Lower-income Americans are already in a recession, according to JPMorgan's Matthew Boss.
The analyst said the US was in a "selective" recession as some consumers .
67% of middle-class Americans said they believed their income wasn't keeping up with the cost of living.
The US economy is in a "selective recession," as lower-income Americans are struggling to get by while upper-income consumers are doing just fine, according to JPMorgan analyst Matthew Boss.
Speaking to CNBC on Tuesday, Boss pointed to the divergence in upper-income and middle-to-lower income Americans, the latter of whom are struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living as prices remain elevated and savings dwindle.
"You have the consumer at the high end who is being more choiceful. The low-end I do think is a melting ice cube … What I'm calling it now is a selective recession," Boss said. "[B]y our survey, over 70% of low-income consumers right now are saying that they're struggling to make ends meet."
Inflation has cooled dramatically from its highs in 2022, but consumers are still feeling the pain of accumulated price increases over the years. Consumer prices overall are 22% higher than they were five years ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"You focus on that low- to middle-income consumer, they're under pressure, and the pressure is really that the inflation … continues to last. Each month that we move forward, it doesn't matter that inflation is not worsening, it's just an incremental toll on that savings that they built," Boss said.
Most Americans have likely blown through the savings they accumulated during the pandemic. Excess savings from the COVID era were probably depleted in March of this year, according to a paper from San Francisco Fed economists. 38% of middle-class respondents in Primerica's survey added that they didn't have a $1,000 emergency fund.
Recession fears have been on the rise as Americans survey a weakening job market and anticipate rates staying higher for longer. The US has a 50-50 chance of slipping into a downturn within the next 12 months, the New York Fed estimated in its latest recession forecast.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) speaks during a press conference held to celebrate U.S. President Joe Biden cancelling student debt on Capitol Hill on September 29, 2022 in Washington, DC.
Jemal Countess/Getty Images for We, The 45 Million
A group of Democratic lawmakers and advocates called on the Education Department to end MOHELA's contract.
They cited servicer failures, including inaccurate billing, as reasons the company should no longer service borrowers.
The Education Department has already withheld pay from MOHELA for failing its obligations.
Less than a year into the return to student-loan repayment, some Democratic lawmakers and advocates have seen enough: They want the Education Department to fire servicer MOHELA.
One month after federal payments started back up again in October after an over three-year pause, MOHELA — which services about 8 million borrowers — was the first servicer to have its pay withheld after the Education Department found it failed to send on-time billing statements to over 2 million borrowers.
That's why, on Wednesday, a group of Democratic lawmakers — including Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Greg Casar, and Sen. Ed Markey — joined advocates in calling for the Education Department to end MOHELA's federal contract.
"It is time to stop their contract. It is time to fire them. It is time to listen to the borrowers that have been speaking up about the struggles that they are facing and it is time for us to do the right thing," Omar said during a press conference. "We are asking the administration to take this step forward because it is past time that we listen to the borrowers that have been suffering under the incompetence of MOHELA."
Business Insider first reported in April that the Education Department was transferring over 1 million borrowers from MOHELA to new servicers, with Federal Student Aid saying that MOHELA "requested these transfers and FSA, as part of its work to ensure borrowers receive the best service and support, agreed to this"
Pressley said that she applauds those transfers, but millions of borrowers remain under MOHELA's contract, and that should not be the case.
"Enough is enough. Terminate MOHELA's contract and put loan services on notice: we will not tolerate your negligence and exploitation; we will not let you profiteer off vulnerable student borrowers," Pressley said.
The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI. A MOHELA spokesperson told BI that "borrowers are not better off when outside groups spread false and misleading information about our work as a federal contractor for FSA. We remain committed to continuing to provide the highest quality of customer service to the borrowers that we serve."
In April, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren held a hearing investigating MOHELA and its management of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. While she invited MOHELA's CEO Scott Giles to testify before the Senate, the company declined on his behalf, instead offering private briefings to address any lawmakers' concerns.
Prior to the April 10 hearing, MOHELA said it has already been "actively engaged in conversations with the Subcommittee and has offered its cooperation in addressing any questions and concerns by participating in a series of bipartisan briefings on the identified areas of interest about student loan servicing."
Meanwhile, the Education Department has vowed to oversee all servicers, and it withheld pay for the remaining servicers in January because they failed to fulfill some of their obligations.
But Democrats have focused in on MOHELA — and they want it to go.
"There's an old saying, 'Never attribute to malevolence what is merely due to incompetence.' Well, MOHELA is both incompetent and malevolent in the way in which they have been handling the responsibility of young people's lives and their ability to plan for their future," Markey said. "It is time to fire MOHELA."
The offers and details on this page may have updated or changed since the time of publication. See our article on Business Insider for current information.
Shopping portals are one of the most powerful tools for online shoppers to earn bonus cash back, travel rewards and other benefits.
Crystal Cox/Business Insider
Online shopping portals allow consumers to earn bonus rewards for online purchases.
Shoppers can "double dip" on rewards using a rewards credit card through an online shopping portal.
Shopping portals typically offer rewards in the form of cash back, airline miles, or hotel points.
Introduction to Online Shopping Portals
If you don't use a shopping portal when you shop online, you're forfeiting cash, airline miles, hotel points, and bank points that could easily fund your next vacation.
What are online shopping portals?
An online shopping portal is a website that offers bonus rewards for shopping through its affiliate link. Rewards can include cash back, airline miles, hotel points, and various other loyalty "currencies."
Shopping portals offer a powerful way to supercharge your rewards on money you'd spend anyway. They're easy to use and don't alter your shopping experience.
Here's everything you need to know about shopping portals including how to use them, tricks to maximizing them, and pitfalls to avoid.
How do shopping portals work?
