovered America,” civilizations had been thriving on this land for millennia. The colonizers introduced slavery to these shores two years before the first “Thanksgiving” in 1621. That was more than 50 years before King Louis XIV started France’s first pension; 60 years before King Christian V approved Great Prayer Day; and 157 years before the 13 colonies declared independence from Britain on July 4, 1776.

Of all the national holidays around the Western world, it would appear Juneteenth is among the most significant historically. Yet it gained federal recognition just four years ago, and it remains vulnerable. The transatlantic slave trade transformed the global economy, but the numbers show it was Juneteenth that lifted America to the top. Which tells you the president’s hint at its elimination has little to do with our greatness and everything to do with the worldview of an elected official who was endorsed by the newspaper of the Ku Klux Klan.

If it does get to the point where we — like France and Denmark — end up seriously considering cutting a holiday, my vote is for Thanksgiving. The retail industry treats it like a speed bump between Halloween and Christmas, and when history retells its origins, it’s not a holiday worth protesting to keep.

YouTube: @LZGrandersonShow

Debt is holding back economic growth for many low income countries. When South Africa took over the Group of 20 presidency last year, it promised it would take on that challenge, improve food security and represent African nations from the head of the table.

As the G20’s finance ministers meet in Durban without the United States Treasury secretary and with just four months left in its term, has South Africa lived up to those promises?

Can organisations like the G20 ever really bring about change?

And in a transactional global economy, has South Africa’s leadership role come just as organisations like this matter less?

There are a frightening number of ways an American can become indebted today: there’s medical debt (I won’t be paying off my child’s birth until he’s nearly 5 years old, and I have insurance). Mortgages, of course (though as a millennial living in an expensive city, I wouldn’t know what those look like). And then there’s student loan debt carried by nearly 43 million Americans, and which disproportionately affects Black women. But hey, at least one good thing has come of that, as TV writer and novelist Kashana Cauley graciously acknowledges in her new book, “The Payback”: “To the student loan industry,” reads her dedication, “whose threatening phone calls made this book possible.”

Narrated by Jada Williams, a wardrobe designer turned retail salesperson, “The Payback” is full of such you-gotta-laugh-to-keep-from-crying humor. The book opens at Phoenix, the clothing store at the Glendale mall where Jada now works, and includes a hilarious yet mostly sincere appreciation for the beleaguered centers of suburban America: “I loved mall smell,” Jada narrates, waxing poetic about the scents of the bins at the candy store and the ever-present pizza smell before admitting that she sometimes even leans down to smell the plastic kiddie ride horses. “Sometimes, when there were no kids, I’d lean into the horse and sniff it to get a whiff of plastic, childhood dreams, and dried piss. Yes, I know, nobody’s supposed to savor the aroma of pee, and I wouldn’t rank it first among the smells of the world, but pee is life. It’s humanity. It’s the mall.”

Jada loves the mall, and she even loves her job, which is not a given for anyone who’s lost their dream career like she did. She’s passionate about helping people find the clothes that look and make them feel good, even if she’s doing that for 20% commission. She’s definitely gotten over her sticky fingers habit, too, except that, well, on the day the book opens, someone leaves an expensive watch in the fitting room, and Jada can’t help but pocket it. This eventually leads to her getting fired, but not before the boss she likes, Richard, dies on the store’s floor and Jada and her co-workers get to witness the newly formed debt police in action chasing and beating up Richard’s grieving widower during his wake.

The debt police are exactly what they sound like: cops who come after people in debt. Cauley, a former writer for “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah” who has contributed to the New Yorker, has fun with this concept: she dresses them up in turquoise and makes them all obnoxiously hot and as annoying as the worst Angeleno cliché you can think of (they’re especially obsessed with overpriced new age treatments and diet culture). The cherry on top is their true apathetic evil. “These Leo moon incidents are always the worst,” a debt policeman says, for example, while literally beating Jada up.

Six months after she’s fired, Jada is making money by “eating food on camera in the hope that internet people, mostly guys, according to their screen names and Cash App handles, would pay [her] rent.” She eats shrimp for its pop and the way she can lick it; graham crackers for their whisper and crackle; almonds for their snap; celery sticks for their crunch. On the one hand, she’s paying her rent; on the other hand, her relationship to food has become sonically focused and exhausting.

The saving grace is that Jada manages to stay friends with her former Phoenix co-workers, Lanae (frontwoman of a punk band, the Donner Party) and Audrey (a runner and hacker in her spare time). Together, they come up with a plan to erase their own — and everyone else’s — student loan debt. It’s a heist, of sorts, except instead of getting rich, they’ll stop being in the hole for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. But the real pleasure, just like it is in any good heist movie, is witnessing the three women spending time together and becoming closer over the course of the book.

Jada is a deeply imperfect narrator. She’s quick to judge others, slow to trust, and even steals a watch on page 12 (Gasp! She’s a thief!) So, yes, she’s a messy millennial who has some issues to work through, but neither she nor anyone deserves to spend the rest of their life indebted to a system that claimed a college education as the only way to break into the middle class, and which instead ends up keeping so many from it.

The novel is a satire, of course, and the debt police are over the top because it’s generically appropriate, but also because Cauley is using humor to approach the horrifying reality that people really do go to prison for having debt in this country. And even when they don’t, student loan debt ends up increasing the racial wealth gap. According to the latest data from the Education Data Initiative, “Black and African American college graduates owe an average of $25,000 more in student loan debt than white college graduates.” Flash-forward four years after graduation, and “Black students owe an average of 188% more than white students.”

Yet the job of a novelist isn’t to hit you over the head with statistics but to entertain you — if you learn anything along the way or think more deeply about something you’d never considered, that’s great, but it’s not the main point. For all that it deals with systemic racism and economic precarity, “The Payback” is a terrifically fun book that made me laugh out loud at least once every chapter.

Masad, a books and culture critic, is the author of the novel “All My Mother’s Lovers” and the forthcoming novel “Beings.”

Jennifer Geerlings-Simons to lead the impoverished Latin American country through crisis before oil wealth arrives.

Suriname has elected Jennifer Geerlings-Simons as its first female president, with parliament backing the 71-year-old physician and lawmaker to lead the crisis-hit South American nation.

Her election came after a coalition deal was struck in the National Assembly, which voted by a two-thirds majority on Sunday.

The move followed inconclusive May polls and mounting pressure to replace outgoing President Chandrikapersad Santokhi, whose tenure was marred by corruption scandals and harsh austerity.

Geerlings-Simons, leader of the National Democratic Party, ran unopposed and will take office on July 16.

“I am aware that the heavy task I have taken on is further aggravated by the fact that I am the first woman to serve the country in this position,” she said after her confirmation.

She will be joined by running mate Gregory Rusland, as the pair inherit a country struggling under the weight of economic hardship, reduced subsidies, and widespread frustration. While Santokhi’s government managed to restructure debt and restore macroeconomic stability with IMF backing, it also triggered mass protests over deep cuts.

With Suriname expected to begin producing offshore oil in 2028, Geerlings-Simons has promised to focus on stabilising state finances. She has previously pledged to boost revenues by tightening tax collection, including from small-scale gold miners.

Economists warn she faces a rocky road ahead. Winston Ramautarsingh, former head of the national economists’ association, said Suriname must repay about $400m annually in debt servicing.

“Suriname does not have that money,” he said. “The previous government rescheduled the debts, but that was only a postponement.”

Geerlings-Simons will now be tasked with steering the Dutch-speaking country of 646,000 people through a fragile period, balancing public discontent with the promise of future oil wealth.

As Suriname prepares to mark 50 years since gaining independence from the Netherlands this November, the small South American country is pinning its hopes on a new era driven by oil wealth and deepening ties with China.

In 2019, it joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative, becoming one of the first Latin American states to sign on to the vast infrastructure project.

Suriname is one of the continent’s poorest nations, despite its rich ethnic tapestry that includes descendants of Africans, Indigenous groups, Indians, Indonesians, Chinese, and Dutch settlers.

On July 3, the United States House of Representatives passed President Donald Trump’s signature tax cut and spending package, which he has called the “One Big Beautiful Bill“.

The bill combines tax reductions, spending hikes on defence and border security, and cuts to social safety nets.

Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries warned that the bill “hurts everyday Americans and rewards billionaires with massive tax breaks”.

Trump’s erstwhile ally, billionaire Elon Musk, publicly opposed the bill, arguing it would bloat expenditure and the country’s already unmatched debt.

Trump is expected to sign the bill into law on Friday, July 4 – the US’s independence day – at 4pm ET.

Here’s what’s next – and whom the bill will affect:

How have taxes been lowered?

The main goal of the bill was to extend Trump’s first-term tax cuts.

In 2017, Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which lowered taxes and increased the standard deduction for all taxpayers, primarily benefitting higher-income earners.

