Consumers picked up their spending modestly in April from March, buoyed by a solid job market and easing inflationary pressures.

A bump up in demand for new cars also helped results, according to the Commerce Department report issued Tuesday.

Retail sales increased 0.4% in April from March when it was down 0.7%. It marked the first increase since January when unusually warm weather and a big jump in Social Security benefits likely spurred more spending.

Sales at car and auto parts dealers rose 0.4%, while business at gas stations fell 0.8%. Excluding car dealers and gas stations, retail sales rose 0.6%.

Spending increased 1.2% at online retailers and ticked up 0.6% at restaurants and bars. Department stores, electronic stores and home furnishings stores all saw declines. The figures are not adjusted for inflation unlike many other government reports.

Spending by Americans has remained resilient with signs of weakness elsewhere in the economy. A solid job market has helped to prop up spending. But theres still been a broader pullback in spending as inflation still remains high despite some easing, and rising interest rates are taking a toll.

Consumer prices in the United States rose again in April, and measures of underlying inflation remained high, implying that the retreat from sharply higher prices is likely to be slow and bumpy. Prices increased 0.4% from March to April, the government said last week, up sharply from a 0.1% rise from February to March. Compared with a year earlier, prices rose 4.9%, down slightly from Marchs year-over-year increase. It was the smallest annual gain in two years.

And earlier on Tuesday Home Depot, after years of explosive growth during the pandemic, said that sales slowed during the first quarter of 2023 and the nations largest home improvement retailer cut its profit and sales expectations for the entire year. Sales at stores open at least a year, a key indicator of a retailers health, dropped 4.5%, and it was down 4.6% for stores in the U.S.

The numbers from Home Depot were a rough beginning to a busy week of retail earnings, dragging down the entire sector and the Dow as well.

Walmart, Target and Macys will all report quarterly earnings this week and next and all edged lower in trading before the opening bell. Rival Lowes slid almost 3%.

Economists will be parsing retail numbers to look for the impact of volatility in the banking sector and how tightening credit is changing behavior.

The retail report covers only about a third of overall consumer spending and doesnt include services such as hotel stays and plane tickets, which have rebounded as the threat of COVID-19 eases.

The Commerce Department recently revised its retail-sales data based on the results of annual surveys of retail and services industries.

__

AP Economics Writer Chris Rugaber in Washington contributed to this report.

The recent failures of a trio of midsize banks has once again raised questions about whether senior executives in the U.S. are being rewarded more for short-term gains like rising stock prices than for ensuring their companies long-term health.

Executives at Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank were paid millions of dollars over their tenures up until their banks failed, the bulk of the compensation coming in the form company stock. That stock is now largely worthless but the CEOs still pocketed millions from the planned sales of their shares before the banks collapse.

The heads of the two of the three failed banks will appear Tuesday in front of the Senate Banking Committee to respond to questions about why their banks went under and what regulators could have done to avoid the calamities. Executive compensation is almost certainly to come up as well, most likely raised by senators including Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who wrote letters to First Republic Bank about its compensation practices after the bank failed.

Silicon Valley Banks former CEO Greg Becker received compensation valued at roughly $9.9 million in 2022, and also sold stock in the company only a few weeks before it failed. Joseph DePaolo, CEO of Signature Bank, also sold stock in the company in the years leading up to its collapse.

DePaolo will not appear in front of the Senate on Tuesday, instead Signatures co-founder and the banks president have agreed to testify.

The anger over CEO pay echoes that of roughly 15 years ago, when the 2008 financial crisis led to taxpayer-funded bailouts of major banks. The CEOs and high-level bankers still received millions in pay and bonuses, most notably at nearly failed insurance conglomerate American International Group.

The recent bank failures prove yet again that banker compensation is at the core of causing banks to take too much risk, act irresponsibly if not recklessly, and blow themselves up, said Dennis Kelleher, co-founder of Better Markets, which was founded after the Great Recession focused on financial industry reform.

Clawing back CEO pay has gained bipartisan attention despite the fierce divisions between the two political parties.

Four senators two Democrats and two Republicans have introduced legislation that would give the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation authority to claw back any pay made to executives in the five years leading up to a banks failure.

The bill is sponsored by Warren, Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev. and Mike Braun, R-Ind. The White House, while not endorsing the specific bill, has called on Congress to pass laws to reform how bank CEOs are paid in the event of a failure.

Bank executives who make risky investments with customers money shouldnt be permitted to profit in the good times, and then avoid financial consequences when things go south, Hawley said when the bill was introduced in late March.

