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The Palisades Power Plant in Covert, Michigan, could become the first nuclear reactor to restart operations in U.S. history.
The plant’s owner, Holtec International, aims to reopen the plant in late 2025, subject to review and approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Holtec has plans to expand the plant in 2030 with small modular reactors — a new technology that could speed deployment of nuclear power in the future.

The Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Covert, Mich.
John Madill | The Herald-Palladium | AP

The Palisades Power Plant on the shores of Lake Michigan had become a piece of history, a relic of an era when nuclear energy was viewed as the future.
The reactor in Covert, Michigan, about 70 miles of southwest of Grand Rapids, ceased operations in May 2022 after providing power to the industrial Midwestern state for more than 40 years.

The closure was part of a decade-long wave of reactor shutdowns in the U.S., as nuclear power struggled to compete against cheap, abundant natural gas in the wake of the shale boom and the rapid expansion renewable energy.
Plus, the power source had long been controversial, with opponents who feared the consequences of waste produced by the process or the potential of radiation leaks in the event of an accident.
But Palisades is now poised to become the first reactor in U.S. history to reopen after shutting down. Lawmakers on both sides of the political divide, tech companies and leading utilities increasingly view nuclear as a crucial source of reliable, carbon-free energy to supply rising electricity demand in the U.S. while slashing emissions to address climate change.
Holtec International, the privately held owner of the Palisades, aims for the plant to resume operations by the end of 2025 with the support of up to $1.5 billion in loans from the Department of Energy and $300 million in grants from the state of Michigan.
The plans to reopen Palisades are under review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. If successful, Palisades could provide a road map for other mothballed plants to resume operations such as Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania.

“It’s a bridge to our small modular reactor program,” Kelly Trice, president of Holtec, said in a nod to its long-term plan to nearly double the facility’s power generation in 2030 with small modular reactors. The new technology, which could become the first of its kind on the U.S. grid, promises to speed deployment of nuclear plants in the future.
“Our goal is to be able to increase plants in the country and elsewhere in the world with small modular reactors,” he said.

Road map for restarting reactors

Florida-based Holtec bought Palisades in 2022 with the intention of dismantling it. The previous owner, Entergy, shut down the facility as its finances deteriorated under the strain of competing with cheap natural gas.
But Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made restarting Palisades a priority, saying it could support the state’s push to produce all of its energy from clean sources by 2040. Whitmer signed bipartisan legislation that provided state funding and supported Holtec’s application for federal financing.
“It was not shut down for so long that it was irreversible,” Trice said. “This plant actually had a 10-year period where we weren’t going to do heavy decommissioning work.”
A restart of Palisades could mark a turning point for the nuclear industry after a decade in which a dozen reactors have shut down across the country. The 800-megawatt reactor would provide enough power for more than 800,000 homes.

Gretchen Whitmer, governor of Michigan, right, and Jennifer Granholm, US energy secretary, center, in the control room simulator during a tour of the Holtec Palisades Training Center in Covert, Michigan, US, on Wednesday, March 27, 2024. 
Kristen Norman | Bloomberg | Getty Images

The U.S. is facing historic growth of electricity demand from data centers that support artificial intelligence, the return of domestic manufacturing, and the electrification of vehicles as well as the broader economy. Data centers and electric vehicles alone are expected to boost demand by 290 terawatt hours by 2030 — the equivalent of the electricity consumption of Turkey, according to a recent report from Rystad Energy.
Nuclear is the most dependable energy source, generating maximum power 93% of the time without emitting carbon dioxide. It’s nearly four times more reliable than solar and three times more than wind, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Executives at some of the largest utilities have warned that failure to meet this demand could jeopardize U.S. economic growth. Southern Company CEO Chris Womack said in June that the U.S. needs to a build a significant number of new nuclear plants to meet the country’s growing power demand. The U.S. and a coalition of more than 20 other countries pledged in December to triple nuclear energy by 2050.
But building new nuclear plants is slow and expensive. Sometimes plants can get mired in legal challenges. Southern recently completed the first new plant in decades, but the project was years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
Trice said restarting a reactor can be “easier, cheaper and faster” than building a new one, though he emphasized that this depends on how far the decommissioning process has progressed.
“There are a few other plants that have talked to us about how to do it,” the executive said. “And we’re hopeful that they will. From that regard, maybe it becomes a model on a few plants where that fits.”

