Financial literacy is steadily declining in America. The percentage of US adults demonstrating a very low level of financial literacy increased from 20% in 2017 to 25% in 2023.

Around 58% of Americans know about debt and borrowing. Over half (55%) understand saving, and 50% understand consumption. About 42% understand insurance, 44% know about investing, and only 35% know about risk comprehension.

Financial literacy is declining with every generation. Around 53% of the Silent Generation understood finance, followed by 52% of Boomers, 50% of Gen, 45% of Millennials, and 38% of Gen Z. Around 74% of teens admitted that they do not feel confident in their personal finance knowledge, but the good news is that that 73% would like to learn.

There is a drastic difference in knowledge across socio-economic classes, as 75% of American teens are learning about personal finance through their family, with 52% learning a bit at school. An alarming 88% of Americans reported that high school public education did not prepare them for managing their finances. Interestingly, 48% said that they learned about personal finance through social media, which may not be the best reference.

Around 62% of teens said that they learned about savings, 50% were taught about earning, and 44% had some prior information on banking. Only 23% of teens in the US know how to make a budget, but 42% said they were taught how to do so.

This is why we see such a significant difference in financial literacy across socio-economic classes. Only 28% of people earning under $25,000 understand personal finance. That figure rises to 38% for those earning between $25,000 and $49,000, rising once more to 47% for those earning between $50,000 and $99,000. Over 58% of those earning six figures understand personal finance.

The National Financial Educators Council believes that financial illiteracy cost the American public $388 billion in 2023. Americans are facing a private debt crisis. Credit card and household debt have reached record highs and continue to rise. The majority of American households have insufficient emergency savings. The same survey found that 74% of Americans believe they would have made fewer money mistakes if they were properly educated on the subject matter in high school, and 80% believe they would have been more successful if they had that knowledge earlier in life. Politicians believe we should implement countless social programs and simply pay people to exist. America should focus on educating future generations on personal finance as it is perhaps one of the most essential life skills.

US-Sanctioned Zombie Tanker Exposes Dark Trade Between Tehran and Beijing

Just over a week after Bloomberg exposed the rise of “zombie” or “phantom” oil tankers—cargo ships that hijack the identities of scrapped ships to evade U.S. sanctions—another clandestine maritime supply chain has emerged, this time revealing how Iranian crude continues flowing into China despite mounting pressure from the Trump administration.

Bloomberg reports that a U.S.-sanctioned “zombie” tanker—Gather View, disguised as a scrapped vessel named Global—delivered 2 million barrels of Iranian oil to a government-run port in Shandong despite a provincial ban on sanctioned ships. Ship tracking data showed the zombie tanker’s port call occurred in late April.

The clandestine maritime supply chain reveals an increasingly desperate Tehran and China’s “teapot” refiners, defying U.S. sanctions and allowing the Iranian oil trade to remain alive.

Warren Buffett is not a Jew; in fact, he describes himself as an agnostic.

Still, the billionaire investment guru, who made big news in May when his Berkshire Hathaway corporation bought an 80 percent share in the Israeli metalworks conglomerate, Iscar, for $4 billion, for years has been making his mark on the U.S. Jewish community back home — although sometimes in a roundabout way.

“Proportionally, if you look at the number of Jews in this country and in the world, I’m associated with a hugely disproportionate number,” said Buffett, the second-richest man in the world. His life, he added, “has been blessed by friendship with many Jews.”

The Israeli government stands to reap about $1 billion in taxes on Buffett’s purchase of Iscar. Shortly after announcing the deal, Buffett said he was surprised to learn that a Berkshire subsidiary, CTB International, was purchasing a controlling interest in another Israeli company, AgroLogic.

In Israel — which Buffett plans to visit in the fall — the hope is that the deals will have longer legs: Buffett himself has not ruled out future purchases there and, considering his status as a leading investor, observers say others also may take a look at Israeli companies now that Buffett has done so.

