Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, warned that the central bank’s campaign to beat back the fastest inflation in decades would come at a cost to workers and overall growth. But he emphasized that the Fed must continue raising interest rates — and keep them elevated for a while — to prevent rapid price increases from becoming a more permanent feature of the American economy.
“Restoring price stability will take some time and requires using our tools forcefully to bring demand and supply into better balance,” Mr. Powell said in a speech on Friday. “While higher interest rates, slower growth and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses.”
He then added: “These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation.”
Mr. Powell, who was speaking at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s annual conference near Jackson, Wyo., used his most closely watched speech of the year to underline both the Fed’s dedication to bringing inflation back under control and to emphasize that its policy moves so far have not been enough to achieve that goal. Put simply, more will need to be done to tame rapid price increases. …
Stock prices moved sharply lower following Mr. Powell’s comments. The S&P 500 fell by as much as 2 percent by late morning, with every sector of the index lower. Bond investors also quickly adjusted for more interest rate increases from the Fed, with the two-year Treasury yield, which is sensitive to changes in Fed policy, rising close to its highest level of the year at 3.44 percent.
The Fed chair’s comments sent a signal that the central bank remains resolute in fighting inflation and does not plan to deviate from its plan to slow the economy anytime soon. Central bankers have spent much of the past year saying that they hope to set the economy down gently, but Mr. Powell’s remarks made it clear that a bumpy landing would be a price worth paying to return price stability to the United States. …
… Pressed to say whether Mr. Trump lost, Mr. Kushner demurred. “I believe it was a very sloppy election,” he said. “I think that there’s a lot of issues that I think if litigated differently may have had different insights into them.”
In reality, the words that election officials have used to describe the 2020 contest are “the most secure in American history,” and judges across the country rejected nearly all of the several dozen lawsuits that allies of Mr. Trump filed alleging fraud.
Mr. Kushner’s reluctance to concede as much reflected the contortions he is now attempting as he tries to sell a book whose success hinges on his close ties to Mr. Trump. At the same time, he is seeking to keep his distance from the lies and misdeeds that paved the way for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. …
Ivanka Trump married a man who, in many ways, appears to be the total opposite of her father, though they are both scions of wealthy real-estate families. Donald Trump’s life has been full of marital drama and sexual-misconduct allegations; Jared Kushner has been married to Ivanka for nearly 13 years and seems like he’d blanch at “locker-room talk.” Trump is best known for fumbling a biblical citation and awkwardly using a Bible a photo prop; Kushner is a devout Orthodox Jew. Trump is a larger-than-life celebrity who thrives on public attention; Kushner is so press-shy that most Americans don’t know what his voice sounds like.
When it was reported that Kushner had scored a seven-figure deal to write a memoir of his time as a White House adviser, many assumed it would be a dry affair that mainly just talked up his work on the Abraham Accords. But it turns out Kushner is more similar to his father-in-law than we realized: Breaking History is like the more respectable, Javanka version of Trump’s $75 burn book Our Journey Together. Excerpts and early reporting show that Kushner does plenty of score settling in the 512-page memoir, dropping surprising allegations and stirring up new drama with former colleagues in the Trump administration, where he served as senior adviser to the president. …
The amount of student debt held in America is roughly equal to the size of the economy of Brazil or Australia. More than 45 million people collectively owe $1.6 trillion, according to U.S. government data.
That figure has skyrocketed over the last half-century as the cost of higher education has continued to rise. The growth in cost has substantially been more than the increase in most other household expenses. …
The rising cost of college has come at a time when students receive less government support, placing a greater burden on students and families to take out loans in order to fund their education.
Funding from states in particular has steadily declined, accounting for roughly 60 percent of spending on higher education just before the pandemic, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute, down from around 70 percent in the 1970s. …
Student debt, however, has a widely disparate impact on different populations.
As student debt has grown in recent years, people’s ability to repay it has declined.
When the pandemic brought the global economy to a standstill in 2020, President Trump issued a moratorium on student debt payments and forced interest rates down to zero. Mr. Biden adopted similar policies. The moves helped millions of people lower their loan balances and prevented borrowers unable to pay their loans from defaulting on them.
Nonetheless, there has been a sharp increase in the number of people whose loan balances have stayed the same or have grown since the start of the pandemic.
On Wednesday, Mr. Biden announced that the pandemic-era pause on payments would expire at the end of the year. He also reiterated his commitment to providing relief, in particular to lower- and middle-income households. How exactly to do that has been a topic of debate inside the White House and out.
