Financial Mindset

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian acknowledged his country’s economic woes amid pressure from the U.S., which is strangling its trade while protecting other countries’ ships carrying oil through the Strait of Hormuz. Recent weeks have seen Tehran lose leverage over the critical energy chokepoint as traffic picks up, especially via a southern route along Oman’s coast. At the same time, warnings about Iran’s economy from Pezeshkian and the regime’s other relative moderates have been mounting. In an interview with state media on Friday, he signaled defiance in the face of all the economic pressure and credited Iran’s resilience to its unity. “We have many problems,” Pezeshkian said, according to a Google translation. “There’s inflation, economic issues, employment and many other problems, but the people are with us.” Indeed, inflation has soared above 80%, with prices for certain food staples up 100%. The...

U.S. forces struck Iranian rocket launchers on the  Strait of Hormuz  in the first military action in a month on Sunday, according to a U.S. official, breaking a lull in fighting during an intermittent war that has lasted more than six months. Forces with the Revolutionary Guard Corps were observed preparing to launch rockets with sea mines into the strait, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to detail sensitive military movements. The U.S. military last week completed clearing sea mines from the strait’s international shipping routes. Semiofficial news outlets in Iran reported sounds of explosions near Larak island on the strait. The Guard in a statement carried by Iran’s state broadcaster noted “the martyrdom and injury of several of our fighters and compatriots.” The statement said the attack will “result in punishment of the aggressor.” The fighting comes just days after the Trump administration said it would turn its f...

Officials struggled for years to curb  high-speed crashes  along a residential corridor cutting through Albuquerque, New Mexico, but simply  punishing the lead-footed drivers  didn’t seem to work. What ultimately did was rewarding the law-abiding ones with fewer  red lights . The solution, which the city credits for a dramatic drop in crashes and injuries along one busy stretch of road, is a relatively novel version of a longstanding  traffic safety  concept commonly known as “rest in red,” in which traffic signals default to red until a vehicle approaches. But Albuquerque and Portland, Oregon, took it a step further by adding speed sensors that grant a much earlier green light to drivers traveling at or below the  posted limit. “We’re finding that the technology itself is kind of its best advertisement,” Jennifer Turner, Albuquerque’s director of municipal development, said of the strategy the city deployed on Lead and Coal ave...

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent laid out plans for an “economic D-Day” against Iran on Monday,  seeking to further isolate the regime from the rest of the world. The U.S. will expand its use of secondary sanctions against entities and countries that engage with Iran. Bessent also said any country that helps Iran will be removed from the dollar-based financial system. In addition, he targeted five of Iran’s “most vital lifelines”: digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping. But Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder and CEO of the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation think tank, said those are actually lifelines for the Iranian people, not the regime. “Digital assets and gold are how ordinary Iranians protect their savings from inflation,” he explained in a post on X . “Technology keeps Iranians connected with the world. Aviation keeps Iranian families connected with loved ones across borders. Shipping is how essential g...

President Donald Trump on Friday said the U.S. has entered an agreement with Venezuela to take control of 65 billion barrels of the South American country’s oil reserves. Trump in a social media post announced the agreement he said was negotiated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez. “The United States of America has just entered into an Agreement with the Country of Venezuela on, THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!” Trump wrote. The announcement of the deal comes nearly nine months after the U.S. military at Trump’s direction carried out an operation to  capture Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro  and spirit him to the United States to face federal narcoterrorism and drug trafficking charges. Trump faces mounting pressure to address high gas prices as  the war in Iran  reaches a six-month milestone with no conclusion in sight. The U.S. has tapped its strategic petrol...

The world has lost a music legend in Dolly Parton, who has died at 80 after a “brief battle” with cancer. She’s remembered for her twanging country vocals, decades of hit recordings, Grammys, Emmys and a liberal splash of acting. But the biggest legacy Parton leaves is her songwriting, and three songs define her more than any others. Jolene , I Will Always Love You and 9 to 5 are not just memorable Parton songs – they are integral to popular music history. They show a skilful musician who knew how to blend the story of lyrics with the drama of music. Like many songwriters, Parton had things to say. What makes her contribution notable was when her lyrics told a story, and her music matched it. Jolene In Jolene, released in 1974, Parton’s lyrics capture the torment of watching your lover flirt with someone else. It’s a powerful human experience – particularly for women despairing over how easily the next pretty young thing grabs male attention. Parton’s despera...

Zach Abrams, the founder of stablecoin company Bridge, admits he was surprised when the bulk of his business ended up coming from non-U.S. markets in Latin America, Europe, and Africa. “We were very U.S.-centric. We didn’t know what the opportunities were in the Philippines, Africa, or Latin America,” Abrams says. “Unbeknownst to us, there was all this pent up demand outside the U.S. to build with stablecoins.” The firm’s first customers asked it to build cross-border payment infrastructure between the U.S. and Colombia and to facilitate payouts into countries like Venezuela and the Philippines. Bridge’s rapid rise was driven by regions that featured high friction across borders, like Latin America. Now part of Stripe, Abrams argues that the next phase of growth could come from tokenizing non-dollar currencies. Today’s stablecoin sector is dominated by coins denominated in the U.S. dollar , with these tokens making up over 95% of all transactions. That’s unnerved gove...