The Federal Reserve’s two most powerful leaders, Jerome Powell and Janet Yellen will testify in front of the Senate Banking Committee about the U.S. economy on Wednesday morning at 9:00am EST.
The “powell speech today live youtube” is a video that allows the audience to watch Jerome Powell and Janet Yellen testify about the economy.
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Mr. Powell said that “in our future meeting in a few of weeks,” the Fed would explore slowing down bond purchases. Credit… The New York Times/Sarahbeth Maney
Alan Rappeport and Jeanna Smialek
The Federal Reserve chair, Jerome H. Powell, indicated that the central bank is becoming more apprehensive of high — and persistent — inflation, and that it may accelerate its plan to remove economic assistance as soon as its December meeting, in order to ensure that fast price increases do not continue.
For most of the epidemic, the Fed had been purchasing $120 billion in government-backed assets each month to keep money flowing in financial markets and stimulate the economy. Officials indicated in November that they would reduce monthly purchases by $15 billion. That would have brought the program to a close in the middle of 2022. However, Mr. Powell hinted on Tuesday that the process may accelerate up, reducing the amount of stimulus the Fed would provide in the coming months.
During a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, Mr. Powell said, “At this moment, the economy is quite robust, and inflationary pressures are high.” “As a result, I believe it is acceptable to consider winding up the taper of our asset acquisitions, which we actually announced at our November meeting, possibly a few months sooner.”
Mr. Powell stated that the Fed will discuss slowing bond purchases “at our upcoming meeting in a couple of weeks,” stressing that the Fed will gain a better understanding of the new Omicron coronavirus variant, a new labor market report, and a new reading on consumer price inflation between now and then.
The next two-day policy meeting of the Federal Reserve will be held on December 14-15.
Mr. Powell made it plain that it was too early for Fed officials — or anybody else — to predict the new variant’s effect, since it would depend on how quickly it spreads and if it causes more severe illness.
“Experts tell me that in about a month, we’ll know quite a bit about those solutions,” he remarked. “Within a week or 10 days, we’ll know something.”
“It’s a risk, it’s a danger to the baseline,” he added, “but it’s not really baked into our estimates.”
The potential threat posed by Omicron comes at a difficult time for politicians. This year, the economy has rebounded, and strong demand has clashed with constrained supply chains, driving prices considerably higher. As price increases continue persistently high, the central bank has been trying to remove its economic aid, reorienting its policies so that it may hike rates next year if required to keep growing prices in line if inflation proves to be more obstinate than policymakers had thought.
“In general, the higher prices we’re witnessing are attributable to supply and demand mismatches that can be traced straight back to the epidemic and the reopening of the economy,” Mr. Powell said Tuesday, “but it’s also the fact that price rises have spread much more widely in the previous few months.” “I believe that the danger of greater inflation has risen.”
If the new variation continues to wreak havoc on supply chains while keeping employees at home and preventing a complete labor market recovery, the Fed may find itself in a difficult position. Central bank officials are meant to promote full employment while also maintaining price stability.
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Eshe Nelson and Matt Phillips
The probability that the Federal Reserve would speed the withdrawal of its economic stimulus just as a frightening new form of the coronavirus has started to spread sent stocks down on Wall Street on Tuesday.
Jerome H. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, told a Senate committee on Tuesday that inflation was expected to linger far into next year, and that the Fed would consider reducing its bond-buying program more swiftly as a result.
During a hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, Mr. Powell said, “At this moment, the economy is quite robust, and inflationary pressures are high.” “As a result, I believe it is acceptable to consider winding up the taper of our asset acquisitions, which we actually announced at our November meeting, possibly a few months sooner.”
The Fed’s actions have been a key element in the stock market’s rapid increase since the outbreak began. Following Mr. Powell’s remarks, the S&P 500, which had been down approximately 0.5 percent for most of the morning, plummeted. At lunchtime, the index was down 1.7 percent, giving up all of Monday’s gains.
Short-term bond rates, which are highly impacted by Fed rate increase forecasts, have risen sharply. Investors read Mr. Powell’s remarks as an admission that inflation — which the central bank has long viewed as “transitory” — will compel the Fed to adopt higher interest rates sooner than many had anticipated.