‘On the grid first’

Holtec hopes to expand Palisades with two 300-megawatt small modular reactors, or SMRs, which would nearly double its capacity to 1,400 megawatts — enough power for 1.4 million homes.
The company aims to break ground before the end of 2027, Trice said. He expects the first SMR would come online in mid-2030.
“Our goal is to be on the grid first,” Trice said.
SMRs are viewed as an important path to expand nuclear power because they promise to reduce capital costs, a major hurdle to building new plants. They use a pressurized water reactor, like traditional plants. However, SMRs are prefabricated in pieces and then assembled at the construction site.
“It’s a smaller, simpler plant in comparison — it’s easier to operate,” Trice said.
Once the first SMR is built, Holtec plans to build an order book to “continually manufacture components for whatever plant is needed,” he said. “We’ve had more utilities than I can count contact us and want to be on the list,” Trice said.
The Big Tech companies are also showing growing interest in nuclear, including Holtec’s SMR program. As the tech giants build out power-hungry data centers to support AI, they are still hoping to meet their climate goals.
“We’ve talked to pretty much all of them, especially the big ones have talked to us,” Trice said. “They’re all interested in carbon-free, green, baseload power.”

Possible Three Mile Island project

Constellation Energy, the largest U.S. operator of nuclear plants, has hinted that Palisades could serve as a model for a restart of Three Mile Island near Middletown, Pennsylvania. The company owns the Unit 1 reactor at the facility, which ceased operations in 2019. (Unit 1 is not the reactor that partially melted down in 1979 in the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history.)
“We’ve obviously seen what happened with Palisades. I think that was brilliant,” CEO Jose Dominguez said on Constellation’s first-quarter earnings call in May.
Constellation is considering a “number of different opportunities” and Three Mile Island “would probably be certainly one of those that we would think about,” Dominguez said.
“We’re at a point where we believe that it is technically feasible,” Kathleen Barrón, Constellation’s chief strategy officer told CNBC regarding a Three Mile Island restart. “But there are a number of economic and commercial and regulatory questions that we’re still evaluating.”
NextEra Energy, the largest renewables operator in the U.S., is weighing whether to restart the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Palo, Iowa. It ceased operations in August 2020.
“There would be opportunities and a lot of demand from the market if we were able to do something with Duane Arnold,” NextEra CEO John Ketchum said on a second-quarter earnings call on July 24.
“We’re looking at it,” Ketchum said. “But we would only do it if we could do it in a way that is essentially risk free with plenty of mitigants around the approach. There are a few things we would have to work through.”
But Palisades, Three Mile Island and Duane Arnold ceased operations relatively recently. Finding more plants to restart could prove difficult, said Doug True, chief nuclear officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute.
“It gets harder and harder,” True said. “A lot of these plants have already started the deconstruction process that goes with decommissioning and the facility wasn’t as thoroughly laid up in a way that was intended to restart in any way.”
Three Mile Island and Duane Arnold would “require a lot of thought and effort to see what it’s going to take to get those back online,” True said.

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Pavlo Gonchar | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Company: Five9 (FIVN)

Business: Five9 provides intelligent cloud software for contact centers in the United States and internationally. It offers a virtual contact center cloud platform that delivers a suite of applications, which enables the breadth of contact center-related customer service, sales and marketing functions. The platform also matches each customer interaction with an agent resource and delivers customer data to the agent in real-time through integrations with adjacent enterprise applications. The company serves customers in a range of industries, including banking and financial services, business process outsourcers, retail, health care, technology and education.
Stock Market Value: $3.01B ($40.77 per share)

Stock chart icon

Five9’s year-to-date performance

Activist: Anson Funds

Percentage Ownership:  n/a
Average Cost: n/a
Activist Commentary: Anson Funds is a multi-strategy fund founded in 2007 by Moez Kassam, and it has $1.9 billion in assets. While not historically activists, in October 2023, Anson hired Sagar Gupta (former senior analyst and head of technology, media and telecommunications investing at Legion Partners) to build out the firm’s activism strategy.

What’s happening

On July 11, Reuters reported that Anson acquired a position in Five9.

Behind the scenes

Five9 is a cloud-based contact center software provider empowering clients with solutions for customer service, sales and marketing. The company is a leader in the space and the only pure-play cloud contact center provider with peers InContact and Genesys, which are respectively owned by Nice and Permira.

