Business and finance, tested against the data
Original questions. Visible evidence.
Every week, Theoria asks the question the headlines skip, works it through public data, and shows every source, estimate and assumption so you can check the thinking yourself.
- 30.2% → 8.2%Chase checking complaints closed with money back, 2019 vs. 2025
- 36.0%Bank of America’s rate in 2025, more than four times Chase’s
- 8.2%Chase’s rate with Bank of America’s mix of complaints: no change
- 33.0% vs 36.2%overdraft-fee complaints with money back, Chase vs. Bank of America
- 69.3% → 88.5%Chase complaints closed with an explanation only
- ≈2,550more Chase complaints with money back at Bank of America’s rates (Theoria estimate)
Analysis
The questions behind the headlines
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This week
Banking · Consumer finance
The refund scoreboard banks grade themselves
In 2019 Chase and Bank of America gave money back on the same share of checking-account complaints. Now Bank of America reports doing it more than four times as often. The government’s scoreboard can’t tell you why.
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Consumer & retail · Artificial intelligence
The Deal You’ll Never Know You Lost
AI agents are starting to bargain on our behalf. In a real-money test, people with the weaker agent got worse prices and rated their deals just as fair.
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Health care · Drug pricing
The Toll at the Gate
Drugmakers pay insurers a toll in price cuts to reach Medicare patients. One company’s toll was likely cheap. The patients who wait are the cost nobody counts.
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Public finance · Property tax
When property-tax relief shows up, it usually sticks. That’s the expensive part.
We tracked 13 major state homeowner tax reforms since 2006 through 18 years of Census data. Where relief showed up, it mostly stuck. So did the bill for it, and that bill is what Florida votes on Nov. 3.
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Investing · Tokenization · Europe
From Seoul to Frankfurt, Investors Are Betting on America
Investors abroad keep more of their stock money in US companies than in 2014. Tokens now let them buy at almost any hour, while Europe’s own rules keep its biggest companies off the blockchain.
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Finance · Artificial intelligence
Everyone’s asking whether AI can beat the market. The economy needs a different answer.
For 140 years, finance has charged the economy about two cents for every dollar it handles. The test for AI trading bots is whether they can bring that number down.
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5
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By the numbers
What this week’s data says
Four figures from the refund-scoreboard analysis. Each one is traced to its source in the article’s claims ledger.
8.2%
of its checking complaints Chase closed with money back in 2025, down from 30.2% in 2019.
36.0%
for Bank of America in 2025. The two banks were level in 2019.
88.5%
of Chase checking complaints closed with an explanation alone in 2025, up from 69.3%.
2,550
more Chase complaints would have ended with money back at Bank of America’s rate in each type (Theoria estimate).
Source: CFPB Consumer Complaint Database, pulled Nov 4, 2026; Theoria analysis. See the full ledger
Our method
Thinking you can inspect
01
Ask the question the headlines skip
Start from what the coverage leaves out, not what it already says.
02
Test it against public data
Government, academic and company sources, recomputed rather than repeated.
03
Label every estimate
When Theoria builds its own number, the method, the test and the limits are shown in full.
04
Say what would change our mind
Every argument names the evidence that would prove it wrong.
Coverage
The economies that move markets
Analysis focused on the world’s largest economies, where the data is deepest and the stakes are highest.
United States
Markets, banks, the Fed and corporate America.
United Kingdom
The City, the Bank of England and UK business.
Europe
The euro area, the ECB and European industry.
Asia’s largest economies
China, Japan, India and their global reach.