Investing

Many investors don’t plan for future taxes when funneling money into pre-tax 401(k) plans and traditional individual retirement accounts.
But as balances grow, “your IRA is an IOU to the IRS,” said certified public accountant Ed Slott.
However, your pre-tax IRA could offer planning opportunities in retirement, experts say.

Guido Mieth | Moment | Getty Images

‘Your IRA is an IOU to the IRS’

Traditional IRAs are the oldest and most common type of IRA, owned by 31.3% of U.S. households as of mid-2023, according to research from the Investment Company Institute.
Nearly two-thirds of families with traditional IRAs have accounts with retirement plan rollovers, and 43% made contributions on top of rolled over funds, ICI found.  
These accounts continue to grow, and many retirees don’t have a plan to withdraw the money, experts say.

“Your IRA is an IOU to the IRS,” said Slott, who is also a certified public accountant.
Starting at age 73, pre-tax retirement accounts are generally subject to required minimum distributions, or RMDs, based on your previous year-end balance and a life expectancy factor.
By comparison, Roth accounts, which are funded with after-tax dollars and grow tax-free, don’t have RMDs until after the accountholder’s death. But these accounts are less common. As of mid-2023, only 24.3% of households had Roth IRAs, according to ICI.

Leverage ‘bargain basement rates’

Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act enacted by President Donald Trump, income tax brackets have been lower since 2018. That provision could be extended past 2025 under the current Republican-controlled Congress.
Slott argues it’s better to pay income taxes now at “bargain basement rates” than withdrawing from a pre-tax IRA when rates could be higher, depending on future legislative changes.
You can do that by contributing to Roth accounts or making so-called Roth conversions, which incur an upfront bill, but grow tax free. With Roth accounts, “there’s no obligation to share with Uncle Sam,” he said.
Plus, Roth accounts avoid tax issues for non-spouse heirs who inherit your IRA since most beneficiaries must follow the “10-year rule,” and empty accounts within 10 years of the original owner’s death.

Roth-only strategy could mean ‘fewer options’

While building a bucket of tax-free retirement savings is appealing to many investors, there could be some trade-offs, experts say. 
With only Roth accounts, “you’re taking away choice from individuals … because they have fewer options down the road,” certified public accountant Jeff Levine said at the Horizons conference session. 
You should aim to incur taxes at the lowest rates possible, Levine told CNBC. By paying all your taxes in advance, there’s no “dry powder” to withdraw from pre-tax accounts in future lower-income years. 

Plus, you could miss future tax planning opportunities, he said.
For example, if you’re philanthropic, you can make so-called qualified charitable distributions, or QCDs, at age 70½ or older, which transfer money directly from an IRA to an eligible non-profit, Levine said.
The move lowers your adjusted gross income since you can use the withdrawal to satisfy RMDs and helps reduce your pretax balance for smaller future required withdrawals.   More

Landis+Gyr Group AG’s residential and commercial FOCUS electric meter installation. 
Landis+Gyr Group AG

Company: Landis+Gyr Group AG (LAND-CH)

Business: Landis+Gyr Group is a Switzerland-based company primarily engaged in the electrical components and equipment manufacturing business. It specializes in metering solutions for electricity, gas, heat/cold and water for energy measurement solutions for utilities. Landis+Gyr product portfolio consists of advanced metering and intelligent energy management products, such as electricity meters, heating and cooling meters, grid management solutions and personal energy management solutions. In addition, the company offers various software services, managed services, cloud services, smart grid services, systems integration, training, as well as consulting and support services.
Stock Market Value: roughly 1.49B Swiss francs (CHF 51.60 per share)

Activist: Spectrum Entrepreneurial Ownership

Ownership: 5.01%
Average Cost: n/a
Activist Commentary: Spectrum Entrepreneurial Ownership (“SEO”) manages a concentrated portfolio of large minority investments, typically six to eight positions, in listed European companies with a focus on the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland). As a long-term and engaged anchor shareholder, SEO strives to unleash its portfolio companies’ full value potential. The firm targets small and mid-cap companies with multiple catalysts for value creation and prioritizes amicable engagement, typically sitting on the board of most of the companies where they have engagements. The fund’s stable capital base stems from family offices, endowments, pension funds, and other long-term institutional investors. SEO was co-founded in 2022 by Fabian Rauch and Dr. Ilias Läber. The two principals have a combined four decades of board experience in listed companies and each previously worked at Cevian Capital for roughly a decade.

