Daily News Brief for Friday,, December 15th, 2023

This is Garrison Hardie with your CrossPolitic Daily News Brief for Friday,, December 15th, 2023. 
 
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https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/13/fed-interest-rate-decision-december-2023.html
 
Fed holds rates steady, indicates three cuts coming in 2024
 
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday held its key interest rate steady for the third straight time and set the table for multiple cuts to come in 2024 and beyond.
 
With the inflation rate easing and the economy holding in, policymakers on the Federal Open Market Committee voted unanimously to keep the benchmark overnight borrowing rate in a targeted range between 5.25%-5.5%. 
 
Along with the decision to stay on hold, committee members penciled in at least three rate cuts in 2024, assuming quarter percentage point increments. That’s less than market pricing of four, but more aggressive than what officials had previously indicated. 
 
Markets had widely anticipated the decision to stay put, which could end a cycle that has seen 11 hikes, pushing the fed funds rate to its highest level in more than 22 years. There was uncertainty, though, about how ambitious the FOMC might be regarding policy easing. Following the release of the decision, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped more than 400 points, surpassing 37,000 for the first time.
 
The committee’s “dot plot” of individual members’ expectations indicates another four cuts in 2025, or a full percentage point. Three more reductions in 2026 would take the fed funds rate down to between 2%-2.25%, close to the long-run outlook, though there was considerable dispersion in the estimates for the final two years. 
 
Markets, though, followed up the meeting and Chair Jerome Powell’s press conference by pricing in an even more aggressive rate-cut path, anticipating 1.5 percentage points in reductions next year, double the FOMC’s indicated pace.
 
In a possible nod that hikes are over, the statement said that the committee would take multiple factors into account for “any” more policy tightening, a word that had not appeared previously. 
Along with the interest rate hikes, the Fed has been allowing up to $95 billion a month in proceeds from maturing bonds to roll off its balance sheet. That process has continued, and there has been no indication the Fed is willing to curtail that portion of policy tightening. 
 
That echoed new language in the post-meeting statement. The committee added the qualifier that inflation has “eased over the past year” while maintaining its description of prices as “elevated.” Fed officials see core inflation falling to 3.2% in 2023 and 2.4% in 2024, then to 2.2% in 2025. Finally, it gets back to the 2% target in 2026.
 
Economic data released this week showed both consumer and wholesale prices were little changed in November. By some measures, though, the Fed is nearing its 2% inflation target. Bank of America’s calculations indicate that the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge will be around 3.1% year over year in November, and actually could hit a 2% six-month annualized rate, meeting the central bank’s goal.
 
The statement also noted that the economy “has slowed,” after saying in November that activity had “expanded at a strong pace.” 
 
In the news conference, Powell said: “Recent indicators suggest that growth in economic activity has slowed substantially from the outsized pace seen in the third quarter. Even so, GDP is on track to expand around 2.5% for the year as a whole.”
 
Committee members upgraded gross domestic product to grow at a 2.6% annualized pace in 2023, a half percentage point increase from the last update in September. Officials see GDP at 1.4% in 2024, roughly unchanged from the previous outlook. Projections for the unemployment rate were largely unchanged, at 3.8% in 2023 and rising to 4.1% in subsequent years.  
 
Officials have stressed their willingness to hike rates again if inflation flares up. However, most have said they can be patient now as they watch the impact the previous policy tightening moves are having on the U.S. economy.  
 
Stubbornly high prices have exacted a political toll on President Joe Biden, whose approval rating has suffered in large part because of negative sentiment on how he has handled the economy. There had been some speculation that the Fed could be reluctant to make any dramatic policy actions during a presidential election year, which looms large in 2024. 
 
However, with real rates, or the difference between the fed funds rate and inflation, running high, the Fed would be more likely to act if the inflation data continues to cooperate.
 
https://thenationalpulse.com/2023/12/11/even-leftist-governments-around-the-world-are-moving-to-slash-migration/
 
Even Leftist Governments Around the World Are Moving to Slash Migration.
 
Leftist governments in Denmark and Australia are adopting a more hardline stance on immigration than many notionally conservative governments. Australia’s governing Labor Party has pledged to cut net immigration in half. Denmark’s Social Democrats have pledged zero net immigration, a.k.a. balanced immigration. 
 
Australia, with a population of only around 25 million, suffered net immigration of around 510,000 in the year to June. The government has conceded the system is “broken” and “in tatters” – blaming the previous center-right government. They say they will reduce it to around 250,000 by June 2025.
 