More than a third of the total cuts went to households with an income of $460,000 or more.

The top 1 percent (roughly 2.4 million people) received average tax cuts of about $61,090 by 2025 – higher than any other income group. By contrast, the middle 60 percent of earners (78 million people) saw cuts in the range of $380 to $1,800.

Those tax breaks were set to expire this year, but the new bill has made them permanent. It also adds some more cuts Trump promised during his latest campaign.

For instance, there is a change to the US tax code called the State and Local Taxes deduction.

This will let taxpayers deduct certain local taxes (like property taxes) from their federal tax return.

Currently, people can only deduct up to $10,000 of these taxes. The new bill would raise that cap from $10,000 to $40,000 for five years.

Taxpayers will also be allowed to deduct income earned from tips and overtime, until 2028, as well as interest paid on loans for buying cars made in the US from this year until 2028.

Elsewhere, the estate tax exemption will rise to $15m for individuals and $30m for married couples.

In all, the legislation contains about $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.

How big are social welfare cuts?

To help offset the cost of the tax cuts, Republicans plan to scale back Medicaid and food assistance programmes for low-income families.

Their stated goal was to focus these programmes on certain groups – primarily pregnant women, people with disabilities and children – while also reducing what they deem to be waste, including by limiting access to immigrants.

Currently, more than 71 million people depend on Medicaid, the government health insurance program.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the bill would leave an additional 17 million Americans without health cover in the next decade.

While Medicaid helps Americans suffering from poor health, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) helps poor people afford groceries.

About 40 million Americans currently receive benefits through SNAP, also known as food stamps.

The CBO calculates that 4.7 million SNAP participants will lose out over the 2025-2034 period, due to program reductions.

Changes to Medicaid and SNAP could become permanent provisions, with no sunset clauses attached to them.

A recent White House memo pointed to more than $1 trillion in welfare cuts from the new bill – the largest spending reductions to the US safety net in modern history.

Will there be new money for national security?

The bill sets aside about $350bn, to be spread out over several years, for Trump’s border and national security plans. This includes:

• $46bn for the US-Mexico border wall
• $45bn to fund 100,000 beds in migrant detention centres
• Billions more to hire an extra 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents by 2029, as part of Trump’s plan to carry out the largest mass deportation effort in US history.

Will clean energy be affected?

Republicans have rolled back tax incentives that support clean energy projects powered by renewables like solar and wind, instead giving tax breaks to coal and oil companies.

These “green” tax breaks were a part of former President Joe Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act, which aimed to tackle climate change and reduce healthcare costs.

A tax break for people who buy new or used electric vehicles will expire on September 30 this year, instead of at the end of 2032 under current law.

How will the bill affect the US debt profile?

The legislation would raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, from $36.2 trillion currently (which amounts to 122 percent of gross domestic product or GDP), going beyond the $4 trillion outlined in the version passed by the House in May.

Washington cannot borrow more than its stated debt ceiling. But since 1960, Congress has raised, suspended or changed the terms of the debt ceiling 78 times, facilitating more leverage and undermining the US’s long-term fiscal stability.

In his first term, Trump oversaw a roughly $8 trillion increase in the federal debt, which surged due to 2017 tax cuts and emergency spending, approved by Congress, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Debt as a share of GDP was already higher last year than it was anytime outside of World War II, the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis or the COVID-19 pandemic. Deficit concerns contributed to Moody’s downgrading of the US credit score in May.

For its part, the White House claims the new tax bill will reduce projected deficits by more than $1.4 trillion over the next decade, in part by spurring additional growth. But economists on both sides of the aisle have strongly disputed that.

Indeed, according to the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, interest payments on national debt will rise to $2 trillion per year by 2034 owing to the legislation, crowding out spending on other goods and services.

How did the House of Representatives vote on the bill?

The lower house of the US Congress voted by a margin of 218 to 214 in favour of the bill on Thursday.

All 212 Democratic members of the House opposed the bill. They were joined by Representatives Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, who broke from the Republican majority.

On July 1, the Senate narrowly passed the bill by a 51–50 vote, with the deciding vote cast by Vice President JD Vance.

Who will benefit the most?

According to Yale University’s Budget Lab, wealthier taxpayers are likely to gain more from this bill than lower-income Americans.

They estimate that people in the lowest income bracket will see their incomes drop by 2.5 percent, mainly because of cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, while the highest earners will see their incomes rise by 2.2 percent.

SEOUL — The third and final season of Netflix’s “Squid Game” broke viewership records on the streaming platform following its release on June 27, marking a fitting close for what has arguably been the most successful South Korean TV series in history.

Although reviews have been mixed, Season 3 recorded more than 60 million views in the first three days and topped leaderboards in all 93 countries, making it Netflix’s biggest launch to date.

“Squid Game” has been transformative for South Korea, with much of the domestic reaction focused not on plot but on the prestige it has brought to the country. In Seoul, fans celebrated with a parade to commemorate the show’s end, shutting down major roads to make way for a marching band and parade floats of characters from the show.

In one section of the procession, a phalanx of the show’s masked guards, dressed in their trademark pink uniforms, carried neon-lit versions of the coffins that appear on the show to carry away the losers of the survival game. They were joined by actors playing the contestants, who lurched along wearing expressions of exaggerated horror, as though the cruel stakes of the game had just been revealed to them.

At the fan event that capped off the evening, series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk thanked the show’s viewers and shared the bittersweetness of it all being over.

“I gave my everything to this project, so the thought of it all ending does make me a bit sad,” he said. “But at the same time, I lived with such a heavy weight on my shoulders for so long that it feels freeing to put that all down.”

Despite the overnight global fame “Squid Game” brought him (it’s Netflix’s most-watched series of all time), Hwang has spoken extensively about the physical and mental toil of creating the show.

Visitors take photos near a model of the doll named “Younghee” that’s featured in Netflix’s series “Squid Game,” displayed at the Olympic park in Seoul in October 2021.

(Lee Jin-man / Associated Press)

He unsuccessfully shopped the show around for a decade until Netflix picked up the first season in 2019, paying the director just “enough to put food on the table” — while claiming all of the show’s intellectual property rights. During production for the first season, which was released in 2021, Hwang lost several teeth from stress.

A gateway into Korean content for many around the world, “Squid Game” show served to spotlight previously lesser-known aspects of South Korean culture, bringing inventions like dalgona coffee — made with a traditional Korean candy that was featured in the show — to places such as Los Angeles and New York.

The show also cleared a path for the global success of other South Korean series, accelerating a golden age of “Hallyu” (the Korean wave) that has boosted tourism and exports of food and cosmetics, as well as international interest in learning Korean.

But alongside its worldly successes, the show also provoked conversations about socioeconomic inequality in South Korean society, such as the prevalence of debt, which looms in the backstories of several characters.

A few years ago, President Lee Jae-myung, a longtime proponent of debt relief, said, “‘Squid Game’ reveals the grim realities of our society. A playground in which participants stake their lives in order to pay off their debt is more than competition — it is an arena in which you are fighting to survive.”

In 2022, the show made history as the first non-English-language TV series and the first Korean series to win a Screen Actors Guild Award, taking home three in total. It also won six Emmy Awards. That same year, the city of L.A. designated Sept. 17 — the series’ release date — as “Squid Game Day.“

Although Hwang has said in media interviews that he is done with the “Squid Game” franchise, the Season 3 finale — which features Cate Blanchett in a cameo as a recruiter for the games that are the show’s namesake — has revived rumors that filmmaker David Fincher may pick it up for an English-language spinoff in the future.

While saying he had initially written a more conventional happy ending, Hwang has described “Squid Game’s” final season as a sobering last stroke to its unsparing portrait of cutthroat capitalism.

“I wanted to focus in Season 3 on how in this world, where incessant greed is always fueled, it’s like a jungle — the strong eating the weak, where people climb higher by stepping on other people’s heads,” he told The Times’ Michael Ordoña last month.

“Coming into Season 3, because the economic system has failed us, politics have failed us, it seems like we have no hope,” he added. “What hope do we have as a human race when we can no longer control our own greed? I wanted to explore that. And in particular, I wanted to [pose] that question to myself.”

Dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”, President Donald Trump’s signature policy bill would slash taxes, largely benefitting the wealthiest Americans.

To pay for it, federal spending would be reduced, including on Medicaid, food stamps and student loans. Supporters say the bill could jumpstart economic growth and create jobs.

Critics, including some Republicans, say millions of Americans would pay the price. And the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would actually add an estimated $3.3 trillion to debt over a decade.

Why did Canada scrap its digital tax on US tech companies?

Plus, Nigeria’s tax reform.

The United States Senate narrowly passed President Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending bill on Tuesday, following intense negotiations and a marathon voting session on amendments.

