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Weather: A 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly sunny, with a high near 90.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
The Palm Coast City Council holds a closed-door session to discuss a possible settlement with a contractor in the litigation over the Splash Pad. The session is at 1 p.m. at City Hall.
Free For All Fridays with Host David Ayres, an hour-long public affairs radio show featuring local newsmakers, personalities, public health updates and the occasional surprise guest, starts a little after 9 a.m. after FlaglerLive Editor Pierre Tristam’s Reality Check. See previous podcasts here. On WNZF at 94.9 FM, 1550 AM, and live at Flagler Broadcasting’s YouTube channel.
First Friday Garden Walks at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park, 6400 North Oceanshore Blvd., Palm Coast, 10 a.m. Join a Ranger the First Friday of every month for a garden walk. Learn about the history of Washington Oaks while exploring the formal gardens. The walk is approximately one hour. No registration required. Walk included with park entry fee. Participants meet in the Garden parking lot. The event is free with paid admission fee to the state park: $5 per vehicle. (Limit 2-8 people per vehicle) $4 per single-occupant vehicle. Call (386) 446-6783 for more information or by email: [email protected].
The Friday Blue Forum, a discussion group organized by local Democrats, meets at 12:15 p.m. at the Flagler Democratic Office at 160 Cypress Point Parkway, Suite C214 (above Cue Note) at City Marketplace. Come and add your voice to local, state and national political issues.
First Friday in Flagler Beach, the monthly festival of music, food and leisure, is scheduled for this evening at Downtown’s Veterans Park, 105 South 2nd Street, from 5 to 9 p.m. The event is overseen by the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency and run by Laverne M. Shank Jr. and Surf 97.3
Free Family Art Night, Ormond Memorial Art Museum and Gardens, 78 East Granada Boulevard, Ormond Beach. All art supplies are provided. No art experience is needed, and all ages are welcome. Free Family Art Night is a popular, monthly program typically scheduled on the first Friday of each month to coordinate with the free, family-friendly movie shown outdoors at Rockefeller Gardens. The two programs offer a stimulating evening for families, at no charge, in the heart of downtown Ormond Beach. Our art program takes place in the OMAM Classroom, rain or shine, but the City’s outdoor movies are weather dependent. Movie information can be found here or call The Casements at 386-676-3216.
Byblos: Flannery O’Connor was dying when she finished “Judgement Day” in 1964, the story of a once-prosperous white landowner who has moved in with his daughter in New York City after she discovered he’d shacked up with his Black farmhand in a hovel. O’Connor was at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the University of Iowa when “The Geranium” appeared in a journal called Accent in the summer of 1946, and when she submitted it the following year as part of her master’s thesis, a collection of stories called The Geranium: A Collection of Stories. “The Geranium” is an earlier version of “Judgement Day.” The old Southerner is called Dudley instead of T.C. Tanner. “The Geranium” is shorter, much looser with the N-word, which O’Connor uses with the same self-evident self-conscious glee she does in her intimate letters. The disappearance in the latter story of the geranium pot aside, the themes are similar, the plot equally taut, the tension heightened by Dudley’s outrage that a Black tenant has moved in next door (“He was trapped in this place where n— could call you ‘old timer.’”) To Dudley’s contempt, the tenant treats him like an equal. In “Judgment Day,” the old man’s room “looked out on a brick wall and into an alley full of New York air, the kind fit for cats and garbage.” (O’Connor had no more regard for New York City than did Updike, who saw the city as a place where “Nothing can be trusted; nothing is sure.” I’m not sure how different that is from Palm Coast or Holcomb, Kansas, but whatever.) In “The Geranium,” Dudley’s room looks out on a neighboring window where the tenant places a geranium pot on the ledge every morning at 10:30. When he doesn’t, Dudley gets angry. O’Connor spits symbolism. The geranium, I imagine, is Dudley’s nostalgia. It is his Georgian plot of land and memories. It is how things used to be: “He didn’t like flowers, but the geranium didn’t look like a flower. It looked like the sick Grisby boy at home and it was the color of the drapes the old ladies had in the