The Canadian economy added a modest 14,100 jobs in March, in line with economists’ expectations but marking only a partial reversal of the 109,000 positions lost in the first two months of the year.
Two academic experts weigh in on what’s happening with private credit and how concerned business leaders should be.
A world-class degree only takes you so far. Where you have the right to live and work determines how far that degree actually goes, according to a recent global analysis. The Henley Opportunity Index 2026, published as part of the wealth advisory firm’s annual Education Report, ranks the top countries where residence or citizenship can be secured through investment or merit.
PNC recently launched its new relationship program called TotalRewards. By keeping different amounts of assets with PNC, you can unlock various perks. The most notable benefit is a boost on your credit card cashback earnings. This program is very similar to the well-known Bank of America Preferred Rewards program.
PNC TotalRewards has the following tiers, along with their asset requirements and cashback bonuses:
| Default | Silver | Gold | Platinum | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asset Requirement | $0+ | $25k+ | $100k+ | $500k+ |
| Cashback Boost | 0 | 5% | 25% | 35% |
Among these, the sweet spot is clearly the Gold tier. The requirement is much lower than Platinum at just $100k, while the 25% boost is already quite attractive.
Eligible assets include balances across PNC accounts such as checking, savings, and brokerage. As usual with these programs, it’s especially appealing that brokerage assets count—you can simply park something like VOO there. Since you have to hold those investments somewhere anyway, this effectively comes at near-zero opportunity cost.
In addition to meeting the asset threshold, you must also maintain an active PNC checking account. If you don’t already have one, it’s worth opening one and stacking it with a checking account bonus along the way.
Here are the most relevant PNC cards that benefit from this program:
This card is originally a straightforward 2% cashback card on all purchases with no annual fee. But once you factor in the rewards boost, it becomes extremely powerful:
At 2.7%, this becomes one of the strongest no-category cashback cards on the market. It beats Bank of AmericaUnlimited Cash Rewards (2.625% with Preferred Rewards), though still slightly below Robinhood Gold Card’s 3% (which has exclusions).
This card earns 4% cashback on gas (up to $8,000 per year). With the boost:
That makes it one of the highest-earning gas cards available.
PNC TotalRewards offers meaningful value if you can meet the asset requirements:
Combined with PNC’s solid 2% flat-rate card, you’re effectively looking at 2.5%–2.7% cashback on all purchases, which is top-tier in the current market. If you have idle assets that can be moved, this is definitely a program worth considering.
9 Financial Goals You Should Achieve Before 40
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New Department of Education Building in Washington D.C. Photo: Robert Farrington/The College Investor
The U.S. Department of Education, working with its Office of Inspector General, says it has uncovered tens of millions of dollars in fraud and mismanagement tied to COVID-19 pandemic education relief funds. This is part of the Trump Administration’s broader push to crack down on waste across federal education programs.
Why it matters: Congress distributed roughly $190 billion in Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds across three rounds between 2020 and 2021. This is more than three times what the federal government typically spends on K-12 education annually. The Department says much of it went out with weak safeguards and reduced oversight, creating openings for bad actors to exploit.
The cases so far: OIG investigations have flagged specific instances of fraud and mismanagement in multiple states:
How this connects: The fraud crackdown comes alongside a broader shakeup at the Department of Education that directly affects student loan borrowers and families.
The Department of Education has been highlighting it’s crackdown on “ghost students” and financial aid fraud. The Department said it had prevented $1 billion in attempted student aid fraud since January 2025.
Meanwhile, The College Investor has been tracking the ripple effects of pandemic-era policy across borrower repayment. Federal data shows 7.7 million borrowers with $180 billion in student loans are now in default as of December 2025, after years of paused payments left many borrowers disconnected from their servicers and confused about their obligations. Nearly 12 million borrowers total are delinquent or in default — more than one-quarter of the federal portfolio.
The question of accountability extends in both directions: holding institutions responsible for misspending taxpayer dollars, while also addressing a student loan system where millions of borrowers are struggling to re-enter repayment after years of disruptions and failed restart attempts.
The bigger picture: Most K-12 education funding is local – from counties, cities, and states. The $190 billion in ESSER funds was the largest-ever federal investment in K-12 education.
While the majority of funds went toward reopening schools, tutoring, and mental health support, the sheer scale of the spending (distributed quickly during a crisis) made it a target for fraud. A Government Accountability Office report confirmed that most spending went to legitimate student needs, but flagged weak oversight at the state and district levels as an ongoing concern.
The pattern mirrors what happened across other pandemic relief programs. The White House’s own chief coordinator for stimulus spending acknowledged publicly that immense fraud took place across federal pandemic relief.
What to watch: The Department says additional crackdowns are expected in 2026, with the OIG continuing to audit how states and districts used ESSER funds before the spending deadline expired. Keep an eye on whether more states face clawback demands for misspent funds and whether the Department’s fraud prevention efforts extend to tighter oversight of how the remaining federal student aid pipeline operates going forward.