The bill, which still faces a challenging path to final approval in the House of Representatives, would impose deep cuts to popular health and nutrition programmes, among other measures, while offering $4.5 trillion in tax reductions.

The measure was approved after almost 48 hours of debate and amendment battles.

Here is what you need to know:

What is Trump’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’?

The bill is a piece of legislation that combines tax cuts, spending hikes on defence and border security, and cuts to social safety nets into one giant package.

The main goal of the bill is to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2025. It would make most of these tax breaks permanent, while also boosting spending on border security, the military and energy projects.

The bill is partly funded by cutting healthcare and food programmes.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates Trump’s measure will increase the US debt by $3.3 trillion over the next 10 years. The US government currently owes its lenders $36.2 trillion.

The key aspects of the bill include:

Tax cuts

In 2017, Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which lowered taxes and increased the standard deduction for all taxpayers, but it primarily benefitted higher-income earners.

Those tax breaks are set to expire this year, but the new bill would make them permanent. It also adds some more cuts he promised during his campaign.

There is a change to the US tax code called the SALT deduction (State and Local Taxes). This lets taxpayers deduct certain state and local taxes (like income or property taxes) on their federal tax return.

Currently, people can only deduct up to $10,000 of these taxes. The new bill would raise that cap from $10,000 to $40,000 for five years.

Taxpayers would also be allowed to deduct income earned from tips and overtime, as well as interest paid on loans for buying cars made in the US.

The legislation contains about $4.5 trillion in tax cuts.

Children

If the bill does not become law, the child tax credit – which is now $2,000 per child each year – will fall to $1,000, starting in 2026.

But if the Senate’s current version of the bill is approved, the credit would rise to $2,200.

Border wall and security

The bill sets aside about $350bn for Trump’s border and national security plans. This includes:

• $46bn for the US-Mexico border wall
• $45bn to fund 100,000 beds in migrant detention centres
• Billions more to hire an extra 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents by 2029 as part of Trump’s plan to carry out the largest mass deportation effort in US history.

Cuts to Medicaid and other programmes

To help offset the cost of the tax cuts and new spending, Republicans plan to scale back Medicaid and food assistance programmes for low-income families.

They say their goal is to refocus these safety net programmes on the groups they were originally meant to help, primarily pregnant women, people with disabilities and children – while also reducing what they call waste and abuse.

Medicaid helps Americans who are poor and those with disabilities, while the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) helps people afford groceries.

Currently, more than 71 million people depend on Medicaid, and 40 million receive benefits through SNAP. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill would leave an additional 11.8 million Americans without health insurance by 2034 if it becomes law.

Clean energy tax cuts

Republicans are pushing to significantly scale back tax incentives that support clean energy projects powered by renewables like solar and wind. These tax breaks were a key part of former President Joe Biden’s landmark 2022 law, the Inflation Reduction Act, which aimed to tackle climate change and reduce healthcare costs.

A tax break for people who buy new or used electric vehicles would expire on September 30 this year if the bill passes in its current form, instead of at the end of 2032 under current law.

Debt limit

The legislation would raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion, going beyond the $4 trillion outlined in the version passed by the House in May.

Who benefits most?

According to Yale University’s Budget Lab, wealthier taxpayers are likely to gain more from this bill than lower-income Americans.

They estimate that people in the lowest income bracket will see their incomes drop by 2.5 percent, mainly because of cuts to SNAP and Medicaid, while the highest earners will see their incomes rise by 2.2 percent.

Which senators voted against the bill?

Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine opposed due to deep Medicaid cuts affecting low-income families and rural healthcare.

I strongly support extending the tax relief for families and small businesses. My vote against this bill stems primarily from the harmful impact it will have on Medicaid, affecting low-income families and rural health care providers like our hospitals and nursing homes.

— Sen. Susan Collins (@SenatorCollins) July 1, 2025

Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina cited concerns over Medicaid reductions to his constituents. Tillis has announced that he will not seek re-election, amid threats from Trump that he would back a Republican challenger to Tillis.

The facts matter. The people matter. The Senate’s Medicaid approach breaks promises and will kick people off of Medicaid who truly need it. The Senate can make one simple fix to make sure that won’t happen. pic.twitter.com/zvW1AgCxBF

— Senator Thom Tillis (@SenThomTillis) June 30, 2025

Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky voted “no” on fiscal grounds, warning that the bill would significantly worsen the national deficit.

Throughout the Vote-a-rama, I was working all night to stop Congress from adding to our debt.

I met with @VP and I reiterated my offer to vote for the bill—if it included a 90% reduction in the debt ceiling.

No earmarks. No handouts. Just real fiscal reform.

I wasn’t looking…

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) July 1, 2025

Every member of the Democratic caucus, a total of 47 senators, also voted against the bill.

Who supported the bill in the Senate?

The remaining Republicans voted in favour, allowing the bill to pass 51–50, with the deciding vote cast by Vice President JD Vance.

Trump has set a July 4 deadline to pass the bill through Congress, but conceded on Tuesday that it would be “very hard to do” by that date, since the House now needs to vote on it. The House had passed an earlier version of the bill in May, but needs to look at it again due to the amendments brought by the Senate.

Notable Senator supporters include:

Senator Lisa Murkowski (representative of Alaska): Her backing was secured after Republicans agreed to Alaska-specific provisions, including delayed nutrition cuts and a new rural health fund, making her vote pivotal.

“I have an obligation to the people of the state of Alaska, and I live up to that every single day,” she told a reporter for NBC News.

Senators Rick Scott of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming: These fiscally conservative senators shifted from hesitation to support following amendments to the bill.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune led the push to pass the legislation.

How have lawmakers and the public reacted?

Most Republican lawmakers celebrated it as a historic achievement.

Trump also expressed delight.

“Wow, music to my ears,” Trump said after a reporter told him the news. “I was also wondering how we’re doing, because I know this is primetime, it shows that I care about you,” he added.

Thune said after the vote: “In the end, we got the job done, and we’re delighted to be able to be partners with President Trump and his agenda.”

Democrats opposed it, calling it a giveaway to the wealthy at the expense of healthcare, food aid and climate policy.

“Today’s vote will haunt our Republican colleagues for years to come,” Democrat Chuck Schumer said in a floor speech after the vote.

“Republicans covered this chamber in shame,” he added.

Today’s vote will haunt Senate Republicans for years to come.

Americans will see the damage done as hospitals close, as people are laid off, as costs go up, and as the debt increases.

Democrats will make sure Americans remember the betrayal that took place today. pic.twitter.com/WmwnZa5n9k

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) July 1, 2025

The US Chamber of Commerce led a coalition of more than 145 organisations supporting the bill, emphasising it would “foster capital investment, job creation, and higher wages”.

They praised the permanent tax cuts and border security funding.

However, healthcare and hospital associations have warned that millions could lose coverage, driving up emergency and unpaid care costs. Environmental groups have also voiced strong opposition.

Public opinion on the bill is in decline, too.

“Initially, [Trump] had more than 50 percent of the support. Now, it is under 50 percent, and politicians know that,” Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher said, reporting from Washington, DC.

“They are aware that this could lead to a cut in Medicaid. They are aware, even though Donald Trump had promised to protect it, that this could cut nutritional programmes, particularly for poorer families in the United States.

“And although they will get tax cuts, they have managed a lot of the time to be convinced by the Democratic argument that, yes, there are tax cuts, but billionaires will do much better out of this than the ordinary American people, and that is what’s changed the opinion polls,” he added.

What happens next?

The process begins with the House Rules Committee, which will meet to mark up the bill and decide how debate and consideration will proceed on the House floor.

After the bill passes through the Rules Committee, it will move to the House floor for debate and a vote on the rule, potentially as soon as Wednesday morning.

If the House of Representatives does not accept the Senate’s version of the bill, it could make changes and send it back to the Senate for another vote.

Alternatively, both chambers could appoint members to a conference committee to work out a compromise.

Once both the House and Senate agree on the final text, and it is passed in both chambers of Congress, the bill would go to Trump to be signed into law.

The United States dollar has had its worst first six months of the year since 1973, as President Donald Trump’s economic policies have prompted global investors to sell their greenback holdings, threatening the currency’s “safe-haven” status.

The dollar index, which measures the currency’s strength against a basket of six others, including the pound, euro and yen, fell 10.8 percent in the first half of 2025.

President Trump’s stop-start tariff war, and his attacks that have led to worries over the independence of the Federal Reserve, have undermined the appeal of the dollar as a safe bet. Economists are also worried about Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill, currently under debate in the US Congress.

The landmark legislation is expected to add trillions of dollars to the US debt pile over the coming decade and has raised concerns about the sustainability of Washington’s borrowing, prompting an exodus from the US Treasury market.

Meanwhile, gold has hit record highs this year, on continued buying by central banks worried about devaluation of their dollar assets.