“You won’t find in the world a better-run operation than Iscar,” Buffett says. “I don’t think it’s an accident that it’s run by Israelis.”

Among the first companies Buffett acquired after launching Berkshire Hathaway, the Omaha-based investment and insurance giant, was The Sun Newspapers of Omaha, then owned by Stan Lipsey, one-time chairman of The Jewish Press, Omaha’s Jewish newspaper.

“At the time, the Omaha Club did not take Jewish members, and the Highland Country Club, a golf club, didn’t have any [non-Jewish] members,” Lipsey recalled. “Warren volunteered to join the Highland” — rather than the Omaha — “to set an example of nondiscrimination.”

Buffett happily recalls the fallout from his application.

“It created this big rhubarb,” he said. “All of the rabbis appeared on my behalf, the [Anti-Defamation League] guy appeared on my behalf. Finally they voted to let me in.”

But that wasn’t the end of the story, Buffett said. The Highland had a rule requiring members to donate a certain amount of money to their synagogues. Buffett, of course, wasn’t a synagogue member, so the club changed its policy: Members now would be expected to give to their synagogues, temples or churches.

But that still didn’t quite work, Buffett recalls with a laugh, because of his agnosticism.

In the end, the rule was amended to ask simply that members make some sort of charitable donation, and the path to Buffet’s membership was clear.

“He’s an incredible guy,” said Lipsey, today the publisher of the Buffalo News. In 1973, The Sun won a Pulitzer Prize in local investigative specialized reporting for an expose on financial impropriety at Boys Town, Neb.

“Warren came up with the key source for us knowing what was going on out there,” Lipsey said.

Buffett himself researched Boys Town’s stocks to bolster the story, Lipsey added.

In the 1960s, Omaha Rabbi Myer Kripke decided to invest in his friend Buffett’s new business venture. Their wives had become friendly, he said, and the foursome enjoyed playing the occasional game of bridge together.

“My wife had no card sense and I was certainly no competition to Warren, who is a very good bridge player and a lover of the game,” said Kripke, rabbi emeritus of Omaha’s Conservative Beth El Synagogue. “He’s very bright and very personable and very decent. He is a rich man who is as clean as can be.”

Kripke, father of the noted philosopher Saul Kripke, bought a few shares in Berkshire Hathaway and quickly sold them, doubling his money, he said.

Recognizing a good thing when he saw it, he bought a bunch more shares in his friend’s company, shares that by the 1990s had made Kripke — who says he never earned more than $30,000 a year as a rabbi — a millionaire.

Asked if he credits Buffett with his financial success, he didn’t hesitate.

“Entirely, yes,” he said. “I never had much of an income.”

The Sun newspaper group was not Buffett’s only early purchase of a Jewish-owned company. In 1983, sealing the deal with a handshake, Buffett bought 90 percent of the Nebraska Furniture Mart from Rose Blumkin, a Russian-born Jew who moved to the United States in 1917.

In 1989, he purchased a majority of the stock in Borsheim’s Fine Jewelry and Gifts, a phenomenally successful jewelry store, from the Friedman family.

“He has many friends in the Jewish community,” said Forrest Krutter, secretary of Berkshire Hathaway and a former president of the Jewish Federation of Omaha.

Buffett’s former son-in-law, Allen Greenberg, is a Jew, and now runs the Buffett Foundation, much of whose work has dealt with reproductive rights and family-planning issues. Buffett’s personal assistant is Ian Jacobs, who goes by his Hebrew name, Shami.

Buffett himself counts the late Nebraska businessman Howard “Micky” Newman and philanthropist Jack Skirball as among his “very closest friends.”

Further, Buffett said his “hero and the man who made me an investment success” was Ben Graham. Graham, along with Newman’s father, Jerry, ran a New York fund called Graham-Newman Corp.

