Author: John W. Diamond, Director of the Center for Public Finance at the Baker Institute, Rice University

From mortgages to auto loans to credit cards, borrowing is set to get even pricier. But the Federal Reserve’s decision on Sept. 16, 2026, to hike its baseline interest rate also highlighted an increasingly confounding dilemma: It can raise the price of money across the economy, but it can’t determine which sectors are most affected. […]

Every year, the panel overseeing the trust fund for Social Security and Medicare publishes its annual financial report. And every year, its members make clear that the programs’ reserves will be exhausted by the time Gen X retires – meaning they will no longer be able to pay full scheduled benefits by the mid-2030s. While […]