Workers at Kaiser Permanente — the nation’s largest health care nonprofit organization — began a strike Wednesday morning that is set to within hours see more than 75,000 union members walk out of hospitals and medical offices after the company and labor negotiators failed to resolve a dispute over staffing levels.

The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions has described the work stoppage as the largest strike of health care workers in U.S. history.

The strike will target Kaiser hospitals and medical offices serving California, Colorado, Oregon, Virginia, the District of Columbia and Washington state.

The strike began at 6 a.m. ET in D.C. and Virginia.

Other workers will be scheduled to walk out at 6 a.m. local time in the remaining states.

The striking workers include vocational nurses, emergency department technicians, radiology technicians, X-ray technicians, respiratory therapists, medical assistants, pharmacists and hundreds of other positions.

Kaiser Permanente serves nearly 13 million patients and operates 39 hospitals and more than 600 medical offices across eight states and the District of Columbia.

Kaiser said it has contingency plans to ensure patients continue to receive care during a strike.

The strike by Kaiser Permanente employees is the latest action by organized labor this year as inflation and a workforce shortage have brought tensions over pay, benefits and staffing to a boiling point.

Abercrombie & Fitch says it is investigating allegations that ex-CEO Mike Jeffries, who led the company for more than 20 years and defined its modern image, exploited men at sex parties he hosted.

BBC News reported on Monday that 12 men described attending or organizing events that included sex acts for Jeffries and his partner Matthew Smith. Some of those men said they were exploited or didn’t participate willingly. Those events took place from 2009 to 2015, according to the BBC.

Two of the men the BBC spoke to disclosed their identities on-the-record, and the BBC said it had confirmed key points of their stories by fact-checking emails, flight tickets and other documents as well as interviewing dozens of other people.

It was not clear if any of the men had filed police reports.

The BBC also reported that in the months before Jeffries left the company, a pension fund that had invested in Abercrombie & Fitch initiated a legal claim that the company had paid out settlements after allegations of ‘misconduct’ by Jeffries.

Michael Jeffries, then-CEO of Abercrombie, speaks at a conference in New York on Jan. 13, 2009.Mark Lennihan / AP file

Brian Bieber, Jeffries’ attorney, told NBC News that Jeffries would not comment on reports about his personal life. Smith did not respond to requests for comment.

In a statement emailed to NBC News, a spokesperson for Abercrombie & Fitch said the company was ‘appalled and disgusted’ by the allegations. It said that its current leadership and board were not aware of the allegations against Jeffries, and that it has engaged an outside law firm to investigate the issues raised by the BBC’s reporting.

Jeffries was CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch from 1992 to 2014. When he was hired, the company had recently emerged from bankruptcy and had a stodgy image. During his tenure, it became a much-imitated retailer that defined how younger people looked and dressed.

It was also frequently criticized and repeatedly boycotted for sexualized ads and messages on its clothes.

Later in Jeffries’ tenure, the company fell behind rivals and newer fast fashion competitors. Its financial results also began to weaken, which hurt the company’s stock. Jeffries lost his title as chairman following pressure from investors, and then left the company.

Most of Abercrombie & Fitch’s current management and board of directors joined after Jeffries left the company, although Fran Horowitz, who has been CEO since February 2017, was president of A&F’s Hollister brand for the last two months of Jeffries’ tenure.

Walmart says people who get weight loss drugs like Wegovy at its pharmacies are buying a bit less food at its stores.

Walmart’s U.S. CEO, John Furner, told Bloomberg News that the company is seeing signs that people taking GLP-1 agonist appetite suppressant medications are buying ‘less units, slightly less calories.’

GLP-1 agonists include semaglutide, which is sold under the name Ozempic as a Type 2 diabetes treatment and Wegovy as a weight loss drug; as well as Mounjaro and Victoza.

The retail giant is comparing shoppers who pick up a prescription for those medications at its pharmacies to shoppers who are otherwise similar but aren’t filling those scripts at Walmart. Using anonymized data, it’s looking for patterns in the spending of those groups, and it says the first group is buying less food.

Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart, Inc., said in August that the growing popularity of the drugs was helping its sales.

Wegovy.Steffen Trumpf / dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images file

According to Trilliant Health, prescriptions of those medications quadrupled from late 2020 to 2022, with 9 million prescriptions filled in the last three months of last year.

Walmart previously recorded stronger grocery sales when high inflation was driving wealthier shoppers to its stores. In summer 2022, after inflation had topped out at 9.1%, the company said it saw more customers in higher income brackets shunning expensive grocery stores in favor of Walmart’s lower prices.