“The Fed is the final owner of the ‘transitory’ label, and the chair’s choice to go beyond it is a highly hawkish step,” Ian Lyngen, head of U.S. rates strategy at BMO Capital Markets in New York, said in a note to clients soon after Mr. Powell’s remarks.
Before Mr. Powell’s speech, stock prices were tumbling throughout the globe as investors sought to comprehend the risk presented by the Omicron variety. The Stoxx Europe 600 index lost 0.4%. The Nikkei 225 in Japan and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong both fell more than 1% in Asia.
Since last week, investors have been paying careful attention to information on the Omicron variety, and are especially interested in the efficacy of vaccinations against it.
In an interview on Tuesday, the CEO of Moderna, a vaccine company, claimed there may be a “substantial decline” in the efficiency of existing vaccinations when compared to the new variety. The CEO, Stéphane Bancel, told The Financial Times that an Omicron-specific vaccine may take months to develop at scale, but that shifting the company’s whole vaccine manufacturing while other variations are still widespread would be dangerous.
Since the discovery of the new variety in southern Africa late last week, financial markets have been shaky. On Friday, the S&P 500 had its worst day since February, falling 2.3 percent. It started to rebound on Monday, as governments across the globe warned against panic, even as some imposed travel limits. The Omicron variation is a little-known variety. Scientists have mapped all its changes, but it will take a few weeks before they know how it reacts to current vaccinations or whether it causes serious illness.
Nonetheless, investors believe the Omicron model will not elicit the same level of interest from governments, businesses, or people as Covid did when it originally appeared in early 2020. Even though Omicron poses a larger danger than the Delta variation before it, investors believe the virus’s latest edition will have considerably less financial ramifications than the approximately 34% drop in stock prices between February 2020 and the following month.
“The worst case scenario is not March 2020,” said Jeb Breece, principal of Spears Abacus, a Manhattan-based independent money management business. “Fear and the unknown were such a major part of it.” “I don’t think we’ll do it again.”
This article was co-written by Coral Murphy Marcos.
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In the German town of Ahlen, there is a grocery. The reopening of economies after a period of lockdown has resulted in an increase in the cost of products and services. Credit… Getty Images/Ina Fassbender/Agence France-Presse
Inflation in Europe hit a new high in November, according to figures released on Tuesday, as the cost of energy continued to rise.
The European statistics office Eurostat announced that annual inflation in the eurozone soared to 4.9 percent, the highest level since records started in 1997. Inflation rose by 2.6 percent from a year ago, the most in two decades, excluding volatile energy and food costs.
Prices for goods and services have been slowly rising since the summer, when the global economy reopened after coronavirus lockdowns, boosting economic activity and constraining global supply networks.
Energy prices increased by 27.4 percent in November compared to the same month a year earlier, maintaining an increasing trend.
In a letter to clients, Bert Colijn, senior economist for the eurozone at ING Bank, stated, “We haven’t seen inflation this high since the 1980s.” “The 2021 energy shock is beginning to have a significant effect on consumers,” he continued.
Inflation in the eurozone year over year
Inflationary pressures have pushed up prices for a variety of goods and services, prompting employees and unions in many European nations to seek greater salaries.
Inflation in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, increased to 6% from a year earlier, while it increased to 3.4 percent in France, the highest level in almost a decade. Belgium had the highest inflation rate of 7.1 percent, while Lithuania had the highest rate of 9 percent.
The fast spread of the newly identified Omicron version of the coronavirus has thrown the global economic picture into disarray.
According to the European Central Bank, the inflation rise will be brief as energy price hikes diminish next year. The bank’s mission is to manage inflation at or below 2%.
“Although the ECB has stated that current price pressures will ease in 2022, and our baseline is that monetary policy will remain accommodative,” Katharina Koenz, an economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a note to clients, “the latest data will add to the debate on the appropriate level of policy support.”
“However, there isn’t much the ECB can do in the near term about increasing energy costs and supply constraints,” she noted.