What has happened to the dollar?

On April 2, the Trump administration unveiled tariffs on imports from most countries around the world, denting confidence in the world’s largest economy and causing a selloff in US financial assets.

More than $5 trillion was erased from the value of the benchmark S&P 500 index of shares in the three days after “Liberation Day”, as Trump described the day of his tariffs announcement. US Treasuries also saw clear-outs, lowering their price and sending debt costs for the US government sharply higher.

Faced with a revolt in financial markets, Trump announced a 90-day pause on tariffs, except for exports from China, on April 9. While trade tensions with China – the world’s second-largest economy – have since eased, investors remain wary of holding dollar-linked assets.

Last month, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) announced that it had cut its US growth outlook for this year from 2.2 percent in March to just 1.6 percent, even as inflation has slowed.

Looking ahead, Republican leaders are trying to push through Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act through Congress before July 4. The bill would extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, slash healthcare and welfare spending and increase borrowing.

While some legislators believe it could take until August to pass the bill, the aim would be to raise the borrowing limit on the country’s $36.2 trillion debt pile. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said it would raise Federal debt by $3.3 trillion by 2034.

That would significantly raise the government’s debt-to-GDP (gross domestic product) ratio from 124 percent today, raising concerns about long-term debt sustainability. Meanwhile, annual deficits – when state spending exceeds tax revenues – would rise to 6.9 percent of GDP from about 6.4 percent in 2024.

So far, Trump’s attempts to lower spending through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have fallen short of expectations. And though import tariffs have raised revenue for the government, they’ve been paid for – in the form of higher costs – by American consumers.

The upshot is that Trump’s unpredictable policies, which prompted Moody’s rating agency to strip the US government of its top credit score in May, have slowed US growth prospects this year and dented the demand for its currency.

The dollar has also trended down on expectations that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates to support the United States’ economy, urged on by Trump, with two to three reductions expected by the end of this year, according to levels implied by futures contracts.

Is the US becoming a ‘less attractive’ destination?

Owing to its dominance in trade and finance, the dollar has been the world’s currency anchor. In the 1980s, for instance, many Gulf countries began pegging their currencies to the greenback.

Its influence doesn’t stop there. Though the US accounts for one-quarter of global GDP, 54 percent of world exports were denominated in dollars in 2023, according to the Atlantic Council.

Its dominance in finance is even greater. About 60 percent of all bank deposits are denominated in dollars, while nearly 70 percent of international bonds are quoted in the US currency.

Meanwhile, 57 percent of the world’s foreign currency reserves – assets held by central banks – are held in dollars, according to the IMF.

But the dollar’s reserve status is supported by confidence in the US economy, its financial markets and its legal system.

And Trump is changing that. Karsten Junius, chief economist at Bank J Safra Sarasin, says “investors are beginning to realise that they’re over-exposed to US assets.”

Indeed, foreigners own $19 trillion of US equities, $7 trillion of US Treasuries and $5 trillion of US corporate bonds, according to Apollo Asset Management.

If investors continue to trim their positions, the dollar’s value could continue to come under sustained pressure.

“The US has become a less attractive place to invest these days… US assets are not as safe as they used to be,” Junius told Al Jazeera.

What are the consequences of a lower-value dollar?

Many within the Trump administration argue that the costs of the US dollar’s reserve status outweigh the benefits – because that raises the cost of US exports.

Stephen Miran, chair of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, has said high dollar valuations place “undue burdens on our firms and workers, making their products and labour uncompetitive on the global stage”.

“The dollar’s overvaluation has been one factor contributing to the US’s loss of competitiveness over the years, and… tariffs are a reaction to this unpleasant reality,” he added.

At first blush, a lower dollar would indeed make US goods cheaper to overseas buyers and make imports more expensive, helping to reduce the country’s trade deficits. However, these typical trade effects remain in flux due to ongoing tariff threats.

For developing countries, a weaker greenback will lower the local currency cost of repaying dollar debt, providing relief to heavily indebted countries like Zambia, Ghana or Pakistan.

Elsewhere, a weaker dollar should boost commodity prices, increasing export revenues for countries exporting oil, metals or agricultural goods such as Indonesia, Nigeria and Chile.

Have other currencies done well?

Since the start of Trump’s second term in office, the greenback’s slide has upended widespread predictions that his trade war would do greater damage to economies outside the US, while also spurring US inflation – strengthening the currency against its rivals.

Instead, the euro has risen 13 percent to above $1.17 as investors continue to focus on growth risks inside the US. At the same time, demand has risen for other safe assets like German and French government bonds.

For American investors, the weaker dollar has also encouraged equity investments abroad. The Stoxx 600 index, a broad measure across European stocks, has risen roughly 15 percent since the start of 2025.

Converted back into dollars, that gain amounts to 23 percent.

Meanwhile, inflation – again belying predictions – has come down from 3 percent in January to 2.3 percent in May.

According to Junius, there is no significant threat to the dollar’s status as the world’s de facto reserve currency anytime soon.

But “that doesn’t mean that you can’t have more of a weakening in the US dollar,” he said. “In fact, we continue to expect that between now and the end of the year.”

Billionaire Elon Musk said on Monday that he would form a new political party in the United States if a Republican-leaning Congress passes President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”, which proposes tax breaks and funding cuts for healthcare and food programmes.

Musk has voiced criticism of the bill on multiple occasions over the past month and began suggesting the idea of the new party on social media starting early June.

Here is more about Musk’s reservations about the bill, and about his new proposed party.

What has Musk said about the America Party?

Musk has been saying that if the bill is passed, Republicans are no different from Democrats, who are often accused by conservatives of being profligate with spending taxpayers’ dollars.

The version of the bill that the Senate is discussing at the moment, if passed by both chambers of Congress, would expand the national debt by $3.3 trillion between 2025 and 2034. The current US national debt stands at more than $36 trillion.

“If this insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day,” Musk posted on his social media platform, X, on Monday.

“Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE.”

In an earlier post, Musk wrote: “It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS that we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!”

The debt ceiling, set by the US Congress, determines the upper limit to the amount of money that the US Treasury can borrow. The current debt limit is $36.1 trillion.

Why does Musk oppose the bill?

Once a key aide and major campaign donor for Trump, Musk had a public online falling out with the president in June over his criticism of the bill.

On June 3, Musk wrote on X: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.”

Musk alleged that Trump was linked to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in a now-deleted post on X. However, Trump and Musk seemed to have reached a detente when Trump told reporters that he wished Musk well while the latter wrote on X on June 11 that he had gone “too far” in his criticism of the US president.

However, since then, Musk has argued in a series of online posts that the bill would increase the debt ceiling, “bankrupt America”, and “destroy millions of jobs in America”.

Musk owns the electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer Tesla. The current version of the bill, with amendments made by the Senate, seeks to end the tax credit for purchases of EVs worth up to $7,500, starting on September 30. This could reduce the consumer demand for EVs in the US.

What is the America Party that Musk proposed?

On June 5, Musk posted a poll on his X account, asking his followers: “Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80 percent in the middle?”

While social media polls are known to be nonrepresentative of broader public sentiment, 5.6 million people voted on the poll, and 80.4 percent responded with “yes”. Since then, Musk has repeatedly reposted the poll result, citing it as evidence that most Americans want a new party to be formed.

“Musk believes that 80 percent of Americans are unhappy with the two major parties and are not being represented,” Natasha Lindstaedt, a professor at the Department of Government, the University of Essex, told Al Jazeera.

While that number might not reflect the wider American public, it does point to a trend in the electorate; according to a Gallup poll from 2024, 43 percent of Americans identified as independent, 28 percent identified as Republican and 28 percent identified as Democrat. In other words, more Americans identify as independent than as either Democrat or Republican.

One of Musk’s followers replied to a post on X with an image with the text “America Party”. The world’s richest man responded: “‘America Party’ has a nice ring to it. The party that actually represents America!”

How real is Musk’s threat?

Experts say Musk, whose net worth is $363bn as of Monday according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, would realistically be able to fund a third party in the US. However, it is still unclear whether he would go ahead with his plan or whether his party would have a significant effect on US elections.

“Musk certainly has the financial power to back a third party that could be very disruptive to the Republican Party, but it’s not certain if Musk will take on this risk,” Lindstaedt said.

Lindstaedt recalled how earlier this month, Musk backed down from his criticism of Trump on X. “If we take him at his word, he could spend hundreds of millions on this project,” she added.

“Musk has been ramping up his criticism of the bill lately, and he may find specific legislators [particularly from the House] would be willing to defect if their constituencies are more negatively affected by Trump’s policies,” Lindstaedt said, referring to the House of Representatives. “He will also have the attention of fiscal hawks in particular.”

Lindstaedt added that among American voters, there is a “huge appetite” for a third party.