One provision of the program involves an income cap: Debt relief may apply only to individuals or families who earn below a certain amount. The point of that provision, according to the White House, is to make sure no one who earns a high income will benefit from the relief.
An independent analysis from the Wharton School of Business showed that households earning between $51,000 and $82,000 a year would see the most relief — regardless of whether an income cap were applied. This is in part because more people at middle income levels hold student loans. …
The judge, an appointee of President Donald J. Trump, indicated she was prepared to grant Mr. Trump’s request for an arbiter, or special master, to review the documents seized by the F.B.I.
A federal judge in Florida gave notice on Saturday of her “preliminary intent” to appoint an independent arbiter, known as a special master, to conduct a review of the highly sensitive documents that were seized by the F.B.I. this month during a search of Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald J. Trump’s club and residence in Palm Beach.
In an unusual action that fell short of a formal order, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida, signaled that she was inclined to agree with the former president and his lawyers that a special master should be appointed to review the seized documents.
But Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2020, set a hearing for arguments in the matter for Thursday in the federal courthouse in West Palm Beach — not the one in Fort Pierce, Fla., where she typically works. …
(What will be up next? Trump will demand a Special Master to review the conduct of the 2020 presidential election.)
Aileen Mercedes Cannon is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. …
On April 29, 2020, President Trump announced his intent to nominate Cannon to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. …
On May 21, 2020, her nomination was sent to the United States Senate. …
The 2020 United States presidential election was the 59th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020 …
On November 12, 2020, the Senate confirmed her nomination by a 56–21 vote. …
She received her judicial commission on November 13, 2020. …
(Wikipedia)
She probably should be recusing herself in such matters as these.
(Bloomberg) — Senator Elizabeth Warren took aim at the Federal Reserve’s inflation-fighting game plan on Sunday, saying she was worried the central bank will tip the US economy into a recession.
“Do you know what’s worse than high prices and a strong economy?” the Massachusetts Democrat asked on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It’s high prices and millions of people out of work. I’m very worried that the Fed is going to tip the economy into recession.”
Warren renewed her criticism of Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s monetary tightening policies, saying she doesn’t believe increasing interest rates can contain current inflationary pressures.
“Things like the fact that Covid is still shutting down parts of the economy around the world, that we still have supply chain kinks, that we still have a war going on in Ukraine that drives up the cost of energy,” Warren said. “There is nothing in raising interest rates, nothing in Jerome Powell’s toolbag, that deals directly with those.”
Powell, in a highly anticipated speech from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Friday, signaled the Fed was going to continue its aggressive series of interest rate hikes, and keep rates elevated for a time, to try to tamp down demand and get inflation under control. He warned of slowing growth and “some pain” to households and businesses to get there.
Warren said his comments indicate that jobs will be lost and small businesses hurt.
Fed officials and their European counterparts, also dealing with decades-high inflation, are pushing back against suggestions they will reverse course if their economies falter while price pressures remain too high. …
With its ‘dual mandate’ one expects the Fed to be concerned about both unemployment and inflation. It does often seem like they focus on one aspect at a time, however. With unemployment low and inflation high, you’d sort of expect them to be putting most of their attention there maybe?
Few Republicans appeared on the major Sunday talk shows to defend the former president. Those who did indicated that they would rather be talking about almost anything else.
… some are signaling concern that the referendum they anticipated on Mr. Biden — and the high inflation and gas prices that have bedeviled his administration — is being complicated by all-encompassing attention on the legal exposure of a different president: his predecessor, Donald J. Trump.
Those worries were on display on Sunday morning as few Republicans appeared on the major Washington-focused news shows to defend Mr. Trump two days after a redacted version of the affidavit used to justify the F.B.I. search of his Mar-a-Lago estate revealed that he had retained highly classified material related to the use of “clandestine human sources” in intelligence gathering. And those who did appear indicated that they would rather be talking about almost anything else.
Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, acknowledged that Mr. Trump “should have turned the documents over” but quickly pivoted to the timing of the search.
“What I wonder about is why this could go on for almost two years and, less than 100 days before the election, suddenly we’re talking about this rather than the economy or inflation or even the student loan program,” Mr. Blunt lamented on ABC’s “This Week.”
Gov. Chris Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire, also pointed to a fear that Mr. Trump’s legal troubles could hurt his party’s midterm chances.