parlor and the paper bow on it looked like the one behind Lutish’s uniform she wore on Sundays.” The pot’s disappearance at the end–its shattering on the sidewalk–may have been too obvious for O’Connor, who in “Judgment Day” replaced the plant with memories and implied it in Dudley/Tanner’s sense of imprisonment in his more subtly racist daughter’s house and that of his son-in-law. The Black neighbor in the late story is better drawn, more Black Power than Gone with the Wind, saying things like “I don’t take no crap off no wool-hat red-neck son-of-a-bitch peckerwood old bastard like you.” Time changed rapidly in the 20 years and between the two stories with which O’Connor bracketed her writing life. Like Bach who wrote his two books of the Well-Tempered Clavier with the same 20-year interval (1722, 1742), O’Connor’s two stories are markers of a stylistic mastery that was never in doubt, but also a “Revelation” (the title of one of her last stories) of a search for a resolution to an inward tension she never attained. She is the characters she depicts. All of them. She never got away from what remained despite her professed immersion and love of her South a stereotypical, outsider’s interpreter of the Black experience. She was actually never an interpreter of the Black experience, but of the white experience experiencing Blacks, the comic in her barely masking the contempt she never abandoned. In “Geranium” and “Judgement Day,” the old man wants to return to southern Alabama. He wants to be buried there. He dies in “Judgment Day,” opening the door to O’Connor’s death. He doesn’t die in “The Geranium.” He just gets yelled at by the neighbor for having the temerity to get upset over the crashed geranium. He is out of place in both stories, as O’Connor’s characters so often are, as she, thankfully, always was: her obsession with grace was one way to feel nearer a home she never got in an abroad she narrated, if often as judgmentally and bitterly as hilariously, all her short life.
—P.T.
The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
October 2025
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Flagler Beach All Stars Beach Clean-Up
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Sunshine and Sandals Social at Cornerstone
‘Avenue Q,’ at City Repertory Theatre
‘Nunsense,’ at St. Augustine’s Limelight Theatre
‘Sweeney Todd’ at Athens Theatre
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
‘Nunsense,’ at St. Augustine’s Limelight Theatre
Al-Anon Family Groups
‘Avenue Q,’ at City Repertory Theatre
For the full calendar, go here.
He would. He’d go down and pick it up. He’d put it in his own window and look at it all day if he wanted to. He turned from the window and left the room. He walked slowly down the dog run and got to the steps. The steps dropped down like a deep wound in the floor. They opened up through a gap like a cavern and went down and down. And he had gone up them a little behind the n—. And the n— had pulled him up on his feet and kept his arm in his and gone up the steps with him and said he hunted deer, “old timer,” and seen him holding a gun that wasn’t there and sitting on the steps like a child. He had shiny tan shoes and he was trying not to laugh and the whole business was laughing. There’d probably be n— with black flecks in their socks on every step, pulling down their mouths so as not to laugh. The steps dropped down and down. He wouldn’t go down and have n— pattin’ him on the back. He went back to the room and the window and looked down at the geranium.
–From .
Pogo says
@Self indictment of a fellow exile
… and beating a subject to death — in public.
Kind of a theme — more and more, everywhere one turns; thank God it’s Friday, and it’s always 5 o’clock somewhere.
Dennis C Rathsam says
Free from democracy my ass! Since elected leaders, of democratic city’s cant do thier job to stop the crime, murder,& car jackings. Someone has too. His name is TRUMP. He cleaned up D.C. in a matter of days. I don’t care what kind of morons live in these death cities, its not fair that a few hoodlums control the lives of many citizens. How many seniors, & women stopped a solider & thanked him. The liberals are killing our society.Why do the democrat leaders look the other way? Have they all gone crazy? Anyone with a 1/2 a brain see what a great job was done in the nations capital. For the 1st time in years, there where no murders in Washington. So instead of helping TRUMP, they mock him, sue him, & hinder his great accomplishments. TRUMP wants all cities to be save, & stop the bloodshead, while the jackass party pushes cashless bail, they let the looters loot. Why are they so hell bent on destruction of the USA?