“The bill will leave the US spending hundreds of billions just in the interest, and the more Americans understand this, the more they may want to flock to something different. US public frustration with the traditional parties is at an all-time high, and Musk may be able to capitalise on this.”

However, Thomas Gift, an associate professor of political science in the UCL School of Public Policy in London, said it was unclear whether Musk is serious and suggested that the barriers to breaking the Republican-Democrat duopoly are hard to scale for anyone.

“This is Elon Musk bluffing,” he told Al Jazeera. “He knows as well as anyone that the power of party machines behind Democrats and Republicans is too much to surmount.”

Gift added that while forming a party is possible, “winning seats in Congress or the White House is another matter entirely”.

“At best, a third party will have little impact on US elections; at worst, it will play ‘spoiler’, taking votes from one of the two parties and de facto giving it to another.”

What has Trump said about Musk?

On Monday, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, saying: “Elon Musk knew, long before he so strongly Endorsed me for President, that I was strongly against the EV Mandate. Electric cars are fine, but not everyone should be forced to own one.”

Trump added: “Without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE.”

“Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!” Trump wrote, referring to the Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory body aimed at boosting government efficiency and upgrading Information Technology, that Musk formed and led at the start of Trump’s second administration, before leaving on May 30.

The Writers Guild of America West has removed Randall Emmett from its “strike list” after the film producer paid $630,000 to resolve a judgment in a long-standing dispute over unpaid compensation.

The resolution comes more than five years after Emmett’s former production firm, Emmett/Furla Oasis, failed to pay health insurance benefits and other compensation to four writers on a proposed Arnold Schwarzenegger television show, “Pump,” that collapsed in 2019 when the action star bowed out.

“This was originally a financial obligation tied to former companies,” Emmett said in a statement. “However, I made the personal decision to take it on independently because it was simply the right thing to do.”

The WGA confirmed Monday that Emmett had been taken off its strike list after nearly five years, a penalty due to his former firm’s lingering debt. But a WGA representative said members should still refrain from working with him unless he becomes a signatory to the guild’s contract with producers.

Emmett/Furla Oasis has been defunct for years. His current production firm, Convergence Entertainment Group, is trying to mount a film project in collaboration with Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese. The filmmakers hope to bring to the screen “Wall of White,” a story of a deadly 1982 avalanche near Lake Tahoe.

However, in March, the WGA warned its members to stay clear of the project, citing the unpaid debt. The WGA’s high-profile advisory clouded Emmett’s endeavors.

Emmett was the subject of a 2022 Times investigation and subsequent Hulu documentary that surfaced allegations of mistreatment of women, assistants and business partners, which he has denied.

Emmett has continued to crank out low-budget films, primarily starring John Travolta and Sylvester Stallone.

Last year, Emmett attempted to fly under the radar by using the moniker “Ives,” which is his middle name.

Emmett ran afoul of union rules in 2019 after hiring four guild writers to develop scripts for a TV series loosely based on Schwarzenegger’s early years in California.

Writers of the project previously told The Times they wanted “Pump” to be a love letter to Venice Beach in the early 1970s and the birth of the modern bodybuilding culture.

At the time, Emmett’s firm was burning through cash, according to internal documents previously viewed by The Times. The writers were also brought on board before Schwarzenegger committed to the project.

The WGA won a $541,464 judgment against Emmett/Furla Oasis in 2021 after it filed a claim on behalf of writers. The debt swelled with interest.

The “Wall of White” project draws on a 2010 book as well as a 2021 documentary, “Buried: The 1982 Alpine Meadows Avalanche.” After a heavy spring storm in Northern California in 1982, tons of snow rushed down a mountain and into a village, trapping eight people at a ski resort. Seven died, and rescuers pulled one woman from the wreckage.

Screenwriter Petter Skavlan, a WGA member, was attached to the film, according to IMDb.

Book author Jennifer Woodlief also has been listed as a screenwriter.

Emmett has been working on the project for more than a year. He introduced the Netflix documentary to Scorsese, according to a March article in the Tahoe Guide, which touted how the local tragedy was being adapted into a feature film.

The filmmakers are searching for a director.

“We expect to finalize an A-list director by this summer in preparation for a February 1st production start,” Emmett said.

The project is expected to film in Nevada, Ohio and Canada, he said.

WASHINGTON — The changes made to President Trump’s big tax bill in the Senate would pile trillions onto the nation’s debt load while resulting in even steeper losses in healthcare coverage, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a new analysis, adding to the challenges for Republicans as they try to muscle the bill to passage.

The CBO estimates that the Senate bill would increase the deficit by nearly $3.3 trillion from 2025 to 2034, a nearly $1-trillion increase from the House-passed bill, which the CBO has projected would add $2.4 to the debt over a decade.

The analysis also found that 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law, an increase over the estimate for the House-passed version of the bill, which predicts that 10.9 million more people would be without health coverage.

The stark numbers are yet another obstacle for Republican leaders as they labor to pass Trump’s bill by his declared July 4 deadline.

Even before the CBO’s estimate, Republicans were at odds over the contours of the legislation, with some resisting the cost-saving proposals to reduce spending on Medicaid and food aid programs even as other Republicans say those proposals don’t go far enough. Republicans are slashing the programs as a way to help cover the cost of extending some $3.8 trillion in Trump tax breaks put in place during his first term.

The push-pull was on vivid display Saturday night as a routine procedural vote to take up the legislation in the Senate was held open for hours as Vice President JD Vance and Republican leaders met with several holdouts. The bill ultimately advanced in a 51-49 vote, but the path ahead is fraught, with voting on amendments still to come.

Still, many Republicans are disputing the CBO estimates and the reliability of the office’s work. To hoist the bill to passage, they are using a different budget baseline that assumes the Trump tax cuts expiring in December already have been extended, essentially making them cost-free in the budget.

The CBO on Saturday released a separate analysis of the GOP’s preferred approach that found the Senate bill would reduce deficits by about $500 billion.

Democrats and economists decry the GOP’s approach as “magic math” that obscures the true costs of the GOP tax breaks.

In addition, Democrats note that under the traditional estimation system, the Republican bill would violate the Senate’s “Byrd Rule” that forbids the legislation from increasing deficits after 10 years.

In a Sunday letter to Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, CBO Director Phillip Swagel said the office estimates that the Finance Committee’s portion of the bill, also known as Title VII, “increases the deficits in years after 2034” under traditional scoring.

Hussein writes for the Associated Press.

New Delhi, India – Getting into one of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) schools was supposed to be the end of the financial woes for Paras* and his family. Instead, things have only worsened due to the federal government’s long delays in dispensing Paras’s monthly fellowship allowance of 37,000 rupees ($435).

At the IIT, Paras is a research fellow, looking into solutions to a global public health crisis created by the spread of infectious diseases. His fellowship comes from the INSPIRE scheme, funded by India’s Department of Science and Technology (DST).

But delays in the scheme’s payment have meant that Paras was not able to pay the instalments on the laptop he bought for his research in 2022. His credit score plummeted, and his savings plans crashed.

Paras’s parents are farmers in a drought-affected region of western India, and their income depends on a harvest that often fails. So, he has resorted to borrowing money from friends, including as recently as between August and December, he told Al Jazeera.

Paras is not alone. Al Jazeera spoke to nearly a dozen current and former fellows enrolled in top institutes across India under the Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) programme. The interviewees studied at institutions such as the IIT, a network of engineering and technology schools across the country, and the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, another network.

All had gone from three to as long as nine months without a stipend.

The funding delays and procedural lapses have marred the fellowship and impaired their research capacity, they said.

Many researchers recently took to social media to complain, tagging Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Minister of Science and Technology Jitendra Singh.

“For over a year now, many of us who are pursuing PhDs under DST-funded fellowships have not received our stipends,” Sayali Atkare, an INSPIRE fellow, wrote on LinkedIn. “This has pushed many young researchers into severe financial and emotional stress.”

Last year, India ranked 39th in the Global Innovation Index of 133 countries, up one spot from the year prior. It leads lower-middle-income countries like Vietnam and the Philippines in innovation. China leads upper-middle-income countries and is followed by Malaysia and Turkiye.

The federal government termed the ranking an “impressive leap” in a news release. It said that India’s “growing innovation potential has been supported by government initiatives that prioritise technological advancement, ease of doing business, and entrepreneurship”.

At a federal government conference in April, Modi boasted of India’s growing research acumen. Under his leadership in the past decade, the government has doubled its gross spending on research and development from 600 billion rupees ($7.05bn) to more than 1,250 billion rupees ($14.7bn), while the number of patents filed has more than doubled – from 40,000 to more than 80,000.

The numerous steps taken by the government – like doubling of expenditure on R&D (research and development), doubling of patents filed in India, creation of state-of-the-art research parks and research fellowships and facilities – ensure “that talented individuals face no obstacles in advancing their careers”, Modi said.>

However, an analysis of government documents, budgets and interviews with researchers reveals that the government is more focused on commercial research, primarily product development led by start-ups and big corporations. It is offering little funding for research conducted at the country’s premier universities.

