Breitbart Business Digest:

The Fed Just Lost Control of Interest Rates

Powell’s Speech Backfired

Jerome Powell probably did not mean to trigger a significant easing of financial conditions on Friday, but that’s exactly what he did.

The chairman of the Federal Reserve gave a talk today at Spelman College in Atlanta in which he declared that it was “premature” to conclude that monetary policy was “sufficiently restrictive” or to speculate on when the central bank might start cutting rates. He even added that the Fed is prepared to tighten further if needed.

The market’s reaction was a flat-out rejection of that idea.

Just a few days ago, no one in their right mind would have told you there was any chance the Fed might lower its benchmark interest rate target in at the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting scheduled for the end of January. The big debate on Wall Street was whether the Fed would cut in May or June, which was markedly earlier than Fed officials appear to have been signaling.

After Powell’s speech on Friday, however, the market was pricing in a 16 percent chance the Fed will ease in January. While that is still only a slim chance, it is a significant move from zero.

The Markets Go A-Marching

Looking out to the March meeting, the move is even more striking. Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman made headlines earlier this week by arguing for a March rate cut. At the time, this was a very far out-of-consensus call that many folks shrugged off. Ackman likes to make headlines and has a reputation for bold—and often wrong—forecasts about markets, companies, and the economy.

He was joined, however, by Neel Dutta, head of U.S. economic research at Renaissance Macro Research. Dutta is a serious economic analyst and a thoughtful Fed watcher who was one of the few Wall Street economists to correctly defy the consensus view that we would see a recession this year. He told Bloomberg News this week that the Fed was on a “glidepath” to a cut in March because it is “highly likely that core inflation is running sub-2.5 percent on a six-month basis by the first quarter of next year.”

Even still, by yesterday, the fed funds futures market was pricing in just a 43 percent chance of a rate cut at the March meeting. That was up from a 21 percent chance a week ago and 13 percent a month ago.

Following Powell’s speech the odds went up to 64.4 percent, according to the CME FedWatch Tool.

If you are reading this, Mr. Chairman, you might want to look away because after this it gets even uglier.

The odds that the Fed will have eased at least once by the May meeting jumped to 90 percent on Friday. A week ago, they stood at 47.8 percent. In fact, there’s now close to a fifty percent chance that the Fed will be cutting rates a second time at that May meeting.

The fed funds futures have now priced in near certainty—98 percent—of at least some easing by the June meeting. They’re implying something like a 75 percent chance of two cuts by June and a 37 percent chance that June will bring a third cut. Going even further out—all the way to December 2024—the market is pricing in overwhelming odds that the Fed will have cut five or six times next year, which would mean more than one quarter-point cut every other meeting.

To see how far the market has moved ahead of the Fed, keep in mind that back at the September meeting, the Summary of Economic Projections showed the Fed penciling in a range of five percent to 5.25 percent Fed funds rate for year-end 2024. The market currently assigns a zero chance of that. …

https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2023/12/01/breitbart-business-digest-the-fed-just-lost-control-of-interest-rates/

>>20012052

>The Fed Just Lost Control of Interest Rates

rest of it

Bond Market Vigilantes Take Off Powell’s Head

It was not just the futures market that moved against Powell. The U.S. Treasury market—the largest and most liquid financial market the world has ever seen—swung its axe like a medieval executioner. And it was Powell’s head on the block.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury dropped 12 basis points, a huge move, to 4.23 percent, the lowest since early September. The yield on two-year Treasuries dropped 15 basis points to 4.568 percent.

Lower bond yields mean easier financial conditions. The decline in the 10-year Treasury yield, for example, is likely to drag down mortgage rates, re-energizing the housing market. Lower bond yields push investors into riskier assets, pushing up the prices of stocks and making investment in business expansion more attractive.

It was as if the bond market were mocking Powell’s claim that “the full effects of our tightening have likely not yet been felt.”

Powell does not get a second chance at this. The Fed’s official blackout period before the next meeting starts tomorrow, which means we will not hear from Fed officials on monetary policy until after the next FOMC meeting on December 12 and 13.

The Fed lost control of interest rates on Friday. We will not know until the next meeting if it can win it back.

Parenting Is the Key to Adolescent Mental Health

After a decade of surging adolescent mental health problems and suicide, the nation’s leading public health authorities have declared an emergency. Unfortunately, the solutions proposed by organizations like the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics—such as increased funding for diagnostic and psychiatric services—do not meet the challenge and ignore what are likely to be the most important causes. Adolescent biology hasn’t changed.

My colleagues and I at Gallup launched a study this summer to understand the causes. We surveyed 6,643 parents, including 2,956 who live with an adolescent, and we surveyed an additional 1,580 of those adolescents. We asked about mental health, visits to doctors, parenting practices, family relationships, activities, personality traits, attitudes toward marriage, and other topics, including excessive social media use, as discussed in prior work. I present the results in a new Institute for Family Studies and Gallup research brief.

Highlights

▶ The most important factor in the mental health of adolescents is the quality of the relationship with their parents/caregivers.

▶ Conservative and very conservative parents are the most likely to adopt the parenting practices associated with adolescent mental health.