You can access thousands of merchants worldwide through shopping portals, from major retailers such as Best Buy and Apple to small brands with just a few locations. Dozens of companies offer shopping portals including Southwest, Delta, Capital One, Rakuten, and Mr. Rebates.
You can use a tool such as Cashback Monitor to quickly evaluate various shopping portals for the best reward rate on an upcoming purchase.
Finding the right shopping portal
The right shopping portal may vary from store to store and even from time to time. Many portals offer elevated rates during peak shopping times, such as the weeks leading up to the end-of-year holiday season, or offer bonus returns during special promotional periods.
Many airlines offer proprietary shopping portals. These are great ways to rack up bonus miles and points from the comfort of your couch.
Here are some popular shopping portals from travel programs:
Some credit card issuers like Chase, Citi, and Barclays have their own versions of shopping portals, which require you to log into your account to use them. With these portals, you can earn bonus bank points or cash back.
How to use online shopping portals
With all these options, it can be hard to discern where to find the biggest return for your shopping. Shopping portal bonuses are always changing, after all. Here's how to stay on top of the best deals.
Creating an account and linking payment methods
You'll need an account for every shopping portal you use in order to track your purchases and payouts. You'll need to sign up with an email address and password, and you'll need to input a payment method such as PayPal in order to cash out your rewards. Some portals allow you to redeem your rewards in the form of gift cards to popular retailers such as Amazon or Starbucks.
Making purchases through portals
Once you find the retailer you want to shop within the merchant directory, you'll be taken to the official store website. For the most part, you won't notice any difference during your shopping; the prices are the same, and the merchant code won't change when the purchase is posted to your credit card.
After choosing your shopping portal of choice, click through the retailer's page to be taken to the actual merchant website.
Rakuten website
Each shopping portal offers a unique payout scheme for making purchases. For example:
You may earn a fixed number of points per dollar you spend, unique for each merchant (for example, 5x points with Macy's versus 2x points with Apple)
You may receive a few thousand points for enrolling in a food or media subscription
You may receive 1,000+ bonus points if it's your first time using a particular shopping portal
Some portals also publish promotions that reward you for spending a certain amount of money, such as $20 back for spending $100.
Maximizing rewards with shopping portals
Some people have a favorite portal or two, and stick with them regardless of the reward rate. But savvy consumers know to shop around for the best discounts or promotional payouts on every online purchase. Here are some tips for maximizing your earning opportunities.
Tips for increasing rewards
Shopping portal aggregators allow you to view all the shopping portal deals in one place. This can save literally hours for those who shop online with regularity.
Cashback Monitor quickly showcases the most viewed stores, the retailers offering the highest returns that day, and offers a comprehensive search tool that helps you find any retailer that offers shopping portal rewards.
View the most popular (and most rewarding) stores at a glance.
Cashback Monitor
Enter the name of the retailer you plan to use, and Cashback Monitor will display every shopping portal that works with that particular store, as well as the current rate and form of return. Results are organized by reward category:
Cash back
Travel miles/points
Credit card points
Other reward points
Search "Walmart" and you can easily see the biggest payout for your Walmart shopping.
Cashback Monitor
While the website orders its list of portals by return rate, you can rearrange this list to reflect your personal value of each reward currency. If you value American Airlines miles twice as highly as Southwest points, for example, you can ask Cashback Monitor to list American Airlines miles before Southwest even if a shopping portal offers 4 American Airlines miles vs. 7 Southwest points per dollar.
To set up preferences like this, you'll have to create a Cashback Monitor account (it's free).
Use browser extensions
Internet browser extensions are an excellent way to save money when shopping online. These extensions notify you if a product you're viewing qualifies for rewards through a shopping portal. If you install multiple extensions, you may receive a series of handy pop-ups whenever an item qualifies.
Rakuten is a unique portal that allows shoppers to choose between earning cash back or Amex Membership Rewards points (1 cent = 1 point). If a store is offering 8% back via Rakuten, for example, you can earn up to 8 Amex points per dollar instead of 8 cents per dollar. Since Business Insider values Amex points at 1.8 cents each toward travel, that 8% return is worth closer to around 14.4% on every dollar you spend.
Stacking credit card rewards with portal discounts and promotions can help you save big on your shopping.
The rewards you earn through online shopping portals are completely separate from those you'll earn from other bonus opportunities, such as a rewards credit card. If you use a good credit card in addition to a shopping portal, you'll earn points, miles, or cash back from your credit card in addition to the shopping portal bonus.
9 Wyndham points per dollar for shopping through the portal (offer current at the time of post writing)
5 Chase Ultimate Rewards points per dollar (5% back) for using your Ink Business Cash at Staples (the card earns 5x points at office supply stores*)
That's quite a points haul — effectively 14 points per dollar. A reasonably priced laptop will likely earn you more than 10,000 points.
You can add another level to shopping portals by incorporating additional bonuses such as Amex Offers. Amex Offers are targeted statement credits or bonus points that trigger when you enroll your card and spend at select merchants. For example, The Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express occasionally offers select cardholders 10% back at Dell, up to a total of $1,500.
If you have this offer on your card and choose to buy a $500 computer monitor from Dell via the American Airlines shopping portal, you can earn:
1,000 American Airlines miles (2 miles per dollar for using the American Airlines shopping portal)
$50 statement credit (10% back on my Dell purchase with Amex Offers)
1,000 Amex Membership Rewards points (2 points per dollar spent on The Blue Business® Plus Credit Card from American Express)
Thus, you'll earn 2,000 points and a $50 rebate on that monitor simply by triple-stacking these three deals.