In 2021, Zoom Video made a $14.7 billion offer to acquire Five9 for about $200 per share using Zoom stock. However, the value of the deal declined to approximately $170 per share as the price of Zoom stock fell, and Five9 shareholders voted against it. Two years later, in December 2023, with Five9 shares trading in the low $80s, the company received another acquisition offer which was widely reported to be from Zoom. Five9 rejected that offer. On Friday, the stock closed at $40.77.
Five9’s shares have been tumbling for two main reasons: First, its growth has slowed to 17% last year from 40% in 2021. Second, this happened at a time when the market perceived the company as a potential artificial intelligence victim. There is a misguided belief that as AI applications reduce the staffing of contact centers, Five9 will lose market share and revenue. However, this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Five9 is and what it does. The company is not being disrupted. Rather, it’s the disruptor. It is a developer and provider of AI contact center solutions that augment or replace human beings often at more than double the price. Moreover, only 20% of contact centers are in the cloud, 80% are still on premises, and on-premise contact centers cannot use AI without converting to the cloud. Five9 is cloud native and offers the software that large enterprises need to implement AI in their contact centers. Considering that, there is tremendous market share left to be captured by the three incumbent cloud providers. So as AI becomes more prevalent in contact centers, the total addressable market and revenue for Five9 and its peers should greatly increase. In other words, the bear case for this company is, in fact, the bull case.
As an independent company, Five9 has a tremendous opportunity for value. First, while the company is not likely to get annual growth back to 40% at this level of revenue, it can certainly get it over 20%, particularly if the AI thesis plays. Second, as the revenue mix skews more toward “software as a service” as expected, Five9’s gross margins should increase from the mid-60% over 70%. Finally, as SaaS revenue increases, a lot of that will go straight to the bottom line improving the company’s operating margins.
Reuters, citing sources familiar, has also reported that Anson is pushing the company to explore a sale. We do not think that is the case as much as the investor is encouraging the board to responsibly manage any incoming interest to sell the company and weigh that against the risk-adjusted value of Five9 on a standalone basis. While this could lead to a more robust sales process, as the last remaining pure-play cloud-based contact center, there are a handful of potential acquirers, all strategic: ServiceNow, Salesforce and Zoom. Despite reportedly trying to buy the company twice before, at significantly higher prices, Zoom has made no secret of its goal to use its $7.4 billion of net cash for an acquisition and has specifically mentioned a contact center.
The question is whether Five9 management is receptive to a sale. We think they are for several reasons. First, Five9’s current chairman and CEO Mike Burkland was the chairman of the company in 2021 when he first agreed to sell to Zoom. Second, the company has had a change of control severance agreement since 2014, which had a five-year term and was renewed for an additional five years in 2019. In 2024, Five9 renewed it for only one year. Finally, to put a little additional pressure on management, while Five9 has a staggered board, its lead independent director for the past 10 years is up for election next year and would certainly prefer to go out with a sale of the company at a premium rather than through a negative vote if it comes to that.
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. Five9 is owned in the fund. More

Nonfarm payrolls grew by just 114,000 in July, down from 179,000 in June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday.
The unemployment rate increased to 4.3%, the highest since October 2021, the agency noted.
If you’re looking for a job, some sectors are still hiring. Here’s where to start.

Tom Merton | Ojo Images | Getty Images

Job seekers have been sour on the job market for awhile now — and with good reason.
“The soft landing in the U.S. labor market is in danger,” Nick Bunker, Economic Research Director for North America for Indeed Hiring Lab, wrote in a statement on Friday.

“Yellow flags had started to pop up in the labor market data over the past few months, but now the flags are turning red,” Bunker said. 
While some market areas like the information services sector posted a loss of 20,000 in Friday’s jobs report, other sectors might still have “Help Wanted” signs on their doors. 
If you’re currently battling through a competitive labor market, here are the sectors that are hiring and how you can transfer your skills to pivot into a different field, according to experts.

A ‘warning sign’ from entry-level workers

Job growth in the U.S. slowed more than expected and the unemployment rate bounced higher, according to the latest information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Nonfarm payrolls grew by just 114,000 in July, down from 179,000 in June, the agency reported on Friday. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate increased to 4.3%, the highest since October 2021.

A key driver in the July’s unemployment rate was an increase in “job loser unemployment,” or temporarily laid-off workers, Bunker said. This can happen in the manufacturing sector, he said.
“They are unemployed, but their connection to their old employer isn’t entirely severed,” Bunker said. “Their probability of finding a job in the next six months is much higher than other unemployed workers.”

The jobless rate is also driven by young workers under the age of 24 facing increased competition, said Alí Bustamante, a labor economist and director of the Worker Power and Economic Security program at the Roosevelt Institute, a liberal think tank based in New York City.

These sectors are still hiring

“The only constants in this labor market over the last 18 months have been government jobs, health-care jobs and construction, too, remarkably,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.
A small share of the private sector is adding jobs, according to Bunker.
“It’s not like the broad share of sectors is adding jobs right now,” he said.

Health care and social assistance took the lead in job creations by adding 64,000 openings, according to the BLS. Other growing sectors include construction (25,000); leisure and hospitality (23,000); government (17,000); transportation and warehousing (14,000); wholesale trade (4,300); retail trade (4,000); and manufacturing (1,000).

