VIDEO: Fed Chair on monetary policy: ‘Inflation is too high… and the path forward is uncertain.’ “Longer term inflation expectations appear to remain well anchored, as reflected in a broad range of surveys of households, businesses, and forecasters, as well as measures from financial markets.”
And: Fed’s Goolsbee Says Too Early to Declare Victory Over Inflation.
SANCTUARY, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG: Chicago Begins Impounding ‘Rogue’ Migrant Buses as a New Law Increases Penalties.
CHRIS QUEEN: The New Disney War Heats Up. “This week, Trian nominated two candidates for Disney’s board. Peltz is one of those candidates, of course, but the second one is a name that should intrigue students of recent Disney history: Jay Rasulo.”
THAT’S NICE, BUT WILL BIDEN ENFORCE IT? Senate closes in on deal on new hardline border policy that could ban asylum after 5,000 crossings a day.
DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: San Francisco Hits Record Overdose Deaths.
FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Grand Theft Auto 6 Stole My Stolen Identity. “It’s your much-needed break from the serious news and this week we have a fake Joker, a real stolen ambulance, a molested manatee statue, and Colorado’s most audacious trial attorney.”
OH: Fed Official Says Central Bank Isn’t ‘Really Talking About Rate Cuts.’
A senior Federal Reserve official said Friday that central-bank policy makers weren’t actively debating when to cut interest rates, an apparent effort to temper markets’ exuberant interpretation of comments Chair Jerome Powell made two days earlier.
“We aren’t really talking about rate cuts right now,” New York Fed President John Williams said on CNBC. “We’re very focused on the question in front of us, which as Chair Powell said…is, have you gotten monetary policy to a sufficiently restrictive stance?”
Williams serves as the vice chair of the Fed’s rate-setting committee and is part of Powell’s inner circle of monetary policy advisers.
Stocks surged and bond yields tumbled Wednesday after the Fed held interest rates steady and officials projected three rate cuts next year.
End-of-the-year rallies always feel nice but it looks like this one is built on false hope.
THEY CAN’T AFFORD THE EMBARRASSMENT: Chicago Aldermen Block Plan to Put Question of Sanctuary City Status on the Ballot.
I’M SO OLD, I REMEMBER WHEN BIDEN WAS GOING TO RESTORE OUR TATTERED RELATIONS WITH COUNTRIES LIKE MEXICO: Mexico Suspends Deportations, Allowing Even More Invaders to Reach US.
KRUISER: Trump Derangement Syndrome Meltdown of the Week — DESTROYER OF WORLDS Edition. “Their panic delights and energizes me.”
SHUT UP, THEY EXPLAINED: Asked about its $244 million BLM donation, Microsoft told its investors to pound sand.
“According to the Claremont Institute’s Black Lives Matter (BLM) Funding Database,” I began, “Microsoft has contributed almost a quarter of a billion dollars to the BLM movement and related causes since 2020. This was done despite warnings at the time that BLM has neo-Marxist roots, pushes Anti-American values and promotes policies like defunding the police that harm the very communities it claims to help. Since that time, reports of mismanagement and self-dealing have raised serious questions about BLM’s use of donated funds. Most recently, BLM aligned itself with antisemitism by promoting pro-Hamas imagery in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel. In light of all this, is Microsoft now prepared to admit its support of BLM was a mistake and renounce that support?”
Microsoft never answered the question. It’s unclear why, but Microsoft does provide a list of reasons it claims grant it the right to tell shareholders who own the company to go pound sand including, among other things, if it deems a submitted question to be “in bad taste.”
Perhaps relatedly, Microsoft did answer a general question regarding how it keeps “political ideology out of business decisions.” Unfortunately, the multi-paragraph answer provided absolutely no principle that shareholders could rely on to keep the political and ideological biases of relevant corporate decision-makers out of Microsoft’s decisionmaking.
Opacity means they have something to hide.