Look for holiday promotions
Throughout the year, but especially around the holidays, shopping portals issue promotions incentivizing you to spend specific dollar amounts with them. They're often tiered — something like:
Spend $250, earn 500 bonus points
Spend $500, earn 1,000 bonus points
Spend $750, earn 3,000 bonus points
If you're going to be making purchases anyway, it's worth perusing your favorite shopping portal to see if they've got an active promotion like this.
In-store purchases
If you're the kind of person who will scratch and claw for every extra point, you can also use shopping portals in-store. If you see something you like, simply log onto your favorite shopping portal, make your purchase, and choose in-store pickup. Many stores prepare your order in about an hour — but this strategy is only worth it if you'll be hanging around the store for a while.
Avoiding common pitfalls
Not all purchases qualify
Read the portal's fine print before you check out. Some items are exempt from earning bonus rewards (cash equivalents such as gift cards are commonly ineligible for earning shopping portal rewards).
Ad blockers may stop up your earnings
A shopping portal works by directing you to your desired merchant and then tracking your activity until checkout. Ad blockers often prevent shopping portals from tracking you, meaning the portal won't have a record of your purchase — and you'll get no rewards.
Fortunately, many portals will warn you that your ad blocker is preventing them from tracking you, allowing you to temporarily disable it before checkout.
You'll usually get a warning if your ad blocker is on.
Rakuten
Some promotions disqualify your order
If you enter a promo code or coupon code at checkout, this will sometimes disqualify you from earning shopping portal rewards. It's not a rule — you can sometimes get away with it — but unless the savings outweighs the bonus points, it's better to be safe than sorry.
You may need to clear your cart before shopping through a portal
Some retailers are stricter than others, stating that you may not earn a bonus if you only click through the shopping portal once you've filled up your online shopping cart. Make sure you always read the fine print for each portal and each retailer before clicking through, since terms and conditions change all the time.
Shopping portal frequently asked questions
How do I choose the best online shopping portal for my needs?
Consider the types of rewards you prefer (cash back, points, miles), the retailers available through the portal, and user reviews for reliability and customer service.
Can I use online shopping portals with any online retailer?
Not all retailers participate in every shopping portal. You'll need to use the portals that partner with the retailers where you intend to shop.
Is it possible to use more than one shopping portal at a time?
You can only use one shopping portal per purchase, but you can switch between portals for different purchases to maximize rewards.
How can I ensure I receive my rewards from a shopping portal?
Follow the portal's instructions carefully, ensure your browser allows cookies (for tracking purposes), and keep receipts in case you need to file a claim for missing rewards.
Can I combine shopping portal rewards with other discounts or promotions?
Often, yes. Many shopping portals allow you to take advantage of retailer sales and promotions, and you may also be able to stack rewards with those from your credit card.
Chase Griffin was the first college athlete to speak at the Cannes Lions Creativity Festival.
Chase Griffin
College athletes should be leveraging LinkedIn more, say athletes and experts.
Student-athlete Sabrina Oostburg described the success she's had using LinkedIn to promote herself.
NIL Athlete of the Year Chase Griffin also said even high-school athletes should be on LinkedIn.
The name, image, and likeness business has changed the game for college athletes who now need to self-promote on social-media platforms like Instagram and TikTok if they want to make money from NIL.
LinkedIn is another often-overlooked platform where student-athletes can promote themselves and score brand deals, athletes and experts told Business Insider.
The professional network has leaned into creator content and grown in recent years as a platform for influencers of all kinds.
Some student-athletes who have found success building their brands on LinkedIn include Tanner Maddox, a freshman football player from Villanova; Sabrina Oostburg, a track and field athlete from Belmont University; and Connor Printz, a former basketball player from Claremont McKenna College, according to Out2Win, an athlete-marketing-intelligence platform, which tracked the frequency of student-athletes posting on LinkedIn.
While Instagram and TikTok are crucial for athletes to showcase their creativity and build an audience, LinkedIn is better for connecting directly with brands, said Jack Adler, founder of Out2Win.
"LinkedIn is a better platform for actually connecting with those businesses because that's where a lot of the marketers spend their time," Adler said.
Oostburg and Printz told BI they've used LinkedIn to secure NIL brand deals and connect with agents or other professionals they want to work with.
College athletes have used LinkedIn to get brand deals and sign with talent agents
Oostburg said she landed two sponsorship deals through LinkedIn, including with the Nashville Zoo and a startup called Backhat. One of the partnerships was paid and both offered free products. She's also connected through the platform with social-media managers and business owners — and even her current agency, Raymond Representation.
Sabrina Oostburg.
Belmont Athletics
Oostburg said some of her peers have laughed at her for using LinkedIn and don't see the value in it.
"I'm like, 'What are you guys laughing at?'"she said. "They don't see the vision of how you can use that for NIL."
Printz, meanwhile, has used LinkedIn to help build his personal brand and prepare for a sports career after college. Two months ago, he posted on LinkedIn his story about gaining over 100 NIL deals and over 1 million followers across social media. He said the post opened a lot of doors for him.
"It kind of went a little bit viral on there and people were reaching out to me every single day just wanting to talk," said Printz.
While Printz hasn't used LinkedIn to get NIL deals, like Oostburg, he found his agent through the platform while seeking NIL representation about six months ago.
"When I was looking for an agent, I just posted on there and had many, many people reach out," he said. "Luckily, that's how I connected with my agent."
Samantha Green, who founded the Athlete Con convention and works directly with student-athletes, said she advises athletes to post about their current NIL deals and contact brands on LinkedIn for opportunities.
"If you think about it seriously, anybody that's a head of influencer marketing at any brand is often on LinkedIn," she told BI.
Green said athletes can also make more of a name for themselves on LinkedIn than on other platforms.