Some fields ‘see insatiable demand from employers’

It can be hard to optimize the job search on a growing sector because of cyclical market fluctuations, economists said.
But if you were to make a career pivot, “health care does make sense,” Bunker said.
In some cases, that might involve going back to school, Pollak said.
“We see incredibly high demand in health care throughout every level of job for registered nurses, for nursing assistants,” she said.
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Training in skilled trades is a way to go as well, she added. Some fields are seeing a strong demand, especially those where the workforce is aging and on the brink of retirement, and industries that are unlikely to be disrupted by artificial intelligence automation, Pollak explained.
“It’s the skilled trades, like an electrician or a [heating, ventilation and air conditioning] technician, where we see insatiable demand from employers and rising wages,” she said.

To pivot, assess ‘transferrable skills’

Because the labor market is weakening, it might be hard for workers to find opportunities in their preferred industries, Bustamante noted.
Looking at other occupations and other industries that may have a similar occupation than the one that they were looking for could be a start, he said.
Say, for example, “you’re an IT worker and you want to work at a startup firm,” said Bustamante. It might be difficult to find an opportunity there, but perhaps looking into the medical field or in government service, which is “doing pretty strong hiring as well,” could be fruitful, he said.

It’s really about not just looking at the industries but “really looking at the occupations and where those occupations or opportunities are really present at the moment,” Bustamante said.
Pollak agreed: “Definitely look at things where you have transferable skills.”
Job seekers can become better competitors by making these kinds of changes: tailoring the resume, browsing job listings, applying right away and seeing that “AI can be your best friend,” from resume rebuilding, interview preparation to discovering roles, she said.

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As the de facto Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris’ financial records are under fresh scrutiny.
Her tax returns have been “fairly basic,” according to Craig Hausz, CEO and managing partner at CMH Advisors.
Still, there could be missed tax savings opportunities from her conservative approach, experts say.

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff descend from Air Force Two in Wilmington, DE, U.S., July 22, 2024. 
Erin Schaff | Via Reuters

Vice President Kamala Harris’ personal financial records are under fresh scrutiny now that she is running for the highest office in the United States.
Experts say recent tax filings show she and her husband, Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff, have largely kept their finances simple during her years as vice president.

“Her returns are fairly basic,” said Craig Hausz, a certified financial planner and certified public accountant, who is CEO and managing partner at CMH Advisors in Dallas.
Yet that approach may have cost the couple as they left unclaimed tax savings through additional deductions, as well as other missed financial strategies.
The financial disclosures may raise few red flags in her career in public office. Unlike most other Americans, Harris and Emhoff can afford to avoid to miss those savings.
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“Even if she doesn’t win president, as an ex vice president, she’ll always have lots of money coming in,” said Carolyn McClanahan, a CFP and founder of Life Planning Partners in Jacksonville, Florida.

“They will never lack for money, so they don’t really need to worry too much about how [tax] efficient they are, or how much they save,” said McClanahan, who is also a member of the CNBC FA Council.
Harris’ office did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
The couple’s recent tax filings mirror millions of other Americans’, according to Boston-based CFP and enrolled agent Catherine Valega, founder of Green Bee Advisory.
“They took a conservative approach and that’s the right thing to do,” Valega said. “You don’t see them trying to do anything super creative here to reduce their taxes.”

What tax savings Harris may have missed

Overall, Harris’ return could have been more aggressive to reduce tax liability, experts say.  
“Somebody in her position could probably take more deductions,” particularly against her book income, Hausz explained.
To that point, Harris reported $7,272 in gross book income in 2023 with a single business deduction of $1,273 for “commissions and fees.” By comparison, her 2021 book earnings were $452,664 with the same deduction worth $65,951.
“If I were advising her, I would say ‘let’s keep this as uncomplicated as possible, so there’s no talking points,'” Hausz said. “She’s done a very good job of that.”

‘A little too conservative’ with cash

Another possible missed opportunity is Harris’ cash allocations, with $50,603 in bank account interest reported for 2023, up from $6,054 in 2022, experts say.Bank account yields have been higher after a series of interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve. But Harris’ jump in interest could mean they have significant cash allocations, which may be “a little too conservative,” Hausz said.”They’ve missed out on growth in the stock market,” he added.
However, the cash allocation could be a good fit, depending on their short-term financial goals and other investments, Valega said.