There is growing acknowledgment that an ongoing housing crisis cannot be resolved if mass migration continues at current levels. 
 
Denmark, a generous welfare state, is going even further. They aim to balance the number of people entering the country against the number of people leaving, with the government insisting: “If you want to be a party of the working class and middle class, you have to ensure that migration has a manageable level.” 
 
Social Democrat lawmaker Rasmus Stoklund explained his party’s increasingly anti-immigration stance is the true left-wing position. 
 
“The part of society that bears the brunt of unchecked migration is the working-class population that we should be representing,” he said. “It is their children who have to go to schools that experience cultural clashes. It is those people who have to experience the criminality and social problems that follow. The more privileged people in society will only meet migrants if they are the children of diplomats, so for them the issue is not so clear.” 
 
Denmark is also taking radical action to integrate the existing migration background population. Vollsmose, a notorious suburban “no go zone”, is being bulldozed, to help integrate its predominantly “non-Western” residents.

https://thenationalpulse.com/2023/12/11/suicide-is-consistently-killing-more-u-s-soldiers-than-anything-else-including-war/
 
Suicide Is Consistently Killing More U.S. Soldiers Than Anything Else, Including War.
 
Suicide accounted for just under 40 percent of United States active military deaths as of December 2022, according to the Defense Casualty Analysis System, which found that U.S. military suicide rates have dramatically increased over the past several decades. 
 
Indeed, the current leading cause of death among servicemen is currently categorized as “self-inflicted,” with a total of 333 incidents last year. Suicide was recorded as almost ten percent higher in prevalence than accidents, of which there were 265.
 
Yet, last year represents a slight decrease in the rate of self-inflicted deaths compared to October 2020, in which suicide rates were just under 41 percent.
 
Suicide accounted for roughly ten percent of military deaths when records began in 1980, with that figure remaining mostly stable until the 1990s, in which the rate jumped to 23 percent in 1995. The rate of self-inflicted deaths fell sharply in the mid-2000s, however, much of the decline can be attributed to the increase in “hostile action” fatalities in 2008.
 
Suicide rates across American society have reached unprecedented levels under the Biden government, with just under 50,000 people killing themselves in 2022. The rate was 14.3 three people per 100,000 – the highest since 1941.
 
https://www.dailyfetched.com/donations-to-harry-and-meghans-woke-charity-collapse-by-11-million/
 
Donations to Harry and Meghan’s ‘Woke’ Charity Collapse by $11 Million
 
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Archewell charitable foundation has reported a massive loss of a $11 million year-on-year collapse in donations.
 
According to the foundation’s website, Harry and Meghan aimed to “uplift and unite communities, both local and global, online and offline.”
 
But that didn’t happen.
 
In a tax filing disclosed Tuesday, the non-profit organization received just over $2 million in charitable contributions in 2022, compared to $13 million in 2021.
 
However, some $8.2 million funds remain in the Archewell Foundation accounts.
 
The 28-page report also details the charitable work the foundation has undertaken during 2023.
 
The report stated:
 
“We are committed to a simple but profound mission: Show Up, Do Good.”
 
But “doing good” has not come cheap for the woke pair, who recently made the decision only to have two children to help fight climate change.
 
https://twitter.com/i/status/1734930901883129891 - Play Video 
 
Breitbart reported that Archewell’s total expenses exceeded its revenue the year before, leaving it down by more than $674,000, according to the public filing. Its revenue in 2021 had exceeded $9 million.
 
The organization’s executive director, James Holt, earned a salary of $227,405, including a $20,000 bonus, in 2022.
 
The figure represents a 280 percent increase from his salary of less than $60,000 in 2021.
 
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle also faced more bad news earlier this week after they named Showbusiness’ biggest losers of 2023.
 
They also faced a belittling on South Park and were dropped from their lucrative $20 million Spotify deal.
 
The Royal couple also faced a roasting in the Hollywood Reporter’s “brutally honest rundown.”
 
James Hibberd contributed the scathing review, noting they were labeled “f**king grifters” by top executive Bill Simmons.
 
Earlier this week, NBC reported a judge ordered Prince Harry on Monday to pay nearly 50,000 pounds (more than $60,000) in legal fees to the publisher of the Daily Mail tabloid for his failed court challenge in a libel lawsuit.
 
The Duke of Sussex is suing Associated Newspapers Ltd. over an article that said Harry tried to hide his efforts to retain publicly funded protection in the U.K. after leaving his role as a working member of the royal family.