With a heavy slate of games on Wednesday, the Thursday NBA slate is a bit lighter, but we still get some exciting matchups between teams like the Grizzlies and Trailblazers. Underdog is offering promo code FOXNEWS to wager $10 on the game and earn $50 in bonus bets.The NBA is back in action with only three games tonight, but the Grizzlies and the Trail Blazers might be one of the more exciting games on the schedule. Both teams have had a hot start to the season, and this is the first time the two teams have faced each other since Ja Morant switched sides in the battle. Memphis comes into this game with a perfect record and hopes of returning to the postseason this year. They haven’t had to face anyone that is all that great yet, but that’s not their fault. They beat the Jazz in their first game with ease. Then they took down the Warriors by three points in their second game. They beat the Kings by 11, and then they beat the Jazz by five in their last game. Cam Boozer is averaging a double-double, but the true turnaround of this season has been Ty Jerome, averaging almost 30 points per game. The Trail Blazers are returning home after taking on the Lakers on Tuesday night. In that game, Portland racked up 136 points with six different players scoring in double figures. Their other two games saw them destroy Phoenix on opening night, their lone home game of the season. In their next game, they faced the Kings and beat them by eight points. It may take a while for Portland to figure out the balance of their roster, but for now, Damian Lillard and Deni Avdija are leading the way. Which of these teams will win this battle between the Grizzlies and Trail Blazers? Wager on your choice at Underdog, with a $10 wager giving you $50 in bonus bets when using promo code FOXNEWS. Odds are subject to change
Fanatics Sportsbook Promo Code FOXNEWS350: Bet $20, Get $350 on Packers-Panthers on TNF
Thursday Night Football action comes back to us tonight with the Panthers heading to Green Bay to face the Packers. Fanatics Sportsbook is offering new users $350 in FanCash from a $20 wager when using promo code FOXNEWS350.Football games often come down to whichever team is better at the quarterback position. We have two great quarterbacks battling tonight. The Panthers bring in Bryce Young, looking for a new contract. And Jordan Love goes for the Packers, a team he will be with for years to come.Bryce Young has enjoyed a strong season, but things haven’t been entirely smooth for the Panthers quarterback in Carolina. This is the fourth season for Young at the helm of the Panthers, and he has already eclipsed his touchdown total from year one and is well on his way to having the best statistical season of his career. He has about a third of his season complete and is roughly at half of his best numbers from last year. Jordan Love is in his sixth year and is probably being asked to do more than he ever has before. He seems to have responded to that positively. If he continues at this pace, this season will see him throw for over 4,000 yards and likely around 30 touchdowns. He is doing this with virtually no running game this season. He will need to lead the way against a tough passing defense. With two great quarterbacks under center, will tonight be a great battle, or will we see the defenses prevail? Fanatics Sportsbook is offering new users $350 in FanCash when wagering $20 and using promo code FOXNEWS350.
Blue-Haired Missouri Monster Mom Abandoned 4-Year-Old in Truck Stop Parking Lot at 3 AM, Then Told Cops She Didn’t Have a Daughter
A Missouri mother is accused of leaving her 4-year-old daughter alone in the parking lot of a Love’s Travel Stop near Neosho around 3 a.m. on Friday, driving away with her two young sons, and later telling police the girl was not hers.
Kayla Marie Christensen faces charges of first-degree child abandonment and two counts of first-degree child endangerment, according to court records and an affidavit obtained by local station KZRG.
Neosho Police Department officers responded to a report of a young child alone in the travel stop’s lot shortly before 3 a.m.
Investigators determined Christensen intentionally left the girl, referred to in the affidavit as JV1, and did not plan to return.
The affidavit states she left the child “with the purpose of wholly abandoning her under circumstances likely to result in serious physical injury or death, as evidenced by knowingly driving away, failing to return, and later denying that she had a daughter,” according to a report from Law & Crime.
After leaving the girl, Christensen drove off with her two sons.
Neither boy was properly restrained in a car seat, and police said both were in close proximity to suspected drug paraphernalia, including syringes.
KZRG reported that Christensen left the boys alone in the vehicle while she went to a casino in Wyandotte.