▶ Parents who think highly of marriage exhibit better parenting practices and have a higher quality relationship with their teens.

https://ifstudies.org/blog/parenting-is-the-key-to-adolescent-mental-health

Brad Wilcox

👀Surprising new @Gallup @FamStudies study finds "Conservative parents are most likely to adopt parenting practices associated w/ adolescent mental health… most likely to effectively discipline their children, while also displaying affection & responding to their needs."

Brad Wilcox·Nov 30

1. Surprisinglyjust like I've found w/ women's marital quality@jtrothwell @Gallup finds a J-Curve in parent-child relationship quality in America.

✔️Very liberal parents do pretty well

But

✔️(Very) conservative parents do best

>>20012119

>Parenting Is the Key to Adolescent Mental Health

https://ifstudies.org/blog/parenting-is-the-key-to-adolescent-mental-health

10:46 AM · Nov 30, 2023·178K Views

https://twitter.com/BradWilcoxIFS/status/1730252073990517046

Study: Children of Conservative Parents Have Better Mental Health

Children of conservative parents are more likely to have good mental health compared to children of liberal parents, according to a new Institute for Family Studies (IFS) and Gallup research brief published Thursday.

“As it happens, being raised by liberal parents is a much larger risk factor for mental health problems in adolescence than being raised in a low-income household with parents who did not attend college,” wrote the brief’s author, Jonathan Rothwell, the principal economist at Gallup and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

“Children of conservative parents score significantly better on mental health using either a comprehensive measure of mental health based on several items, or just asking either parent or adolescents to summarize their mental health on a 1-5 scale. The gap is large,” Rothwell continued.

Rothwell and his colleagues at Gallup launched a study over the summer exploring what makes a positive relationship between adolescents and their parents and how the parent-adolescent relationship impacts youth mental health. They surveyed 6,643 parents, including 2,956 who live with an adolescent, and they interviewed 1,580 of those adolescents.

Rothwell wrote about his findings in an IFS blog post, noting that parents’ political ideology “is one of the strongest predictors” of a child’s positive mental health.

“Conservative and very conservative parents are the most likely to adopt the parenting practices associated with adolescent mental health. They are the most likely to effectively discipline their children, while also displaying affection and responding to their needs,” he wrote.

Conversely, he said “liberal parents score the lowest, even worse than very liberal parents, largely because they are the least likely to successfully discipline their children.”

“By contrast, conservative parents enjoy higher quality relationships with their children, characterized by fewer arguments, more warmth, and a stronger bond, according to both parent and child reporting,” he continued.

By the numbers, researchers found that adolescents with very conservative parents are 16 to 17 percentage points more likely to be in good or excellent health compared to their peers with very liberal parents.

“Only 55 percent of adolescents of liberal parents reported good or excellent mental health compared to 77 percent of those with conservative or very conservative parents,” the study found. …

>>20012129

>>20012119

>Parenting Is the Key to Adolescent Mental Health

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/12/01/study-children-conservative-parents-have-better-mental-health/

Watch: Bloomberg Anchors Laugh At Biden’s ‘Price Gouging’ Inflation Gaslighting

President Joe Biden’s claim that businesses should be cutting prices because inflation has declined—and his accusation that not cutting amounts to price gouging—prompted laughter and derision Friday morning from the normally straight-laced anchors of Bloomberg TV’s “Surveillance” program.

“I have no idea who actually wrote this tweet, but it’s got the president’s name on it so we should probably read it,” said Bloomberg anchor Jonathan Ferro.

John Carney @carney

Jonathan Ferro & Lisa Abramowicz of Bloomberg on Biden's now infamous inflation tweet.

12:56 PM · Dec 1, 2023·1,893 Views 1:44

https://twitter.com/carney/status/1730647146934809074

https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2023/12/01/watch-bloomberg-anchors-laugh-at-bidens-price-gouging-inflation-gaslighting/

Bruner:

Irish Officials Are Trying to Use Welfare to Implement a Social Credit System

On Thursday’s broadcast of One America News’ “Real America,” Seamus Bruner, Director of Research at the Government Accountability Institute and author of Controligarchs: Exposing the Billionaire Class, their Secret Deals, and the Globalist Plot to Dominate Your Life, stated that some officials in Ireland are essentially using the European welfare state to impose a China-style social credit score by threatening to revoke government benefits from people protesting against the government’s migrant policies.

Bruner said, “And here’s one more thing, this is the biggest outrage, everybody should be kind of shocked — well, not shocked, I guess it’s shocking, but also not surprising, in Ireland, some of these protesters — the officials, these left-wing, globalist officials want to take away their welfare. Now, the European countries have a much bigger welfare state and much more people qualify, but they’re saying that if you’re going to protest for your country, that you should have your welfare taken away. That’s like a social credit score now that they have sort of implemented de facto. So, if you go out and peacefully — they don’t say they’re rioters or violent people — they’re talking about protesters, that you should [lose government benefits]…and so, this is like a social credit score happening all at the same time.”

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2023/12/01/bruner-irish-officials-are-trying-to-use-welfare-to-implement-a-social-credit-system/