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☆ What the banking crisis means for your job
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-24 | by ( Alicia Wallace | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

The Fed’s latest economic projections, released on Wednesday, were largely in line with those from its last forecast, in December. “We are in a situation with inflation elevated and now a banking crisis on top of that,” Brusuelas told CNN. “I think that the Fed’s going to move toward an above 5% unemployment rate forecast, either in June or by September,” he said. “But the costs of failing are much higher.”A new wild cardThen there’s also the scenario that the Fed could get an assist from an unlikely bedfellow — the banking crisis. I do think the odds of a recession have increased in the wake of this banking sector crisis,” he said.

☆ The market's moves this month have been correct given what's going on, says iCapital's Amoroso
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailThe market's moves this month have been correct given what's going on, says iCapital's AmorosoAnastasia Amoroso, iCapital; Delano Saporu, New Street Advisors Group; and Gregory Daco, EY-Parthenon, discuss the Fed and navigating the market's next move.

"This is all a bit of a mess," Krishna Guha, vice chair of ISI Evercore and a former New York Federal Reserve official, wrote ahead of a Federal Open Market Committee meeting that has veered from a dead-certain jump in interest rates two weeks ago to a speculative morass. The yield on the 2-year Treasury note - particularly sensitive to Fed policy expectations - rose steadily through the day, adding roughly a quarter of a point from the overnight low and approaching 4%. Analysts trying to parse what recent bank stress might mean said a coming credit contraction could be the equivalent of an additional quarter point Fed rate increase, or as much as a recession-inducing 1.5 percentage points, rendering further rate hikes obsolete. "The emergence of financial stress is likely to indicate to the committee that monetary policy is closer to being 'sufficiently restrictive' than some may have thought previously," BOA economists wrote. "At the very least, stress in financial markets suggests that the Fed should proceed with caution."

☆ Premarket stocks: The banking meltdown put the Fed in a bind
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-17 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

In prior years, the Fed was able to respond “unswervingly” to financial risks by loosening policy without worrying about price stability, he said. The reputation play: The question isn’t about what the Fed should do, it’s about what the Fed will do, said Daco. The central bank has the tools if needed to respond to a liquidity crisis “but this is not what we are seeing,” she told reporters on Thursday. Prior to the current stress in the banking sector, Fed officials were hinting that they would hike rates by half a point. “Every central bank tightening cycle in history has induced some sort of financial strains,” she wrote Thursday.

The determination is intact," European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said in remarks after the policy decision. "There is no tradeoff between price stability and financial stability ... we are addressing the price stability issue by raising the interest rate by 50 basis points ... Beyond the rate increase, the Fed will also be debating changes to its policy statement that could prove consequential. In crafting their next policy statement officials will have to decide, for example, whether to continue to anticipate the need for "ongoing increases" in the policy interest rate, or to temper that seemingly open-ended commitment with language that indicates rate hikes could pause at any moment, given the new risks. They will also be issuing new economic and interest rate projections that could add a further dose of caution.

REUTERS/Brendan McDermidORLANDO, Florida, March 14 (Reuters) - When the U.S. yield curve inverts bad things tend to happen. chartCARRY THAT WEIGHTWhile SVB's failure may not be a direct casualty of the inverted yield curve, an inverted curve is a sign that wider financial conditions are not so easy, presenting banks with a far more challenging economic and financial environment. The two-year Treasury yield has been higher than the 10-year yield since last July as the Fed has embarked on its most aggressive rate-raising campaign in decades. Banks make money when the yield curve slopes positively, borrowing cheaply via customer deposits, central bank windows or the short end of the curve, and lending longer term at higher rates - a classic 'carry trade'. A downward-sloping curve stymies this 'carry' and curbs lending, and the consequences are clear when that lasts for as long as eight months.

☆ Premarket stocks: What comes next in the banking crisis? The early 1990s hold clues
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

This isn’t 2008: There are some key differences between today’s banking saga and what happened in 2008. This time around the US federal government stepped in early to guarantee all customer deposits and restore confidence in the US banking system. Here comes CPIFormer banking regulators, economists and Wall Street analysts are increasingly calling for the Federal Reserve to pause its inflation-fighting interest rate hikes because of the current banking sector chaos. Last Wednesday, investors were putting 70% odds of a half-point interest rate hike at the Federal Reserve policy meeting next week, according to the CME FedWatch tool. Analysts expect the inflation rate to come in at 6% year-over-year (down from 6.4% in January) and at 0.4% month-over-month (down from 0.5% in January).

☆ We're likely to see accelerating disinflation going forward, says EY-Parthenon's Daco
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-14 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

Share Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailWe're likely to see accelerating disinflation going forward, says EY-Parthenon's DacoGregory Daco, EY-Parthenon, joins 'Power Lunch' to discuss whether the Fed will slow down with rate hikes, given recent CPI data and the trouble with regional banks.