Yields will fall once the Federal Reserve begins cutting interest rates again. In the meantime, earning $50,000 on Federal Insurance Deposit Corporation-protected cash is a “pretty good deal,” she said.  
It is possible Harris and Emhoff may not be getting the best returns on their cash, depending on whether that money is locked up in certificates of deposit, or sitting in a lower-yield savings account, according to McClanahan.
Yet having lots of cash on hand may give them the financial flexibility they need, particularly as Emhoff took a big pay cut to become Second Gentleman, McClanahan said.
“It’s good to have lots of cash when you’re a politician, so you could stay out of trouble with meeting your expenses,” McClanahan said.

More money toward retirement

Harris could also put more of her income in tax-deferred retirement accounts to boost her tax savings.
“Even though she could have put money in retirement plans, she didn’t need to,” McClanahan said.
Hopefully, Harris is maxing out a Thrift Savings Plan, a retirement savings and investment plan for federal employees, McClanahan said.
In addition, she could contribute to a simplified employee pension plan, or SEP, a variation of individual retirement accounts, to further boost her retirement savings, she said.
While those contributions may help Harris save on taxes, she already has retirement security through pensions from her time as vice president, senator and attorney general of California, McClanahan noted. In addition, she stands to receive Social Security benefits based on her payroll tax contributions to the program. More

In 2023, 6% of Americans were living without a bank account, Federal Reserve data shows.
Black and Hispanic adults are disproportionately unbanked, according to the Fed.
Experts say a lack of brick-and-mortar banks in communities of color has exacerbated the issue.

Sean Gladwell | Moment | Getty Images

Even as many Americans go cashless, some don’t have the option to choose that lifestyle.
About 6% of Americans were unbanked in 2023, meaning they’re living without access to any traditional financial services such as savings accounts, credit cards or personal checks, according to data from the Federal Reserve.

This share of the population grows to 23% when only considering people making less than $25,000. 
The unbanked are more vulnerable to predatory lending practices and their cash is more at risk, financial experts say. This issue disproportionately affects Black and Hispanic adults, Fed data shows, putting financial institutions and local organizations in a position to build trust within marginalized communities.
“Oftentimes the most vulnerable among us, who need the resources most efficiently, aren’t able to get access,” said Wole Coaxum, CEO of MoCaFi, a fintech company serving the unbanked and underbanked.

Young adults, people of color are more often unbanked

Black and Hispanic adults are 14% and 11%, respectively, more likely to be unbanked than white (4%) and Asian (4%) adults, according to the Fed.
This doesn’t come as a surprise to Joe Lugo, founder and CEO of J^3 Creations, a Clearwater, Florida-based consulting business that helps organizations become more culturally sensitive.

Much of the disconnect between financial institutions and communities of color, he said, can be attributed to a lack of banks in their neighborhoods.
“There is a subliminal message being sent to the community from generation to generation,” Lugo said. “When they don’t see a financial institution or a bank, [they] tend to say, ‘There’s no avenue for me this way. If I had a dream to start a business or buy a home, that’s not for me because they don’t exist here.'”
Many rural areas of the U.S. also tend to be banking deserts, largely because of a lack of population density, according to Darrin Williams, CEO of Southern Bancorp, Inc., a community development financial institution that serves rural and minority communities in the mid-South.
“In many of the markets we serve, we’re the only bank in town,” Williams said. “Often competition of the bank is a payday lender or some predatory provider of capital.”
Younger adults are also more likely to be unbanked.
Of 18- to 29-year-olds, 11% are living without a bank account, compared to 9% of 30- to 44-year-olds, 5% of 45- to 59-year-olds and 2% of people 60 and older, according to the Federal Reserve.
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Part of this can be explained by Generation Z’s mindset toward banking, said Winnie Sun, co-founder and managing director of Irvine, California-based Sun Group Wealth Partners. She is also a member of the CNBC Advisor Council.
“They feel like banking is something that is old school and traditional and there’s not a fit for them,” said Sun, who is the mother of a Gen Zer. “It’s an opportunity for us to talk to them about why they need to bank and how to open an account that works for them.”

‘They’re getting preyed upon’

Your money is better protected in a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.-insured bank account, experts say, rather than keeping cash at home or stored in a Venmo or Cash App account, which are not FDIC insured.
It’s not always easy to tell which fintech services offer FDIC deposit insurance coverage, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation says “it depends.” The American Fintech Council did not respond to a request for comment.
It’s still a good idea to keep some cash on hand in case of emergencies, but putting money in an inexpensive or free checking account can help build credit and establish good habits, Sun said. 
“It would help you, even if it’s just small amounts, to start to build that savings pattern so that you can save for the future and other financial goals, too,” she said.
People without bank accounts might also turn to check cashing services or consider payday loans, especially if they’re the only brick-and-mortar financial services in their neighborhood. These each come with risks, such as steep interest rates and a lack of federal insurance, said Preston Duppins, a senior partner and financial advisor at Florida-based Vilardi Wealth Management. 
“They’re getting preyed upon,” Duppins said about people taking out payday borrowers.
“And they don’t have the pull to get Congress to change payday loan laws,” he added.
The Community Financial Services Association of America, which represents payday lenders, did not respond to a request for comment.