The outlet reports that Neosho police thanked Love’s employees for keeping the girl calm and safe until officers arrived.
Christensen is also facing charges of second-degree child abandonment, unlawful possession of drug paraphernalia, three counts of child abuse or neglect, and three counts of failing to restrain a child properly
The post Blue-Haired Missouri Monster Mom Abandoned 4-Year-Old in Truck Stop Parking Lot at 3 AM, Then Told Cops She Didn’t Have a Daughter appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
WATCH Live: Trump speaks to South Carolina rally crowd
Criminal charges? Governor orders investigation into Dems’ ‘Sullivan’ scheme just days before election
Alaska’s governor, Mike Dunleavy, stunningly has ordered an investigation into a apparent Democrat scheme to influence the state’s vote for a representative in the U.S. Senate by recruiting and pushing the candidacy of an unknown with the same name as the Republican incumbent, Dan Sullivan.
Dunleavy announced, “Today’s New York Times reporting reveals disturbing new evidence of an organized effort to manipulate Alaska’s elections by recruiting candidates—including one with the same name as an incumbent U.S. Senator—to deliberately confuse voters and misdirect their votes.”
He continued, “The Alaska Division of Elections investigated these very concerns in June of this year. The new reporting substantially supports the Division’s findings. I am therefore directing the Department of Public Safety to investigate whether this scheme violated Alaska’s laws and whether criminal charges or civil action are warranted. The evidence will determine what happens next. Alaskans have a fundamental right to vote for the candidate they actually intend to support.
“Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections. Anyone or any organization found to have broken the law must be held accountable.”
Today’s New York Times reporting reveals disturbing new evidence of an organized effort to manipulate Alaska’s elections by recruiting candidates—including one with the same name as an incumbent U.S. Senator—to deliberately confuse voters and misdirect their votes. The Alaska Division of Elections investigated these very concerns in June of this year. The new reporting substantially supports the Division’s findings. I am therefore directing the Department of Public Safety to investigate whether this scheme violated Alaska’s laws and whether criminal charges or civil action are warranted. The evidence will determine what happens next. Alaskans have a fundamental right to vote for the candidate they actually intend to support. Deliberately tricking voters into casting their ballots for someone else strikes at the integrity of our elections. Anyone or any organization found to have broken the law must be held accountable.
— Governor Mike Dunleavy (@GovDunleavy) October 29, 2026
The Democrat running for office, and whose campaign staff members apparently have been linked to the agenda to recruit the second Dan Sullivan, is Mary Peltola.
Dunleavy, a Republican, confirmed civil penalties or criminal charges would be reviewed.
President Donald Trump called for Peltola to be thrown from the ballot and prosecuted, citing the apparent “perjury” involved from her campaign officials.
He described it as “voter fraud at the highest level.”
Reports now are identifying the second Dan Sullivan as “Decoy Dan.”
Peltola supporters allegedly tapped the retiree, who was recruited because of his name.
Both Sullivans appear on the ballot, along with Peltola and a fourth candidate. The Department of Justice already has asked that the confirmation of the vote be delayed pending a review of the allegedly criminal actions.
The DOJ alleges Daniel J. Sullivan, the “decoy,” who says he backed Democrats in the last three presidential elections and voted for Peltola in her 2022 and 2024 House races, of trying to fool Alaskans into thinking he is the senator.
Judge Sharon Gleason of the U.S. District Court in Alaska has put the case on a fast track, giving federal lawyers until Thursday afternoon to answer a motion to dismiss.
Peltola claims it’s all a distraction.
Trump’s call was for consequences.
In a social media statement, he said, “It has just been determined that the Democrats in Alaska illegally searched for, and recruited, a man named Dan Sullivan to run against our distinguished Republican Senator, Dan Sullivan, in order to defraud, confuse, and obfuscate the Election, thereby taking votes away from the REAL Senator, San Sullivan.”
He said, “The New York Times reports that, ‘Democrats have insisted they have nothing to do with the other Dan Sullivan on Alaska’s Senate ballot. But aides with the Mary Peltola campaign and DSCC were part of a monthslong secret plan to recruit him to run – as well as other candidates.”
Trump pointed out, “The Democrats false statements were made under oath in federal court. Therefore they perjured themselves, and should be liable for very serious consequences.”