Ray W. says
HuffPost UK reported on a Radio 4 program that hosted this morning Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, Great Britain’s chief of staff until earlier this week. Among the topics was the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. The admiral’s position? The Russian invasion has been a “disaster for Russia.”
He stated:
“Putin originally thought he would subjugate Ukraine in days, if not weeks. That’s clearly not the case.”
And:
“It’s a facile description, but it’s a really important one. If a snail had left Rostov-on-Don in Russia on February 24, 2022, by now it would have crossed all the way through Ukraine and now would be halfway through Poland. That’s how Russia is finding it.”
In the reporter’s words, the Admiral said that, “at its current rate of progress, it would take the Russian army 4.4 years to capture the four Ukrainian oblasts it wants to occupy, at the cost of a further two million casualties.”
Make of this what you will.
CABarron says
@Dennis C Rathsam says
BRAVO!!! Finally someone with a strong backbone and a set well placed speaks!
The danger to our democracy just had the biggest military parade probably in their own history. Sporting all types of weapons to totally wipe America off the face of the earth and all of us along for the ride. With $hithead Putin and rocket man all mass murderers . WAKE UP Americans it’s not Trump it the whole damn world that freaking hates us. Have we all lost our minds! Guess what all you liberals that includes you as well…you wouldn’t be spared…wake up!
Youse guys have a great day!
Bo Peep says
They are here because the Democrats would not enforce the law in their cities darling.
Ray W. says
Norway has two wealth funds. The largest, started decades ago, has been for decades investing government funds derived from the nation’s oil and hydropower wealth.
According to a CNBC story published earlier today, Norway’s “sovereign wealth fund”, the world’s largest, is at $1.98 trillion.
The management agency overseeing the fund, “Norges Bank Investment Management” (NBIM), is independent from the Norwegian government. Decisions about the fund’s portfolio are made by NBIM’s executive board, which includes input from the nation’s independent central bank, the fund’s independent ethics council, and the nation’s Ministry of Finance, Jens Stoltenberg.
So why is Norway’s sovereign wealth fund in the news?
Last week, NBIM announced that, after its ethics council recommended the action, it would drop Caterpillar and five Israeli banks from its portfolio, citing to an “unacceptable risk that the companies contribute to serious violations of the rights of individuals in situations of war and conflict.”
NBIM’s deputy CEO, Trond Grande, said:
“What we’re doing now is really not down-weighing, I wouldn’t put it like that, but we are trying to simplify our portfolio in Israeli equities, because we have ethical guidelines.”
The U.S. State Department responded:
“We are very troubled by the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund’s decision, which appears to be based on illegitimate claims against Caterpillar and the Israeli government.”
Senator Lindsay Graham called the fund’s portfolio shuffle “shortsighted.” He posted to X:
“Maybe its time to put tariffs on countries who refuse to do business with great American companies. Or maybe we shouldn’t give visas to individuals who run organizations that attempt to punish American companies for geopolitical differences.”
Minister Stoltenberg, in an e-mail, stated:
“The government is not involved in assessing individual companies. … The decision to exclude companies [from the portfolio] is an independent decision made by the Executive Board of Norges Bank, in accordance with the established framework. It is not a political decision.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I have commented on this before.
In the 60s, when oil was discovered off the coast of Norway, the Norwegian government chose to take a different path from that taken by the U.S. government.
When Norway leases a tract in an oil field to an oil extraction company, it requires the lease holder to pay a share of the oil wealth into an independent sovereign wealth fund, so that the government cannot search for ways to squander the money. The fund used some of the incoming oil wealth to diversify the nation’s electricity grid. I don’t know how many dams were built over the decades, but with hundreds of fjords having rivers that flow year round, there never was a shortage of options for dams.
Today, so much electricity is generated by hydropower that Norway exports its excess electricity to Europe, with profits going back into the fund. Norway is almost at 100% of new vehicle sales being EV.