Building trust

To get the unbanked to trust financial institutions, Lugo, with J^3 Creations, said local leaders and banks must meet people where they are.
“Most of the time, marginalized folks are not willing to venture out of their areas. I think there are some financial institutions that are starting to get it” said Lugo, who also co-founded the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Pinellas County.
“They’re going out into the community, they’re promoting their services into the community, they’re creating programs specifically for the community,” he said.

It’s one thing that Coaxum says MoCaFi aims to do. The fintech company, he said, initially assumed people who were unbanked or underbanked would readily adopt their free bank account offering with accessible ATMs. However, it wasn’t so simple, and Coaxum said the company’s “sophistication bias” impeded its ability to recruit customers.
The company shifted over time to partner with governments to distribute benefits like universal basic income programs, which gave recipients a reason to use the platform. 
“Giving them access to some benefit and then using that conversation as a way to be able to get them into our demand deposit account is how we shifted,” Coaxum said. 
Other ways to build trust are through education and representation, experts say. As a Black financial advisor, Duppins says he doesn’t see a lot of people who look like him in his field. 
“I spend a lot of time in my community. I don’t segment people by their access, because that means segmenting people who look like me,” Duppins said. “We need to continually focus on women, women of color, men of color in this space, in this banking industry.” More

Former President Donald Trump said this week that if elected, he would lower interest rates.
Interest rates are set by the Federal Reserve, which governs decisions about monetary policy independently from the White House. Therefore, it is theoretically free from political pressure.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell has maintained that politics will not play a role in the FOMC’s policy decisions.

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks on a panel of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) convention in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. July 31, 2024. 
Vincent Alban | Reuters

At the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention in Chicago on Wednesday, former President Donald Trump said inflation and high interest rates are “destroying our country.”
The Republican presidential nominee said if elected, he would “bring interest rates way down.”

“I bring inflation way down, so people can buy bacon again, so people can buy a ham sandwich again, so that people can go to a restaurant and afford it,” he said.
The president, however, exerts no direct control over interest rates. The Federal Reserve sets interest rates, and it operates independently of the White House.
Inflation has been a persistent problem since the Covid-19 pandemic, when price increases soared to their highest levels in more than 40 years. The Federal Reserve — which sets interest rates — responded with a series of rate hikes to effectively pump the brakes on the economy in an effort to get inflation under control.
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Now, recent economic data indicates that inflation is falling back toward the Fed’s 2% target, paving the way for the central bank to lower its benchmark rate for the first time in years. The personal consumption expenditures price index — the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge — showed a rise of 2.5% year over year in June. 

The federal funds rate, which sets overnight borrowing costs for banks but also influences consumer borrowing costs, is currently targeted in a range of 5.25% to 5.50%, the result of 11 rate increases between March 2022 and July 2023.
Once that rate comes down, consumers may see their borrowing costs fall as well.

‘A highly consequential year’

A contentious history

Trump, who nominated Powell to head of the nation’s central bank in 2018, became a fierce critic of the Fed chief and his colleagues, skirting historical precedent while in office by repeatedly and publicly berating the Fed’s decision-making. 
During his tenure in the White House, Trump complained that the central bank maintained a fed funds rate that was too high, making it harder for businesses and consumers to borrow and putting the U.S. at an economic disadvantage to countries with lower rates.
Ultimately, though, Trump’s comments had no impact on the Fed’s benchmark.
“Any chairman is going to remain loyal to the Fed’s mandate over any browbeating from the White House,” said Brett House, economics professor at Columbia Business School. 

Earlier this year, the former president told Fox Business that he would not reappoint Powell to lead the Fed. “I think he’s political,” Trump said. “I think he’s going to do something to probably help the Democrats, I think, if he lowers interest rates.”
Trump also told Bloomberg Businessweek in an interview in July that cutting rates just weeks ahead of the presidential election in November is “something that [central bank officials] know they shouldn’t be doing.”
When asked about these comments Wednesday, Powell underscored the Fed’s singular focus on the economy. (The central bank has a few main goals with respect to the economy: to promote maximum employment, keep prices stable and ensure moderate long-term interest rates.) 
“We don’t change anything in our approach to address other factors like the political calendar,” Powell said. “We never use our tools to support or oppose a political party, a politician or any political outcome.”