BREAKING: President Trump calls for Democrat operatives to be hit with PERJURY CHARGES after they LIED in federal court, saying they were NOT involved in recruiting a decoy Dan Sullivan on the Alaska ballot Trump also said the Democrat candidate, Mary Peltola, should be REMOVED from the ballot for this scheme: “They perjured themselves, and should be liable for very serious consequences. Mary Peltola should suffer the Legal and Political consequences for what she has done, A FRAUD ON THE AMERICAN PUBLIC, and Dan Sullivan should be allowed to run without either Mary Peltola or FAKE Dan Sullivan on the Ballot.”
— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) October 28, 2026
WND also reported that the Times charged that former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola’s campaign reportedly plotted the sabotage of the incumbent Sullivan’s campaign.
The report said, “Peltola’s team actively searched for other Dan Sullivans to be on the ballot in November to boost the Democrat’s chances of winning … An operative introduced by aides from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee made secret trips to Alaskan communities while using a fake name and pitched his idea to would-be candidates over beers at brew pubs.”
Quiet part out loud: NYT columnist has plan to ‘drain’ bank accounts of Trump administration officials
Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy
Democrats across America have adopted extremist tactics as the midterm elections loom in just days.
Enraged by President Donald Trump and his pro-American policies and practices, in California they are insisting on counting ballots that may be from illegal aliens.
In Alaska, the evidence shows Democrats recruited a “decoy” Dan Sullivan to be on the ballot alongside the incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan.
They’ve fought to extended election day, demanding that votes be counted long after election day is over.
Will the schemes work? Americans will know shortly. But even before results are official. one extremist has issued a playbook on how Democrats, in any sort of congressional majority, must punish members of the Trump administration by raiding their bank accounts.
According to a report at the Federalist, it is New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie who “wants Democrats to ‘begin the reconstruction of American democracy with the rule of law in mind if they win next Tuesday.’”
“His proposed starting point? Draining Stephen Miller’s bank account,” the report said.
Bouie claims that the way forward for extremists is “to use lawfare against people around the president even when criminal prosecution seems hard to get.”
Democrats are familiar with lawfare, having used it against Trump for years around and after his elections. A for-instance is that he was indicted and charged for having documents to which he arguably was entitled from his presidency in his home. Joe Biden, on the other, kept government documents after his term as vice president, which gave him no authorization to have them, in his unsecured garage, and got a pass from prosecutors.
Bouie demands Democrats “deal with the crisis of a lawless president and administration” by bankrupting administration officials, the report said.
Bouie tells Democrats to “create a civil cause of action against executive branch officers, allowing victims of abuse to sue federal officials in court for damages.”
The goal is, for Stephen Miller, to have his bank account “drained.”
Bouie further wants a constitutional amendment on a president’s pardon power, used by Joe Biden to protect his own family members from possible prison terms, to impose new limits.
Those pardons issued by Trump? Dems should go extra-constitutional and ignore them, Bouie said.
The Federalist reported, “But notice how in order to restore the ‘rule of law,’ Bouie keeps coming up with proposed law and rule changes to target his political enemies. If criminal accountability isn’t an option, drain their bank account! If pardons stand in the way, get creative!”
The report noted the agenda comes on the heels of a fantasy from Jennifer Welch about investigating Barron and Tiffany Trump. And further Constitution-“supporting” ideology comes from Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., who threatened the careers of young conservatives if they committed the offense of working in the Trump administration.
Other Democrats are demanding Republicans be “locked up and punished in jail” in their perspective of democracy.
If they can’t get rid of Trump and associates for breaking any laws, the NYT columnist suggest they have their money taken away instead. The leftist nutjobs know no bounds! Columnist Jamelle Bouie also suggests that the Dems ignore any pardons Trump makes and prosecute anyways. Perhaps the GOP should do the same with Biden’s pardons. You didn’t think that one through did you, Jamelle? Link to article in comments
— NWRain-Judi (@RYboating) October 29, 2026
Jamelle Bouie: The Future of the Party Is Endless Investigations https://t.co/a19A6UTLTf
— MAGAmerican Tharpe (@Bre50015Brenda) October 29, 2026
The 3.6% Social Security COLA Could Finally Feel Like a Raise for Retirees in 2027
The 2027 Social Security cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, could outpace inflation and boost Baby Boomers’ spending power next year.