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Biden Finally Built an EV Charging Station But There’s One Little Problem…
UNEXPECTEDLY! It’s starting to look like China regrets its private-enterprise crackdown.
China held its annual Central Economic Work Conference, or CEWC, on Monday and Tuesday. It was attended by all of the country’s top leaders, including President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang.
A document released after the conference sets the agenda for China’s economy — the second-largest economy in the world — for the next year. And strikingly, this year’s readout acknowledges that China needs to prioritize economic development.
“Next year, we must persist in seeking progress while maintaining stability, promote stability through growth, and establish the new before breaking the old,” states the meeting’s official readout.
The wording in this document suggests “hints of remorse at overzealous growth-negative policy implementation,” Rory Green, the chief China economist at GlobalData.TS Lombard, wrote in a note on Wednesday.
I’m not sure the business climate is going to improve until Xi is gone.
I HAD BEEN TOLD BY ALL THE BEST LEFTISTS THAT DARK MONEY IS A THREAT TO OUR DEMOCRACY: Soros Dark Money Keeps Biden’s SuperPAC Alive.
We can also thank Xi Jinping for some of that relief at the gas pump: Oil slips as markets weigh OPEC+ cuts against China demand concerns.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Uh-Oh, Kamala Harris Is Showing Up Everywhere. “The mere thought of a Harris presidency is creepy. She’s a less coherent, more radical Biden. Her one upside compared to her boss is that she tends to know how to exit a room without assistance.”
STILL NOT READY FOR PRIMETIME: GM’s Cruise laying off 900 employees, or 24% of its workforce. “The layoffs, which primarily affected commercial operations and related corporate functions, are the latest turmoil for the robotaxi startup and come one day after Cruise dismissed nine ‘key leaders’ for the company’s response to an Oct. 2 accident in which a pedestrian was dragged 20 feet by a Cruise self-driving car after being struck by another vehicle.”
THE FAMILY BUSINESS: Who Is Sara Biden? Joe’s In-Law Emerges as Central Figure in Foreign Cash Deals.
Trouble has followed Sara Catherine Jones since she married into the Biden family almost three decades ago.
Not long after her 1995 wedding to Jim Biden, she took a job with one of his brother Joe’s Senate donors, who later accused her of “fraud” and “unjust enrichment,” according to court records reviewed by RealClearInvestigations. In the years since, she and her husband have been accused of reneging on debts and failing to pay their taxes, court and property records show. Like their nephew, first son Hunter Biden, they have reportedly sold the promise of access to their powerful relative to companies, several of which have gone bankrupt, some of which are tied to foreign countries hostile to the United States.
Now, Sara Jones Biden has emerged as a key figure in the mushrooming Biden foreign influence-peddling scandal.
GOP lawmakers seek to question the 64-year-old licensed attorney as part of their investigation of President Biden for possible impeachable offenses, including bribery. They are especially interested in subpoenaed bank records that include almost a quarter million dollars in checks Sara Biden wrote to her brother-in-law Joe, conspicuously marking them as “loan repayment.” Republicans want to ask her about the origin of those loans and whether checks “were funded by Biden influence-peddling schemes with China.”
Read the whole thing.
IMPRESSIVE: Meet the Totally Badass Republican Mom of Seven Running for that Santos Seat. “Mazi Melesa Pilip is not your typical Long Island Republican. She is not, in fact, your typical anything.”
I’LL PASS BUT I’M ALSO ODDLY INTRIGUED: Doritos launches nacho cheese flavored alcohol. “Smells and tastes just like the real thing.”
MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Watch Jill Biden Magically Transform From Cringe to Cringier.
CHANGE: Elon U. “It seems like Austin is becoming something of a center for anti-woke universities. First the University of Austin anounced it was starting a campus here, and now Elon Musk has filed paperwork to start a new university.”
THE NEEDS OF THE PARTY HAVE CHANGED SINCE THEN: According to Joe Biden, Anyone Who Defies a Congressional Subpoena Should Be Prosecuted.
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