What’s happening

Behind the scenes

Landis+Gyr is a Switzerland-based leading global provider of integrated energy management solutions, specializing in advanced metering infrastructure and smart grid technologies. Utilities and energy providers utilize Landis’ portfolio of smart metering tech, sensors, software and services to modernize and improve the efficiency of their infrastructure. While Landis is a very old company, founded in 1896, it was privately owned and invested in by a series of strategic and financial investors for much of its history. In 2011, Toshiba acquired a 60% stake in the company for U.S. $2.3 billion, but eventually opted to IPO the Swiss unit six years later. It began trading on the SIX Swiss Exchange on July 21, 2017, at 78 Swiss francs (CHF) per share, implying a market cap of CHF 2.3 billion.

Today, Landis is trading well below its IPO price, down over 35%. It is also significantly undervalued, trading around 7.5-times enterprise value/EBITDA, compared to its Nasdaq-listed pure-play peer Itron (roughly 15-times) with which it functionally has a duopoly in the United States, each controlling 35% to 40% of the market. In July 2024, SEO acquired a 5% interest in Landis from Kirkbi, becoming the second largest shareholder. Shortly after, Landis requisitioned an extraordinary general meeting to elect to the board Fabian Rauch, co-founder and managing partner of SEO, in August 2024. Two months later, on Oct. 30, 2024, the company announced a strategic review of its business portfolio which includes the following key elements: (i) increasing focus on its Americas business; (ii) reviewing value creation opportunities for its Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) business; and (iii) evaluating a potential change in listing location to the United States. However, several things have sent the stock price down since then, including Landis reducing its FY24 revenue guidance by 8% and the announcement that it will exit its electric vehicle charging business in EMEA, resulting in expected impairment charges of $35 million to 45 million. Regarding the reduction of guidance, despite Landis continually messaging that post-Covid growth was unsustainable due to pent-up demand, the warnings fell on deaf ears. Shares fell nearly 22% on Feb. 11, 2025, the date of the announcement.
Focusing on the Americas makes a lot of sense. Landis generated $1.963 billion of revenue from three geographic segments: Americas (58%), EMEA (34%), and Asia-Pacific (8%). Despite EMEA contributing a third of revenue, it delivered just 8% of adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, less EBITDA than its significantly smaller Asia-Pacific unit. Exploring additional possibilities for growth in the Americas and winding down its EMEA business through either a sale or spinoff of this business could be highly accretive to shareholder value. A change in listing location, likely to a U.S. exchange, would also make sense considering that this Swiss company is generating most of its profits in the region. This is a strategy which Cevian pushed for at both CRH and Pearson, and it has been a popular activist catalyst in Europe in recent years.
Landis is a story of a failed equity with somewhat of an insular board. Welcoming Fabian Rauch was the first strong signal that the board wanted change. Announcing a value-creating plan shortly thereafter was the second signal. The third happened in November 2024, when the company replaced CEO Werner Lieberherr with Peter Mainz. Finally, the fourth signal happened in January 2025 when the company announced that its chairman Andreas Umbach will not stand for re-election and will be replaced by Audrey Zibelman.
Ken Squire is the founder and president of 13D Monitor, an institutional research service on shareholder activism, and the founder and portfolio manager of the 13D Activist Fund, a mutual fund that invests in a portfolio of activist 13D investments. More

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order excluding certain student loan borrowers from the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 7, 2025. 
Leah Millis | Reuters

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order Friday excluding certain student loan borrowers from the popular Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.
A White House official said Friday that the PSLF program includes borrowers who work for organizations that “engage in illegal, or what we would consider to be improper, activities.”