"There are a million athletes on TikTok. There are a million athletes on Instagram. But who are the ones actually putting a business presence forward and building a brand as a professional while still being a college athlete?" Green said. "Few and far between are on LinkedIn, so you'll really stand out."
Chase Griffin, a UCLA quarterback who was named the 2022 NIL Male Athlete of the Year by NIL Summit and Opendorse, is also proof of the opportunities athletes can get on LinkedIn. Griffin, who's scored more than 30 NIL deals during his career, landed his first through LinkedIn.
He advises any athlete in college or high school to create a LinkedIn profile because it can set them up for future success.
"LinkedIn can play a huge role in making sure that you have a network vesting while you're still in college," he said. "That way, once you leave your campus, you're still tied to your network, and you've been able to put your accomplishments and accolades out in front of the companies that you're going to work for."
Griffin said his LinkedIn presence has helped shape his early career, and he plans to continue building his audience and content on the platform.
"If you're doing NIL or not, as a college athlete, you're also a college student," he said, "and LinkedIn is the spot to be for college students."
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s early life was overshadowed by his father's assassination.
UPI/Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s early life was overshadowed by the murder of his father.
He later struggled with a drug addiction.
After his most humiliating moment, Kennedy reinvented himself as an environmentalist.
Robert F. Kennedy's children have spent a lifetime trying to add their marks to their slain father's legacy. They made history in public service, followed his footsteps into Congress, and contributed to an Academy Award-nominated documentary. Like their relatives born into the generation after Camelot, some struggled to shake the tinge of tragedy and scandal that continues to hang around the famous family.
Robert F. Kennedy's namesake has seen all elements of this journey.
The first Kennedy to run for the presidency in decades, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing so without the family's well-documented loyalty. Instead, some of his siblings have begged him to drop out. For years, they have worried, in increasingly public ways, that he's eroding the foundation of why the nation reveres them so much in the first place.
The son of the expected next Kennedy president.
Born into privilege in 1954, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was raised between Massachusetts and suburban Virginia estates. He took an early interest in the outdoors, an affinity aided by the menagerie of animals kept at Hickory Hill, the family's McLean, Virginia mansion. He was the third of the 11 eventual children born to RFK and Ethel Kennedy.
He was asleep in his dorm at Georgetown Preparatory School on June 5, 1968, when a priest awoke him. He wasn't told what was happening, only that a ride would soon take him back to Hickory Hill. At the family home, he was told his dad had been shot the night before. He, Kathleen, and Joseph P. II flew out on Vice President Hubert Humphery's plane in a rush to be by their father's side.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was later a pallbearer at his father's funeral, joined by Astronaut John Glenn and former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was one of the pallbearers in his father's funeral.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
The 14-year-old never returned to Georgetown Prep, which now counts two Supreme Court justices and multiple lawmakers among its influential alumni. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. bounced between three private schools before graduating from high school.
At Millbrook School in New York, he briefly kept a lion cub gifted to him by former "Tonight Show" host Jack Paar. Kennedy was forced to find a new home for the animal, aptly named Mtoto Mbaya, "Boy Boy" in Swahili, after a string of incidents, including when it bit the backside of the school's zoo keeper, according to "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the Dark Side of the Dream," an unauthorized 2015 biography. It wasn't the animal that got him kicked out.
Kennedy had begun to use drugs and not just marijuana, according to the 2015 book. Officials became increasingly concerned that they would be held responsible if another Kennedy died on their watch. Years later, Kennedy would tell Oprah that the source of his drug problems didn't truly matter. He viewed his problems more as being a product of the 1960s. Whatever the reason, his drug use would lead to repeated brushes with the law.
Kennedy graduates from Harvard, but drug use continues to hang over him.
After graduating from high school, Kennedy attended Harvard, the alma mater of his father, uncle, and grandfather. Like JFK, RFK Jr. would see his senior thesis turned into a book. Unfortunately for him, reviewers reacted harshly to the tome about federal judge Frank M. Johnson Jr., whose rulings played a major role in the Civil Rights movement.
After briefly attending the London School of Economics, Kennedy graduated from the University of Virginia Law School. While in Charlottesville, Kennedy met his first wife, Emily Black. Their wedding in Black's native Bloomington, Indiana, received international coverage as the Midwesterner joined the nation's foremost political family. The couple had two children together.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s marriage to Emily Black, his law school classmate, received international attention.
Images Press/Getty Images
He filed for divorce in 1994 in the Dominican Republic, taking advantage of a local law that allows foreigners to file for divorce there and potentially trying to avoid media scrutiny.
In March 1982, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, whom JFK had previously appointed to lead the famous Southern District of New York, hired RFK Jr. as an assistant district attorney. The famous son's first brush with politics in New York, the state his father represented in the US Senate, did not go well. Kennedy struggled to pass the bar exam. He resigned in July 1983.
Months later, Kennedy would spark his largest legal scandal. While on the way to receive treatment in South Dakota for his addiction, a fellow passenger found him sick in an airplane's bathroom. Local authorities later found a small amount of heroin in his belongings. He faced up to two years in prison, according to The New York Times. Kennedy was sentenced to probation and community service.
Kennedy found a new advocacy after his lowest moment.
Kennedy's lowest moment led to his greatest reinvention. As part of his community service, he worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council and was later connected with the Hudson River Fishermen's Association. Robert Boyle, founder of the New York environmental group, began to mentor Kennedy. The organization already had notched major legal victories, but Kennedy's star power would help take it to new heights.
He was so committed to his new career that in 1994, he married Mary Richardson, a longtime friend of his sister Kerry Kennedy, aboard a ship on the Hudson River.
Robert F. Kennedy became a star for his environmental advocacy.