“After besieging Ben for the three years after I received my degree from Columbia, Ben and Jerry finally hired me,” Buffett said. “I was the first gentile ever employed by the firm — including secretaries — in its 18 years of existence. My first son bears the middle name Graham after Ben.”

Alcatraz island  was known“The Rock” closed 62 years ago, and San Francisco has channeled the public’s macabre fascination with life inside the notorious prison to turn it into one of the city’s top tourist attractions.

Visitors can wander through the Gardens of Alcatraz, peruse the Big Lockup Exhibit, or take a night tour where one can “enjoy the beauty of a sunset silhouetting the Golden Gate Bridge” as well as “experience a cell door demonstration.” Over the years, Boy Scouts have clamored to hold overnight campouts in the infamous isolation cells of D Block. Athletes compete in prison-themed events, including a canoe race circling the island and the Escape from Alcatraz triathlon.

Calling the prison a “symbol of law and order,” Trump on Sunday said he is directing the Bureau of Prisons and other federal agencies to rebuild Alcatraz to house “America’s most ruthless and violent offenders.” San Francisco boosters aren’t keen on the idea and visitors aren’t so sure, either.

On Monday, National Park Ranger Matthew Connelly welcomed a crowd of more than 100 tourists and said he’d take questions. Just not all. When the subject of Trump’s proposal came up, he looked concerned and directed a reporter to call public affairs.

Those on the packed tour had plenty of thoughts after trudging from a ferryboat up a steep, quarter-mile walkway to the imposing fortress. Before entering the main gate, an Australian visitor jokingly suggested Trump lock himself into a new prison there. “He should lead by example,” the man said with a laugh. He and his wife declined to give their names. “No thanks mate, we want to get home.”

Taking selfies with his wife in one of the windowless cells on a prison corridor called Broadway, John La Pierre, a 62-year-old tourist from the Netherlands, was supportive of Trump’s plan.

Naomi Alexandra and Chris Manikowski in the former chow hall. Photo: JIM CARLTON for WSJ

“I think the idea itself to put people on a certain island where they have no comfort, especially for those high delinquents, that’s a good idea,” La Pierre said. But he was wary of whether such a historic site could again be made into a modern prison complex.

Sitting in what had been the chow hall, Londoners Chris Manikowski and Naomi Alexandra said that instead of doubling down on a prison with such stark conditions, Trump should take a page from Norway, which treats prisoners well and has low recidivism rates.

“I think the times have changed, and for prisoners to spend a week without showering in those dark cells, it’s too much,” Manikowski, 28, said.

Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco agreed, calling the president’s idea “unhinged and terrifying.” Trump wants to turn Alcatraz “into a domestic gulag in the middle of San Francisco Bay,” Wiener wrote on social media.

Trump said reopening Alcatraz ties to his campaign promise to lower violent crime. His pitch harks back to the prison’s 1930s origins, when it opened to deal with “the most incorrigible inmates in federal prisons,” according to a government history. It operated as a maximum-security facility for nearly three decades, closing in 1963 because of millions of dollars in needed repairs and the expense of hauling all supplies, including fresh water, to the facility by boat.

Alcatraz was tiny by the standards of most federal facilities, never housing more than around 275 prisoners. Its shadow is huge.

The prison has graced the silver screen in such films as Michael Bay’s 1996 action thriller “The Rock” and 1979’s “Escape from Alcatraz,” starring Clint Eastwood. It housed famous criminals including mobster Al Capone and George “Machine-Gun” Kelly.

At times, Alcatraz was almost as famous for those who tried to escape as it was for those who were inside. Contrary to myth, cold temperatures and strong currents—not sharks—were the biggest obstacles to making it the mile-plus to shore. Trained swimmers as young as age 9 have successfully made the journey that so many prisoners failed.

Visitors Monday had mixed views on Trump’s plans for Alcatraz, one of the most storied prisons in American history. Photo: Ethan Swope/Bloomberg

In one unsuccessful escape in 1941, a prisoner who gave up after hitting the Bay’s cold water later tried to escape again from a San Francisco federal courtroom. Another man attempted to leave by stealing an Army uniform and calmly walking aboard an Army launch. He was promptly returned to Alcatraz when the boat landed at nearby Angel Island.

