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The “soul of Soho,” as Ken Burns put it, is here to stay.

The “soul of Soho,” as Ken Burns put it, is here to stay.

She's put plenty of products to the test — but this select group has earned rave reviews.

She's put plenty of products to the test — but this select group has earned rave reviews.

The Post's Stefan Bondy predicts what the Knicks might do at No. 24 in the 2026 NBA Draft.

These three letters – I, P and O – excite emotions like few others in finance.

Ex-JPMorgan banker Chirayu Rana wants to withdraw his explosive "sex slave" lawsuit against the bank and a female supervisor — but the bank is now fighting to stop Rana from unceremoniously dropping his claims.

Piper Sandler's Top Economist Sees "Big Bounce" In Consumer Sentiment As Gas Prices Tumble

Building on last week's theme of "early signs of a turn in U.S. consumer discretionary," Piper Sandler analysts note that the sharp decline in gasoline prices at the pump is beginning to lift consumer sentiment, particularly among lower-income households. Their proprietary daily confidence data suggest the rebound is still in the early innings, but the direction is clear: cheaper gas is easing pressure on working-class folks.

Piper Sandler's chief global economist and head of the firm's economics research team, Nancy Lazar, provided clients with three of the most important consumer conclusions of the week as the national average for gas at the pump tumbled due to easing tensions in the Middle East:

1. The steep rollover in gasoline prices triggered a big bounce in PSC’s Daily Confidence Survey last week, with low-end consumers particularly more cheerful.

2. With all daily survey components improving, the observed retail sales aggregate has hooked up.

3. Higher prices weighed on consumers last quarter, according to Kroger & La-ZBoy.

Lazar's note, titled "The Gasoline Down-Confidence Up Two-Step," says that cheaper pump prices are now producing consumer tailwinds amid a still-healthy labor market.

She shows that Piper Sandler's proprietary high-frequency gauge of U.S. consumer sentiment, conducted by Rasmussen Reports, "appears to have bottomed, mirroring the sharp rollover in gasoline prices – adding to economic tailwinds from refunds and healthy labor."

"The impact of easing pump prices is clear in both confidence and consumption," Lazar continued in the note.

In markets, she pointed out, "The Russell 2000 and XRT retailing ETF certainly act as if the bottom is in for confidence."

More consumer sentiment data from Piper's internal sources show improvement:

The rebound in sentiment could help drive consumers back into retail stores and support spending on experiences...

Great news for the Trump administration, with 136 days until the midterm elections this fall. 

Professional subscribers can read more consumer notes at our new Marketdesk.ai portal.

Tyler Durden Tue, 06/23/2026 - 05:45

You get a deal, you get a deal — everybody gets a deal!

You get a deal, you get a deal — everybody gets a deal!

An expectant Sydney mum has gone viral after she aired her disappointment in her long-anticipated baby shower, with thousands weighing in.

These Are The Countries Where $1,000 Takes The Longest To Earn

How long would you need to work to earn $1,000? In Colombia, the answer is roughly 86 hours. In Luxembourg and Iceland, it’s just 16.

Using data from the OECD on average annual wages and Our World in Data’s figures for annual working hours, Visual Capitalist's Srijaa Chatterjee created this visualization ranking countries by how long it takes the average worker to earn $1,000.

The figures are expressed in purchasing power parity (PPP)-adjusted dollars, which account for differences in local price levels and make incomes more comparable across countries. Taxes are not included.

How Many Hours of Work Earn $1,000?

Workers in the lowest-ranked countries need more than five times as many hours to earn $1,000 as workers in the highest-ranked countries. The gap ranges from 16 hours in Luxembourg and Iceland to 86 hours in Colombia.

The data table below shows the number of hours worked per $1,000 earned by country in purchasing power parity-adjusted dollars:

Rank Country Hours Worked per $1,000 Earned 1 🇨🇴 Colombia 86 2 🇲🇽 Mexico 78 3 🇬🇷 Greece 60 4 🇨🇷 Costa Rica 53 5 🇭🇺 Hungary 51 6 🇨🇱 Chile 51 7 🇨🇿 Czechia 48 8 🇸🇰 Slovakia 47 9 🇵🇹 Portugal 45 10 🇵🇱 Poland 43 11 🇪🇪 Estonia 42 12 🇱🇻 Latvia 38 13 🇰🇷 South Korea 38 14 🇹🇷 Turkey 37 15 🇮🇱 Israel 34 16 🇮🇹 Italy 34 17 🇯🇵 Japan 34 18 🇱🇹 Lithuania 33 19 🇪🇸 Spain 30 20 🇳🇿 New Zealand 28 21 🇮🇪 Ireland 27 22 🇸🇮 Slovenia 27 23 🇫🇮 Finland 25 24 🇨🇦 Canada 25 25 🇫🇷 France 25 26 🇬🇧 United Kingdom 24 27 🇸🇪 Sweden 24 28 🇦🇺 Australia 23 29 🇺🇸 United States 22 30 🇧🇪 Belgium 21 31 🇩🇪 Germany 20 32 🇦🇹 Austria 20 33 🇩🇰 Denmark 19 34 🇳🇱 Netherlands 19 35 🇳🇴 Norway 19 36 🇨🇭 Switzerland 18 37 🇮🇸 Iceland 16 38 🇱🇺 Luxembourg 16

Europe dominates the top of the ranking. Luxembourg, Iceland, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands all require fewer than 20 hours of work to earn $1,000.

For comparison, the average American worker needs about 22 hours to earn $1,000, placing the U.S. among the stronger earners but still behind multiple European economies.

