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Those families are Vanguard, D&C, and Fidelity.An increased transaction fee [currently $74.95] applies to purchases made by self-directed retail clients of funds from certain fund families that do not pay Schwab for recordkeeping, shareholder, and other administrative services on fund shares held by self-directed retail clients
The consumer watchdog agency was formed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Elon Musk wants to “delete” it.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau halted much of its work to investigate and penalize corporate wrongdoing on Monday, after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent — tapped to lead the watchdog on an acting basis — ordered an agency-wide review to “promote consistency” with the new Trump administration.
Shortly after assuming the post, Bessent and his aides ordered bureau staff in an email to cease crafting regulations, enforcing rules, conducting probes or providing “public communications of any type,” according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post, which said he had instituted the ban “effective immediately.”
The missive appeared to herald a stark shift for the CFPB, a powerful agency formed in the wake of the 2008 banking crisis to protect consumers from unfair, deceptive or predatory financial practices. It came on the same day that President Donald Trump named Secretary of State Marco Rubio acting administrator of another agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the administration moved to shutter as part of a broad and contested effort to slash government spending and regulation.
The financial watchdog is a longtime target of Republicans’ scorn: Party lawmakers have threatened for years to defund the CFPB or neuter its powers — and tech billionaire Elon Musk, who is advising Trump on his reconfiguration of American government, has called on Congress to “delete” the bureau entirely.
Under President Joe Biden, the CFPB had been active and aggressive: Its leader, Rohit Chopra, issued a wide array of rules to crack down on predatory lending, reduce the burden of medical debt and cut fees that customers pay when they fall behind on their credit card bills or overextend their checking accounts. Chopra also expanded the bureau’s watch over Apple, Google and other tech giants as their digital payment apps grew more popular with consumers.
Trump similarly moved to restrain the CFPB during his first term. His acting director then — former congressman Mick Mulvaney — at one point requested no new money for the agency and settled its pending enforcement actions, sometimes for as little as $1.
This time, Republicans have promised to pursue even more significant changes to the CFPB, targeting its leadership structure, investigative powers and funding source; the bureau gets its money from the Federal Reserve. Last week, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) unveiled the latest bill to curtail its funding, describing the CFPB as an “unelected, unaccountable bureaucratic agency.”
Businesses and shoppers in the U.S. are bracing for higher prices on everything from gasoline to guacamole, as President Trump renews his threat to impose steep tariffs this weekend on imports from two of the country's biggest trading partners.
Trump told reporters at the White House Thursday that he intends to follow through with his threat to slap a 25% tax on imports from Canada and Mexico starting Saturday, in response to what he called a flow of immigrants and drugs across the country's northern and southern borders.
General Motors told financial analysts on Tuesday that it could shift some pickup truck production out of Mexico and Canada if tariffs are imposed. But the automaker is reluctant to act while the trade landscape is still uncertain.
"We are prepared to mitigate near-term impacts," said CEO Mary Barra. "What we won't do is spend [a] large amount of capital without clarity." The auto industry in North America is highly integrated, relying on manufacturing in all three countries.
Mexico is a leading producer of flat-screen TVs.
Canada is also a major supplier of crude oil to U.S. refineries, especially in the Midwest. "Increasing expenses by 25% is going to lead to higher costs at the pump for U.S. consumers and higher input costs for businesses around the country," said Matthew Martdin of Oxford Economics.
Mexico and Canada would likely respond to any tariffs by imposing taxes of their own on U.S. exports.
A government-wide hiring freeze has led the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to yank job offers to more than 200 new examiners, the front-line employees who closely monitor banks to ensure they operate safely and adhere to an extensive rule book.
The FDIC is already facing a staffing challenge, particularly with a lack of examiners, undermining its ability to reduce the risk of bank failures. A chronic shortage of examiners contributed to the failure of Signature Bank, one of three large banks to collapse in 2023, the agency has said.
Examiners are essentially charged with making sure a bank doesn’t fail, a critical function at the roughly 6,000-employee FDIC, of which roughly 2,300 are examiners. The agency oversees about 4,500 banks around the country, most of them small. It also insures trillions of bank deposits and winds down failing banks. Its work is funded through industry assessments.
Perhaps more significantly, the agency is already in need of additional examiners, with frequent turnover and staffing shortages contributing to major setbacks in recent years. Current and former regulators said they feared the situation could snowball if hiring cuts combine with an uptick in the departures of retirement-eligible employees.
A review of the March 2023 failure of Signature Bank found the supervisory group overseeing large financial institutions in the FDIC’s New York office had average vacancies of about 40 percent. For the six years before Signature’s collapse, the FDIC couldn’t adequately staff the team dedicated to the bank.
If I may opine here, when I look to buy a new car, computer, piece of furniture I don’t just focus on the ones that have risen the most in price over the last 3 years. I sometimes apply the same logic to buying financial products, But perhaps I have it all backwards,@Observant1 What drives you to purchase addition share of this fund? A quick look on yahoo fin. shows it to be running "way behind" in the category over 1 & 3 years!
Barron's, Vanguard Throws in the Towel on Its Managed Payout Fund, Feb 28, 2020Payout funds got their start during the 2007-2008 financial crisis when Vanguard and Fidelity both launched the products. The idea was appealing: Convert a retirement savings pool into a reliable income stream and offer investors peace of mind that they’d get a monthly paycheck, regardless of the market’s ups and downs.
...
Vanguard initially had three payout funds but merged them into one fund in January 2014. Fidelity developed a series of Income Replacement funds, paired with an optional monthly payout feature, but Fidelity rebranded the funds in 2017 as “Managed Retirement Income” with more of a high-income focus rather than managed payouts.
One hurdle: Managed payout funds have long had trouble hitting their income targets without dipping into capital—simply giving investors part of their money back. Annuities work similarly, though they have an insurance component that can keep the income flowing if the portfolio runs out of money.
What annuities do is pool risk. Some people die early, others later. Instead of each individual self insuring (collectively overinsuring), individuals pool their risk through an insurance company. This provides larger income streams safely.[U]sing a relatively simple model we estimate consumption could increase by approximately 80% for retirees if assets were converted to lifetime income streams, where the improvement rates are significantly higher for joint households
The Mechanics and Regulation of Variable Payout Annuities (50 pages. TL;DR)Variable payout annuities provide protection against longevity risk and allow for some participation in the higher (but more volatile) returns of corporate equities and other real assets. They also avoid the annuitization risk because their benefit payments vary with investment performance and are not fully determined by the prevailing conditions at the time of retirement. But VPAs are exposed to investment and inflation risks ...
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