L. Busacca/Getty Images
But his relationship with Boyle did not last. His mentor later recalled that he was less than thrilled about the celebrities Kennedy soon brought onto the organization's board. He also chafed at his former protegé's other actions, particularly Kennedy's decision to hire a scientist named William Wegner. Kennedy defended hiring Wegner, who had served time in federal prison, saying that giving him a second chance was the right thing to do. Boyle was incensed given that Wegener was sentenced over his connections to a bird smuggling ring. Boyle and seven other officials later resigned from Riverkeeper's board in protest.
"I think he's a despicable person," Boyle told Kennedy's unauthorized biographer in 2014. Boyle's children recently told The Washington Post that his father later couldn't even bear looking at the Hudson as it was too much of a reminder of Kennedy's betrayal.
As for Kennedy, his environmental advocacy became the foundation of his fame. In 1999, Time Magazine named Kennedy one of its "Heroes for the Planet" as part of a series of reports on leading environmentalists.
While gaining fame, Kennedy began to notice problems with his voice. He recently told The Los Angeles Times that he was 42 when he first noticed the problem. Kennedy was later diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, a rare neurological condition that affects muscles in one's voice box.
In 2010, Kennedy filed for divorce from Richardson, the mother of four of his six children. Two years later, she died by suicide at the couple's former Bedford estate.
After years of environmentalism, Kennedy became the face of anti-vaccine advocacy.
After decades of environmental advocacy, Kennedy prepared to make his most controversial turn. In his retelling, mothers began to approach him at events to question whether vaccines had affected their children.
In 2005, Kennedy wrote a piece for Salon and Rolling Stone that is now regarded as establishing him as a major player in spreading vaccine skepticism. Despite his claims of a major conspiracy over a mercury-based preservative that had already been "removed from all childhood vaccines except for some variations of the flu vaccine in 2001," according to STAT. Within days, Salon, which published the piece online, issued five corrections. In 2011, the site decided to retract the article entirely.
In 2014, Kennedy married the actress Cheryl Hines, best known for her co-starring role in the Larry David-led "Curb Your Enthusiasm."
One year later, Kennedy joined the World Health Defense Fund. He continued to be involved with Riverkeeper, but his anti-vaccine advocacy overwhelmed his public persona.
Kennedy's name fueled his rise in the movement, which drew on the credibility of his environmentalism and his famous family. In turn, the now-presidential hopeful began to cobble together what the Associated Press would later deem "an anti-vaccine juggernaut" that he deployed when the COVID-19 pandemic arrived.
That's according to market veteran Ed Yardeni, who broke down why recessionary doomsayers are misguided. Among his main listed factors are the retirement generation's rising spending habits, amplified by a transition into retirement.
"Most importantly, the baby boom generation has started to retire with a record $76 trillion in net worth," he wrote for the Financial Times. "They are spending on restaurants, cruises, traveling and healthcare. All these services industries have been expanding their payrolls, thus boosting real incomes, and fuelling more spending."
That counters gloomy expectations of an impending consumer slowdown, which has been the basis for why the economy will eventually buckle.
Instead, only the goods sector has shown signs of a growth recession, Yardeni said. But that's after the lockdown's hard-to-beat buying spree; today, goods spending remains at a record high when adjusted for inflation.
It's a fresh take on what the post-war generation can offer, given that retirees are often framed as a source of economic strain on younger individuals. With 4.1 million minted each year through 2027, some fear this will burden everything from equities to the labor market.
But to Yardeni, they're the reason no consumer recession has appeared in the past two years, he separately wrote in April:
"The Baby Boomers watched a lot of 'Star Trek' during the 1960s. They certainly took to heart Spock's mantra 'Live long and prosper.' He should have finished the thought with 'Then retire and spend it all before your expiration date," he then said.
Retiree consumption is one of many recession-canceling factors that Yardeni listed in FT.
In his view, analysts were correct to originally expect a downturn, given the Federal Reserve's aggressive hiking cycle and a number of flashing recessionary indicators.
But the problems typically brought on by tight monetary policy have largely been overcome, such as a credit crunch and speculative bubble. Although a banking crisis did appear last year, the Fed's emergency response was enough to squash credit fallout.
What's more, higher rates actually strengthened consumer resiliency, as households accumulated bigger returns on bank deposits and money market funds.
Meanwhile, the baby boomer focus on service spending may also have deformed indicators, making things look gloomier than they are.
"And what about the Index of Leading Economic Indicators?" Yardeni said. "It hasn't worked so well because it is heavily skewed towards the goods economy, which has been relatively weak, and it doesn't give enough weighting to the services sector, which has been strong."
Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
OpenAI is best known for popularizing AI chatbots with ChatGPT.
But the company that created the AI chatbot has a history with some of Silicon Valley's biggest names.
Here's everything you need to know about OpenAI, from being founded by Elon Musk to its eye-popping tech.
OpenAI has taken the world by storm since its AI chatbot, ChatGPT, went viral upon its release in November 2022.
The company counts Elon Musk among its cofounders, though he has since cut ties and become a vocal critic of it (while launching his own competitor). Since then, OpenAI CEO and cofounder Sam Altman has become a household name, and even survived an ousting by his board.
OpenAI has kept busy, releasing updates to its massively popular chatbot at a rapid pace as well as new products, like the image-generation tool DALL-E and its upcoming video-generation tool Sora.
Last week, it showed off its latest AI model, the omnimodal GPT-4o, which can do things like translate conversations in real time and assess your physical surroundings to reason and problem-solve.
But the story of OpenAI started years before the first version of ChatGPT was launched to the masses.
Here's a look at how OpenAI came to be one of the biggest players in the industry.
OpenAI released an early demo of ChatGPT in November 2022, and the conversational chatbot quickly went viral on social media.
People took to social media to show how they were using ChatGPT to do everything from code to come up with recipes.
