Americans cut back their retail spending last month as the holiday shopping season began amid high prices and rising interest rates that are forcing some families, particularly those with lower incomes, curtail their consumption. The government said Thursday that retail sales fell 0.6% from November to December, after a sharp rise the previous month. Sales fell at furniture, electronics, and home and garden stores.

Lawmakers who eagerly accepted piles of cash from Samuel Bankman-Fried now can’t move fast enough to offload contributions from the disgraced crypto mogul to anywhere but their own campaign coffers.  The Associated Press contacted more than four dozen current and incoming lawmakers who received contributions from Bankman-Fried this election cycle. Many were quick to respond, stressing that they had already donated or plan to send the money to charity.

When the Federal Reserve’s policymakers made their 2022 forecasts a year ago, they felt almost cheery. It turns out they underestimated how much wage growth, supply shortages and the pent-up desire of consumers to spend would conspire to keep inflation high. But mainly what they didn’t foresee was that Russia would invade neighboring Ukraine in February this year — an act of shocking aggression that upended world trade in energy and farm products and sent oil, natural gas and grain prices soaring.

Compiled from AP reports.