Investments and Business

Despite lingering inflation, Americans increased their spending this holiday season, early data shows. That comes as a big relief for retailers that had spent much of the year fearing the economy would soon weaken and consumer spending would fall.Retail sales from Nov. 1 to Dec. 24 increased 3.1 percent from a year earlier, according to data from Mastercard SpendingPulse, which measures in-store and online retail sales across all forms of payment. The numbers, released Tuesday, are not adjusted for inflation.Spending increased across many categories, with restaurants experiencing one of the largest jumps, 7.8 percent. Apparel increased 2.4 percent, and groceries also had gains.The holiday sales figures, driven by a healthy labor market and wage gains, suggest that the economy remains stron...

Killinger is from Grosse Pointe, Mich., a Detroit suburb, but spent a chunk of her childhood in Mexico City, where her father, who worked for Ford Motors, moved the family when she was 11. She was bullied there for looking different and bullied again back in America when she pulled up to Grosse Pointe South High School — preppy Izod city — looking “like a combo platter of Debbie Gibson, big bangs, shellacking hair spray, blow dryer to keep them up, white frost lip gloss.”In 1995, she graduated from Penn State with a marketing degree and later worked in television, including on air in local news in Albany, N.Y., and Orlando, Fla. In 2006, Martha Stewart fired her from “The Apprentice.”A self-proclaimed homebody, she likes to spend her free time with her husband, Joe Carretta, and adopted da...

Over the past two weeks, the owner of a hip wine bar in Buenos Aires saw the price of beef soar 73 percent, while the zucchini he puts in salads rose 140 percent. An Uber driver paid 60 percent more to fill her tank. And a father said he spent twice as much on diapers for his toddler than he did last month.In Argentina, a country synonymous with galloping inflation, people are used to paying more for just about everything. But under the country’s new president, life is quickly becoming even more painful.When Javier Milei was elected president on Nov. 19, the country was already suffering under the world’s third-highest rate of inflation, with prices up 160 percent from a year before.But since Mr. Milei took office on Dec. 10 and quickly devalued the Argentine currency, prices have soared a...

The Biden administration is preparing to relax restrictions on some weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, U.S. officials said on Thursday, crediting the kingdom’s peace talks with a militia in Yemen for hastening an easing of the constraints.President Biden imposed the ban two years ago amid concerns that U.S. weapons were being used against civilians in Yemen, where hundreds of thousands of people have died from airstrikes, fighting, disease and hunger as a Saudi-led military coalition waged war against an Iran-backed militia called the Houthis.The expected loosening of the limits — which blocked sales of major offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia — comes as the kingdom attempts to finalize a U.S.-backed peace accord with the Houthis.A representative for the White House National Security Council de...

This year, the world learned that some men just can’t stop thinking about the Roman Empire. Over here at The New York Times, we can’t stop thinking about what social trends like that one tell us about the American economy.We had no shortage of viral memes and moments to discuss in 2023. Americans flocked to Paris (and overseas in general). Millennial women stocked up on the Stanley thermoses their dads used to use, one of a range of female-powered consumer fads. Thanks partly to Barbie, Birkenstocks also came back harder than a ’90s trend. People spoke in Taylor Swift lyrics.Social developments like those can tell us a lot about the economy we’re living in. To wrap up 2023, we ran through some of the big cultural events and what they taught us about the labor market, economic growth and th...

A Republican-led campaign against researchers who study disinformation online has zeroed in on the most prominent American government agency dedicated to countering propaganda and other information operations from terrorists and hostile nations.The agency, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, is facing a torrent of accusations in court and in Congress that it has helped the social media giants — including Facebook, YouTube and X — to censor Americans in violation of the First Amendment.The attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, and two conservative digital news outlets last week became the latest plaintiffs to sue the department and its top officials, including Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. The lawsuit said the center’s work was “one of the most egregious government ope...