For a nation of fewer than six million people, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund offers its populace many choices. The fund long ago chose to adopt an ethics division, free from political interference.
Ray W. says
Newsweek just published a story about the current status of the Russian economy.
Here are a few bullet points from the article:
– German Gref, CEO of Russia’s biggest bank told reporters covering an “Eastern Economic Forum” in Vladivostok that, in the reporter’s words, “in the second quarter of 2025 the economy looked as if it was in ‘technical stagnation’ and bank data showed that growth was close to zero in July and August.”
– Gref opined that cutting the central bank’s lending rate from 18% to 14% by the end of the year would not be enough to heat the Russian economy; slashing it to 12% was needed:
“Reviving the economy will be much more difficult than cooling it down … at current inflation levels, the rate at which we can hope for economic recovery is 12 percent or lower.”
– Russia’s inflation rate is officially said to be 8.8% and government officials have expressed concern that the cost of credit is “crippling.”
– Russia’s Finance Minister, Anton Siluanov, recently told President Putin that GDP growth for 2025 was likely to be 1.5% for the year, down from a forecast 2.5%.
– According to the reporter, Russian businesses have complained that the high lending rates and high inflation and high government spending “has stifled investment and had other negative effects for the economy, which is suffering from a worker shortage and sanctions.”
– A London Business School expert on Russian economics, Richard Portes, told the reporter:
“The Russian economy is not only stagnating, it’s declining.”
– Portes opined to the reporter that Gref could not openly say the Russia’s economic difficulties are “caused by the dysfunctionalities of the war economy and the fall in labor supply.”
– In Portes’ opinion, cutting the central bank’s lending rate from 18% to 12% is not going to sufficiently stimulate the national economy:
“I think the Russian economy is in a very bad state, and it’s not going to get better … the problems of the Russian economy are not due to high central bank interest rates.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
For perhaps two years now I have been commenting on articles about the declining Russian economy. Prior to Putin’s first invasion of the Ukraine in 2014, the Russian government had been diverting oil and natural gas export revenues into a number of funds, including a sovereign wealth fund. Back in 2022, a number of stories circulated about the size of these financial reserves being estimated at roughly $350 billion. Now, many experts believe that the financial reserves are soon to be fully depleted.
Russia is experiencing a serious labor shortage that has caused labor costs to skyrocket. About a year ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that milkmaids were commanding wages comparable to IT workers. Other news outlets reported that butter had become so expensive that dairy stores were being robbed of their butter, not their money. The labor shortage was caused in part by hundreds of thousands of young Russian males leaving the country to avoid war service. With a million Russian soldiers dead or wounded since early 2022, the male youth of the country has been depleted. Some 600,000 Tajik immigrants were deported after a terrorist attack blamed on Tajik extremists, so immigrant labor shortages persist. There is little wonder why the Russian unemployment rate has been as low as 2.1% in recent months, though 2.5% is being reported now. Ideally, in the U.S., a 4.0% unemployment rate is called “full employment.”
Ray W. says
Fortune reports that tariff instability and an economic breakaway by China is impacting American companies.
Here are a few bullet points from the article:
– John Deere, a company that reported record profits two years ago, laid off 238 production line workers last month, claiming “decreased demand and lower order volumes.”
– The company’s net profit dropped 25% year-over-year in its third quarter and worldwide sales and revenue dropped to $3.9 billion, down from $5.8 billion last year.
– During its most recent “earnings call”, a Deere spokesman said that there are “pockets of optimism” throughout the company, but, in the reporter’s words, customers “may be feeling the sting of tariffs and instability.” Said the spokesman:
“Given challenging industry fundamentals and evolving global trade environment and ever-changing interest rate expectations, our customers are operating in increasingly dynamic markets, which naturally drives caution as they consider capital purchases.”
– Corn prices are down 50% from 2022. Soybeans prices are down 40% over the same time frame, according to a New York Times story.