In a company earnings release at the time, McMillion said, “We’re pleased to see more customers choosing Walmart during this inflationary period, and we’re working hard to support them as they prioritize their spending.”

The criminal cyberattack on MGM Resorts in Las Vegas last month resulted in the company’s losing around $100 million, it said in a filing Thursday evening with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The admission is a rare insight into the giant sums that major companies can lose when they fall victim to significant hacks.

MGM, whose prominent casinos along the Las Vegas Strip include the Bellagio and Mandalay Bay, were hacked last month. The company said it deliberately shut down a number of services “to mitigate risk to customer information.”

The shutdown had severe impacts for MGM. Some hotel customers couldn’t use key cards to enter their rooms. Employees were locked out of corporate emails for days. The tech news website 404 Media found entire sections of slot machines at MGM casinos roped off.

The fallout stood in sharp contrast what happened to rival Caesars Entertainment, which disclosed that it had been hacked around the same time. Caesars indicated in its SEC filing that it may have paid the hackers to go away.

In an open letter also published Thursday evening, MGM CEO Bill Hornbuckle said that “the vast majority of our systems have been restored,” adding, “We also believe that this attack is contained.”

Even though those systems were shut down, the hackers did access some customer information. While customer bank account information and credit card numbers appear untouched, the hackers stole some customers’ personal information, including names, driver’s license numbers and Social Security numbers, Hornbuckle said.

In the housing market today, it feels like what goes up doesn’t have to come down.

It looked like home prices were finally cooling off late last year after price spikes that began during the pandemic. Nationwide, prices dipped gradually in the second half of 2022 as mortgage rates climbed in response to rising interest rates. And some areas where a lot of new homes had been built — like Austin, Texas; Boise, Idaho; and Charlotte, North Carolina — saw significant price declines.

Granted, that was a double-edged sword for many people. Higher interest rates tend to bring home prices down, but that’s because they make it more expensive for buyers to borrow money to finance their purchases.

The rate hikes were not enough to undo the big price gains of the past few years, especially in parts of the U.S. where home sale prices already run well above the national average, but the change came as a relief for many people.

Then something even more surprising happened early this year. Prices started going up again. Potential homebuyers who may have breathed a sigh of relief a few months ago are now staring at an improbable double whammy: Prices are at all-time highs even with mortgage rates at 23-year highs.

The average U.S. rate for a 30-year mortgage was 7.49% on October 5, according to government-backed lender Fannie Mae.

In fact, an NBC News analysis of data from Zillow found that estimated mortgage payments have increased in more than 500 cities since the end of 2020, with payments doubling in more than half of cities.

Two of Sam Bankman-Fried’s former friends from MIT, who also worked at crypto exchange FTX while living with the company co-founder in the Bahamas, took the stand in a Manhattan courtroom this week to testify against their former classmate, confidant, and boss — a man who allegedly ran a crypto empire that defrauded thousands of customers out of billions of dollars.

Gary Wang, the lesser-known co-founder of FTX, was asked by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos on Thursday, “Did you commit financial crimes while working at FTX?”

“Yes,” responded Wang. He said that his crimes, including wire and commodities fraud, were carried out with the help of Bankman-Fried, FTX ex-engineering head Nishad Singh and Caroline Ellison, who ran sister hedge fund Alameda Research and had been Bankman-Fried’s girlfriend.

“Mr. Wang, do you see any of the people you committed those crimes with in the courtroom today?” Roos continued.

Wang, dressed in an oversized and wrinkled suit with a red tie and glasses, awkwardly stood up and looked around the courtroom before responding, “Yes.”

“Who do you see?” asked Roos.

“Sam Bankman-Fried,” he said.

The trial, set to last six weeks, will resume on Tuesday with key testimony expected from Ellison, who is considered the prosecution’s star witness, having already pleaded guilty to multiple charges. Bankman-Fried faces seven federal charges, including wire fraud, securities fraud and money laundering, that could put him in prison for the rest of his life.

Thus far, Bankman-Fried, 31, has remained mostly quiet in court intently listening to witnesses and at times writing notes to his attorneys. But as Wang testified against him, Bankman-Fried looked visibly upset, shifting his gaze from his former friend to the ground, and at one point putting his head in his hands.

Wang, 30, was technology chief for FTX, which spiraled into bankruptcy in November. He spoke so fast that U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan and the prosecutor both stopped him at points to ask that he slow his pace.