Kelleher said he supports the congressional efforts to claw back CEO pay following a bank failure.

Executives at big companies also tend get most of their pay each year in company stock. That means CEOs and other insiders have much to gain if the companys stock rises. And shareholders typically like it this way. The thought is that by tying a CEOs compensation to the stock price, it better aligns their interests with shareholders.

But the executives also have a lot to gain if they can sell their stock before the share price takes a steep dive.

Since 2000, the Securities and Exchange Commission has given CEOs and other corporate insiders a way to defend themselves against charges that they bought or sold stock using information unavailable to others, an illegal practice known as insider trading.

The method, known as the 10b5-1 rule, lets insiders enter into written plans to buy and sell stock in the future. The goal was to let insiders make trades, but not when they have their hands on material information not available to the public.

In prepared remarks for the Senate, Becker says he believed that these plans were the most ethical means to manage this part of my compensation and that his selling of Silicon Valley Bank stock before the bank failed was preplanned.

Over the years, complaints have risen about insiders abusing some loopholes in the 10b5-1 rule. In December, the SEC announced added amendments to close the loopholes.

Key among them was a cooling-off period. That meant directors and officers have to wait at least 90 days in many cases after establishing or modifying a trading plan before any purchases or sales could be made. The changes also limit insiders ability to use multiple overlapping 10b5-1 plans.

In March, the Justice Department announced the first insider trading prosecution based exclusively on the use of 10b5-1 trading plans. It charged the CEO of a health care company in California with securities fraud for allegedly avoiding more than $12.5 million in losses by entering into two 10b5-1 trading plans while knowing the companys then-largest customer might be terminating its contract.

The SEC also charged the CEO with insider trading after avoiding the 44% drop in the companys stock price when it announced the customer had terminated the contract.

Ja Morant still had his endorsement deals Monday. While his latest gun video on social media is costing him plenty in public relations currency, he hasnt lost any money.

Any, or all, of that could change any day. Once again, Morant is in limbo awaiting the outcome of yet another NBA investigation into what could end up becoming a cataclysmic off-court decision.

This is going to be a hot question, Syracuse professor of sport management Rick Burton said Monday. I dont think they can hit pause on this. I think that there will be too much demand for, What are you going to do?

The NBA already suspended the two-time All-Star guard eight games in March for livestreaming himself holding an apparent handgun in Colorado. That cost him about $669,000 in salary.

How Morants sponsors react to him being caught on social media apparently holding a weapon for the second time in less than three months is another issue.

Morant has endorsement deals with Nike and the sports drink Powerade, which is owned by Coca-Cola. Endorsement deals traditionally include confidentiality and morals clauses.

Representatives of Nike, which started selling Morants Ja 1 shoes on April 19, did not return a message from The Associated Press on Monday. Powerade pulled his ad almost immediately after the March video.

In April, Morant countersued a Memphis teenager accusing the Grizzlies guard of punching him during a pickup court fight last summer at Morants home. The countersuit noted the lawsuit jeopardized relationships with sponsors including some unconsummated deals.

Burton, commissioner of Australias National Basketball League from 2003-07, said research shows some athletes believe negativity can help them break out as a perfect pitch person. Burton wrote in 2001 about the demand for antiheroes or athletes with controversial images.

Im sure the people at Nike are trying to figure out, Does this make him more relevant to a certain audience? And is this something were going to ride out? said Burton, who noted Nike doesnt often give up on an athlete trending negatively.

Memphis suspended Morant on Sunday from team activities, though thats unclear what that involves in the offseason. The Grizzlies were eliminated from the playoffs in the first round. Charity events are the biggest offseason events until training camp in late September. Players start receiving game checks when the season begins in October.

Criminal charges are not likely with no indication of where the latest Instagram video was streamed.

Morant has a home in Tennessee, where Republican leaders have repeatedly worked to relax state gun laws, including in 2001 when they allowed most adults 21 and older to carry handguns without first obtaining a permit. A federal judge has since cleared the way to drop that minimum age to 18.

The issues are much broader for the face of the franchise and one of the NBAs more marketable players.

Hopefully, the young man will figure out what hes got to do to turn the ship around if he wants to continue in not only the money, but his career in the NBA, said Rob Prazmark, founder and CEO of 21 Marketing, whose clients have included the NBA and USA Basketball.

Morant now is facing criticism even from his own fans. He remained among Twitters top trending topics nationally even 24 hours after his latest suspension.

Game 1 of the NBA Finals is scheduled for June 1. Commissioner Adam Silver, who cited Morant for conduct detrimental to the league when suspending him in March, traditionally holds a news conference before the Finals start.