ChatGPT
Within five days the chatbot had over one million users, as people took to social media to share examples of ChatGPT's many capabilities — from casual conversation to essay writing and coding.
The artificial intelligence company that created it is now backed by Microsoft, but has a long history with some of Silicon Valley's biggest names.
Elon Musk and former Y Combinator president Sam Altman cofounded OpenAI in 2015.
Elon Musk and Sam Altman are among OpenAI's cofounders.
Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Vanity Fair
Musk, Altman, and other prominent Silicon Valley characters, including Peter Thiel and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, pledged $1 billion to the project in 2015.
The group aimed to create a nonprofit focused on developing artificial intelligence "in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole," according to a statement on OpenAI's website from December 11, 2015.
At the time, Musk said that AI was the "biggest existential threat" to humanity.
OpenAI's founding statement warned of the perils of AI "if built or used incorrectly."
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
"It's hard to fathom how much human-level AI could benefit society, and it's equally hard to imagine how much it could damage society if built or used incorrectly," the statement announcing the founding of Open AI continued.
In 2016, OpenAI released two products.
Some of OpenAI's earliest products were Gym and Universe.
Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
There was Gym, a platform that allowed researchers to develop and compare reinforcement learning systems. These systems teach AI to come to decisions with the best cumulative rewards.
Later that year, OpenAI also released Universe, a toolkit for training intelligent agents across websites and gaming platforms.
In 2018, three years after helping found the company, Musk resigned from OpenAI's board of directors.
Musk left OpenAI's board in 2018.
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The company said in a blog post at the time that the Tesla CEO resigned to "eliminate potential future conflict" due to the carmaker's focus on AI.
The company added that Musk would continue to donate to the nonprofit.
Musk had been telling Tesla investors for years about his plans to make the electric cars autonomous.
Musk later said he quit the company because he "didn't agree with some of what [the] OpenAI team wanted to do."
Musk later gave other reasons for his departure.
Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
In 2019, the billionaire said on X, formerly Twitter, that Tesla was also competing for some of the same employees as OpenAI, adding that he hadn't been involved with the company for "over a year."
"Add that all up & it was just better to part ways on good terms," he said.
Musk has continued to take issue with OpenAI in recent years.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk have publicly squabbled.
"OpenAI should be more open imo," the billionaire tweeted in response to an investigation into the company by MIT Technology Review.
The publication said that an investigation into OpenAI revealed a culture of secrecy that ran counter to the nonprofit's purported commitment to transparency.
Musk also said he paused OpenAI's access to Twitter's database for training its software.
"Need to understand more about governance structure & revenue plans going forward," he said in December 2022. "OpenAI was started as open-source & non-profit. Neither are still true."
In 2019, the company built an AI tool that could craft fake news stories.
Though the company initially decided against releasing the fake news AI, it later did anyway.
OpenAI
At first, OpenAI said the bot was so good at writing fake news that they decided not to release it. Later that year, the company released a version of the AI tool as GPT-2.
The company released another chatbot called GPT-3 in 2020.
That same year, OpenAI shed its status as a nonprofit.
OpenAI became "capped profit" in 2019.
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The company announced that it had become a "capped profit" corporation in a blog post.
"We want to increase our ability to raise capital while still serving our mission, and no pre-existing legal structure we know of strikes the right balance," the company said. "Our solution is to create OpenAI LP as a hybrid of a for-profit and nonprofit — which we are calling a 'capped-profit' company."
The profit structure introduced at the time meant OpenAI investors could earn up to 100 times their original investment, but nothing over that. The remaining money would go to not-for-profit work.
OpenAI announced a partnership with Microsoft at the end of 2019.
Microsoft and OpenAI have a licensing partnership.
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Microsoft invested $1 billion in the AI company, and OpenAI said it would exclusively license its technology with the tech company.
"The scope of commercial and creative potential that can be unlocked through the GPT-3 model is profound, with genuinely novel capabilities – most of which we haven't even imagined yet," Microsoft said in a blog post.
"Directly aiding human creativity and ingenuity in areas like writing and composition, describing and summarizing large blocks of long-form data (including code), converting natural language to another language – the possibilities are limited only by the ideas and scenarios that we bring to the table," it said.
The partnership allows Microsoft to compete with Google's DeepMind AI company.
In 2021, OpenAI released an AI art generator.
OpenAI's Dall-E is a text-to-image model.
OpenAI
Dall-E is an AI system that can create realistic images and even art based on descriptions of the images.
OpenAI released the first version of GPT-4 in March 2023 and the next generation of the model, GPT-4 Turbo, that November.
ChatGPT got improvements in 2023.
FLORENCE LO/Reuters
Musk, meanwhile, is still commenting.
Musk continues to criticize OpenAI on X, formerly Twitter.
John Raoux/AP Photo
"We are not far from dangerously strong AI," Musk tweeted in response to a post from Altman.
Meanwhile, Musk was readying his own rival AI company, xAI, and later launched an AI chatbot through X, formerly Twitter, called Grok.
In January 2023, it was reported that Microsoft plans to invest $10 billion in OpenAI over the next few years.
Microsoft is investing billions into OpenAI's efforts.
CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images
Microsoft said it was making a "multiyear, multibillion-dollar" investment in OpenAI.
Citing people familiar with the issue, Semafor reported at the time that the investment would give Microsoft a 75% share of OpenAI's profits until the investment was earned back and then a 49% stake going forward.
In November 2023, OpenAI was rocked by the board's decision to fire CEO Sam Altman.
Sam Altman was out and back in at OpenAI in the span of less than a week.
JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images
"Mr. Altman's departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities," OpenAI said in a blog post at the time. "The board no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI."