Don’t Miss These Other Stories:
Editor: Colin Graves
The post The Education Department Is Exposing Tens of Millions in Covid-Era Fraud appeared first on The College Investor.
After nearly 10 days in space, complete with a historic loop around the moon, the four astronauts on NASA’s Artemis II mission faced their most dangerous moment yet: not in deep space, but in the final 13 minutes of their journey home.
“It’s 13 minutes of things that have to go right,” said NASA’s Artemis II flight director Jeff Radigan on Thursday at a news briefing.
Before the Orion spacecraft, named Integrity by the crew, ever left the Kennedy Space Center launchpad in Florida on April 1, NASA knew there was a problem. During the unmanned Artemis I mission in 2022, engineers discovered more than 100 locations on the Orion heat shield that had cracked and broken off during reentry.
Here’s the issue: it’s not supposed to do that. The shield was designed to melt away, not pop off in chunks. Instead, scientists discovered the culprit was a pressure problem buried within the shield itself. As the capsule dipped into the atmosphere, internal layers became scorching hot through a process called pyrolysis, trapping gas.
When the capsule briefly climbed back out of the atmosphere during its “skip” (meaning skip entry, which is when a spacecraft returning from high speed dips into the earth’s upper atmosphere. It’s the guided maneuver it uses to skip along the layer, closely mirroring a stone “skipping” across a pond, all before it reenters for a final landing. The outer layer hardened and became impermeable. This posed a problem because the gas had nowhere to go. On the second descent, the pressure burst through, taking chunks of the heat shield with it.
Now you’re wondering, that was Artemis I, surely they would never put four people—commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen—aboard a ship with such flaws. And you’d be partially right: the Artemis II has, remarkably, an even less permeable shield than the one on Artemis I, meaning the same failure mode was even more likely to occur.
Rather than delay the mission by more than a year to install a redesigned heat shield (as one engineer wanted), NASA flew Artemis II with the same flawed design and simply changed how the capsule returned. The solution was counterintuitive, with NASA instructing the crew to apply more heat more consistently. This shortened the skip phase and maintained higher temperatures throughout the descent, ensuring the outer char layer never cooled sufficiently to trap gas beneath it.
So these four astronauts, who broke a 56-year-old distance record and became the furthest humans to travel from earth when the mission brought them around the moon, not only had to overcome faulty Outlook problems and smelly toilet issues, but they had to enter the earth’s atmosphere at the right angle, at the right speed, and the right time—and they did it.
The four astronauts reached speeds of over 24,000 mph, equivalent to traveling across the continental U.S. in about six minutes. The 16.5-foot-wide heat shield reached approximately 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, about half the temperature of the sun’s visible surface. The steeper, hotter trajectory also gave the capsule less range to maneuver away from bad weather near the Pacific splashdown zone.
Not everyone was on board with the plan. Former NASA engineer Dr. Charles Camarda had publicly warned that NASA didn’t fully understand the root cause of the cracking and that the modified trajectory amounted to “playing Russian roulette.” But NASA stood by its data. Associate administrator Amit Kshatriya pointed to Artemis I flight data, ground testing, and engineering models as justification, and Glover acknowledged the risk head-on, noting the heat shield and parachutes are systems with zero fault tolerance built in.
The capsule splashed down safely in the Pacific, capping the first crewed lunar mission since Apollo 17 in 1972.
Researchers identified three distinct ADHD brain biotypes, each with different neurological wiring, strengths, and risks. That nuance matters—especially for entrepreneurs, where some ADHD traits help, and others can undermine long‑term success.
The Alaska Airlines Lounge at SFO (Terminal 1) has officially rejoined the Priority Pass network.
Given the recent schedule reductions out of San Francisco, it’s not entirely surprising that Alaska is looking to fill seats. But Priority Pass members looking to enjoy some peace and quiet at this Alaska Airlines Lounge will have to pay to get in.
The lounge is charging a $15 fee per Priority Pass member. You must be flying with Alaska Airlines or a partner carrier to gain entry, and your stay is capped at a maximum of 4 hours.
While the $15 fee might sting for some, the SFO lounge is arguably one of the nicest in Alaska’s network. And it’s not the only lounge to charge extra for Priority Pass members. Over at LAX, the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse will cost you $35 per person.
The return of the Alaska Airlines Lounge to the Priority Pass network at SFO gives travelers a great option to relax and grab a bite before their flight. However, the $15 surcharge signals a growing trend where a Priority Pass membership is no longer enough to get you lounge access. Plus with different lounges charging different prices, it gets even more confusing for guests.
HT: VFTW and FlyerTalk
(Bloomberg) — Treasuries fell as quickening inflation stemming from the US war on Iran — and the prospect of escalation — eroded wagers that the Federal Reserve will lower interest rates once this year.