Spotrac.com noted Monday that Morant is projected to be paid $33.5 million for the 2023-24 season if the NBA salary cap is $134 million. A suspension of 20 games or fewer would cost Morant $231,034 per game while more than 20 games would mean he loses $304,545 a game.

Morant said when the Grizzlies season ended that he needed to work on his decision-making.

Ive got to be better in that area, Morant said.

The Grizzlies hold the No. 25 overall pick in the June draft and now likely are preparing for the possibility Morant wont be available when the season starts in October.

The biggest question now is just how long that might be.

The head of the artificial intelligence company that makes ChatGPT is set to testify before Congress as lawmakers call for new rules to guide the rapid development of AI technology.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is scheduled to speak at a Senate hearing Tuesday.

His San Francisco-based startup rocketed to public attention after its release late last year of ChatGPT, a free chatbot tool that answers questions with convincingly human-like responses.

What started out as a panic among educators about ChatGPTs use to cheat on homework assignments has expanded to broader concerns about the ability of the latest crop of generative AI tools to mislead people, spread falsehoods, violate copyright protections and upend some jobs.

And while theres no immediate sign that Congress will craft sweeping new AI rules, as European lawmakers are doing, the societal concerns brought Altman and other tech CEOs to the White House earlier this month and have led U.S. agencies to promise to crack down on harmful AI products that break existing civil rights and consumer protection laws.

Artificial intelligence urgently needs rules and safeguards to address its immense promise and pitfalls, said a prepared statement from Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committees subcommittee on privacy, technology and the law.

Founded in 2015, OpenAI is also known for other AI products including the image-maker DALL-E. Microsoft has invested billions of dollars into the startup and has integrated its technology into its own products, including its search engine Bing.

Also testifying will be IBMs chief privacy and trust officer, Christina Montgomery, and Gary Marcus, a professor emeritus at New York University who was among a group of AI experts who called on OpenAI and other tech firms to pause their development of more powerful AI models for six months to give society more time to consider the risks. The letter was a response to the March release of OpenAIs latest model, GPT-4, described as more powerful than ChatGPT.

Artificial intelligence will be transformative in ways we cant even imagine, with implications for Americans elections, jobs, and security, said the panels ranking Republican, Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri. This hearing marks a critical first step towards understanding what Congress should do.

Altman and other tech industry leaders have said they welcome some form of AI oversight but have cautioned against what they see as overly heavy-handed rules. In a copy of her prepared remarks, IBMs Montgomery asks Congress to take a precision regulation approach.

This means establishing rules to govern the deployment of AI in specific use-cases, not regulating the technology itself, Montgomery said.

Elon Musk lashed out at George Soros after the billionaire liquidated his stake in Tesla, smearing the 92-year-old in a personal attack.

Fresh from picking a new CEO for his financially troubled Twitter acquisition, the entrepreneur compared the Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor to the nemesis of Marvels popular band of mutant protagonists.

Soros reminds me of Magneto, he wrote on Monday, claiming the philanthropist uses his considerable wealth to the detriment of mankind.

In the comics, the X-Men villain escapes a Nazi death camp to pursue his own radical form of supremacy in which mutants gifted with superpowers like himself are bent on dominating the human race.

The worlds second wealthiest businessman did not explain what prompted his attack on Soros, but a quarterly SEC filing last week revealed that the investor dumped his entire $16 million stake in Musks company last week, along with most of his shares in EV rival Rivian.

In his Monday tweets targeting Soros, Musk claimed the Hungarian-born financier that achieved worldwide notoriety in 1992 for crashing the U.K. pound wants to erode the very fabric of civilization.

He hates humanity, the Tesla CEO claimed, without elaborating further.

Musks battle with critics

Its not unusual for Musk to lash out at his critics.

While he rewards those that support his business endeavors and talks favorably about them, such as Berkshire Hathaways Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, he can be equally vindicative towards critics and short-sellers. 

When Bill Gates asked him to join in a philanthropic cause, the CEO of Tesla refused on the basis that the Microsoft co-founder placed bearish bets against his EV manufacturer. Musk then made light of Gates body.

Attacks on Soros by conservatives are commonplace since he funds a lot of civic causes through his Open Society Foundations, in particular in Eastern Europe and his native Hungary following the fall of the Iron Curtain.

These are typically aimed at strengthening democracy and discouraging the return of toxic nationalism that led to two world wars.

Among the alt-right, however, this stance against ethnic identity has earned him virulent criticism.