PSLF, which President George W. Bush signed into law in 2007, allows many not-for-profit and government employees to have their federal student loans canceled after 10 years of payments.
In his first few months in office, Trump has cracked down on illegal immigration as well as diversity efforts across the public and private sector. Many nonprofits work in these spaces, providing legal support or doing advocacy and education work.

Consumer advocates were quick to criticize Trump’s move.
“Donald Trump is weaponizing debt to police speech that does not toe the MAGA party line,” Mike Pierce, co-founder and executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, wrote on X. “Our Democracy is on fire.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request from CNBC for comment.
Correction: A White House official said the PSLF program includes borrowers who work for organizations that “engage in illegal, or what we would consider to be improper, activities.” A previous version of this story misattributed the quote. More

In 2025, workers pay Social Security payroll taxes up to a $176,100 cap.
High earners with $1 million in gross annual wage income have already stopped paying into the program as of March 6.

A video protest sign on a truck paid for by the Patriotic Millionaires drives past a mansion owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as part of a federal tax filing day protest to demand he pay his fair share of taxes, in Washington, May 17, 2021.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

Most workers can expect to see Social Security payroll taxes taken from their paychecks throughout the year.
But high earners with $1 million in gross annual wage income have already stopped paying into the program as of March 6, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

In 2025, workers are subject to payroll taxes on up to $176,100 in earnings. Workers pay a 6.2% Social Security payroll tax rate, which is matched by their employers, for a total of 12.4%.
Once high earners hit that $176,100 cap, they no longer contribute to the program for the rest of the year.
“Elon Musk has already reached that cap of $176,100 within the first few minutes of 2025 just on gross annual wage income,” said Emma Curchin, research assistant at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
That does not include the investment income he earns, which is not subject to Social Security payroll taxes, she said.
Approximately 6% of workers have earnings over the taxable maximum, according to the Social Security Administration.

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Ultimately, higher earners who contribute to the program up to the highest taxable earnings each year for most of their careers stand to receive the maximum retirement benefit.
In 2025, the maximum Social Security benefit for a worker retiring at full retirement age is $4,018 per month.
Meanwhile, the average monthly benefit for retired workers is $1,976 per month in 2025.

Congress could mull eliminating payroll tax cap

As Social Security’s trust funds face a looming insolvency date, some proposals have suggested eliminating or lifting the cap on earnings subject to the Social Security payroll tax.
Last year, Social Security’s trustees projected the fund that the program relies on to pay retirement benefits may last until 2033. At that time, 79% of scheduled benefits will be payable.
To prevent those benefit shortfalls, Congress may consider a variety of tax increases or benefit cuts.

One recent survey found the most popular policy option would be to eliminate the payroll tax cap for earnings of more than $400,000, according to the National Academy of Social Insurance, AARP, the National Institute on Retirement Security and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The change would not provide additional benefits for higher earners who are affected.
The survey also found Americans would be open to higher taxes to ensure benefits either stay the same or increase.
“They’re willing to pay more, not to get extra benefits for themselves, but just to close the financing gap to prevent indiscriminate across the board benefit cuts,” Tyler Bond, research director for the National Institute on Retirement Security, previously told CNBC.com.
Another change survey respondents favored is reducing benefits for individuals with higher retirement incomes excluding Social Security. That would apply to individual retirees with $60,000 or more aside from Social Security per year and married couples with $120,000 or more per year.
“By scrapping the cap, the Social Security trust fund could be much more healthy and secure,” Curchin said.
But it’s not enough. To restore the program’s solvency, research has shown a combination of changes would be required. More

A spousal individual retirement account is a separate Roth or traditional IRA for a non-working spouse.
If you’re married and file jointly, you have until the federal tax deadline — April 15 for most taxpayers — to make 2024 IRA contributions for each spouse.
Your traditional IRA contributions could provide a tax break, depending on your income workplace retirement plan participation.

Peopleimages | Istock | Getty Images

If you’re married and in a single-income household, a lesser-known retirement strategy could boost your nest egg — and there’s still time to use it for 2024.
A spousal individual retirement account is a separate Roth or traditional IRA for the non-working spouse. With this strategy, two IRAs can be maxed out annually with enough income from the working spouse. The deadline for 2024 contributions is April 15.