The central bank is an independent agency that governs decisions about monetary policy without interference from the president or any branch of government. Therefore, it is theoretically free from political pressure.
“The Fed will staunchly defend their independence regardless of who is president,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com.

The election effect on interest rate policy

In previous presidential election cycles, the Fed has maintained its charted course through the election, whether that was tightening as in 2004, cutting in 2008 or remaining on hold as in 1996, 2012 and 2020, according to a research report by Wells Fargo released in February.
Further, since 1994, the Fed adjusted its policy rate roughly the same number of times in presidential election years as in non-election years, the report said.
A separate research note by Barclays also found “no compelling statistical evidence that Federal Reserve policy is conducted differently during presidential elections.”

“The Fed’s independence will remain paramount,” McBride said. Going forward, “what will influence what the Fed does is what is happening in the broader economy.”
And yet, Fed board members are nominated by the president and must be approved by the Senate. Powell will conclude his second four-year stretch as chair in 2026 — opening the door to a potential change in leadership — and, possibly, the direction of monetary policy — smack in the middle of the next presidential term. 
The Trump campaign did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment. 
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Many Americans are pessimistic that Social Security benefits will be there for them when they retire.
It is possible benefits will change to address a looming Social Security funding shortfall.
But experts say the chances are slim that Social Security benefits will go away completely.

Twenty47studio | Moment | Getty Images

Workers who pay into Social Security while they’re working should expect benefits from the program when they retire.
Yet 72% of adults worry Social Security will run out of funding in their lifetimes, a new survey from Nationwide Retirement Institute finds.

Meanwhile, 23% do not expect to receive even a dime of the Social Security benefits they’ve earned.
Millennials and Gen Xers are most concerned the program’s funding may run out, according to Nationwide’s online survey of more than 1,800 adults, ages 18 and up.
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The pessimism comes as the program’s future funding status is uncertain. The trust fund the program relies on to pay retirement benefits is due to run out in 2033. At that time, just 79% of benefits will be payable.
Voters in the November presidential election are expected to place a high priority on where the candidates stand on fixing Social Security.

However, fears that Social Security benefits may dry up completely are overblown, experts say.
“The odds of it going away completely, I think, are really, really low,” David Blanchett, managing director and head of retirement research at PGIM DC Solutions, recently told CNBC.com.

However, it is possible benefits could be rearranged to make it so high earners receive a reduced income replacement rate, he said. Nevertheless, Americans shouldn’t worry Social Security will disappear.
“We’re always going to have a public pension system that almost all Americans will have access to,” Blanchett said.
While it is possible future Social Security benefits will be reduced, it is unlikely they will be eliminated altogether, Joe Elsasser, a certified financial planner and president of Social Security claiming software company Covisum, recently told CNBC.com.
“It’s totally reasonable to expect a benefit cut for younger people,” Elsasser said. “But to plan for it not to be there at all is a poor assumption.”

Most Americans don’t fully understand Social Security

While many Americans worry about Social Security’s future, they also don’t know fully understand how the program works, Nationwide’s survey found.
“What is disappointing is to recognize that the gaps actually widened,” said Tina Ambrozy, senior vice president of strategic customer solutions at Nationwide, said of the results of the firm’s 11th annual survey.
More than half of respondents — 51% — do not know how to maximize their Social Security benefits and 33% are uncertain when they may qualify for full retirement benefits.
Likewise, recent research from the National Institute on Retirement Security found just 11% of Americans know exactly how much Social Security benefits they may receive.

Social Security retirement benefits are calculated based on the top 35 years of wages that are averaged together to determine your benefit, Blanchett explained.
If you start working and paying into the program through payroll taxes at age 20, and then retire age 65, you have a 45-year wage history. Social Security will use your highest 35 earning years to calculate your benefit.
Importantly, beneficiaries are not limited to a fixed retirement benefit amount and can maximize their benefits.
You can claim retirement benefits at the earliest at age 62 or wait until 70, the highest claiming age. At age 62, you will receive a permanently reduced benefit. If you wait instead until full retirement age — 66 to 67, depending on when you were born — you will receive 100% of the benefits you earned.
But if you wait even longer, you may receive even more. Most experts recommend waiting until the highest age at which benefits can grow — 70 — to maximize Social Security benefit income.
Many people are not familiar with the highest claiming age, NIRS recently found.
“If you wait until age 70 you get the maximum possible benefit,” Blanchett said. “Every month or year you claim before that, the benefit is proportionally reduced.”

