©2015 Bloomberg News NRHYK96JIJUW (Bloomberg) — The National Retail Federation predicted a drop in the average family’s back-to-school spending, bringing a downbeat forecast to an industry hoping for a resurgence in the second half. Families will spend about 5.8 percent less on back-to- school shopping this year than in 2014,

©2015 Bloomberg News NRFDC86S972D (Bloomberg Business) — Coal is having a hard time lately. U.S. power plants are switching to natural gas, environmental restrictions are kicking in, and the industry is being derided as the world’s No. 1 climate criminal. Prices have crashed, sure, but for a real sense of coal’s diminishing prospects,

©2015 Bloomberg News NRG1CU6JTSE8 (Bloomberg Politics) — Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton suggested Monday that she may endorse lower capital gains taxes on long-held assets as a way to discourage a quick-profits mentality in the U.S. economy. That could mean a sliding scale of tax rates on investments, offering a

©2015 Bloomberg News NRGFHF6KLVR6 (Bloomberg) — Lu Tao can’t sleep. He gets bouts of panic at night. And he’s too afraid to tell his parents why. The 23-year-old university student in Hangzhou, a city on China’s eastern seaboard, has a stock-market problem. He borrowed 200,000 yuan ($32,215) from mom and

©2015 Bloomberg News NRBTK36S9728 (Bloomberg Politics) — Last year, a bipartisan commission established by President Obama declared that the U.S. faces an “impending crisis in voting technology.” After the 2000 Florida recount showed the world that the American presidency could be determined by hanging chads, Congress set aside $3.3 billion,

Scott Walker The Wisconsin governor is building his campaign around what many conservatives see as his signature accomplishment: taking on unions. In his 2014 memoir, Unintimidated: A Governor’s Story and A Nation’s Challenge, Walker recounts his successful battle to strip organized labor of collective bargaining rights. It was this victory that catapulted

©2015 Bloomberg News NPP08SSYF01T (Bloomberg) — The members of Generation X have plenty to be grumpy about. For starters, no one talks about them anymore. It’s all millennials all the time. There’s another reason Americans born between 1965 and 1980 are gloomy: Gen Xers are in even worse shape financially

©2015 Bloomberg News NQK26H6JTSEF (Bloomberg Business) — The U.S. Supreme Court just legalized gay marriage nationwide. If same-sex couples get married, they gain access to hundreds of legal and financial benefits. They—and anybody else thinking about marrying—also bear some often-overlooked costs and responsibilities. Even couples who have been together for

©2015 Bloomberg News NR90ZM6KLVR5 (Bloomberg) — U.S. and Australian government bonds fell for a second day as Greece sought a bailout loan, curbing demand for safer assets. Ten-year Treasury prices extended Thursday’s biggest decline in two months after Greece offered creditors a package of reforms and spending cuts, as it