OpenAI president and cofounder Greg Brockman quit in light of the news, and CTO Mira Murati was named interim CEO briefly before former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear was named to the position days later.
Altman ultimately returned to OpenAI as CEO, just days after his ousting, and multiple board members were replaced.
In February 2024, OpenAI unveiled a new tool, Sora, that creates eerily realistic videos based on users' text prompts.
Sora turns users' text prompts into videos.
OpenAI
Sora can also generate videos from still images and "extend" existing videos. OpenAI has reportedly been shopping around the tool to Hollywood.
In May 2024, OpenAI released GPT-4o, its newest flagship AI model.
OpenAI recently announced its newest flagship model, GPT-4o.
Future Publishing
GPT-4o can process text, image, video, and audio as both inputs and outputs. It can do things like translate in real time, make sense of your physical surroundings, and even sing (kind of).
It's far more natural in its conventional skills too, and can be interrupted by the questioner for a more engaging communication flow.
Days later, actress Scarlett Johansson put out a statement accusing OpenAI of using a voice "eerily similar" to hers for GPT-4 and GPT-4o.
Scarlett Johansson says the "Sky" voice feature sounds "eerily similar" to her voice.
Monica Schipper/Getty
Johansson says OpenAI copied the voice of her character in the movie "Her," in which a man falls in love with an AI chatbot. She says Altman reached out last year asking her to provide a voice for GPT-4, but she declined, so she was "shocked, angered, and in disbelief" to hear how much the new "Sky" voice feature sounds like her.
"We cast the voice actor behind Sky's voice before any outreach to Ms. Johansson. Out of respect for Ms. Johansson, we have paused using Sky's voice in our products," Altman said in a statement in response. "We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn't communicate better."
A naval drone mounted with a rocket launcher firing a rocket in a photo shared on May 22, 2024, by state-affiliated media.
X/@U24_gov_ua
Ukraine is mounting rockets onto its naval drones, an official told the Financial Times.
It's used them to strike Russian positions in occupied Mykolaiv, the official told the FT.
A video of a reported attack shows a sea drone firing several rockets toward Russian targets.
Ukraine has placed rockets onto its feared sea drones and is using them to attack Russian land targets, according to a Ukrainian official.
In a post on X, citing an unnamed Ukrainian intelligence official, Christopher Miller, the Financial Times' Ukraine correspondent, said that sea baby naval drones are now being mounted with a Grad multiple launch rocket system.
The official said that they'd been used to strike Russian positions on the Kinburn Spit in the occupied Mykolaiv region on Monday.
An unnamed security source seemed to confirm the upgrade and the attack to the Kyiv Independent.
"This technological solution is already showing powerful results," the source told the outlet.
"So new surprises await the enemy," they added.
The Security Service of Ukraine didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
But a video shared by Russian and Ukrainian sources showing a naval drone firing several rockets appeared to back up the reports.
According to Anton Gerashchenko, a former advisor to Ukraine's internal affairs ministry, who shared the footage on X, the video shows an unmanned surface drone "launching missiles" at Russian positions near the Kinburn Spit.
The Ukrainian military website Militarnyi reported that the video shows a Ukrainian unmanned boat mounted with an MLRS firing at least six shells at Russian positions.
In a post of its own, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said that sea baby drones were equipped with "Grad" rocket launchers and that they had become "even deadlier" for the Russian fleet.
Business Insider couldn't independently verify the time or location of the video.
Two sea drones mounted with a rocket launcher in a photo shared on May 22, 2024, by Ukrainian state-affiliated media.
X/@U24_gov_ua
Ukraine has frequently deployed its naval drones over the course of the war, outfitting them with larger warheads and using them to devastating effect against Russia's Black Sea Fleet.
The Kyiv Independent reported that six of them took part in what may be Ukraine's biggest sea drone attack last week, with targets including the two major Russian naval ports of Sevastopol and Novorossiysk.
Ukraine previously used sea drones fitted with missiles to attack Russia's Black Sea Fleet in January, and with what appeared to be heat-seeking missiles to strike Russian naval assets earlier this month.
These families are part of a group economists call ALICE, or asset-limited, income-constrained and employed. The latest figures from United For ALICE, shared exclusively with Business Insider, reveal that, from 2021 to 2022, the number of ALICE households rose by nearly 1.6 million. That means at least 29% of households in the US are considered ALICE.
This compares to 13% of Americans who live at or below the federal poverty line, which is $31,200 a year for a family of four. Created in the 1960s, the poverty line is determined solely by household income and is not adjusted based on a family's circumstances, location, or cost of living.Still, government assistance programs that use the metric to assess need are leaving out a large swatch of the population.
Because ALICE households tend to live just above the poverty threshold — sometimes by less than $100 — they aren't covered by America's safety nets. Many live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to afford necessities like rent, groceries, transportation, and healthcare. Families have told BI that their financial situation has forced them to make tough decisions, like choosing between paying their electricity bill or their rent.
"I'm not homeless enough to get certain help because I have a roof over my head," an ALICE woman living in Wilmington, North Carolina, previously told BI. "But I'm too homeless to get a job because I don't know where I'm going to live in three weeks. What do you do?"
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How to know if you're an ALICE
United For ALICE's criteria depend on four main factors: a household's location, size, estimated survival budget, and access to government assistance.
Location determines how much a family can expect to pay for everyday expenses. For instance, two full-time hourly wages of $15 could support a family of four in Clarke County, Alabama, but not one in Cook County, Illinois.
Household size measures whether a family has one or two incomes and the number of dependents. Single-income households with multiple children are highly likely to be ALICE.
Survival budgets include the annual costs of housing, childcare, food, transportation, healthcare, technology, taxes, and miscellaneous spending. The amount varies based on a household's location and number of dependents — and can also be impacted by tax credits. The lowest household survival budget in the US is still around $60,000 for a family of four with two younger children.
