Yahoo Finance Daily

One long-time DC policy strategist thinks there is hope for the millions of people that have lost the ‘top up’ in their weekly unemployment checks after it expired on July 31. But it may take more time before that hope could be turned into cold, hard cash. “There are 30 million Americans who are unemployed who are relying upon that extra income who don’t know when that next check is going to come.

“It is time to return to our roots and break up” Big Tech to “oxygenate the marketplace,” says NYU marketing professor Scott Galloway. “The marketplace is beginning to collectively recognize that when all of the spoils are concentrated among an increasingly small number of firms, it makes for an unhealthy ecosystem and unhealthy economy,” Galloway told Yahoo Finance’s On The Move.

Joe Biden leads President Trump in the polls, and if Biden wins, there’s maybe a 50% chance Democrats will retake the Senate and control both houses of Congress. If that happens, what would the Democrats’ top priorities be in 2021?

Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, testified before Congress for the first time ever Wednesday afternoon. Since founding Amazon (AMZN) 26 years ago, Bezos has been able to control the narrative, and managed to do so — even before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law.

Previous crises hit certain parts of the economy sharply, like the Global Financial Crisis for banks. But no crisis has ever hit anything harder than the coronavirus crisis has hit the travel industry. Due to the worries about Covid-19 transmission, airlines shut down completely, resulting in a shocking unemployment spike in the U.S. Along with consumer demand for flying, airline and other travel companies’ stocks cratered.

The Great Work-From-Home Experiment carries on as the country continues to be shelled by Covd-19. Fortunately, most people involved — companies and employees alike — think that it’s working pretty well, except those trying to work and take care of kids simultaneously.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell once again expressed support for direct payments to Americans on Tuesday when he unveiled more details about the Republican proposal for additional coronavirus relief. “Speaking of building on what worked in the CARES Act, we want another round of direct payments,” McConnell said from the Senate floor. “Direct payments to help American families keep driving our national comeback.

One big reason critics don’t want to extend the coronavirus unemployment benefits is they’re worried the extra $600 per week will keep Americans from returning to work. But that’s far from the case, according to a new analysis of workers who made more while unemployed. The findings could help bolster the case that the jobless aid created under the CARES Act and is set to expire at the end of the month should be extended.

Attention shifted to California on Wednesday, which topped former COVID-19 epicenter New York as the state with the most cases, with hopes growing for a successful vaccine as the pandemic tightens its grip around the country. The U.S. remains the global hotspot, with nearly 4 million of almost 15 million cases around the world. The country’s inability to get a handle on the crisis has amplified fears for the economy, and formed the crux of President Donald Trump’s remarks on Tuesday.

A contentious presidential election right around the bend. A major health pandemic continuing to roil the globe and keep economic growth under severe pressure. Major companies telling investors this earnings season that things are far from great — or getting better at all. And yet in the face of all this negativity and brutal reality, the good ole stock market has galloped like a one-year-old stud back to pre-COVID-19 pandemic highs this week.

It just doesn’t make any sense and nobody on the Hill wants to give it a green light. That’s the mood in D.C. right now with respect to President Trump’s proposed payroll tax cut as being essential in securing another round of government stimulus for households battered by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are still trying to iron out the details of just who and what were behind Wednesday’s massive hack that compromised the accounts of some of the biggest political names and industry leaders in the world.

The day after scammers commandeered various high-profile Twitter accounts to conduct a bitcoin scam, cybersecurity professionals and the company itself tried to make sense of exactly what happened. Twitter said that so far they believe a "coordinated social engineering attack" was performed by "successfully targeting some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.

In March, the IRS laid out a range of ways it would ease the burden on taxpayers who were financially shaken by the coronavirus and ensuing shutdowns and job losses. One such measure was a move to “generally not start” new audits for a few months. Now that self-imposed restriction is over. July 15 – the delayed tax day – is also the day the agency appears set to restart some tax enforcement measures in earnest.

The Great Recession of 2008 crushed the millennial generation’s career aspirations. The labor market for both college and high school graduates wasn’t pretty. In September 2008, young workers faced an unemployment rate of 9.9%, compared to 5.6% for all workers, according to the New York Fed. By May 2010, even as the stock market had recovered, young workers aged 22 to 27 without a bachelor's degree saw unemployment at 15.7%. Even college graduates had an unlucky unemployment rate of 6.8%.