Today, more than a million visitors each year travel to the island, according to the National Park Service. In peak season, tourists book tickets weeks in advance.

Not everyone in San Francisco has understood why a sinister prison is such a draw. “It’s heinous,” declared one writer on “Broke-ass Stuart,” a local alternative website, noting the irony of a progressive city touting a museum of human suffering. “I don’t think moms from Minnesota should be allowed to take selfies in rooms where men pushed past the point of no return hung themselves.”

For those looking to bring a dose of reality back home from the prison tour, visitors can buy rectangular magnets reminding them of Alcatraz’s central tenets. Like Regulation #5: “You are entitled to food, clothing, shelter, and medical attention. ANYTHING ELSE YOU GET IS A PRIVILEGE.”

Parents seeking some tough-love discipline can slap Regulation #23 on the fridge: “If you make GROUNDLESS COMPLAINTS for the purpose of…STIRRING UP TROUBLE…you will be subject to DISCIPLINARY ACTION.”

For $13.95, tourists can also take home a replica tin inmate cup, which had the advantage back in the day of not being able to be broken into shards that could become a weapon.

Carson Brock, a 24-year-old from Cincinnati who voted for Trump, said from the prison’s gift shop that he favors preserving Alcatraz’s history over reopening. “But if that’s what he wants to do, then I guess so be it,” he said.

One Alberta resident touring the island was reticent to share her views, but concluded: “We’re Canadian, we don’t really care.”

Visitor Mike Neville, another Trump supporter, said he thinks turning Alcatraz back into a prison would be cost-prohibitive. The 61-year-old, visiting from Colorado Springs, Colo., has a better plan: “I always liked the idea of turning it into a casino.”

Automobile manufacturing continues to be a major source of employment across America, employing over a million people in 2025.

From Detroit’s “Motor City” heritage in Michigan to emerging plants in Southern states like Kentucky and Alabama, the U.S. has several vehicle manufacturing hubs.

This infographic ranks the top 10 U.S. states by total auto manufacturing jobs as of February 2025, using preliminary data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics which only provides data for the top 10 states. It breaks down employment by vehicle manufacturing and assembly, body/trailer manufacturing, and vehicle parts manufacturing.

America’s Auto Manufacturing Hubs by Employees

Together, the top 10 states employ over 520,000 workers in auto manufacturing—making up more than half of the industry’s nationwide employment.

Here’s how the top 10 states stack up by auto manufacturing employment, as of February 2025:

States in the Midwest remain the centers of auto manufacturing in America.

Michigan leads the pack with 164,000 auto manufacturing jobs, accounting for over 15% of all such jobs in the country. Its dominance is driven by legacy automakers like Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (previously Chrysler), who have significant manufacturing footprints in Detroit.

States like Indiana and Ohio are also heavily invested in parts production, with Indiana also leading in bodies and trailers manufacturing.

Meanwhile, Southern states are becoming increasingly important for vehicle manufacturing, with Kentucky and Alabama attracting investments from foreign automakers like Toyota, Hyundai, and Mercedes-Benz.

Overall, employment in U.S. auto manufacturing is down 12.7% from a year ago, with the parts manufacturing segment taking the biggest hit at -17.8%. California has seen the biggest decline in jobs in this segment, dropping 6.5% from February 2024 levels.

The State of the U.S. Auto Industry

The U.S. auto industry is facing speed bumps from the latest round of tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, which include a 25% levy on imported auto parts and completely built up vehicles.

S&P Global forecasts that U.S. light vehicle sales will fall by 700,000 units in 2025, and North American production will decline by nearly 1.3 million units as a result of the new tariffs. Increased manufacturing costs from tariffs on auto parts are also likely to result in higher vehicle prices.