If inflation cools next year as economists predict, the COLA could feel like a raise to beneficiaries, a new Bank of America Institute report said.
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The Social Security Administration announced on Oct. 14 that the COLA will be 3.6%, the largest increase since 2023. It is set to take effect in January for most recipients, giving a $75 average bump to monthly retirement benefits.
The question beneficiaries are asking: Will it be enough? Advocacy groups such as the Senior Citizens League say firmly that the answer is no.
“A 3.6% COLA is not enough!” John Adams, the organization’s chairman, said in an email blast Tuesday, adding that it won’t cover “the rising cost of everyday essentials.”
As measured by the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers, or the CPI-W, the annual inflation rate is 3.9%, several notches higher than the 2027 COLA.
How the COLA compares with projected inflation
Comparing the COLA with current inflation isn’t the only way to assess the increase. The Bank of America Institute explains in the report that there’s historically a connection between the COLA and retirees’ spending in the year it takes effect.
The Social Security COLA is a routine cost-of-living increase mandated by federal law. It’s supposed to ensure that benefits rise in tandem with prices. It usually doesn’t make or break retirees’ finances. “But when inflation is close to a turning point, the increase can end up looking relatively high or low compared with inflation over the course of the following year,” David Tinsley, senior economist at the Bank of America Institute, wrote in the report.
The COLA is calculated by comparing average CPI-W inflation in the third quarter of the year with inflation in the third quarter of the previous year.
Retirees’ benefits would rise faster than prices if the COLA beats inflation, giving some older Americans a bit of breathing room in their budgets.
Looking at the 2023 COLA as the most recent example, Bank of America observed a link between the 8.7% adjustment, which far outpaced inflation that year, and slow spending growth among Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation.
The report says 2027 could be a mini-repeat of 2023. “The consensus expectation is that CPI inflation is likely to cool over 2027, largely reflecting the lessening impact of higher gasoline prices,” Tinsley wrote.
In that case, benefits would rise more than prices in 2027. But near-term inflation is difficult to predict, and the shocks to energy prices are ongoing.
Tinsley’s report highlights the unique mix of income streams among Americans 60 and older, who may be collecting pensions and Social Security, and who typically receive more income from interest, dividends and rental properties than younger generations.
Low unemployment rates and wage growth have been primary drivers of economic gains for workers. However, that doesn’t mean much for people who have retired.
Bank of America’s data shows that older generations’ discretionary spending growth has lagged younger generations’ for roughly a year. It’s another reason the COLA can’t come soon enough for tens of millions of Social Security beneficiaries.
The bottom line: “If these [inflation] expectations prove correct, households that rely on Social Security may receive a more impactful boost to their budgets next year than they have for the last few,” Tinsley wrote.
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How to Get Your Online Store Ready for AI Shopping Agents
For twenty years, getting found online meant one thing. You fought for a spot on a page of blue links, a human scanned that page, clicked through, and decided on your site whether to buy. That model is not dead, but it now has company. A growing share of shoppers are asking an AI assistant to do the searching, comparing and shortlisting for them, and the first “visitor” to judge your store is often a piece of software, not a person.
That changes what a good online store looks like. A beautiful homepage and a clever hero banner mean very little to an agent that is reading your product data, your return policy and your shipping promises to decide whether you make the shortlist. If you sell anything online, the work of the next twelve months is making sure your store can be read, trusted and chosen by AI shopping agents, while still delighting the humans who arrive on the other side.
The Shift Is Already Showing Up in the Numbers
It is easy to dismiss this as another round of tech hype, so look at the data first. Adobe tracks more than a trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, and its latest figures, reported by Search Engine Land, show AI-referred traffic to retailers grew 71% year over year in September 2026 and is up 1,772% since October 2024. More important than the volume is the quality. In September, visitors arriving from AI services converted 90% better than other visitors and generated 83% more revenue per visit. They also stayed 73% longer, viewed 25% more pages and added items to their carts at a 53% higher rate.