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Lululemon’s lawsuit against Peloton was sparked by the company’s new private label apparel line. Credit… The New York Times’ Jeenah Moon
Lululemon, an athletic gear shop, filed a lawsuit against Peloton, a workout firm, accusing it of patent infringement over the designs of a new range of leggings and sports bras, on Monday.
Peloton is accused of trade dress infringement, false designation of origin, and unfair competition in the action, which was filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. Lululemon is seeking an injunction, as well as a jury trial, damages, and other monetary remedies, against Peloton.
According to court records, Peloton and Lululemon dissolved their co-branding arrangement this year in an amicable breakup. In September, Peloton launched a new clothes line.
Lululemon claimed that five Peloton-branded women’s bra and legging items, including the Strappy Bra, Cadent Laser Dot Bra, and Cadent Laser Dot Legging, “infringed” on six Lululemon patents in its lawsuit.
Lululemon also alleged that a Peloton product called One Luxe Tight was a knockoff of the Align Pant, one of the company’s best-selling items.
On Tuesday, Peloton refused to comment on the case.
Lululemon’s senior vice president, general counsel, and chief compliance officer, Shannon Higginson, said the firm was “confident in our position and look forward to correctly resolving this lawsuit via the courts.”
“Unlike Lululemon and other inventors, Peloton did not take the time, effort, or money to develop a unique product line,” Lululemon said in its lawsuit. “Instead, Peloton copied some of Lululemon’s unique ideas and marketed knockoffs of Lululemon’s items under its own name.”
The lawsuit is the latest in a long-running spat between the two well-known businesses. Peloton filed a case in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on Nov. 24, requesting the court to declare that it had not infringed on any of Lululemon’s patents.
In its case, Peloton claims that its goods “have distinct and visible characteristics that enable the items to be readily recognized” from those of Lululemon.
Lululemon’s attorneys issued Peloton a cease-and-desist letter on Nov. 11 threatening legal action unless the business ceased selling “copy-cat items” that infringed on Lululemon’s “design patent and trade dress rights.”
Peloton said in its case that Lululemon’s “allegations are without validity,” and that the firms’ “brands and logos are also unique and well-recognized, making product misunderstanding a practical impossibility.”
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Meta’s ownership of Giphy, according to a British regulator, allows the social media giant to limit rivals’ access to Giphy’s GIFs. Credit… Reuters/Dado Ruvic
British antitrust officials ordered Facebook’s parent company Meta to sell the animated images collection Giphy on Tuesday, stepping up the country’s attempts to counteract the world’s leading digital giants’ expanding dominance.
According to the Competition and Markets Authority, Meta’s purchase of Giphy last year weakened competition across social media platforms and in the display advertising industry, which Facebook controls and where Giphy was expanding before the merger.
Despite the fact that animated pictures, also known as GIFs, are often amusing snippets and memes shared in text messages and social media postings — such as Homer Simpson slinking back into a hedge – officials found that Meta’s purchase may impair competition significantly. Giphy is the most popular site for making and sharing GIFs, and authorities cautioned that limiting access to Meta’s massive picture database would further entrench Meta’s social media dominance.
According to authorities, Meta’s services, which include Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, account for 73 percent of user time spent on social media in the United Kingdom. Until this month, the whole firm was referred to as Facebook.
The Competition and Markets Authority said that its decision was legally enforceable and that Meta should sell all of Giphy, not only the British portion of the company.
In a statement, Stuart McIntosh, head of the panel evaluating the purchase, claimed that Meta’s ownership of Giphy enabled the business to “extend its substantial market clout in social media even further, by limiting rivals’ access to Giphy GIFs.” “We are safeguarding millions of social media users and fostering competition and innovation in digital advertising” by ordering the sale.
Meta was fined 50.5 million pounds ($70 million) by British antitrust officials in October for “deliberately omitting” to provide all necessary information relevant to the Giphy probe.
Meta said on Tuesday that it was revisiting the order to sell Giphy. It has four weeks to make a decision on whether or not to appeal.
In a statement, the business said, “We disagree with this decision.” “We’re evaluating the judgement and weighing all of our options, including filing an appeal.” With the help of our infrastructure, expertise, and resources, both customers and Giphy will be better off.”