He often ranks alongside World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab and the Rothschild banking dynasty at the top of their list for globalist elites supposedly looking to exert control over everything and everyone.

Since Soros is Jewish, however, attacks on his person are often interpreted as antisemitic dog-whistling.

Musks accomplishments in electric vehicles and artificial intelligence have mostly insulated him from blowback over his increasingly controversial social media presence.  

But he got himself into hot water before, and it is not the first time that the red-pilled Democrat-turned-Republican has inflamed sensitivities on the issue of anti-Jewish bigotry. 

In one recent Twitter post Musk portrayed himself as a musketeer with both Kanye West and Donald Trump, who were both under fire at the time either for remarks that were outright antisemitic or in the case of the former president borrowed heavily from negative stereotypes.

In another, he effectively claimed that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was worse than Adolf Hitler, who murdered six million Jews.

Enough! Hitler isnt a meme Elon Musk, he was evil incarnate, the Jewish advocacy group Simon Wiesenthal Center tweeted from its official account, calling on the tycoon to apologize to Trudeau. 

Musk targeted in Epstein case

Musk has repeatedly cast himself in the benevolent role of mankinds greatest fan and a protector of the innocent whose top priority at Twitter is to root out child exploitation on the platform. 

On Monday however, his connections to convicted sex trafficker Jefferey Epstein once again came under the spotlight when news emerged that he was subpoenaed late last month along with several other wealthy tech entrepreneurs.

The court order demands Musk turn over any evidence involving his exchanges with the deceased money manager and J.P. Morgan that may pertain to a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Virgin Islands against the Wall Street bank. 

This included all documents [in Musks possession] reflecting or regarding Epsteins involvement in human trafficking and/or his procurement of girls or women for consensual sex. 

The Tesla CEO and Twitter owner called the subpoena, which suggests Musk may have been advised by Epstein but does not accuse him of any wrongdoing, absurd and idiotic on so many levels on Monday.

Americans are obsessed with the technologies of tomorrow. From autonomous aircraft and vehicles to quantum computing, fusion energy, and all the possibilities offered by generative artificial intelligence and advanced roboticsthere is so much excitement about whats to come. But therein lies the problem.

Weve dedicated so much innovation to the future that weve completely neglected the problems of the presentproblems so significant that if we dont address them soon, we may not get to enjoy the fruits of tomorrow. Namely, our infrastructure.

Many of the assets in our built world are failing at an alarming rate, without enough skilled labor to maintain them. Despite providing for basic human needs, our energy grid, water systems, buildings, transportation infrastructure, bridges, roads, dams, ports, airports, and a myriad of other physical structures are not aging well. Whennot ifthey fail, it will cost communities millions, if not billions, of dollars, and could cause substantial loss of life.

Just think of recent events: A road crumbled in Wisconsin on Apr. 2. The largest U.S. energy grid shut down almost 25% of its power plants this past Christmas. A nuclear facility in Minnesota suffered a radioactive leak last November. And the people of Jackson, Mississippi had to drink bottled water for two months last fall when their public water system failed.

Todays opportunity

Innovators often move where opportunity exists, and the problems of the built world are massive in scale. Globally, the corrosion of physical assets costs $2.5 trillion. U.S. customers and businesses lose $150 billion a year due to power outages. The Department of Defense reports maintenance backlogs of over $130 billion. Water system failures are projected to cost households $14 billion annually by the end of the next decade. And who knows what the final costsboth direct and indirectwill be to clean up the Norfolk Southern train derailment, just miles from my office in Pittsburgh. There is so much opportunity here that you would expect the invisible hand of American innovation to start churning out startups dedicated to building solutions for these problems. Unfortunately, that hasnt been the case for infrastructure.

For example, in 2016, my co-founder and I went through the worlds most successful accelerator, YCombinator. While we focused on robots designed to improve power plant safety today, other founders focused on things like self-driving trucks, supersonic aircraft, and rockets to support a multi-planetary existence. This is not to put down their work in the slightest. As we crawled around in the dark belly of a power plant in hard hats, I spent more than a moment thinking we should have opted to solve a different problem. I understood the allure. Our cohort wasand most continue to befocused on products that will change society decades from now. We chose to solve a problem for today, and I will forever be glad we did.

Moving forward to save the present

In the U.S. alone, there are 600,000 bridges, 25,000 power plants, and hundreds of thousands of miles of roads, railroads, and powerlines. To understand those assets, you need to collect and process a massive amount of data.