Just over a year earlier, in August 2025, those same AI visitors converted 9% worse than everyone else. In other words, the traffic went from curious to commercial in about twelve months. Adobe now expects AI traffic to retail sites to jump 159% on Thanksgiving, 95% on Black Friday and 88% on Cyber Monday compared with last year. A shopper who has already asked an assistant to narrow the field arrives at your site with intent. They are not browsing. They are close to buying.
If you want a clear picture of where this is heading, this conversation between a16z partners Alex Rampell and Justine Moore digs into how AI agents could reshape discovery, affiliate marketing and the way people decide what to buy.
Discovery Is Moving Faster Than Checkout
Here is the part most of the hype skips. The dream of an AI that finds, compares and pays for everything inside a chat window is still being worked out. OpenAI launched Instant Checkout inside ChatGPT in September 2025, and by March 2026 it had stepped back from that approach. According to CNBC, the company said the feature “did not offer the level of flexibility that we aspire to provide,” and purchases now generally complete on the merchant’s own site. Analysts pointed to the difficulty of onboarding merchants and keeping product data accurate.
That is not a reason to relax. It is a reason to focus your energy in the right place. OpenAI kept its Agentic Commerce Protocol for product feeds and promotions, and major retailers such as Target, Sephora, Best Buy and Home Depot are plugged into ChatGPT for discovery. Google, meanwhile, introduced the Universal Commerce Protocol in January 2026, an open standard developed with Shopify, Etsy, Wayfair, Target and Walmart and endorsed by payment players including Visa, Mastercard, Stripe and American Express. It powers checkout inside Google’s AI Mode and Gemini, with the retailer remaining the seller of record.
The lesson for founders is simple. The checkout layer will keep shifting as the big platforms compete, but every one of them depends on the same raw material, which is clean, accurate, structured information about what you sell and how you sell it. Whoever has the best data gets recommended. Whoever has messy data gets skipped, no matter how good the product is.
Make Your Store Readable to Machines
Adobe’s analysis of retail homepages, covered by Retail TouchPoints, found the average U.S. retail homepage scored just 63% for AI visibility. That means more than a third of the content on a typical homepage is effectively invisible to AI. General merchandise homepages scored only 40%. The content AI reads best is the explanatory material many brands treat as an afterthought, such as FAQs, return policies and buying guides.
Start with your product pages. Every product should have a clear, specific title, a description written in plain language, complete attributes like size, material, compatibility and dimensions, accurate pricing and real-time stock status. If your descriptions are vague marketing copy that says a jacket is “perfect for any adventure,” an agent has nothing to work with. If they say it is waterproof to a stated rating, weighs a certain amount and packs into its own pocket, the agent can match it to a shopper who asked for exactly that.
Then look at the structure underneath. Product schema markup, a well-maintained product feed and consistent data across your site, marketplaces and Google Merchant Center all help software understand your catalog without guessing. Avoid hiding key information inside images, sliders or pop-ups that a crawler cannot read. And treat your policy pages as sales pages. A clear returns window, honest delivery times and transparent warranty terms are precisely what an agent checks when it decides whether to recommend you to someone who wants a hassle-free purchase.
Use the Tools the Platforms Are Handing You
You do not need to build any of this from scratch. The commerce platforms are racing to make their merchants agent-ready because that is how they win too. In its Fall ’26 Edition, released this week, Shopify introduced a knowledge base inside its Agentic sales channel that lets merchants review and publish the facts AI agents receive about their store, things like return windows, shipping details and gift options. It also added a view showing which products are eligible for Shopify Catalog, the system that feeds product data to ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Meta and other AI platforms, and it extended Shop Pay so customers can check out through personal AI agents.
If you are on Shopify, those settings deserve an afternoon of your attention right now, before the holiday rush. If you are on another platform, find out what your provider supports for ChatGPT discovery, Google’s protocol and product feeds, and ask direct questions about timelines. The founders who win this shift will not necessarily be the ones with the biggest budgets. They will be the ones who took the boring setup work seriously while competitors were still debating whether any of this mattered.
