NEWS – Page 20882

Trump ‘endangered’ Mike Pence, everyone at Capitol on Jan. 6, ex-veep writes in book

Former Vice President Mike Pence says in his new book that he was angry, not frightened when a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters broke into the Capitol chanting for him to be hanged on Jan. 6, 2021.

https://nypost.com/2022/11/16/trump-endangered-pence-everyone-at-capitol-jan-6-ex-veep-writes/

Use of death penalty declines in Africa

As the World Congress Against the Death Penalty is underway in Berlin, many African countries are witnessing a fall in the number of state executions.

https://www.dw.com/en/use-of-death-penalty-declines-in-africa/a-63777585?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf

Border agents find $2M in cocaine, dead man near capsized boat in Puerto Rico

Border Patrol officers found $2 million worth of cocaine and a dead man near a capsized boat off the coast of Puerto Rico on Wednesday.

The agents found the vessel early Wednesday traveling with navigation lights 1 nautical mile from Quebradillas, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said. When they reached the location, they found a “yola” vessel capsized.

PHILADELPHIA WELCOMES 20 MIGRANTS BUSED FROM TEXAS ,MANY PLAN TO TRAVEL TO OTHER STATES, OFFICIALS SAY

The drugs weighing 198 pounds were scattered nearby, CBP said. They also found a dead man trapped under the vessel.

Investigators also found three bundles and four bricks that tested positive for cocaine.

The boat was described as a 23-foot vessel with two outbound engines. A firearm was found inside and turned over to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

Puerto Rican authorities are investigating the dead male. The boat was taken to the Ramsey Border Patrol Station on the island territory.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/border-agents-find-cocaine-dead-man-near-capsized-boat-puerto-rico

Republicans flip the House

Republicans have won back control of the House, giving the GOP a toehold to check President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats despite a disappointing midterm election.

Republicans are on track for the smallest of majorities despite pre-election predictions that a red wave was coming. Instead, it took more than a week of vote-counting after Election Day for it to be clear the party had won the majority. And that majority could be difficult to manage for a Republican speaker next year.

The decisive call came in a California race, with Rep. Mike Garcia being declared the winner in his reelection bid in the state’s 27th District over Democratic challenger Christy Smith.

Redistricting, open-seat victories and a surprisingly strong showing in New York State carried the GOP back to power. But President Joe Biden’s middling approval ratings and a lackluster economy largely failed to propel Republican candidates over battle-tested Democratic members and a wider majority. In the end, only six Democratic incumbents fell.

Democrats held out hope of keeping the House for part of the summer and fall, as voters vented fury at the Republican Party over the end of Roe v. Wade. But while the issue of abortion gave Democrats a boost with voters and helped even up what had been developing as a Republican year, it was not enough to halt the GOP’s gains entirely.

Republicans needed to net only five seats to take control of the House. The party notched early victories on election night in Florida, where strong performances at the top of the ticket by Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio — coupled with a new, aggressively gerrymandered congressional map — helped the GOP add several seats.

Those early wins did not translate over to many of the most competitive districts across the country. A number of endangered Democratic incumbents survived, including Reps. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, Angie Craig of Minnesota and Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, and the party captured open toss-up seats in states including Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Still, Republicans notched a banner victory over DCCC chairman Sean Patrick Maloney in upstate New York, one of several pickups in the state. Republican Marc Molinaro won a seat that included much of the turf he lost in a summer special election. And all of Long Island turned red as Republicans George Santos and Anthony D’Esposito captured open blue-leaning seats.

And the GOP also managed to flip seats in Virginia, where Jen Kiggans unseated Rep. Elaine Luria; Arizona where Eli Crane defeated Rep. Tom O’Halleran; New Jersey, where Tom Kean Jr. beat Rep. Tom Malinowski; and Iowa where Zach Nunn bested Rep. Cindy Axne.

Republicans also picked up open seats in Arizona, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Texas and Wisconsin. But most of those districts were seats that Democrats walked away from, thinking they had no shot in keeping them in 2022. Several of them ended up being among the closest contests.

In Michigan, Republican John James, a highly touted recruit, beat an underfunded Democrat by less than 1 point. In Arizona, Republican Juan Ciscomani had a much closer than expected contest with Democrat Kirsten Engel. Both contests saw little to no outside spending by Democratic groups.