“Former President Trump has been out of office for going on two years now,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “You think this is a coincidence just happening a few months before the midterm elections?” …
“Some of the president’s biggest cheerleaders — Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan — have gone kind of silent,” Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, an anti-Trump Republican, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “That tells you all you need to know.”
As the Mar-a-Lago case has dominated the news this month, predictions about a Republican wave have weakened.
Privately, Republican strategists say they are downgrading their forecast of the party picking up as many as 30 seats in the House in favor of smaller gains. …
Maybe this had something to do with the plunge.
Jerome Powell Warns That the War on Inflation May Be Painful
NY Times – Aug 26
The Dobbs Index is down about 17% for the year, is just about where it was two years ago on this date. Buying opportunities abound!
Buying opportunities often abound in Sept and Oct and even more in November.
My question to JK would be, ‘Since I am not willing to buy your book, how much are you willing to pay me to read it?’
Promoting His Memoir, Kushner Offers Tortured Defenses of Trump
NY Times – August 27
Seems like the very buttoned-down JK would appreciate much neater elections going forward. In the meantime …
All the Juicy Gossip From Jared Kushner’s Book
NY Magazine – August 22
Ivanka Trump married a man who, in many ways, appears to be the total opposite of her father, though they are both scions of wealthy real-estate families. Donald Trump’s life has been full of marital drama and sexual-misconduct allegations; Jared Kushner has been married to Ivanka for nearly 13 years and seems like he’d blanch at “locker-room talk.” Trump is best known for fumbling a biblical citation and awkwardly using a Bible a photo prop; Kushner is a devout Orthodox Jew. Trump is a larger-than-life celebrity who thrives on public attention; Kushner is so press-shy that most Americans don’t know what his voice sounds like.
When it was reported that Kushner had scored a seven-figure deal to write a memoir of his time as a White House adviser, many assumed it would be a dry affair that mainly just talked up his work on the Abraham Accords. But it turns out Kushner is more similar to his father-in-law than we realized: Breaking History is like the more respectable, Javanka version of Trump’s $75 burn book Our Journey Together. Excerpts and early reporting show that Kushner does plenty of score settling in the 512-page memoir, dropping surprising allegations and stirring up new drama with former colleagues in the Trump administration, where he served as senior adviser to the president. …
Seems like the very buttoned-up JK would appreciate much neater elections going forward. In the meantime …
All the Juicy Gossip From Jared Kushner’s Book
NY magazine – August 22
The Toll of Student Debt in the US
NY Times – August 26
Judge Signals Intent to Appoint Special Master in Mar-a-Lago Search
NY Times – August 26
The judge, an appointee of President Donald J. Trump, indicated she was prepared to grant Mr. Trump’s request for an arbiter, or special master, to review the documents seized by the F.B.I.
A federal judge in Florida gave notice on Saturday of her “preliminary intent” to appoint an independent arbiter, known as a special master, to conduct a review of the highly sensitive documents that were seized by the F.B.I. this month during a search of Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald J. Trump’s club and residence in Palm Beach.
In an unusual action that fell short of a formal order, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida, signaled that she was inclined to agree with the former president and his lawyers that a special master should be appointed to review the seized documents.
But Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2020, set a hearing for arguments in the matter for Thursday in the federal courthouse in West Palm Beach — not the one in Fort Pierce, Fla., where she typically works. …
(What will be up next? Trump will demand a Special Master to review the conduct of the 2020 presidential election.)
Aileen Mercedes Cannon is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. …
On April 29, 2020, President Trump announced his intent to nominate Cannon to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. …
On May 21, 2020, her nomination was sent to the United States Senate. …
The 2020 United States presidential election was the 59th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020 …
On November 12, 2020, the Senate confirmed her nomination by a 56–21 vote. …
She received her judicial commission on November 13, 2020. …
(Wikipedia)
She probably should be recusing herself in such matters as these.
If Trump actually owned the documents in his possession, he would have a case.
Under the Presidential Records Act, he does not, and he has no right to possess them.
There is no basis for him to get them back, after he stole them.
The Presidential Records Act and the Mar-a-Lago Documents
Senator Elizabeth Warren says Fed policies could tip US economy into recession
Boston – Aug 28
With its ‘dual mandate’ one expects the Fed to be concerned about both unemployment and inflation. It does often seem like they focus on one aspect at a time, however. With unemployment low and inflation high, you’d sort of expect them to be putting most of their attention there maybe?
GOP Signals Worries About Trump and the Midterms
NY Times – August 28