For instance, in the current financial year, 70 percent of the Science and Technology Department’s annual budget has been allocated to a scheme under which interest-free loans are provided to private companies conducting research in sunrise domains, such as semiconductors.

At the same time, the government has made misleading statements about its investments in the country’s research institutes, including with schemes like the INSPIRE fellowship, where funds have actually been cut instead of being increased as touted by the government.

Poor pay, funding delays

The INSPIRE scheme offers PhD and faculty fellowships to “attract, attach, retain and nourish talented young scientific Human Resource for strengthening the R&D foundation and base”.

The fellowships are offered to top-ranking postgraduate students and doctoral researchers to conduct research in areas from agriculture, biochemistry, neuroscience and cancer biology to climate science, renewable energy and nanotechnology.

Under the scheme, PhD fellows are to receive 37,000 rupees ($435.14) to 42,000 rupees ($493.94) per month for living expenses and 20,000 rupees ($235.21) annually for research-related costs, such as paying for equipment or work-related travel.

Faculty fellows are offered teaching positions with a monthly salary of 125,000 rupees ($1,470) and an annual research grant of 700,000 rupees ($8,232).

In the year 2024-25, 653 fellows were enrolled in the PhD fellowship, and 85 in the faculty fellowship programme.

“I couldn’t attend an important annual meeting in our field because it required travel, and I was not sure if I would get my allowance,” a faculty fellow at an institute in eastern India said. He has not received his payments since September 2024.

Atkare, the PhD student who wrote about the government’s failure on LinkedIn, also wrote, “We’ve made endless phone calls, written countless emails – most of which go unanswered or are met with vague responses. Some officials even respond rudely.”

Another INSPIRE PhD fellow told us of a running joke: “If they pick up the phone, you can buy a lottery ticket that day. It’s your lucky day.”

In May, DST Secretary Abhay Karandikar accepted that there were funding delays and said that they would soon be resolved.

Karandikar told the Hindu newspaper that he was “aware” of the disbursement crisis but said that from June 2025, all scholars would get their money on time. “All problems have been addressed. I don’t foresee any issue in the future,” he said.

Al Jazeera requested a comment from the science and technology minister, the DST secretary and the head of the department’s wing that implements the INSPIRE scheme, but has not received a response.

Dodgy math

In January, the federal government folded three R&D-related schemes to start Vigyan Dhara or “the flow of science” to ensure “efficiency in fund utilisation”. The INSPIRE scheme had been funded under one of those schemes.

But instead of efficiency, there has been chaos.

Under Vigyan Dhara, DST asked institutes to set up new bank accounts, leading to delays in payments for INSPIRE fellowships.

New Delhi also said that it had “significantly increased” funding for the Vigyan Dhara scheme, from 3.30 billion rupees ($38.39m) in the last financial year to 14.25 billion rupees ($167.58m) in the current financial year.

However, that math was incomplete. The 3.30 billion rupees ($38.39m) is what the government earmarked for the scheme, which was only launched in the last quarter of the fiscal year. The budget for the full fiscal year of the three schemes that Vigyan Dhara replaced amounted to 18.27 billion rupees ($214.93m). So, in effect, the current budget saw a 22 percent decrease in allocation from 18.27 billion rupees to 14.25 billion rupees ($167.58m).

Overall, the budget for Vigyan Dhara’s constituent schemes reduced 67.5 percent from 43.89 billion rupees ($513.2m) in financial year 2016-17 to 14.25 billion rupees ($167.6m) in financial year 2025-26.

DST officials did not respond to Al Jazeera’s query requesting clarification of Vigyan Dhara’s budgetary allocations.

Commercialisation of research

On the other hand, the Indian government earmarked 200 billion rupees ($2.35bn) for the new Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) scheme targeting the private sector.

This money is part of a larger 1-trillion-rupee ($11.76bn) corpus previously announced by India’s finance minister to provide long-term financing at low or no interest rates.

These changes in schemes are intended to make India a “product nation”, get more patents filed in India, and curb the brain drain, as Union Minister Aswini Vaishnaw and DST officials explain in different videos.

But the plight of the researchers at state-run organisations remains unaddressed.

“The government throws around big terms, but those toiling in laboratories are suffering,” said Lal Chandra Vishwakarma, president of All-India Research Scholars Association.

“Stipends should be similar to salaries of central government employees. Fellows should get their money every month without fail,” he said.

In the current scenario, most fellows Al Jazeera spoke to said that they would prefer a fellowship abroad.

“It’s not just about funds but the ease of research, which is much better in Europe and [the United States]. We get so much staff support there. In India, you get none of that,” said a professor at an IIT, who supervises an INSPIRE PhD fellow who faced funding issues.

While the private sector is being heavily financed, researchers told us they downplay their funding costs as that improves their chances of landing government research projects.

“Cutting-edge research is so fast; if we lose the first few years due to cost-cutting, we are behind our colleagues abroad,” the IIT professor said.

“Once we submit necessary documents, like annual progress reports, DST takes at least three months to release the next instalment. It’s usual,” said a PhD fellow who is a theoretical mathematician.

“Right now, I would say only people with privilege [and high-income backgrounds] should be in academia. Not because that’s how it should be, but because for others, it’s just so hard,” the IIT professor said.

*Al Jazeera has changed names to protect the identity of interviewees.

The central bank held rates steady despite backlash from US President Donald Trump.

The United States Federal Reserve has left its benchmark rate unchanged despite mounting pressure from President Donald Trump to cut rates.

On Wednesday, the Fed said it will leave its short-term rate unchanged at 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent.

The central bank’s decision was largely in line with expectations, and it has not cut interest rates since December.

The decision comes as policymakers weigh signs of a weakening economy. US retail sales numbers fell more than expected in its report from the US Department of Commerce yesterday. Last week’s jobless claims report from the US Department of Labour came in at its highest in eight months at 248,000.

However, the last jobs report showed the unemployment rate was steady at 4.2 percent, indicating the labour market, while slowing, remains fairly stable.

“The Committee seeks to achieve maximum employment and inflation at the rate of 2 percent over the longer run. Uncertainty about the economic outlook has diminished but remains elevated,” the central bank said in a statement.

“Fed Chair Jerome Powell has little urgency to ease. But if any easing were to have occurred, it would have been hugely stimulative, and would have lowered US debt interest expense,” Michael Ashley Schulman, partner and chief investment officer at Running Point Capital Advisors, told Al Jazeera.

Policymakers are looking at the looming and consistently shifting changes to Trump’s tariff policies as well as the escalating tensions in the Middle East. While oil prices were on the decline before Israel’s attack last week on Iran and its retaliatory strikes, the concerns about a closure of the Strait of Hormuz as tensions escalate have fueled concerns that prices could go up in the coming weeks.

Trump criticises Powell

Before the rate announcement, Trump expressed disappointment in the central bank’s decision to hold rates steady in the past few months.

“Powell’s too late,” he said, referring to his desire for rate cuts. “I call him ‘too late Powell’ because he’s always too late. I mean, if you look at him, every time I did this I was right 100 percent, he was wrong,” Trump said.

He added that he “may have to force something” but it is not clear what Trump meant by that.

He also suggested that he should lead the central bank. “Maybe I should go to the Fed,” Trump said. “Am I allowed to appoint myself at the Fed? I’d do a much better job than these people.”

Powell’s term is set to expire next May, and Trump has recently walked back his rhetoric on firing the central bank head.

“What I’m going to do is, you know, he gets out in about nine months, he has to, he gets fortunately terminated … I would have never reappointed him, [former President Joe] Biden reappointed him. I don’t know why that is, but I guess maybe he was a Democrat … he’s done a poor job,” Trump said.

Meerut, India – The last of the paint had begun to peel off Mohammad Mohsin’s house two years ago. The faded green, white and yellow paints on the walls still bore stains from last year’s monsoons.

A narrow, 3-foot-tall (0.9 metres) passage only possible to enter by crouching, led from the kitchen into a courtyard lined with buffalo dung, a rusting scooter, and a creaking cot in northern India’s Meerut district, about 100km (62 miles) from New Delhi.

“We will get the house painted when it’s finally wedding time,” Mohsin had said, leaning on an iron shovel, when Al Jazeera visited him in February earlier this year, referring to his sister Aman’s wedding plans.

But the date for the wedding came and went – without it being solemnised.

In 2023, Mohsin had borrowed roughly $1,440 under the Indian government’s Kisan Credit Card (KCC) scheme. “Kisan” means “farmer” in Hindi.

Launched in 1998, the KCC initiative is intended to modernise rural credit by providing accessible, short-term, low-interest credit to farmers for agricultural expenses, thereby replacing exploitative private moneylenders.