Trust Is the New Ranking Factor
When a human compares two stores, they might be swayed by a great photo or a clever headline. An agent is more literal. It is weighing signals that suggest a purchase will go smoothly. Reviews, ratings, delivery reliability, accurate stock levels and clear policies all feed that judgment, and inconsistencies between what your site says and what actually happens will hurt you over time.
This is why the brands that already run tight operations have an advantage. If you oversell stock, ship late or make returns painful, an AI system drawing on reviews and order data has every reason to send the shopper somewhere else. The flip side is encouraging. A small brand with excellent service, honest descriptions and loyal reviewers can now compete with much bigger names, because the agent is looking for the best match, not the biggest ad spend. If you want to go deeper on earning those recommendations, it is worth studying how to become the business AI chatbots recommend in your category, because the same principles apply to shopping agents.
A Practical Plan for the Next 90 Days
None of this requires a rebuild. It requires focus. Here is where I would put the effort if I were running an online store today.
Audit your top 20 products. Rewrite titles and descriptions so they state facts clearly, fill in every attribute and make sure price and stock data are accurate everywhere you sell.
Rewrite your policy pages. Make returns, shipping and warranty terms specific, easy to find and consistent across your site and your platform settings.
Build real FAQ and buying-guide content. Answer the questions customers actually ask, in plain text, on pages a crawler can reach.
Turn on the agentic features your platform offers. Check catalog eligibility, publish your store facts where agents can read them and confirm your product feed is healthy.
Track AI referrals separately. Segment traffic from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot in your analytics so you can see what converts and what to fix.
That last step matters more than it looks. You cannot improve what you cannot see, and most stores are still lumping AI visitors in with general referral traffic. Once you separate them, you will learn which products the assistants favor, which questions bring people in and where the gaps are. Pair that with the metrics that matter for generative search and you will have a feedback loop most of your competitors do not.
Build for Both Visitors
It is tempting to see AI shopping agents as a threat that will strip away your brand and turn everything into a price comparison. Some of that pressure is real. But the stores that win will be the ones that serve two visitors at once, a machine that needs clear facts and a human who still wants to feel something when they land on your site. Clean data gets you on the shortlist. A great product, honest promises and a brand people genuinely like are what close the sale and bring them back.
The shift in shopping behavior is happening whether you prepare or not. The good news is that the preparation is mostly about doing the fundamentals better than anyone else, which has always been how great businesses are built. Start with your data, tighten your operations and make it easy for anyone, human or machine, to understand why you are the right choice.
The post How to Get Your Online Store Ready for AI Shopping Agents appeared first on Addicted 2 Success.
Strong GDP Growth Continues to Exceed Expectations in 3rd Quarter
The nation’s real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) continued to outperform economists’ predictions in the third quarter, a report released Thursday by the U.S. Commerce Department reveals.Real (seasonally-adjusted) GDP increased at an annual rate of 3.4% in the third quarter (July, August, and September), according to the advance estimate published Thursday. That’s up from the second quarter’s 2.2% growth and the fastest pace in a year. The third quarter’s GDP growth also exceeded economists’ prediction of 3.1%.Both the Commerce Department and economists have tended to underestimate real GDP increases in recent quarters.In September, for example, the Commerce Department had to upwardly revise both its second quarter and first quarter measures of GDP growth, which exceeded economists’ expectations. In that report, real final sales to private domestic purchasers, the sum of consumer spending and gross private fixed investment was revised up 0.4 percentage point from the previous estimate of 4.2%, which had been revised up from a prior estimate of 3.9%.The third quarter’s GDP growth is greater than the second quarter’s 2.2% increase and the fastest rate since the third quarter of 2025. The main contributors to the increase in real GDP in the third quarter were consumer spending, investment, and government spending. Consumer spending grew 3.8% in the third quarter, matching the second quarter’s growth – and remaining at the fastest pace since the fourth quarter of 2024. Consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of the nation’s economic output,Those additions to GDP were partly offset by a decrease in exports and an increase in imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP. The drop in exports primarily reflected a decrease in goods (led by petroleum and related products), while the largest contributor to imports was capital goods, other than automotive.The primary contributors to the increase in private inventory investment were wholesale trade and manufacturing (both led by nondurable goods industries).The increase in consumer spending reflected increases in both goods and services:Within services, the increase was led by health care (mainly hospitals and outpatient services), food services and accommodations (mainly purchased meals and beverages).Within goods, the increase was led by other nondurable goods (particularly prescription drugs).Total government spending rose at a 5.3% annualized rate in the third quarter. Here, federal government expenditures jumped 15.8%, while state and local spending dipped 0.1%%. The federal government increase was boosted by a 22.2% rise in nondefense consumption.“The U.S. economy is on steroids right now,” thanks to higher-then-expected GDP growth, Navy Federal Credit Union Chief Economist Heather Long told The Hill. And, while inflation remains a concern, the economy is being largely fueled by “the massive AI business investment surge,” Long noted.
