CNN – Business/Consumer

By Anna Bahney, CNN Business Mortgage rates increased again, rising to a level not seen since summer 2019. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.92% in the week ending February 17, up from 3.69% the week before, according to Freddie Mac. It has not been this high since May 2019 when it was at 3.99%. Mortgage

Opinion by Erik Lundh for CNN Business Perspectives Last year was a tough one for American consumers. Prices for just about everything, from eggs to used cars to electricity, crept higher, and by the end of the year were up 7% from a year earlier. Unfortunately, that number went even higher last month, with the

By Julia Horowitz, CNN Business Economists and investors have been closely watching climbing producer prices and wages for clues on where inflation is heading. They’re rising, which could add to inflationary pressure in the coming months. But on another front — supply chain backlogs — there are some welcome signs of relief. What’s happening: An

By Allison Morrow, CNN Business The tale of Zachary Horwitz made headlines this week after he was sentenced to 20 years for bilking investors out of $650 million by peddling bogus licensing deals with HBO and Netflix. Ironically, it is just the kind of juicy swindler story you might binge watch on those platforms: Horwitz,

By Matt Egan, CNN Business Economist Larry Summers called on the Federal Reserve Wednesday to take immediate action to catch up to inflation. “There are lots of reasons to suspect the Fed is well behind the curve,” Summers, a former senior official in the Clinton and Obama administrations, said during a virtual event. Summers, who

By Chris Isidore, CNN Business Gas in California hit a record high of $4.72 a gallon on average on Wednesday — and experts say a whopping $5 a gallon will likely be the norm there in a matter of months, if not sooner. This isn’t just an issue for West Coasters: Some of the factors

By Matt Egan, CNN Business Oil prices briefly touched $95 a barrel on Wednesday before backing away as investors try to make sense of the latest developments in the Russia-Ukraine crisis. US crude jumped as much as 3.2% to an intraday peak of $95.01 a barrel as US and NATO officials said they saw no

By Rebecca Wright, CNN The International Finance Corporation, one of the world’s leading development banks, has for decades touted its success in funding companies it says can help end extreme poverty in developing countries. But new research suggests the organization, which operates under the World Bank Group, has been providing hundreds of millions of dollars

By Peter Valdes-Dapena, CNN Business Mercedes’ AMG performance division is most famous for making hand-built gasoline engines, but times are changing and electric motors are the new thing. Mercedes just unveiled its latest AMG model, the Mercedes-AMG EQE, a fully electric high-perfomance mid-size sedan. With two high-output electric motors engineered specifically for AMG — one

By Anneken Tappe and Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN Business Inflation is rampant in the pandemic economy, but that didn’t keep Americans from opening up their wallets last month. US retail sales rose by 3.8% in January from the month prior, adjusted for seasonal swings — more than the 2% increase economists had predicted. That puts the