☆ Takeaways from the February jobs report
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-11 | by ( Alicia Wallace | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

Minneapolis CNN —February’s jobs report had a little something for everyone. In February, the construction industry added 24,000 jobs, marking 12 consecutive months of employment growth. Friday’s report showed that “a modicum of slack crept back into the jobs market,” wrote Wells Fargo economists Sarah House and Michael Pugliese. However, Friday’s jobs report likely won’t spur a more dovish turn from the Fed, said Sean Snaith, an economist and director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Forecasting. “We didn’t go from a four-alarm fire to a five-alarm fire with this data report, but the inflation flames aren’t out either,” he wrote in a note Friday.

☆ Premarket stocks: Here's what keeps Jerome Powell up at night and interest rates high
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-08 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

Structural changes in the labor market: The US economy added an astonishing 517,000 jobs in January, blowing economists’ expectations out of the water. “The labor market is extraordinarily strong,” he said. Core services inflation: Powell noted that he’s seeing disinflation in the goods sector and expects to soon see declining inflation in housing. Service-sector inflation, which is more sensitive to a strong labor market, is up 7.5% from the year prior through the end of 2022, and has not abated, he said. Tech layoffs, Big Oil and soft landings: What investors are watching▸ The labor market is strong, but tech layoffs keep coming.

"It's going to take some time" for disinflation to spread through the economy, Powell said in a news conference following the Fed's latest quarter-point interest rate increase. He said he expects a couple more rate hikes still to go, and, "given our outlook, I just I don't see us cutting rates this year." Rate cuts, they expect, will start in September - a view Powell said Wednesday is driven by the expectation of fast-receding inflation. Since the 1990s, the interlude between rate hikes and rate cuts has varied from as long as 18 months in 1997-1998 to as short as five months in 1995. The Fed, Powell said Wednesday, cannot risk doing too little.

New York CNN —Thursday afternoon will round out what has so far been a sobering earnings season for the Big Tech giants. Alphabet’s revenue will likely remain flat from last year and Amazon’s sales are expected to grow just shy of 6% year-over-year. All three companies’ profits are expected to fall from the year-ago quarter, with Amazon set to suffer the steepest drop with a decline of 40.6%. Then came the press conference, which led to a steep divergence between what the Fed thinks and what the Wall Street thinks. A cautionary tale: In mid-November, Ticketmaster’s site overloaded when fans tried to purchase pre-sale tickets for Taylor Swift’s upcoming tour.

☆ Walmart raises minimum wage as retail labor market remains tight
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-24 | by ( Melissa Repko | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Walmart said Tuesday it is raising its minimum wage for store employees to $14 an hour, representing a roughly 17% jump for the workers who stock shelves and cater to customers. Starting in early March, store employees will make between $14 and $19 an hour. About 340,000 store employees will get a raise because of the move, Hatfield said. Some of those pay increases will also go toward store employees who work in parts of the country where the labor market is more competitive, the company said. Target , for instance, announced in 2017 it would gradually raise its minimum wage and reached $15 an hour in July 2020.

☆ Here’s what will happen to the economy as the debt ceiling drama deepens
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-22 | by ( Alicia Wallace | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

Minneapolis CNN —After the United States hit its debt ceiling on Thursday, the Treasury Department is now undertaking “extraordinary measures” to keep paying the government’s bills. And Americans — many people — would lose their jobs and certainly their borrowing costs would rise.”Dire warnings of debt ceiling trouble aren’t new. “2011 was the first time in a long time that we came close to a debt ceiling breach,” he said. “I think you would be hard pressed to say [the debt ceiling debacle] was a positive thing,” he said. Considering the potential consequences in the United States and abroad, Sheiner believes the debt ceiling will be lifted or suspended — eventually.

Against a backdrop of slowing economic activity and demand, these "base effects" strongly suggest broader inflation has peaked and could fall rapidly in the coming months. Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon, reckons that these disinflationary dynamics will intensify, so much so that headline U.S. consumer price inflation may fall below 2% by the end of this year. Brent oil is below $80 a barrel, and on Wednesday its year-on-year price differential turned negative for the first time in two years. This trend is likely to continue due to base effects - Brent hit a 14-year peak around $130/bbl last March and was above $100/bbl as recently as July. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the non-seasonally adjusted average monthly rate of consumer price inflation in the first half of last year was 1%.

☆ Premarket stocks: Wall Street kills its darlings
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-30 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

It appears that Wall Street has also caught on to the concept. Investors are rushing to kill their darlings – er, sell their stocks– and even safe-havens like Apple (AAPL) and Intel (INTC) are getting crushed in the stampede. What’s happening: It’s been a shaky year full of economic uncertainty, geopolitical chaos, elevated inflation and a hawkish Fed. But what’s been most surprising is that market-cap titans, traditionally expected to weather storms on Wall Street well, haven’t held up against the rising macroeconomic tides. EY Parthenon projects that consumer spending will flatline in 2023 after growing 2.7% this year.

The Tampa Police Department announced it had terminated an officer Tuesday following an internal investigation into a video where he was seen dragging a woman into jail. Interim Tampa Police Chief Lee Bercaw said Damon's actions were "unacceptable and are not tolerated at this department." Supervisors at the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office, the agency which manages the jail, referred Damon's actions to Tampa Police's standards bureau. Tampa Police Department had revised its protocols in 2013 following a similar incident with uncooperative prisoners. Damon's termination comes after two other incidents of police misconduct at the Tampa Police Department in recent weeks.

