EFF Health News

  The Bond Market Is Shouting, What the Federal Debt Crisis Means for You in 2026 Imagine this: Your credit card company just called. They're raising your interest rate. Not because  you  did anything wrong. But because they looked at your overall financial picture, the growing balance, the shrinking income, the lack of a plan, and decided lending to you just got riskier. Now imagine that credit card is the United States Treasury, and the credit card company is the global bond market. That's exactly the conversation happening right now. And the bond market isn't whispering politely. It's shouting. Here is what happened: This week, the Treasury Department announced it needs to borrow $189 billion in the April-to-June quarter, $79 billion more than it projected just three months ago. After adjusting for cash balance accounting, the real increase is $122 billion higher than planned. For context, the spring quarter is  usually  the quiet one. Tax receipts ro...

  The 'K-Shaped Economy' Has Shown Up at the Gasoline Pump, Here's What That Means for Your Wallet Let's start with something you already know in your bones: filling up your car shouldn't feel like a financial decision. But right now, for a lot of Americans, it does. As of early May 2026, the national average price for a gallon of regular gas sits at $4.53, a number that has surged roughly 50% since the Iran war kicked off in late February. If you drive a car and you've been watching those numbers climb on the station marquee, you've probably felt that familiar knot in your stomach. The one that whispers, "this is going to eat into something else this month." Here's what you might not have realized, though: not everyone is feeling that knot equally. In fact, according to fresh research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the experience at the gas pump has split right along the lines of what economists call a  K-shaped economy . The b...

  Consumers Are Literally Running Out of Money": The Kraft Heinz CEO Warning Nobody's Talking About If a CEO of one of the world's largest food companies tells you that people are "literally running out of money toward the end of the month," it's worth pausing to take that in. That's not an activist speaking. It's not a politician angling for votes. It's Steve Cahillane, the new CEO of Kraft Heinz, a company that makes... well, pretty much everything in the middle aisles of your grocery store. Ketchup. Mac & Cheese. Oscar Mayer cold cuts. Philadelphia Cream Cheese. Lunchables. Capri Sun. Velveeta. And in a refreshing burst of corporate honesty, or maybe just a grim acknowledgment of reality, Cahillane laid it bare: the company needs to focus on  value  because consumers are broke. Or nearly broke. Or running on fumes until the next paycheck. This wasn't some offhand comment at a conference. It's the core of Kraft Heinz's new tur...

  McDonald’s $2.50 McDouble Sparks Backlash as Americans Say Fast Food Is No Longer Cheap The $2.50 “Deal” That Made America Finally Snap McDonald’s rolls out a brand-new limited-time offer, a McDouble for $2.50 on the McValue menu, and somewhere in a corporate boardroom, someone genuinely expects applause. Instead, the internet collectively groaned. “Anyone remember when McDoubles used to be 99 cents? It was only 10 years ago,” one Reddit user wrote, capturing a sentiment that ricocheted across social platforms within hours. Another commenter on X put it even more bluntly: “Thing was a dollar, they sell billions of burgers, and I’m supposed to be impressed by $2.50?” This isn’t just about one burger. It’s about the moment millions of Americans looked at a fast-food menu and realized something they’d been feeling for years but hadn’t fully admitted: fast food isn’t cheap anymore. And honestly? We’re done pretending it is. McDonald’s, for its part, insists the McValue menu is bu...

  Microsoft's Historic Buyout: Here's Exactly What Long-Serving Employees Are Being Offered (Before the May Deadline) You've probably been refreshing your inbox. That's the reality for roughly  8,750 Microsoft employees  right now, the cohort that received notification on May 7 that they're eligible for the company's first-ever voluntary retirement program. In 51 years, Microsoft has never done this. Not during the dot-com crash. Not during the 2008 financial crisis. Not during the pandemic. And now, with a  30-day decision clock  ticking, these employees, many of whom have spent decades building the company, are being asked to walk away. If that's you, or someone you care about, let's go through exactly what's on the table. Not the corporate memo version. The real one. The Breakdown: What's Actually in the Package The offer leaked a bit early. Sources inside Microsoft told The Verge that the package details appeared on the internal HR webs...

  Higher Usage Limits for Claude and a Compute Deal with SpaceX: Everything You Need to Know You know that feeling. It’s 10:30pm. You’re in flow. Claude Code is humming along, refactoring a gnarly authentication module that you’ve been putting off for weeks. And then,   bam  — the usage limit hits. “Try again in 2 hours.” The flow dies. You stare at the wall. You contemplate learning woodworking instead. For months, this was the Claude user experience in a nutshell: incredibly capable AI that you couldn’t quite rely on because the limits kept showing up at the worst possible moment. That just changed, substantially. On May 6, 2026, Anthropic announced a double announcement:  higher usage limits across the Claude platform  and a  landmark compute deal with SpaceX  that makes those higher limits possible. The company is doubling Claude Code’s five-hour rate limits, removing peak-hour restrictions for Pro and Max users, and significantly increasing API...

Why Gen Z Is Getting Fired After Being Hired, And Exactly How to Fix It The Numbers Don't Lie, What the Data Says Here's a statistic that should make every young professional pause:  six in ten employers  have already fired a Gen Z employee they hired fresh out of college, often within just a few months of their start date. Let that sink in. These aren't layoffs during a recession. These are targeted terminations of people who were  just  welcomed aboard. A comprehensive survey by Intelligent.com, which polled nearly 1,000 U.S. business leaders, found that  three out of four employers  rated their experience with recent Gen Z graduate hires as unsatisfactory in some way. And it gets worse: one in six hiring managers now say they're hesitant to hire recent graduates again. Roughly one in seven may avoid hiring them altogether in the coming year. The speed is what's most striking. According to an earlier ResumeBuilder survey, 20% of managers said they'd...