“Spousal IRAs are a game changer for married couples looking to build retirement savings and manage their lifetime tax burden,” said certified financial planner Jim Davis, partner at Aspen Wealth Management in Fort Worth, Texas.
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For 2024, the IRA contribution limit is $7,000, plus an extra $1,000 catch-up contribution for investors age 50 and older. The caps are the same for 2025.
That means an older married couple with sufficient earned income could save up to $8,000 per IRA for 2024 before the April 15 tax deadline. They’ll have until next year’s tax due date for 2025 IRA contributions.
“For many, it’s a simple yet powerful step toward achieving long-term goals,” Davis said.

To qualify, you must file taxes jointly and your combined IRA contributions can’t exceed “taxable compensation” reported on your tax return, according to the IRS. The strategy could also work if one spouse is unemployed without enough 2024 earnings to contribute to an IRA on their own.
Roth IRAs are funded with after-tax dollars and offer future tax-free growth, but there’s an income limit. Traditional IRAs could provide an upfront tax break, depending on your income and workplace retirement plan participation.   

‘Leveling the playing field’

Another perk of spousal IRAs is the ability to create or boost retirement savings for spouses who don’t earn an income, said Michelle Petrowski, a CFP and founder of Phoenix-based financial firm Being in Abundance.
“This helps accrue retirement savings for the family CFO who may not be employed outside the home, or is currently underemployed,” she said.
In a divorce, it’s often easier to split retirement accounts when the non-earning spouse has assets in their name, noted Petrowski, who is also a certified divorce financial analyst. 
“This is a great way to acknowledge their unpaid economic contribution to the household,” she said. “It really helps with leveling the playing field in these conversations.” More

The Trump administration — with the help of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, which the president says is headed by Elon Musk — has fired tens of thousands of federal workers.
The scale of cuts will likely be flood the Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees (UCFE) with claims and the program may struggle to make timely payments, according to The Century Foundation.

President Donald Trump listens during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Feb. 26, 2025.
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images News | Getty Images

The Trump administration’s purge of federal staff may flood an unemployment benefits system ill-equipped to handle the deluge, triggering delays in aid for jobless workers, according to a new report.
The terminations of federal workers by the Trump administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency — headed up by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk — may ultimately stretch into the hundreds of thousands. That would amount to the largest mass layoff in U.S. history.

The scale of cuts would likely “overwhelm” the Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees (UCFE) program, the “rarely utilized and creaky” system most federal workers use to claim unemployment benefits, according to a report by The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.  
The result would likely be longer time frames to collect financial aid that’s meant to help workers stay afloat and prevent them from depleting savings as they look for new jobs, said Andrew Stettner, the group’s director of economy and jobs, who co-authored the analysis.
“We’re already hearing it’s taking a long time for people to get their benefits,” said Stettner, former director of unemployment insurance modernization at the U.S. Labor Department during the Biden administration. “And it will probably only get worse.”
The Department of Labor oversees the UCFE program, which is administered by state unemployment agencies.

Elon Musk holds a chainsaw reading “Long live freedom, damn it” during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 20, 2025. 
Saul Loeb | Afp | Getty Images

More than 62,000 federal workers across 17 agencies lost their jobs in February alone, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement firm, reported Thursday. By comparison, there were 151 cuts in January and February last year, it said.

Employers have announced almost 222,000 job cuts so far in 2025, the highest year-to-date total since 2009, Challenger, Gray & Christmas said.
“The sudden surge of claims due to federal layoffs has some worrisome similarities to the pandemic, despite its much smaller scale,” according to the Century report.
States will have to process a “drastically greater” volume of claims for the UCFE program, it said.
The Labor Department didn’t return a request from CNBC for comment.

Federal unemployment program more ‘manual’

The UCFE program differs from the unemployment insurance system for private-sector workers — and has unique challenges.
The private-sector UI system is more automated, while that for federal workers requires more manual inputs that can significantly slow the process during times of high volume, Stettner said.
Specifically, private companies pass an employee’s earnings and employment records on a quarterly basis to the appropriate jurisdiction, Stettner said. (That jurisdiction may be a state, territory or the District of Columbia, depending on where the employee worked.)