– Soybean exports to China are down 51% so far this year from last year, and China has yet to “advance” purchase any soybeans from American farmers from this year’s upcoming harvest. China spent $13 billion on the 2024 soybean crop.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
Several weeks ago, I commented on an article that delved into the idea of economic “lag times”. The idea is that implementation of new governmental policies does not show up in the economic data for months and months and sometimes for years and years.
We have had nearly nine months of the Trump administration’s new policies. I maintain that more time is needed to discern a more clear cause and effect, but evidence is coming out that the new administration’s policies are not having the effects predicted by the new administration.
Who knows? Dennis C. Rathsam might be right. At some point, gasoline prices might begin to drop below what they were on January 20, 2025. He claimed that they are at a four-year low this past Labor Day weekend, but he did not inform the FlaglerLive community that he meant down from previous Labor Day prices; he apparently entirely missed the point that OPEC+ began to manipulate crude oil prices in March 2021, after voting to reduce crude oil production in February 2021. For four years, OPEC manipulated the international crude oil marketplace for its profit. Yes, on Labor Day in 2021, gasoline prices were higher than they were last weekend. So, too, for Labor Day 2022 and 2023 and 2024.
Earlier this year, OPEC voted to increase crude oil production and Labor Day prices really are below those prices for the past four years. But that fact had nothing to do with Trump administration policies. OPEC positions are driving the temporary drop in gasoline prices at the pump. On January 20, 2025, the average price for a gallon of regular gasoline was between $3.12 and $3.13 per gallon, depending on the source (AAA or GasBuddy or EIA). Today, gasoline prices are still above that level. So, no, gasoline prices are not down during the second Trump term; they are down year-over-year on Labor Day.
Ray W. says
The Street, an online news outlet, published a story based on comments by McDonald’s CEO about customer spending trends.
Here are a few bullet points from the article:
– The reporter wrote of a message imprinted on a picture of a bicycle hanging on a kitchen wall:
“Life is like riding a bike. To stay balanced, you must keep moving.”
She likened the message to economic pressures that are negatively impacting our ability to balance our spending habits.
– The reporter then shifted her focus to comments made by Chris Kempczinski, McDonald’s’ CEO during a CNBC “Squawk Box” segment, a venue during which Mr. Kempczinski focused on a perceived divide between “two types of consumers”, those lower- and middle-incomes customers who are “under a lot of pressure in our industry” and those who make above $100,000 per year, for whom the economy is good.
– According to Consumer Price Index (CPI) data, July food-prices rose 2.2% year-over-year for those who ate at home. For those who dined out, food prices rose 3.9% year-over-year. As a result, many restaurants priced themselves out of the ability to attract diners. A number of high-profile restaurant chains filed for bankruptcy or closed locations or both during the past year.
– “All-item” CPI data rose 0.2% from June to July of 2025. From July 2024 to July 2025, the all-item CPI figure rose 2.7%.
– Over the past few years, McDonald’s had increased prices per item, on average, 40%. In the face of criticism, McDonald’s took the position that rising food input prices prompted the price increases.
– To frame the issue, the reporter wrote that beef prices are up 12% from June 2024. KC Cattle Company’s CEO recently told Axios that beef prices are “just the tip of the iceberg. Prices for beef will continue to be tumultuous for the next two to four years.”
– To address this divide between the two types of customers at issue, McDonald’s will introduce on September 8th eight different “Extra Value Meals.” The meals, on average, will save customers 15% over individual prices for the options.
Make of this what you will.
Ray W. says
CNN published an article this morning based on yesterday’s economic news, news existing prior to the release of the August BLS jobs report.
Here are a number of bullet reports from the article:
– “A consensus of economists estimates August payroll gains at 80,000, with an unemployment rate of 4.2%.
– From January through July, the American economy added an average of 85,300 new paychecks per month, down from 2024’s 153,300 new paychecks per month, down from 2023’s 240,400 new paychecks per month, down from 2022’s 466,850 new paychecks per month.