Much of Wang’s testimony on Friday focused on the final days at FTX before the entire operation imploded, including reports in the media detailing Alameda’s business practices and its troubling ties to FTX.

Wang said that in response to the reporting an emergency meeting was called between Bankman-Fried, Wang and Singh, to discuss shutting down Alameda. He said they ultimately decided against such a move because he and Bankman-Fried were aware that Alameda had no way to repay the roughly $14 billion hole in its books.

Prosecutors took the jury through a series of tweets, beginning on Nov. 7. Posts came from the company blaming bank hours for slow withdrawals, while Bankman-Fried tweeted from his personal account, assuring customers that all was fine.

“FTX was not fine and assets were not fine,” Wang testified.

On Nov. 12, after FTX declared bankruptcy, Bankman-Fried asked Wang to drive with him to the Bahamas Securities Commission for a meeting. On the drive, Bankman-Fried told Wang to transfer assets to Bahamian liquidators because he believed they would allow him to maintain control of the company. Wang said he wasn’t in the meeting with the securities authority, though Bankman-Fried’s dad was present.

Wang said he returned to the U.S. and met with prosecutors the next day. He faces up to 50 years in prison when he faces a judge for sentencing following this trial. He told jurors he signed a six-page cooperation agreement that requires him to meet with prosecutors, answer their questions truthfully and turn over evidence.

$65 billion line of credit

For months, Bankman-Fried has known that Wang and Ellison, who were integral members of his personal and professional inner circles, had turned on him. Both pleaded guilty in December and have since been cooperating with the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan.

Wang’s testimony, which stretched into Friday, was given under a cooperation agreement with the government. Ellison is expected to take the stand under a similar arrangement.

Born in China, Wang moved to the U.S. at age 7 and grew up in Minnesota before going to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study math and computer science. He worked at Google after college.

Wang, who first met Bankman-Fried during high school at a summer camp, owned 10% of Alameda, while his boss owned the other 90%. Wang told the court about the advantages that Alameda received by having code baked into FTX’s software that allowed special access to the crypto exchange. Those privileges ultimately resulted in Alameda owing FTX $8 billion worth of customer deposits.

“We gave special privileges on FTX that gave unlimited withdrawals on the platform to Alameda,” Wang said. Alameda was allowed to withdraw and transfer those funds and had a $65 billion line of credit. 

“When customers deposited USD, it went to Alameda,” he said. “It existed in the computer code. Alameda could have negative balances and unlimited withdrawals.”  

That “bug” in the code was written by Nishad Singh, who was FTX’s director of engineering, and reviewed by Wang. Bankman-Fried was calling the shots, Wang said.

Wang also told the court about a $1 million personal loan he received and a $200 million to $300 million loan in his name from Alameda that was never deposited into his account, but rather was used to make investments into other companies on behalf of FTX. That was all done by Bankman-Fried, he testified. 

In early 2020, Wang said he discovered for the first time Alameda’s negative balance exceeded FTX’s revenue, an indication that Alameda was taking customer funds. Wang said he brought this to Bankman-Fried’s attention several times. 

In late 2021, Wang discovered Alameda had withdrawn $3 billion from its $65 billion line of credit.

Wang’s compensation was a base salary of $200,000 per year plus stock. He owned roughly 17% of FTX.

Even though they were co-founders, “ultimately it was Sam’s decision to make” when there were disagreements, he said.

An $8 billion bug

Adam Yedidia, who was the prosecution’s second witness on Wednesday, continued his testimony on Thursday. Yedidia met Bankman-Fried in college at MIT, and the pair remained close friends.

Yedidia, assuming a robotic posture on the stand, worked out of FTX’s Hong Kong office from January to October of 2021 and then in the Bahamas until last year’s collapse. In his testimony, he referred to a group Signal thread called “People of the House,” referring to Bankman-Fried’s $35 million penthouse, where many employees lived.

In terms of who was paying the rent, Yedidia recalled Bankman-Fried saying he “assumed it’s just Alameda paying for it in the end.”

Yedidia said Bankman-Fried had told him before he began working in the Bahamas in 2019 that he and Ellison had sex. Bankman-Fried asked Yedidia if it was a good idea for them to date, to which Yedidia said no. Bankman-Fried responded by saying he was expecting that answer.

One of Yedidia’s responsibilities was fixing the bug in the code that gave Alameda preferential treatment. In June 2022, he submitted a report to Bankman-Fried on Signal that showed $8 billion in customer money held in an internal database tracking the cash wired to an Alameda account called “fiat at ftx.com” was missing.