Democrats fought back in some places, not only limiting their losses but flipping GOP-held districts in Michigan and Washington State, two places where Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump lost in primaries. Democrats were able to beat the eventual far-right nominees in the general elections.

Democratic candidates also felled Reps. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) and Yvette Herrell (R-N.M.) in seats that got bluer thanks to redistricting. But it wasn’t enough to stave off a flip of the House.

One other race was called Wednesday evening, with Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) being declared the winner in his race. Maine uses a ranked-choice voting system.

Eight House races remain uncalled: one in Alaska, one in Colorado and six in California. Democrats lead five of the eight.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/16/house-control-midterm-elections-results-2022-00066546

Nets frustrated, concerned with Ben Simmons’ availability and effort: report

The Brooklyn Nets just cannot get out of their own way.

Amid Kyrie Irving’s suspension, there reportedly had been building frustration in recent weeks, and there still is concern within the organization regarding Ben Simmons’ availability and effort.

Simmons, who missed the entire 2021-2022 season for mostly what he cited as mental health reasons, has already missed five of the Nets’ 15 games this season with a knee issue.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM

However, when he’s been on the court, he’s been an absolute shell of himself. His 5.8 points per game are close to 10 less than his career average, and he’s shooting just 48.1 percent from the floor — he’s a career .558 shooter.

Simmons’ play was apparently brought up in a recent players-only meeting, where Simmons said it was an “honest” conversation.

Upon being traded to the Nets from Philadelphia in last year’s blockbuster, Simmons was working toward a return, but a lingering back injury forced him to not return.

Simmons knows what kind of hits he’ll take by fans and the media every time he misses a game, but for now, he’s shrugging it off.

KEVIN DURANT SAYS HE’S THE REASON BROOKLYN EXPECTED TO WIN, GOES IN DEPTH ON TRADE REQUEST

“I get [the skepticism], but I think the one thing with me is that I’m a competitor. I want to win and play. So, I’m going to do what I can to get out there,” Simmons told The Athletic. “… There’s only so much I can really do [about perception]. You can’t make people believe, you know? They weren’t there when I was on the floor and couldn’t walk [because of his back]. They weren’t there when I was in the ambulance getting taken to the hospital. People weren’t there, so they don’t know. That was the first episode I had against Milwaukee. That was the original trigger of it … right before COVID, the start of my back issues.”

“But that’s a part of my journey. There’s times when I couldn’t walk. I had a dead foot, couldn’t sleep. A lot of stuff was going on with me, physically, to where it was tough. But there’s only so much I can say for somebody to believe, you know?” he continued.

The Nets fired head coach Steve Nash just seven games into the season and were reportedly set on acquiring suspended Celtics head coach Ime Udoka before promoting Jacque Vaughn.

However, the Nets were embarrassed on Tuesday night, falling to the Sacramento Kings, 153-121. It was, though, a bright night for Simmons as he scored 11 points on 5-for-7 shooting.

The 6-9 Nets will face the Portland Trail Blazers on Thursday night.

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/nets-frustrated-concerned-ben-simmons-availability-effort

Money pit MTA kept paying contractors despite poor reviews: audit

The audit found officials “missed opportunities” to flag troubled contractors, allowing at least two bad apples to slip through the cracks.

https://nypost.com/2022/11/16/money-pit-mta-kept-paying-contractors-despite-bad-reviews-audit/

Awards favorite Brendan Fraser says he won’t be attending the Golden Globes

Brendan Fraser, who has garnered considerable awards buzz for his starring turn in next month’s “The Whale,” says he does not plan on attending the next Golden Globes ceremony, citing his “history” with the organization in a new interview.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/16/entertainment/brendan-fraser-golden-globes/index.html

There Is Light At The End Of The “Inflation Tunnel”, But We’re Not There Yet!

Authored by Carlo Putti via BondVigilantes.com,

The latest US inflation report came in softer than expected, with headline inflation now at 7.7% YoY and core inflation at 6.3% YoY. Inflationary pressures eased a touch as the deceleration in CPI was generally broad-based. Core goods inflation turned negative for the month while core services ex-rents inflation decelerated (this was partially due, however, to a technical change in insurance inflation). Rents generally remains elevated, but will likely soften going forward reflecting the current state of the housing market.