These employment records are necessary to determine factors like eligibility and weekly payments if a worker claims jobless benefits.
However, the UCFE program isn’t as streamlined. After a worker applies, the state fills out a form and submits a request to the federal agency at which an employee worked, which then verifies the claim’s accuracy, Stettner said.
The federal system is generally “such a small program, it basically works by hand,” he said.
About 7,400 people were collecting federal unemployment benefits as of Feb. 15, up roughly 12% from the same time last year, according to Labor Department data issued Thursday. The number could easily climb to 10 or 20 times that amount, more than they system has ever fielded, Stettner said.
Additionally, the federal government may try to contest claims in certain situations, which could further slow the process, he added. For example, many probationary workers received termination letters saying they’d been fired for cause; while that characterization doesn’t generally prevent workers from getting benefits, the government may use it as a reason to dispute a benefits application, Stettner said.
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Federal workers may find themselves in a tough financial situation if they can’t access benefits quickly.
That’s because it may be difficult for workers to find new jobs, especially in regional labor markets most impacted by mass layoffs.
“Unfortunately, this labor market will not be conducive to a quick rebound — hiring rates are relatively low and uncertainty across the economy is likely to make businesses cautious about labor investments,” Elizabeth Renter, a senior economist at NerdWallet, wrote Thursday.

Road blocks for the Trump administration, DOGE

Even so, it’s unclear how many cuts will ultimately happen — or stick.
The Trump administration has hit recent road blocks in its attempts to cull federal jobs. For example, a federal judge in San Francisco last week said federal mass layoffs were likely illegal and directed the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to rescind directives ordering some agencies to fire probationary workers.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelsey Helland argued for the government that OPM had asked, not ordered, agencies to lay off probationary workers.

“It appears the administration wants to cut even more workers, but an order to fire the roughly 200,000 probationary employees was blocked by a federal judge,” said Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “It remains to be seen how many more workers will lose their Federal Government roles.”
Additionally, the Merit Systems Protection Board, which handles federal worker disputes, temporarily reinstated about 6,000 workers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture in their old positions effective Wednesday. More

The Education Department’s role working on federal student loan borrowers’ complaints is at risk after significant staff cuts under President Donald Trump, employees at the agency said.
The in-house team dedicated to helping borrowers with complaints concerning the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program no longer exists, a staffer said.
“We lost that expertise and the ability to answer complaints in a timely manner,” a staffer said.

An American flag and a U.S. Department of Education flag fly outside the US Department of Education building in Washington, D.C., U.S., Feb. 1, 2025. 
Annabelle Gordon | Reuters

Federal student loan borrowers experiencing difficulties with their loans could find they have no recourse as President Donald Trump’s cuts to staff at the Department of Education are carried out, employees at the agency said.
Staffers at the Education Department tasked with fielding complaints from federal student loan holders and resolving their issues were let go in the recent job cuts, one employee told CNBC. At least eight of the fired staffers were working on a total of nearly 800 student loan borrower complaint cases, an employee said.

The remaining staff will likely have to take over these accounts. But, the employee said, “I have no idea when they’ll get reassigned.”
As a result, those borrowers “just have to continue to wait, and maybe they go into delinquency,” the staffer said.
Hundreds of thousands of people submit complaints to the Office of the Ombudsman at Federal Student Aid each year, according to a rough calculation by higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz.
Trump is expected to sign an executive order calling on Education Secretary Linda McMahon to abolish the agency, a move that experts say would worsen the situation for borrowers. The Wall Street Journal first reported on that expected order.
As a department authorized by Congress, the department cannot be eliminated without congressional approval. But in the meantime, the Trump administration can slowly starve it by cutting resources.