Yedidia said he and Bankman-Fried spoke about it at the pickleball court at the resort in Nassau, Bahamas. He asked his boss if things were OK. He was concerned because it “seemed like a lot of money” from FTX customers was at risk.

“Sam said, we were bulletproof last year. We aren’t bulletproof this year,” Yedidia testified.

Yedidia said he asked when they would be bulletproof again.

Bankman-Fried said he wasn’t sure, but it may be six months to three years. Yedidia said Bankman-Fried appeared “worried or nervous,” which he said was atypical. Still, Yedidia said he trusted Bankman-Fried and Ellison to “handle the situation.”

On cross-examination, Christian Everdell, Bankman-Fried’s attorney, focused on how Yedidia was the one responsible for developing and reviewing the code.

He asked about the long hours employees worked and Yedidia’s concern for Wang being near burnout. That resulted in Yedidia instituting a rule to not wake Wang at night for bug fixes because he needed sleep.

Everdell also drilled Yedidia on his high level of compensation in his less than two years at FTX. His base salary was between $175,000 and $200,000, but he received multiple bonuses of more than $12 million in cash and company equity. 

Yedidia said he’s now teaching math — geometry and algebra — at a high school. He invested most of the millions he earned as bonuses back into FTX, and his equity stake is now worthless.

As FTX was failing, Yedidia said he was by Bankman-Fried’s side. He highlighted a Signal exchange in November 2022, during which he wrote, “I love you Sam. I’m not going anywhere.” He said he wrote the message because so many people had left.

When asked what changed, Yedidia said he learned that FTX customer deposits had been used to pay loans to creditors. He said Alameda’s actions seemed “flagrantly wrong.”

Yedidia’s testimony ended on a fiery note, which was later struck from the record. He was asked why he had lost faith in FTX and resigned.

“FTX defrauded all its customers,” he said. 

Investment to zero

The third witness to take the stand was Matt Huang, co-founder and managing partner of Paradigm, a crypto venture capital firm that invested over $275 million in FTX. That stake was wiped out.

Huang testified about his firm’s due diligence on FTX, and he told the court that Bankman-Fried assured him that funds would be used for FTX and not Alameda. Additionally, he was promised that Alameda had no preferential treatment on the FTX platform, even though the hedge fund was one of its top traders.

Huang said he was concerned about FTX’s lack of a board of directors, but he eventually invested anyway. During cross-examination, Huang said Paradigm pressed Bankman-Fried on the board issue and was told he didn’t want investors as directors but he did plan on having a board with experts.

CORRECTION (Oct. 8, 2023, 6:45 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article and a video caption misstated Sam Bankman-Fried’s role with FTX. He is one of two co-founders, not the sole founder.

Walk past any bank and you’ll likely see savings rates advertised in the window.

That’s because, for the first time in many years, rates have climbed to 5% on some high-yield savings accounts. Much the same goes for other common financial products, like certificates of deposits (CDs) and money market funds, as the Federal Reserve has boosted interest rates to 20-year highs.

But there’s a catch.

“At the end of the day, there is no free lunch,” said Lauren Goodwin, economist and director of portfolio strategy at New York Life Investments. “If money market or cash-like yields are higher, it’s likely because inflation is higher.”

Last year, consumer prices jumped at rates unseen since the 1980s, swiftly eroding the purchasing power of each U.S. dollar. To attract and keep depositors in this environment, banks have been dangling juicier returns.

For example, a $1,000 investment in a typical “high-yield” savings account in January 2021 — when inflation started picking up — was paying just 0.7% in annual interest at the time, according to Investopedia data.

Then, as the Fed ratcheted rates higher to combat inflation, the rate on that same account surged to 5% by early 2023, delivering much more generous returns. As the interest compounded, that initial deposit would have grown to $1,059.72 as of this August, for a gain of $59.72 on paper.

But that’s before adjusting for inflation. In reality, that balance is worth only $902.86 in 2021 dollars — a $97.14 net loss in purchasing power.

Some investment strategies have done a better job cushioning the blow from inflation — or even beating it — than others. But as the track record of even a high-yield savings account shows, it hasn’t been easy. Try out our simulator to see for yourself. Just pick an initial investment value to explore how three common financial products’ returns compare with stashing cash under the mattress. Then hit “Apply Inflation” to see how those current-day balances look in 2021 dollars.