Access to government assistance is frequently based on the federal poverty line. An ALICE family might be low-income but fall short of qualifying for housing assistance or out of reach of programs like SNAP and Medicaid.
If you live above the poverty threshold but are unable to cover all expenses in your survival budget, you're probably an ALICE.
Certain groups are more likely to be ALICE
Demographically, ALICE Americans are more prevalent across some generations and professions.
Americans who are ALICE often work in retail, healthcare, and food services, and just 61% of all full-time workers earn enough to match their household survival budget.
Black and Hispanic families are more likely to fall at or below the ALICE threshold compared to white families.
More Gen Zers and boomers are ALICE compared to millennials and Gen X. Inflation has forced many boomers, especially, to continue working into their 60s and 70s. In 2022, over half of US households 65 or older were below the ALICE threshold because it's becoming increasingly difficult for millions of Americans to survive solely off of Social Security benefits or their retirement funds. The ALICE 65+ Survival Budget ranges from anywhere between $767 and $2,780 per month more than Social Security payments nationwide.
Parents are hit especially hard by the high costs of raising children and the national lack of affordable childcare options. Between 2010 and 2022, married ALICE households with children grew 12%, single-female-headed ALICE households grew 14%, and single-male-headed households grew 35%. However, childfree adults also struggle to get financial help when they need it — having financially dependent children is often a prerequisite for tax credits and government assistance programs.
With the cost of living rising across the US, United for ALICE predicts more families to become ALICE over time. The end of pandemic-era assistance has also made it more difficult for ALICE families to recover from financial hardship.
Halfway to the weekend! Capri Sun is selling giant jugs for customers whose appetites — but not tastes — have grown up. (Or maybe they're still struggling to get those yellow straws through the pouches.)
We're also running a Memorial Day sale for 80% off our Business Insider subscription. More on that here.
In today's big story, all eyes are on if Nvidia's earnings report will send its shares surging even higher.
As complex as stock analysis can be sometimes, the case for Nvidia is fairly simple. Big Tech has big plans — and budgets — for AI. The only way to get there is using Nvidia's chips.
It might not always be that way. The Financial Times recently reported Nvidia's rivals and customers are supporting an effort to break the company's dominance in the space.
But for now, it's Nvidia or bust.
Jason Merritt/Getty Images; Kevin Dietsch/Getty Image; BI
Elsewhere in AI land, things aren't going as swimmingly.
The buzz from OpenAI's humanlike voice feature for ChatGPT has quickly faded. Self-congratulations quickly turned to backtracking after Scarlett Johansson threatened legal action over how "eerily similar" one of ChatGPT's voices is to hers.
On the one hand, AI being accused of misusing creative work isn't new. (Not that that makes it OK.)
But tussling with Johansson is particularly risky, writes BI's Eammon Jacobs. The actor went head-to-head with Disney over the release of "Black Widow" and secured a settlement.
Even if Johansson doesn't escalate things — OpenAI already pulled the voice — it's another setback for a company looking to gain people's trust that has plenty of skeptics, including its own former executive.
It's also an example of what some allege is OpenAI's "ask forgiveness, not permission" strategy, writes BI's Hasan Chowdhury. (It's giving "move fast and break things.")
3 things in markets
Hollis Johnson/Insider
Wall Street's biggest pessimist isn't backing down. JPMorgan's Marko Kolanovic is the lone top strategist among the big banks predicting a market downturn. He recently doubled down on his take that the S&P 500 will fall about 20%. "We do not see equities as attractive investments at the moment and we don't see a reason to change our stance," Kolanovic wrote.
The crypto world is getting excited about another ETF. Approval for an ethereum ETF could come as soon as this week, sending the price of the cryptocurrency surging more than 20%. It could also be a step toward further legitimizing bitcoin, and the wider crypto market, according to one expert.
China dumped a record amount of US bonds last quarter. The country sold $53.3 billion worth of Treasurys and agency bonds over the first three months of 2024, Bloomberg reported. The acceleration is another symptom of deteriorating trade relations between Beijing and Washington.
3 things in tech
Michael Burrell/Getty, Tyler Le/BI
We have some theories about the discount for Comcast's new streaming bundle. For $15 a month you can get Netflix, Peacock, and Apple TV+, which is about $8 cheaper than if you bought them separately. One reason could be subscribers coming from broadband companies, like Comcast, are less likely to churn.
ICYMI: Here's what went down at Microsoft Build. At its annual developer conference, the company unveiled Team Copilot, which will bring its AI agent to Microsoft Teams chats and meetings. OpenAI's Sam Altman also made a surprise appearance to talk about GPT-4o and offer advice to founders and developers.
How the leaders of the world's biggest tech companies spend their spare time. From Mark Zuckerberg's newfound love of the UFC, to Elon Musk's obsession with gaming, to Bill Gates' luxury car collection, here's a list of wealthy tech execs' favorite hobbies.
3 things in business
Fine Art Photographic/Getty Images; Jenny Chang-Rodriguez/BI
Neighborhood names are getting much, much dumber. You may have noticed that in booming cities, the names of neighborhoods are getting weirder — take Denver's RiNo, SoBo, LoDo, and LoHi areas, for example. It's all an attempt by builders to redevelop neighborhoods in their image.
Trump's proposed tariffs could cost Americans $500 billion a year. Researchers at the Peterson Institute warned Trump's planned taxes on imports could have households spending an additional $1,500 each year. They also said the plan would hit lower-income households harder.
These are the most affordable cities to buy a home in the US. SmartAsset identified 12 areas where the median home price is below $175,000 and no higher than 2.5 years' worth of local incomes. The Midwest dominated the top of the list.