– “The slight uptick in July’s still-low unemployment rate suggests that labor supply has slowed nearly in tandem with labor demand, keeping the overall market in a ‘curious kind of balance'”, wrote Seema Shah, chief global economist at Principal Asset Management, quoting from Fed Chair Powell. “As such,” she added, “the disappointing payroll figures may not signal outright labor market deterioration but rather reflect an economy that requires fewer new jobs to maintain stable employment levels.”
– For the first time in nearly four years, there were fewer job openings than there were job seekers.
– Employment sectors in healthcare, leisure, and hospitality saw positive payroll gains, but most of the other sectors saw payroll declines.
– Unemployment figures for Black workers jumped from 6.0% in May to 6.8% in June to 7.2% in July. Should that figure rise again in August said Center for Economic and Policy Research senior economist Dean Baker, “it will mean we have a serious deterioration in the labor market situation for Black workers in just a half a year.”
According to the reporter, “[a] rise in the Black unemployment rate is often considered the ‘canary in the coal mine,” foretelling a broader-scale job market slowdown.”
– Year-over-year wage growth of 3.9% in July is expected to cool to 3.7% in August. Should employers continue to focus on containing wage growth, it may drop to 3.5% by this fall.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
For years I have focused on the number of unfilled posted job openings. The consensus figure I have seen over the years is that a 1 to 1 to 1.2 to 1 ratio between the number of unfilled posted job openings to the number of the unemployed is considered optimum. Anything less than that ratio is considered negative. Anything above that figure is considered negative. In 2022, the figure approached 2 to 1. For over three years, the ratio has slowly been falling towards optimum. Now, the figure is less than 1 to 1. How long will the ration continue to fall further below optimum range?
Ray W. says
I really wish Dennis C. Rathsam would look things up for accuracy before he comments. It is true that during a one-week span after the arrival of guardsmen, no homicides occurred in Washington D.C. But homicides have not stopped and it isn’t the first time in years that no homicides have occurred in Washington D.C., as he claims.
Earlier this year, according to a fact-checking BBC story, there was another week without homicides in Washington D.C from May 4 to May 11. During a different stretch of more than two weeks earlier this year, from February 25 to March 13, there were no homicides in Washington D.C.
I am not arguing that crime has not dropped in the time that guardsmen and women have been in D.C.
I am arguing that no one should ever accept at face value anything Dennis C. Rathsam types.
There is a reason that I structure many of my comments in a particular way.
I identify the news outlet on which I plan to rely. I lay out the comments on which I rely and quote from sources derived from the article. I then ask readers to accept or reject whatever I write. Look it up. Check it out. Learn for yourselves.
I then explain what I take from the article and why. Sometimes I pose questions to readers. At other times, I challenge the political status quo. If, later, I discover that my points were either inaccurate or incomplete, I apologize to FlaglerLive readers and offer an update.
Dennis C. Rathsam launders lie after lie after lie and he never apologizes for his many errors and distortions.
Ray W. says
The New York Times is reporting that prior to a first-term Trump visit to North Korea, he approved a Navy SEAL team operation to plant a listening device on a North Korean fishing vessel, in hopes of intercepting communications by Kim Jong-un during “high-level nuclear talks.”
During the mission, wrote the Times, the team members thought they had been spotted, so they killed all the fishermen.
Make of this what you will.
Ray W. says
During the month of August, it was widely reported that Ukrainian long-range weapons, including drones and cruise missiles, interrupted some 20% of Russian refinery output. Even the White House shared that figure with reporters.
The Daily Express reports that overnight, “several” more Russian oil facilities were struck, including its largest refinery at Ryazan, Russia, which was previously hit in August. Images shared on social media appear to show a massive fireball arising from the plant. If true, a plant outage at that location, with its annual output of 14 million tons of refined petroleum products, will further crimp Russia’s ability to supply its own needs for refined crude oil products.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I have already commented about reports of an increasingly severe gasoline shortage throughout Russia. The Russian government has already curtailed all gasoline exports. Some regions throughout Russia have seen a scarcity, if not outright stoppage, of gasoline availability for private use.