Nearly 3 In 10 New-Car Trade-Ins Are Underwater, Edmunds Finds
Nearly 3 In 10 New-Car Trade-Ins Are Underwater, Edmunds Finds
Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times,Almost three in 10 vehicles traded toward a new car are worth less than the amount still owed on their loans, a new report suggests.In the third quarter of 2026, about 29.1 percent of trade-ins with outstanding loans carried negative equity, according to an Oct. 21 analysis by car-shopping platform Edmunds. That was down from 30.9 percent at the beginning of the year but above 28.1 percent in the same quarter of 2025.While the share of so-called underwater trade-ins has eased slightly this year, the amount borrowers owe has continued to climb.Drivers trading in underwater vehicles owed an average of $7,107 more than their cars were worth in the third quarter, the highest third-quarter figure in at least a decade, according to Edmunds.That was more than $1,800 above typical levels before the COVID-19 pandemic. Between 2016 and 2019, the average deficit generally ranged from about $5,000 to $5,500.The financial burden grows when drivers roll that unpaid balance into a new car loan.Consumers who did so in the third quarter financed an average of $57,235, up more than 44 percent from $39,732 in the same period in 2019, Edmunds said. Their average monthly payment climbed to $952 from $646 over that period.At an average interest rate of 8.1 percent, those borrowers are expected to pay about $16,610 in interest over the life of their loans, nearly 83 percent more than in the third quarter of 2019.Compared with the average new-car buyer, consumers rolling negative equity into a new loan financed about $12,600 more and paid an additional $165 per month, Edmunds said. More than 91 percent financed their purchases for 72 months or longer.Longer loans can reduce monthly payments, but they also slow the rate at which borrowers build equity and can leave them underwater for longer.Pandemic-Era Purchases Come Back to MarketEdmunds said the current trend partly reflects vehicles bought during the pandemic-era supply shortage, when many buyers paid unusually high prices.”During the pandemic, vehicle shortages and surging used-car values created an unusual window in which many owners found themselves with more equity than expected, even relatively early in their loans,” Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at Edmunds, wrote in the analysis.By early 2022, only 14.7 percent of financed trade-ins were underwater, with the average deficit below $4,300.However, as new-vehicle production recovered and used-car prices retreated from their peaks, some buyers who financed vehicles at elevated prices were left owing more than their cars were worth.The problem is expected to continue into the fourth quarter.A separate report by auto market research firm JD Power forecast that 29.6 percent of trade-ins in October will carry negative equity, up 0.6 percentage points from a year earlier.Lower trade-in equity is contributing to higher monthly payments even as average new-vehicle prices remain roughly flat, JD Power said.The average new-vehicle transaction price is expected to be $46,329 in October, down 0.1 percent from a year earlier. But the average monthly finance payment is projected to reach an October record of $823 as the average loan rate rises to 6.81 percent.Consumers also continue to stretch out their loans to keep monthly payments manageable. JD Power expects 13.3 percent of new-vehicle loans in October to run for 84 months or longer, up slightly from a year ago.For buyers who need to replace a car before paying off their current loan, higher borrowing costs and longer loan terms can make it harder to escape negative equity without putting additional cash into the transaction, Edmunds warned.”Keeping a vehicle longer or paying down the existing loan before trading can help reduce negative equity when circumstances allow,” Caldwell wrote. “Those who need to replace their vehicle sooner should focus on minimizing additional debt and evaluating the total cost of financing rather than the monthly payment alone.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 10/29/2026 – 13:10