Collecting and actioning data at that scale was science fiction even a few years ago. But todays technologies, including advanced robotics and sensors, can scan and capture an incredible amount of data from structures incredibly quickly, while current A.I. models are constantly breaking the barriers of what is thought to be possible in terms of making that data useful for humans. Taken together, these components hold new promise for protecting our built world.

Earn the right to build for tomorrow

The technology is there to fortify our infrastructure and prevent failure. We just arent seeing enough applications in the built world right now. As I take a quick glance through the current 2023 YCombinator class, it shows 190 B2B software companies and 33 fintech startupsand of the seven in the industrials categorynone are addressing the needs of our aging physical infrastructure. This must change.

Futurists are needed. So are realists. We must all work together to solve the practical problems of todays infrastructure with innovative applications of technology. It could be the most important, time-sensitive collaboration of our lives. The opportunity and market are there, but the cost of failing to act could be catastrophic.

By focusing on today, we earn the right to build things for tomorrow. Heres my pitch: I invite my fellow entrepreneurs and business leaders to see the hundreds of thousands of miles of highways, railroad tracks, and powerlines, the thousands of dams, airports, bridges, power plants, and chemical plants, and hundreds of ports, refineries, and nuclear facilities as an opportunity to build world-changing products for today and beyond. Come get some dirt (or rust) on your boots. Its good for our world, and yes, good for your bottom line too.

Jake Loosararian is the co-founder and CEO of Gecko Robotics.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

More must-read commentary published by Fortune:

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that time is running out to avert an economic catastrophe from failing to raise the debt ceiling, in remarks released as President Joe Biden and congressional leaders prepared to meet on the standoff.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy issued his own notice Monday evening ahead of Tuesdays 3 p.m. gathering, saying, We only have so many days left to deal with this.

The two sides showed little signs of agreeing on much else than the countdown in the runup to the second White House encounter on the debt ceiling in two weeks. While senior staff have been negotiating for days, Republicans are still pressing for sweeping spending cuts, while Democrats are determined to protect the presidents legislative achievements.

We are already seeing the impacts of brinksmanship: investors have become more reluctant to hold government debt that matures in early June, Yellen said in remarks prepared for delivery to a banking conference on Tuesday. The impasse has already increased the debt burden to American taxpayers.

The Treasury chief issued a fresh letter to congressional leaders Monday restating that the Treasury risks running out of sufficient cash for all federal obligations as soon as June 1. The livelihoods of millions of Americans hang in the balance, she said in excerpts of her speech to the Independent Community Bankers of America Capital Summit released by the Treasury.

Every single day that Congress does not act, we are experiencing increased economic costs that could slow down the US economy, Yellen said.

Biden and McCarthy have been at an impasse since January over raising the governments $31.4 trillion borrowing limit. Economists have cautioned that US default risks triggering a market selloff, a surge in borrowing costs and a blow to the global economy that could rival the 2008 crash.Play Video

McCarthy emphasized that staff-level meetings are not productive at all and that negotiations were not in a good place.

Tuesdays gathering comes a day before Biden is expected to depart for Asia, in a trip intended to showcase US determination to address strategic competition with China. White House officials said Monday that the plans to attend the Group of Seven summit in Japan, with stops in Papua New Guinea and Australia, had not changed despite the ongoing debt talks.

Biden Trip

Asked whether the president should go abroad at this point, McCarthy said, I think an American president should focus on the solutions for America. I think it shows your values and priorities.

People familiar with the meetings have said that the White House has pushed to exclude elements of the bill passed by House Republicans last month including eliminating the presidents program to forgive some student loans, as well as signature legislative accomplishments from discussions.

Republicans rejected a Democratic proposal that would seek to raise revenue and decrease future deficits by altering a dozen provisions of the tax code, including a loophole that allows investors in cryptocurrency to claim losses on assets that they then purchase. Democrats also proposed eliminating a loophole that allows large real estate investors to effectively receive interest-free financing from the government.

Those tax offerings were part of Bidens budget proposal earlier this year. The White House offered to bring Republicans additional proposals but were told that the GOP would not consider any effort to raise taxes, according to the people familiar.

Deposits Safe

Last week, Representative Dusty Johnson of South Dakota, one of the authors of the House bill, said the GOP has three red lines: no clean debt increase, no tax increase, and the bill must reduce the deficit.

Yellen, in her Tuesday remarks, also addressed the recent banking turmoil in the US. Speaking after the failures of several regional banks in quick succession over the past two months, she reiterated that American deposits remain safe.

Recent banking troubles including the resolution of First Republic are not a sign of any shift in the fundamental health of the US banking system, Yellen said. 

Americans should rest assured that their deposits are safe. Their deposits will be there when they need them.

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