To be sure, waiting may not be the optimal strategy for everyone.
Nationwide and other firms recommend consulting a financial professional to help individuals assess their Social Security claiming options.
Many Americans are heading into their retirement years with a shortfall in retirement savings, which has prompted debate as to whether the U.S. is on the brink of a retirement crisis.
While many Americans may be forced to make significant changes to their lifestyles in their golden years, Social Security should help prevent worst case scenarios, according to Blanchett.
“If we didn’t have Social Security benefits, we would have a crisis where we’d have people retire, they’d be destitute, they’d be in a lot of trouble,” Blanchett said. More

Home prices have been rising faster than incomes, which can be a problem for homeowners because as the value of a home rises, so does the cost to maintain it.
Property taxes and home insurance rates are rising, influenced by inflation and the increase in catastrophic weather events.
More than 1 in 4 homeowners with mortgages are considered “cost-burdened,” according to a 2023 analysis by the Chamber of Commerce.

Record inflation may have people questioning whether homeownership is still a good investment.
Home prices have been rising faster than incomes, which can be a problem for homeowners because as the value of a home rises, so does the cost to maintain it.

More than 1 in 4 homeowners with mortgages are considered “cost-burdened,” meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs, according to a 2023 analysis of U.S. Census data by the Chamber of Commerce.
“Unfortunately, a lot of people go into buying a home and they don’t understand that their monthly payment could change,” said Devon Viehman, regional vice president for the National Association of Realtors.
Changes in two expenses in particular tend to surprise people, experts say.
“What many [homeowners] have failed to anticipate is the rise in both property taxes — and that’s correlated to the rise in the value of their home, something that at some level helps them — as well as the increased cost of paying for that insurance,” said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.

‘Paper’ wealth and rising expenses

Single-family homeowners accumulate an average of $225,000 in wealth from their homes during a 10-year period, according to a 2022 report from the National Association of Realtors.

“That wealth sort of boils down to being primarily only on paper, and the time that you cash in that asset is when you sell the home,” said Hamrick.
Property taxes are one of the costs that can increase with the value of the home. Homeowners whose properties were reassessed between 2019 and 2023 amid skyrocketing valuations saw a median tax increase of 25%, according to a February 2024 study by CoreLogic. The annual median taxes for properties in the U.S. that were reassessed increased more than $600 over that period.
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Home insurance is the other major expense that can fluctuate after a home purchase. 
There has also been a 20% increase in average home insurance premiums between 2021 and 2023, according to insurance comparison company Insurify. Insurify estimates rates will rise another 6% by the end of 2024.
Florida, Louisiana, Texas and Colorado have seen the biggest spike in insurance rates over that period, influenced by extreme weather events.
Florida is leading the pack. The average annual rate for home insurance in Florida was nearly $11,000 in 2023, which is more than $8,600 than the U.S. average. The state’s cities make up six of the top 10 most expensive cities to insure in the country, Insurify found.
What’s more, the cost of repairing a home has risen, which also affects insurance premiums.
“This is going to be a space to watch for the foreseeable future, simply because it is such a dynamic and volatile and potentially costly environment,” Hamrick said.

Tips for homebuyers

Viehman of the NAR recommends people shopping for a home “lean on their realtor first.” She recommends homebuyers ask their real estate agent for a history of costs associated with owning the home such as property taxes, insurance, trash removal, water, gas and electrical bills.
Homebuyers should also see if the state they’re looking to buy in has any laws restricting property tax increases per year.

Just because you qualify for $3,000 a month in a mortgage payment doesn’t mean you should max it out right now … Go a little lower than that so that you give yourself that room.

Devon Viehman
regional vice president for the National Association of Realtors

A good agent ought to be able to answer all those questions for you, Viehman said.
Viehman also recommends leaving room in your monthly budget to address the possibility of surprise expenses.
“Just because you qualify for $3,000 a month in a mortgage payment doesn’t mean you should max it out right now,” she said. “Look for something where you can get in around $2,500 if $3,000 is your comfortable budget. Go a little lower than that so that you give yourself that room.”

Tips for current homeowners

Current homeowners who are struggling to meet their monthly payments also have some options to consider.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recommends reaching out to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, to see if you qualify for any programs or additional help.
The CFPB also suggests cash-strapped homeowners call their mortgage servicer to explain the situation: Why they’re unable to pay, whether it’s a permanent or temporary situation and details about their income and expenses. A mortgage lender may be able to work out a repayment plan or provide a loan modification.

Homeowners can also consider switching insurance companies if their rates get too high.
“You should be interviewing insurance companies,” Viehman said. “Interview everyone. Interview a few lenders. Interview a few realtors. Interview a few insurance agents because they all have different things that they offer, and you need to find what works best for you.”
Watch the video above to learn more about why home payments are skyrocketing and what homebuyers can do to help navigate in this challenging market. More