Overall the report was positive, reinforcing the idea that inflation has peaked and is starting to lower. However, it provided us with very little comfort as to where inflation is going to settle. While there is clearly some positive news on the inflation front, which will help inflation trend lower next year, there are still some negative factors which will likely prevent inflation from falling back to 2% anytime soon.

In today’s blog I want to highlight four pieces of good news around inflation and four pieces of bad news to keep an eye on in 2023.

Good news:

1. Money supply

The huge injection of money since the beginning of Covid is what caused inflation, but since then money supply growth (as measured by M2) has slowed down significantly and is now at a level consistent with 2% inflation.

Source: M&G, Bloomberg, 31 October 2022 (latest data available)

2. Rents

Rents are key in forecasting US inflation as they represent a big part of the index (c. 30% for headline CPI and c. 40% for core CPI). Rents have been rising for most of the year, helping push inflation higher, but we now might be close to a turning point. Rents in the CPI index is usually a lagging indicator, due to the way it is constructed (for example, data for official rents is collected only twice per year in order to capture a larger sample). There are, however, more timely – albeit arguably less accurate – rents indicators and they all are suggesting a slowdown in rents growth. This slowdown will likely start to be reflected in official measures too over the next few months.

Source: M&G, Bloomberg, 31 October 2022 (latest data available)

3. Dollar

The US dollar has been rising sharply this year and this has impacted and will continue to impact inflation, particularly goods inflation. As most of goods are imported, a strong US dollar will likely results in lower goods prices.

Source: M&G, Bloomberg, 31 October 2022

4. Base effect

This is more of a short term effect which might help to push YoY inflation lower. Last year, from October to February, core CPI was fairly high averaging almost 0.6% MoM. This means that, for core inflation to keep rising YoY, we need to see some fairly high MoM numbers over the next 5 months: possible, but tough given that core goods inflation is decelerating while rents growth will likely start to moderate soon.

Source: M&G, Bloomberg, 31 October 2022

Bad news:

1. Broad-based inflation

Inflation is now broad-based. It is not just a few items driving overall inflation up: most of the items are now seeing prices rising fast. A good way to visualise this is to look at median CPI, which is less impacted by outliers since it focuses on the core of the distribution. Inflation remains very much broad-based.

Source: M&G, Bloomberg, Cleveland Fed, 31 October 2022

2. Sticky inflation

As economies reopened, people started to shift their consumption away from goods into services. As a result, goods inflation is now decelerating, while service inflation is rising fast. The problem is that service inflation, unlike goods inflation, is usually very sticky. As a result, we might not see a sharp deceleration in inflation anytime soon. Below you can see a chart showing the sticky components of inflation vs the more volatile items. While the latter have started to trend lower, the sticky part of the inflation basket is now on the rise.

Source: M&G, Bloomberg, Atlanta Fed, 31 October 2022

3. Wages

Wages have been rising this year and this is important as wages are the major input cost for most services. If wage growth remains high or even accelerates from here, there is potential for more inflation surprises going forward. Keep an eye on wages and on a potential wage-price spiral as this could completely change the inflation picture for next year.

Source: M&G, Bloomberg, Atlanta Fed, 31 October 2022

4. Velocity

One thing that hasn’t been discussed much so far is money velocity (how quickly money circulates within the economy). Higher rates usually pushes velocity up as consumers look for opportunities to deploy their cash. Recently, we have seen an acceleration in money velocity. If this continues, inflation might remain elevated even if money supply falls.

Source: M&G, Bloomberg, 30 September 2022

Conclusion:

There seems to be light at the end of the inflation tunnel, particularly as money supply has collapsed down to levels consistent with 2% inflation. Quantitative tightening can accelerate this trend further, potentially pushing M2 into negative territory. Inflation has now become very sticky and broad-based, however, while wage growth is still not consistent with 2% inflation. Moreover, the velocity of money remains a big unknown and could keep inflation high even if money supply falls.

As things stand right now, a further deceleration in inflation seems probable, but a quick return to normality still looks unlikely.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/16/2022 – 15:50

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/there-light-end-inflation-tunnel-were-not-there-yet