Issued against land holdings, the KCC operates like a revolving credit line, allowing farmers to borrow at the start of a crop cycle and repay after the harvest. With a modest interest rate of 4 percent annually, the scheme is among the most accessible financial instruments for millions of farmers.

But for years now, the KCC scheme has deviated from its original purpose. Farmers in rural India, where agriculture barely sustains families and where dowry in marriages is the norm, have used KCC loans as a convenient but dangerous alternative to family income.

The KCC money Mohsin borrowed in 2023 from a state-run bank’s local branch was not meant to sow sugarcane or buy fertiliser. He always meant to use it for his sister’s dowry: Aman’s prospective in-laws had demanded a Maruti Wagon-R car, a larger Mahindra Scorpio SUV, and hundreds of thousands of rupees in cash, when the marriage was planned.

KCC looks and can be used like a regular credit card, including for cash withdrawals. Clutching the family’s KCC card issued in his father Mohammad Kamil’s name, Mohsin withdrew the money from an ATM and went straight to a car dealer in Meerut to make the down payment for a Wagon R car.

In February 2025, Aman’s proposed marriage collapsed under a new set of dowry demands. By now, Mohsin was already in significant debt and had no money to sow crops, or invest in seeds or farm machinery.

He was also saddled with the car he had bought for the groom. He missed paying the monthly instalments a few times. When farmers fail to repay during a crop cycle, the interest rate jumps from 4 percent to 7 percent, which is what happened with Mohsin.

He now repays the loan in small instalments, but knows that he will be playing catchup for years. And the longer he delays his payments, the higher the risk that the loan could be classified as a non-performing asset (NPA), damaging his credit rating and future borrowing capacity.

Meanwhile, 22-year-old Aman finished Fazilat, a seven-year course in Islamic theology offered by Darul Uloom, a prominent Muslim seminary in Deoband, about 80km (50 miles) from Meerut. The course is considered the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree from a regular college.

Aman’s family has also resumed its search for another groom. “I will get married when the right family agrees,” Aman told Al Jazeera.

But families do not just agree. They negotiate – and dowry is the currency. Tens of thousands of Indian women have been killed by their in-laws over dowry demands. In 2024 alone, India saw a dowry-related death every 30 hours, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau.

“In our part of the world, no dowry means no groom,” Aman’s 60-year-old mother, Amina Begum, told Al Jazeera, sitting in one of the corners of their sparse home.

Once a groom is finalised and the new dowry demands are negotiated, Mohsin will need cash again. And he may have to rely on the KCC scheme, again.

But a new KCC loan cannot be sanctioned until the previous one is fully repaid. The only way around this involves local middlemen who help farmers repay the interest on existing KCC loans, and get the principal renewed in the bank as a fresh loan. In exchange, these middlemen charge an interest rate as high as between 2 and 5 percent per day.

The result: If Mohsin gets another KCC loan sanctioned, he will need to use that to also repay the middlemen who helped him get it – perpetuating the cycle of indebtedness he is trapped in.

‘System breaks your dignity’

India’s farmers receive limited state support for unexpected or heavy personal expenses, such as hospital bills, children’s education, social obligations, or even weddings – often forcing them to rely on informal credit or agricultural loans meant for farming needs.

For instance, India’s public healthcare spending is among the lowest globally, consistently under 2.5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP). The limited resources put a significant strain on poor families in cases of medical emergencies.

As a result, across India’s agrarian belt, mainly in the north, the KCC scheme is being drained to plug life’s emergencies, exposing a deep rural distress.

A farmers’ union leader and a politburo member of the Communist Party of India, Vijoo Krishnan, says that in addition to weddings, farmers are increasingly using KCC loans for healthcare and education. This diversion of money leads to what Krishnan calls a “development debt trap”, where farmers are forced to take on loans just to meet basic survival needs, rather than to invest in productivity or growth.

A 2024 study published in The Pharma Innovation Journal, an Indian interdisciplinary publication that also features research in agriculture and rural development, found that only a fraction of KCC loans go towards agriculture. About 28 percent of the KCC-holding farmers who were respondents in the study said they used the fund for household needs, 22 percent for medical expenses, 14 percent for children’s education, and nearly 10 percent for marriage-related expenses.

“Farming barely pays enough to sustain a family,” said Mohammad Mehraj, the former head of Mohsin’s Muslim-majority village of Kaili Kapsadh. “If there’s a medical emergency or a wedding, the pressure is too much.”

The fear of repayment haunts farmers, rooted in the deep shame that failure brings. Everyone has heard the stories. “In a nearby village, a man in his forties was declared a defaulter. His name was read out in the village square. The shame was so unbearable that his wife moved back to her parents’ home,” Mohsin recalled. The man in question, he says, has not been seen since. No one knows if he fled, or if he is even alive.

Mohsin lives with the same fear. “The system doesn’t break down your door, it breaks your dignity,” he said. In small villages with close-knit communities, a bank official’s visit to the house to seek repayment of loans is seen as an embarrassment to be avoided at all costs.

“I’d rather starve than have a bank man knock on our door,” said Mohsin’s father, Kamil, who is in his 70s, his voice barely above a whisper. Around him, others nodded in agreement.

To escape shame, farmers like Mohsin rely on the middlemen who charge a steep interest rate to help them renew KCC loans without settling the principal.

Thomas Franco, a former general secretary of the All India Bank Officers’ Federation, said that while schemes like KCC have expanded credit access for farmers, they have also created a debt trap.

“At the harvest time, many farmers, already burdened with earlier debts, are forced to take additional loans. Loans intended for productivity often get diverted to meet immediate social obligations,” he told Al Jazeera.

By 2024, the Indian government’s official data shows that the KCC scheme had disbursed more than $120bn to farmers, a sharp rise from $51bn in 2014.

But those numbers mask a more complex reality in which banks become a part of the serial indebtedness crisis, while showcasing high numbers of loan disbursals, Franco said.

“The loans get renewed every year without actual repayment, and in the bank’s books, it shows as a fresh disbursal, even though the farmer does not get the actual funds. This exaggerates the success numbers,” he said.

Meanwhile, as India’s farmers find themselves buried in mountains of debt, many are taking their own lives.

In 2023, Maharashtra, India’s richest state, contributing about 13 percent to the country’s GDP, reported the highest number of farmer suicides – at 2,851. This year, Maharashtra’s Marathwada region is one of the worst hit. In the first three months of 2025 alone, the region recorded 269 suicides, marking a 32 percent increase from the same period in 2024.

In neighbouring Karnataka, between April 2023 and July 2024, 1,182 farmers died by suicide, primarily due to severe drought, crop loss and overwhelming debt. In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, farmer suicides rose by 42 percent in 2022, compared with the previous year. Similarly, Haryana, also in the north, reported 266 farm suicides in 2022, up 18 percent from 225 in 2021.

Critics argue that without deep structural reforms aimed at providing better public welfare systems for farmers and their families, such as affordable healthcare, quality education, and reforms to make farming profitable, schemes like the KCC will remain short-term solutions.

Jayati Ghosh, a leading development economist and professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said that India’s agricultural credit system is fundamentally out of sync with how farming works.

“Crop loans are typically structured for a single season, but farmers often need to borrow well before sowing, and can only repay after harvesting and selling. Forcing repayment within that narrow window is unrealistic and harmful, especially when farmers lack the support to store crops and wait for better prices,” she said.

Ghosh, who co-authored a 2021 policy report for the Andhra Pradesh government and has studied agrarian distress for more than three decades, told Al Jazeera that key Indian financial institutions – the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the central bank and NABARD, the apex rural development bank – were to blame for treating agriculture like any other commercial enterprise.

“The failure lies with NABARD, the RBI and successive governments. Agricultural lending needs to be subsidised, decentralised and designed around real conditions in the field,” she said.

Schemes like the KCC, she said, are built on the flawed belief that cash alone can solve rural distress.

“We’ve built a credit system assuming farmers just need money. But without investment in irrigation, land security, local crop research, storage and market access, loans won’t solve the crisis,” she said.

‘I wonder if farming even has a future’

The KCC scheme has also been riddled with controversies, with multiple loan scams surfacing across India in recent years.

In Kaithal, a town in northern Haryana state, six farmers used forged documents to secure nearly $88,000 in loans, which ballooned to $110,000 before detection, due to accrued interest over time after the farmers failed to repay them.

In the Himalayan state of Uttarakhand, agricultural dealer Mohammad Furkan, in collusion with a bank manager, created fake bills and ghost loans worth $1.2m in 2014, earning him a three-year sentence in March 2023.

In Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state where Meerut is located, three State Bank of India managers sanctioned about $792,000 in fraudulent KCC loans between 2014 and 2017, using forged land records and fake documents. The federal Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) booked them in January 2020 after an internal bank inquiry. The matter is still being probed.