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The rise in yields began in early US trading after the release of consumer prices data for March — the first to reflect the impact of the war. Yields extended their climb to trade as much as five basis points higher after midday after US President Donald Trump threatened to escalate the war if weekend talks failed.
Late in New York trading, yields were up between three to four basis points across maturities. The setback pared a weekly gain for US government bonds sparked by an April 8 ceasefire agreement, which caused oil prices to tumble from near multiyear highs.
Short-term interest-rate contracts that predict the course of US monetary policy priced in a less than one-in-four chance of a quarter-point rate cut this year, slightly lower than before the data. A separate economic indicator showing erosion in consumer sentiment offset the impact of the inflation readings.
“We believe the Fed’s going to be on hold for the balance of the year, but if we don’t start to see commerce through the Strait and a drop in energy prices, inflation pressures in the short term will become more of an issue,” said Charlie Ripley, a portfolio manager at Allianz Investment Management.
The consumer price index rose 0.9% in March, the most in nearly four years, reflecting a surge in gasoline prices after the war curtailed the supply of oil via the Strait of Hormuz. The increase matched economists’ median estimate, while prices excluding food and energy — core CPI — increased 0.2%, less than the 0.3% estimate.
Separately on Friday, the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment gauge for April fell to a record low, highlighting the risk to US economic growth stemming from rising consumer prices — which has helped contain the rise in Treasury yields since late March. Consumer inflation expectation gauges included in the sentiment report rose more than economists estimated.
The March CPI was the first to show the impact of the war, which effectively stopped the flow of oil from the region via the Strait, on US consumers. Since the US attacked on Feb. 28, US benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude futures are up nearly 50%. The price tumbled from a multiyear on April 8 following the ceasefire announcement but have resumed rising.
The oil price surge walloped the bond market, both by driving up inflation expectations and via the logic that the Fed is unlikely to cut interest rates — even in response to signs of weakness in the US labor market — against a backdrop of quickening inflation.
“The CPI data today will not support bond prices as next month’s inflation report will reveal more headaches for investors and the Fed,” Tom di Galoma, managing director at Mischler Financial Group, said.
The CPI rose 3.3% from a year earlier, the fastest pace in nearly two years. Fed policymakers have a 2% “longer-run” target for a different measure of inflation. That measure rose 3% from a year earlier in February and will be reported for March on April 30, the day after the central bank’s next scheduled rate decision.
The consumer sentiment slump — a preliminary finding for April — reflected the expectation that inflation will be 4.8% over the next year. The US national average retail price for regular unleaded gasoline topped $4 a gallon at the end of March, up from under $3 at the end of February.
Monthly Loss
Rising yields in the Treasury market in March produced its biggest monthly loss in more than a year.
Before the war started traders were pricing in at least two quarter-point rate reductions by the Fed in 2026. As oil prices rose, they scrapped that view and briefly wagered that the Fed’s next move would be a rate increase. More recently, the potential for mounting energy prices to put the brakes on the economy has partially restored wagers on a cut this year.
Short-maturity Treasuries, whose yields are most closely tied to Fed policy, are likely to “remain more volatile” as traders price in “the potential inflation impact and the probability of a Fed cut — or even a hike,” said Anders Persson, chief investment officer and head of global fixed income at Nuveen.
The US two-year yield, which ended February at 3.37%, rose at least 10 basis points in a day four times in March. Since peaking at 4.02% on March 27, it fell five basis points in a day three times. It rose Friday to 3.80%. The Fed’s rate target band has been 3.5% to 3.75% since December.
The ceasefire agreed to by US President Donald Trump remained broadly intact Friday, though the Strait of Hormuz was still effectively shut. The US and Iran are scheduled for direct talks in Pakistan over the weekend. Nuveen’s Persson said the uncertainty warrants a cautious approach to longer-term bonds, and favors those that mature in three to seven years.
Growth Risks
By contrast, Dan Carter, senior portfolio manager at Fort Washington Investment Advisors, said the risks to economic growth favor risk-taking in bonds, hedged with inflation-protected securities.
The CPI report “data doesn’t suggest any worrisome inflation pressures outside of energy,” and “the economy won’t be strong enough to generate cyclical inflation pressures,” Carter said.
Stronger-than-expected March US employment data released last week soothed growth worries. The Fed cut interest rates three times last year in response to weakness in the job market, then paused the cuts, citing improvement on that front.
Minutes from their March meeting, released this week, revealed that a growing contingent of officials was concerned that the war would contribute to rising inflation.
The March CPI report is the last major economic data release before Fed policymakers’ April 29 rate decision, and their self-imposed communications blackout period ahead of the meeting begins April 18.
–With assistance from Ye Xie and Miles J. Herszenhorn.
(Updates yield levels.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