Ray W. says
Per MarketWatch, there are conflicting explanations for the slowing American economy.
Here are some bullet points from the article:
– Federal Reserve officials have for months been focusing on “the threat of higher inflation stemming from the White House’s aggressive tariff program.”
– Since Labor Day, however, four Fed officials have tried to explain why the American economy has suddenly begun to slow.
– During a CNBC interview, Fed governor Christopher Waller, a Trump appointee, said, “I don’t see a recession in my forecast at all, but I do see slower growth through the year.” He added that “[m]any tariffs are taxes, and taxes are never particularly good for growth.”
– Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari said “the cooling that we are seeing will probably continue,” but he, too, did not predict recession.
– St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem said: “Looking ahead, I expect the labor market to gradually cool and remain near full employment with risks tilted to the downside.”
– “Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic said the labor market is cooling, not collapsing.” He added:
“Signs of cooling bear scrutiny, as history tells us that the labor market can turn quickly and decisively.”
– Torsten Slok, Apollo’s chief economist, said during a CNBC interview that “[t]he data is beginning to look somewhat weaker and should be raising some eyebrows at the Fed. … The economy is facing three headwinds — tariffs are creating uncertainty for planning and consumers, immigration restrictions are reducing the labor force, and the restart of consequences for missing student loan payments has sapped demand.”
– The reporter opines that a “neutral” Fed lending rate is closer to 3%, significantly lower than today’s 4.25% – 4.50% lending rate. Fed President Kashkari told the reporter that a neutral lending rate of 3% suggests that there is room for the Fed’s lending rate to come down, “gently, over the next couple of years. … But there are big macro factors like tariffs that we need to watch.”
– By definition, “[r]ising prices at the same time as slowing growth is called ‘stagflation lite.” But the reporter writes that after four years of inflation above the target level of 2%, it remains unclear whether trimming lending rates any further will continue to bring down inflation. Some officials argue that the higher rates were really not working to bring down inflation. Jobs openings “fell to the second-lowest level since the pandemic. …” An Institute of Supply Management survey of supply managers “gave ‘apocalyptic’ conditions due to tariff uncertainties. And the Fed’s latest Beige Book shows most of the Fed’s District’s reporting flat growth.
Make of this what you will.
Laurel says
Some folks want a daddy so bad, to make decisions for them, so they don’t have to think for themselves, that they are not only willing to back a devil, but are willing to lie for him, and support our own military turning on our own citizens, at all of our expense and freedom. Hitler did the same.
Now, if he’d only clean out all that gold plated garbage in the Oval Office, and kick out all the incompetent cabinet members. Oh, and take down all the giant posters of his contorted, painted face.
Seriously people, go to the library, and pick up some books on history.
Skibum says
What Dennis commented above could easily have been stated by pro Putin Russians who are completely okay with their leader having ultimate authority over all government in that country, even though he has had his opponents murdered, tolerates no amount of protests from Russian citizens, and has staged a years long military invasion of another sovereign country, costing hundreds of thousands of lives in an attempt to rebuild the former Soviet empire.
I think Dennis would be perfectly happy with the abolishment of the democratic party, the imprisonment or killing of every American citizen who ever registered themselves as democrats, and then for him to see tanks and soldiers taking over every city in every state that has democrat mayors. I believe that would be drumph’s wet dream too.
It’s too bad that Dennis grew up in a free country like the U.S.A. where citizens actually can and do think for themselves and have been able to make choices for their own lives and future, because it appears he would much rather have every aspect of not only HIS life, but all of ours made by his daddy with the orange face and little hands… even though his daddy has spent his life screwing other people out of their hard earned money, molesting women he has leered after (and maybe even young, underage girls), committed and been convicted of felony fraud 34 times over, has been impeached by Congress twice, and also adores Dennis’ favorite uncle Vlad. So it is not mystery why Dennis appears to hate democracy so much when he could instead just let his daddy run his whole life for him so he never, ever has to make another decision again.
Wow, is America great again, comrade Dennis???