Yet, bank officials say that despite years of scams and red flags, the KCC scheme continues to suffer from weak oversight.

“There’s no systemic check in place,” said a loan disbursal agent affiliated with the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), who has been processing KCC applications in rural Uttar Pradesh for more than a decade. He spoke to Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity, as he is not authorised to speak to the media.

But even if the KCC was cleaned up and all scammers punished, it would not solve the problem, say some farmer leaders.

“This is not about debt. It’s about dignity,” said Dharmendra Malik, the national spokesperson of the Indian Farmers’ Union, a prominent group. “You can’t solve agrarian distress with easy loans. You need investment in irrigation, storage, education and guaranteed prices for the crops.”

Back in Kaili Kapsadh, Mohsin’s buffalo stood tethered in the courtyard, swatting flies with its tail. It is worth $960 and, in this village, that is a status symbol, akin to owning a vintage car in a wealthy urban suburb.

But prestige does not pay back loans. Mohsin has not been able to renew his family’s KCC loan, worth about $1,500, for more than two years. He is still repaying the last one.

Each harvest yields the same bitter crop for him: more bills and losses. Looking at his sugarcane fields, already browning under a harsh sun, he said: “Sometimes I wonder if farming even has a future.”

If you or someone you know is at risk of suicide, these organisations may be able to help.

Liz Oyer, a lawyer with the United States Department of Justice handling pardons for a long time, was fired by the Trump administration in March. Since then, Oyer has publicly criticised the administration, including its approach to pardons.

In an April 30 video on TikTok, Oyer took issue with many of Trump’s pardons, not only because they short-circuited the justice system but also because of their financial impact.

“President Trump has granted pardons that have wiped out over $1bn in debts owed by wealthy Americans who have committed fraud and broken the law,” claims Oyer, who said she was fired because she opposed a pardon to restore gun rights to actor Mel Gibson, a Trump supporter who was convicted on misdemeanour domestic violence charges in 2011.

US Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, shared her post on May 31 on Instagram, saying Trump is “selling pardons to criminals who dump money on him and ingratiate themselves to his ego. They not only get out of jail, but they get out of the money they owe to make restitution for their crimes. This is wrong.”

Oyer’s Substack includes a running list of Trump’s pardons, along with a dollar figure for each that she says the pardon erased. The dollar figures on her list include fines – a financial penalty for being convicted of a crime – and restitution, which is designed to compensate victims for their losses.

As of June 5, Oyer’s pardon tracker listed 24 people with federal convictions whom Trump pardoned, along with the dollar amounts to be forgiven.

People and companies pardoned by Trump could save up to $1.3bn

On the surface, the maths holds: collectively, the 24 pardoned people and companies Oyer listed were on the hook for $1.34bn.

“A full pardon would wipe out any payments that were required as part of the criminal sentence”, as long as they have not already been paid, said Brian Kalt, a Michigan State University law professor.

But legal experts offered some caveats about this calculation. Some of the dollar amounts on Oyer’s list were not finalised, which adds some speculation to her total.

Oyer did not respond to inquiries for this article.

The biggest debts erased by pardons so far

After four and a half months in office, Trump has surpassed all but three post-World War II presidents for the number of clemency actions, which include pardons and commutations. His total is dominated by the roughly 1,500 pardons he granted to people who faced legal consequences from their participation in the events of January 6, 2021, when pro-Trump rioters stormed the US Capitol.

Trump’s second-term clemency acts exceed all but three modern presidents

The vast majority of clemency actions by Trump’s predecessor, President Joe Biden, were commutations, meaning they did not affect fines or restitution. (Biden commuted sentences for 37 people on death row and about 2,500 others convicted of nonviolent drug crimes.)

Biden pardoned 80 people over four years; Trump has pardoned 58 people in four and a half months, excluding the January 6, 2021-related pardons.

The four pardon recipients on Oyer’s list with the highest debt would collectively exceed $1bn by themselves. They are:

• Trevor Milton, an electric-truck company owner, who had been convicted of securities fraud and wire fraud in 2023 and sentenced to four years in prison. He was ordered to pay $676m in restitution.
• Ross William Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, an online marketplace that sold illegal drugs such as cocaine and heroin. Ulbricht had been convicted of aiding and abetting the distribution of drugs over the internet, continuing criminal enterprise, computer hacking conspiracy, and money laundering conspiracy. He had been sentenced to life in prison. (Ulbricht’s pardon fulfilled a Trump campaign promise.) Ulbricht was ordered to pay almost $184m.
• HDR Global Trading Limited, operator of a cryptocurrency exchange that had been ordered to pay a $100m fine for violating the Bank Secrecy Act’s anti-money laundering provisions.
• Lawrence Duran, owner of American Therapeutic Corp, a Miami-area mental health company, convicted of multiple counts related to healthcare fraud; Duran was sentenced to 50 years in prison and $87.5m in restitution.

However, it is unclear whether these four would add up to $1bn plus in forgone payments to the federal government, because not every amount listed had been formally approved by a judge.

“Almost always, a pardon has come after sentencing, so we know the amount of the fine or restitution with certainty,” said Mark Osler, a University of St Thomas law professor. But at least in Milton’s case, the pardon came before the restitution portion of his sentencing was completed.

Milton is the most important pardon recipient for judging the accuracy of Oyer’s statement, because it is the largest, accounting for about two-thirds of the $1bn figure.

He was sentenced in December 2023, but legal skirmishing over his restitution package was delayed. In March 2025, federal prosecutors requested that the judge approve about $676m in restitution – $660.8m to shareholders in his company and $15m to one victim. That request was pending at the time of Milton’s pardon.

It is impossible to know whether the judge would have ultimately accepted that amount.

Defendants can contest the prosecution’s restitution request, and they often do, said Frank O Bowman III, a University of Missouri emeritus law professor.

However, “a judge will usually accept” what the government suggests, Osler said.

For the second-, third- and fourth-ranking dollar amounts on Oyer’s list, each was finalised in court. For these, though, it is unclear whether the pardon recipients had already begun to pay any of their restitution. If they had, that could reduce the dollar amounts on Oyer’s list. (Our reporting did not turn up a central, publicly accessible repository showing who had paid what by the time of their pardon.)

Restitution owed by January 6, 2021, pardon recipients, which is not included in Oyer’s figure, could also push the total higher. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee said in a March 2025 letter that people receiving pardons related to January 6, 2021, owed nearly $3m in restitution before being pardoned.

Other high-profile names on Oyer’s list with smaller dollar amounts include: Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner, who was interviewed by congressional Republicans during an investigation of Joe Biden, Hunter’s father; Carlos Watson, the founder of Ozy Media Inc, who was convicted on several fraud counts; reality TV stars Todd Chrisley and Julie Chrisley, who were also convicted on fraud counts; and former politicians Michael Grimm, John Rowland, Michelle Fiore and Alexander Sittenfeld.

Oyer told The Washington Post that when deciding clemency, past presidents have hewed closer to the recommendations of her former Justice Department office, which has guidelines stating that potential pardon recipients should have already completed their sentence, including paying any restitution.

“It’s unprecedented for a president to grant pardons that have the effect of wiping out so much debt owed by people who have committed frauds,” Oyer told the Post. “They do not meet Justice Department standards for recommending a pardon.”

Legal experts told PolitiFact that courts have not ruled on what happens to fines or restitution payments after a pardon if they had not already been paid. A 1995 Justice Department memo said that although payments already made and received would not be subject to being clawed back, the obligations not yet paid at the time of the pardon would be forgiven.

“This question, to our knowledge, has not been decided by any court, but we conclude, based upon existing precedent, that a pardon does reach such restitution where the victim has not yet received the restitution award, provided the pardon does not contain an express limitation to the contrary,” the memo said.

Margaret Love, who held Oyer’s former post at the Justice Department from 1990 to 1997, said, “If money is paid to the government, you can’t get the money back except through a congressional appropriation.”

For restitution intended to compensate a person — such as the victim of a fraudulent scheme — it appears that the victims are out of luck once a pardon is issued if they have not received that money already, legal experts said. It is unclear whether the victims would be obliged to repay the restitution they had already received back to the pardoned convict who defrauded them.

“I don’t know if it has ever come up,” Osler said.

Our ruling

Oyer said, “President Trump has granted pardons that have wiped out over $1bn in debts owed by wealthy Americans who have committed fraud and broken the law.”

In 24 Trump pardons Oyer cited, the four biggest dollar amounts top $1bn. However, the single biggest – about $676m – relates to an amount sought by prosecutors that had not been formally approved by a judge before the pardon was issued, making the dollar figure speculative. It accounts for about two-thirds of the $1bn figure.

The statement is accurate but requires additional information, so we rate it Mostly True.