☆ Consumers kept the economy hot in 2022. Now they’re losing steam
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-28 | by ( Alicia Wallace | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

Consumers armed with plenty of pandemic-induced pent-up demand and bountiful financial buffers kept the economy churning throughout much of 2022. “But I think there are reasonable worries that may not last.”Consumer spending remained resilient throughout much of 2022. But the household savings rate now sits at 2.4%, the lowest level since 2005 and the second-lowest rate going back more than 60 years. As of September 30, credit card delinquencies remained near historic lows with a 2.07% rate, according to Federal Reserve data. Persistently high inflation has consumers leaning more on credit cards and other forms of financing.

☆ Christmas meant real Christmas trees for my family. Then my husband got a fake one.
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-25 | by ( Elizabeth Grey | Elizabeth Grey Is An Essayist | Cook. You Can Find A Link To Her Highly Unprofessional Cooking Show | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +7 min

My origin story begins on Christmas Eve. I asked my mother once if we could get silver tinsel icicles, having seen them at a friend’s house. When my brother had kids, we started driving to his house on Christmas Eve to be with them. I would use the fake tree as Exhibit A in the court wrangling over our inevitable divorce. I believe there are two kinds of people, real vs. fake tree, and real tree people are superior.

☆ Premarket stocks: The Grinch comes for retailers
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-16 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

What’s happening: US retail sales, which measure the total amount of money that stores make from selling goods to customers, fell 0.6% in November, the weakest performance in nearly a year. The Fed factor: November’s report could indicate that consumers are feeling the double-punch of sky-high inflation and painful interest rate hikes from the central bank. This retail sales data adds to recessionary concerns, as it suggests that consumers may be becoming more cautious with their spending. Those increases were spurred by the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented campaign of harsh interest rate hikes to tame soaring inflation. The Fed announced on Wednesday that it will continue to raise interest rates — albeit by a smaller amount than it has been.

On the heels of Tuesday's lower-than-expected inflation reading, the Federal Reserve is expected to tap the brakes Wednesday on its aggressive rate-raising plan designed to cool price growth in the U.S. economy. In addition to the slower price growth, layoff announcements are mounting. Notably, demand for bonds has increased, reflecting growing interest in more stable returns that are often correlated with slower economic growth. Out with inflation worries, in with recession fearsKey stock market gauges, meanwhile, continue to decline on concerns about flagging corporate earnings. If it was still worried about inflation, then interest rates, energy and banks would all be higher.

☆ What to expect from the Fed meeting
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-14 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

Although that increase would be smaller than the three-quarter-point hikes announced at the past four Fed meetings, it’s nothing to scoff at. Yet Wall Street appears to believe the Fed will eventually be forced to pivot away from, or even reverse its regimen of rate hikes. The Fed will conclude its rate hike regimen by the second quarter of next year, predicted JPMorgan analysts in a recent note. A global problemThe Fed isn’t acting alone, it’s just one of nine central banks expected to make a rate announcement this week. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank are expected to follow the United States with half-point moves of their own on Thursday.

Consumer price growth cooled in November, indicating a slowing economy and a sign that the Federal Reserve's aggressive rate-raising campaign to fight inflation is starting to pay off. On a year-over-year basis, inflation hit 7.1%, a slowdown from the 7.7% in October and lower than the 7.3% expected by analysts. On a monthly basis, inflation climbed just 0.1%, compared to 0.4% in October. Still, there are signs across the economy that price growth is cooling. Last week, an alternative measure of inflation that tracks producers of goods and services also showed slowing price growth.

☆ Lyon's Festival of Lights goes energy lite to save power
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/7] The art installation "Time" by Philippe Roca and Marko Komar is seen on the Saint-Jean Cathedral during the festival of lights (Fetes des Lumieres) amid a worldwide energy crisis in Lyon, France, December 7, 2022. REUTERS/Denis BalibouseLYON, Dec 8 (Reuters) - Lyon's 'Fete des Lumieres', or Festival of Lights, which features intricate light structures projected on historical monuments and public buildings across town, is toning things down a bit this year due to the energy crisis, organisers said. Lyon locals Beatrice Roche and Laurent Oger attend the festival every year. 'La Fete des Lumieres', originally a festival in which locals celebrate the Virgin Mary by putting a candle on their window sills, attracts large crowds of visitors from all over the world. This year, one of the artworks is the projection on Lyon's art museum of giant portraits singing, among others, Britney Spears and AC/DC songs.

☆ Startups trying to turn cities into carbon sinks to fight climate change have raised a record $2.2 billion this year, new report shows
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-22 | by ( Tasmin Lockwood | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Green construction startups have raised a record $2.2 billion in 2022, per VC firm A/O PropTech. The construction and operation of buildings account for 37% of global CO2 emissions from energy use, according to the UN. The adoption of bio-based materials, such as wood, and a circular approach to construction can help cities become carbon sinks, the report stated. A carbon sink is when something can store more carbon emissions than it produces. Most building materials are currently "down-cycled" and used for things like filling potholes, she added.

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