There are roughly 42 million Americans who hold federal student loans, and the outstanding debt exceeds $1.6 trillion. Currently, around 9.2 million people — or roughly 43% of the nearly 22 million borrowers with payments due — are behind on their payments, according to a recent VantageScore report.
Federal student loan borrowers need assistance now more than ever, the Education Department staffers said. Collection activity is resuming for the first time in roughly five years after the expiration of pandemic-era relief, and a new repayment plan, called SAVE, that millions had enrolled in is now blocked by the courts.
“People will start having their wages or benefits garnished,” the staffer said. “If this happens erroneously, it would be extremely difficult to resolve that on your own.”
“Borrowers would be stuck having their money seized without a way to stop it,” they said.
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Borrowers who reach out the Education Department with questions or complaints are now less likely to get assistance, the staffers told CNBC.
Sources for this story requested anonymity because they feared retribution if they were named.
A White House spokesperson did not respond to questions from CNBC about the slowdown in student loan borrower assistance at the Education Department.
The in-house team dedicated to helping borrowers with complaints concerning the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program no longer exists, a staffer said.
As a result, remaining employees are unsure of where to direct borrowers who have issues with this program, the employee said. (PSLF is a popular way for public servants and those who work at nonprofits to get their debt canceled after 10 years of payments.)
“We lost that expertise and the ability to answer complaints in a timely manner,” the employee said.

Staffers say borrowers are already feeling the effect.
One employee told CNBC that they are currently helping a woman get her student debt discharged because of her disability, and that “every time we talk she’s terrified I won’t be there the next time.”
The employees said their work in complaint resolution has had huge impacts on people’s financial lives, and those efforts are now at risk.
They said they were able to get loans discharged for victims of identity theft, teachers and countless disabled borrowers.
Persis Yu, deputy executive director and managing counsel at the Student Borrower Protection Center, criticized the moves at the Education Department.
“The ombudsman team was one of the first places to raise the alarm when there were systemic problems,” Yu said.
“The student loan system is broken, and right now there’s nowhere for borrowers to turn.”

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The U.S. is the top nation for the world’s wealthy, a recent report finds.
The number of multimillionaires worldwide jumped 4.4% in 2024, while the share of wealthy Americans with more than $10 million grew by 5.2%.

When it comes to the rise of multimillionaires, the United States is leading the charge, a new report found.
The number of high-net-worth individuals — or those with assets worth more than $10 million — rose 4.4% worldwide in 2024, to 2,341,378, but jumped 5.2% in North America, according to the annual Wealth Report by global real estate consultancy Knight Frank.

The U.S. is now home to almost 40% of the world’s super rich, the report estimates — nearly double the share that resides in China, the region with the next highest contingent of wealthy individuals.
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“While the global economy slowed through 2024, the resilience of the U.S. helped prop up investor confidence,” Liam Bailey, global head of research at Knight Frank, said in a statement. “The trends powering wealth creation, including growth in financial markets led by equity markets and the bitcoin run, continued through 2024.”
Over the year, positive market conditions helped boost investors’ bottom line. The S&P 500 stock index gained 23% in 2024. The tech-heavy Nasdaq grew about 29% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose more than 12%.
“And despite geopolitical tensions, resilient global trade further contributed to growth,” Bailey said.

The rich are getting richer

After increasing 4.2% in 2024, the population of global citizens worth at least $100 million surpassed the 100,000 mark for the first time, Knight Frank also found.
Meanwhile, the total number of billionaires jumped nearly 8% last year, according to a separate report by Oxfam from January.
“We’ve reached a new era now, we are in the era of the billionaire,” Jenny Ricks, general secretary of the human rights group Fight Inequality Alliance, recently told CNBC. 

Roughly 204 new billionaires were minted in just 12 months, the Oxfam report found.
“Not only has the rate of billionaire wealth accumulation accelerated — by three times — but so too has their power,” Amitabh Behar, Oxfam International’s executive director, said in a statement after the report’s release.
The latest numbers also underscore a deepening divide between the world’s rich and poor. 
Despite the fact that America ranks first as the richest nation, 36.8 million Americans live in poverty, accounting for 11.1% of the total population, according to the latest report from the U.S. Census Bureau. 
Many middle-class Americans are also showing signs of strain amid the escalating trade war and increased inflationary fears.

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