Latin America Earns Less While Working More

Colombia and Mexico sit at the bottom of the ranking, requiring 86 and 78 hours of work, respectively, to earn $1,000. Both figures are more than triple the U.S. level and more than four times higher than Luxembourg’s.

While workers in these countries often log similar or even greater annual hours than workers in richer economies, average wages remain substantially lower.

Research highlighted by Our World in Data finds that workers in lower-income countries tend to work longer hours while generating less income per hour worked. Economists point to lower productivity levels, a larger informal sector, reduced access to capital, and weaker wage growth as contributing factors.

Nordic Countries and Luxembourg Stand Out

At the other end of the spectrum are Luxembourg and the Nordic economies. Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Finland combine relatively high wages with advanced, high-productivity economies.

Analysis from the Becker Friedman Institute and CEPR highlights how strong labor-market institutions, high workforce participation, and substantial investments in education contribute to both high wages and relatively compressed income distributions.

Luxembourg benefits from an especially high concentration of financial and professional services jobs, helping support some of the highest average wage levels in the world.

Why Purchasing Power Matters

The analysis uses purchasing power parity (PPP), which adjusts wages to reflect differences in local price levels. PPP adjustments allow economists to compare what incomes can actually buy in a specific country rather than relying solely on market exchange rates.

Without PPP adjustments, workers in lower-cost countries could appear poorer than they actually are, and vice versa.

Want to explore wage differences across Europe? Check out Mapped: Average Full-Time Salary in Europe by Country on the Voronoi app.

Tyler Durden Tue, 06/23/2026 - 04:15

President Trump on Tuesday said he could fix Chicago's gun violence epidemic "fast and permanently" urging left-wing Illinois Governor JB Pritzker to call him -- after 39 were shot in the Windy City this weekend.

Shop like a star, save like a pro.

Shop like a star, save like a pro.

A former Oklahoma death row inmate who was released from incarceration after nearly three decades is scheduled to be back in court as his case proceeds to a retrial for a 1997 killing that put him on the brink of execution three times.

AfD Co-Leader Demands Ukraine Pay Reparations To Germany

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

Europeans and especially Germans have borne enormous costs to perpetuate the Ukrainian Conflict while receiving absolutely nothing of tangible benefit in return.

AfD co-leader Alice Weidel responded to Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s proposal to grant Ukraine associate membership in the EU, which was analyzed here and here, by declaring that “We need to know how this state-terrorist act against the most important infrastructure we had, namely the Nord Stream pipelines, came about and what role Ukraine played in it. The flow of payments should actually be moving in the opposite direction.”

She then added that, “Ukraine must pay reparations to the Federal Republic of Germany, because we have suffered enormous damage – and so has Europe as a whole – from the loss of cheap Russian fossil fuels.” Weidel made a solid point about the economic damage that the Ukrainian Conflict has caused to Europe, even independently of the Nord Stream terrorist attack, which she implied was committed by Ukraine like Berlin suggested but which the famous Seymer Hersh cited sources to blame on the US.

To elaborate a bit more on the background of Berlin’s innuendo, it sought the extradition from Poland last year of a Ukrainian suspect but was rebuffed by the judge for the reasons explained here, which lent credence in a lot of the public’s mind to the claim of Ukrainian culpability. Nevertheless, that narrative was already counteracted here, here, and here over the years long before the extradition request was made and rejected, but Weidel, many Germans, and a lot of folks across the West in fact still believe it.

In any case, having clarified the context of her implied accusation against Ukraine and circling back to her reparations demand, the EU spent hundreds of billions of dollars on aid for Ukraine and its refugees. When calculating the higher cost of fuel since then, including that which it still purchases from Russia, the total credibly approaches $1 trillion and might even surpass it by some estimates.

The most that the EU might receive in exchange is arms and reconstruction contracts for only a handful of companies.

That nowhere near justifies the enormous costs that the EU has paid to perpetuate the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine, which highlights the ideological motives behind this policy. The liberal-globalists that rule the bloc are hellbent on inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia through NATO-backed Ukraine, to which end no cost is too high to pay, especially since it’s average Europeans and not them that are paying it.

This cynical policy is already backfiring in Germany by turbocharging the AfD’s rise.

It’s now the most popular party in the country by far and its appeal continues to grow since it’s one of the few forces apart from the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance that’s speaking truth to power about this conflict and its crushing economic consequences for Europeans. Germany in particular has been hit exceptionally hard with growth crawling to a halt and many suspecting that the bloc’s largest economy is actually already in a recession that might soon be confirmed and then spread throughout the EU.

Weidel knows very well that Ukraine will never pay reparations to Germany and that even the hypothetical cession of its key industries to her country wouldn’t come anywhere near compensating the costs that Germans have already paid. Her rhetoric was thus meant to draw attention to these same costs. The more that Germans dwell upon them and realize that their country received nothing of tangible benefit in return, the more likely they are to support the AfD in a bid to bring about real change.

Tyler Durden Tue, 06/23/2026 - 03:30

Austin Metcalf’s dad blasted the “moral decay of society” as he scolded commentators for peddling falsehoods about his son’s murder – as convicted killer Karmelo Anthony gears up to mount a fresh freedom bid. Jeff Metcalf lashed out at “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin, who suggested the jury in the Texas trial shouldn’t have thrown...

This reader asks Dear Abby what she should do about her co-worker who she used to be friends with who is now throwing her under the bus in the workplace.

"The best brands treat athletes as genuine coconspirators in the project."