Britain is taking another move against the world’s largest digital corporations by attempting to overturn the Giphy purchase. To prevent corporations like Meta from accumulating power, British officials are considering tighter competition regulations, including the appointment of a new technology sector regulator.
A new online safety legislation is also being considered, which would oblige Meta and other internet platforms to do more to prevent the spread of illegal information.
In the United States, Meta is fighting allegations made by the Federal Trade Commission and numerous states that it unlawfully bought up smaller competitors to stifle competition.
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As the governor dealt with the initial wave of allegations, Chris Cuomo begged with his brother’s staff to let him “assist with the prep.” Credit… CNN/Mike Coppola/Getty Images
Thousands of pages of new evidence and sworn testimony published on Monday reveal how former Governor Andrew M. Cuomo leaned on a network of supporters, including his younger brother, CNN personality Chris Cuomo, to dodge and survive a wave of sexual harassment allegations that finally enveloped him.
Chris Cuomo pushed to play a bigger role in his brother’s defense, including participating in strategy discussions and utilizing his media connections to track down reporters covering the governor. He even followed up on a tip that another lady accused the governor of unwelcome approaches at a wedding was lying. (No, she wasn’t.)
“You have to trust me,” Chris Cuomo told Melissa DeRosa, the governor’s secretary, in March, urging her to depend on him and other outside advisors such as political strategist Lis Smith and pollster Jefrey Pollock.
“We’re making errors we can’t afford,” he continued.
The investigation records “deserve a careful study and consideration,” CNN said on Monday.
“Over the next few days, we will be having discussions and seeking greater clarification regarding their relevance as it relates to CNN,” the business stated in a statement.
Ms. DeRosa resorted to Chris Cuomo for “intelligence” in early March when she was attempting to keep track of journalists investigating allegations of sexual harassment.
After one such request, he said, “On it.” Ms. DeRosa replied to the governor’s brother a few days later, saying she had heard The New Yorker’s Ronan Farrow was “getting ready to move” a story. “Could you double-check your sources?”
Chris Cuomo claimed he was “panicked” about how the governor’s staff was handling the allegations in text conversations with Ms. DeRosa in March, pleading with her to “let me assist with the prep” before composing his own suggested comments for the governor to deliver, including one mentioning “cancel culture.”
Copy of text and email communications, as well as transcripts of depositions with several of Governor Cuomo’s closest advisers, were among the newly revealed data. READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE
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In November, Elizabeth Holmes walked out of federal court in San Jose, California. Credit… Associated Press/Nic Coury
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Elizabeth Holmes took a deep breath and scrunched her face as she spoke, her voice faltering.
Ms. Holmes said in court on Monday that Ramesh Balwani, her former lover and business partner, mistreated her emotionally and physically. He was domineering, she said, directing what she ate, dictating her schedule, and keeping her away from her family. She also claimed that he pushed her to have sex with him against her will.
“He would compel me to have sex with him when I didn’t want to because he claimed he wanted me to know he still loved me,” Ms. Holmes said while weeping on the stand.
It was the most dramatic scene of a three-month trial in which Ms. Holmes was accused of lying and faking her way to hundreds of millions of dollars for her failing blood-testing company, Theranos. READ ON FOR MORE
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The National Labor Relations Board’s regional office in Alabama ordered a fresh union election at an Amazon warehouse on Monday, affirming a union challenge to a poll that the business easily won.
After a hearing officer recommended in August that the results be thrown out and a fresh election be held, the conclusion was generally predicted. After the August judgment, the corporation said it planned to appeal to the federal labor board in Washington if it didn’t win at the regional level, but it didn’t specify whether it would do so on Monday.
The union submitted a formal challenge to the election soon after the results were revealed in April, claiming that Amazon had harmed the electoral process by pressuring the Postal Service to put a collection box at the warehouse, among other things. The union said that the box, which was not approved by the labor board, gave the appearance that Amazon was keeping track of who voted.
The labor board’s regional director for the Atlanta area concurred in her ruling Monday, saying that Amazon “gave a strong impression that it controlled the process” by organizing the box’s installation. The director, Lisa Y. Henderson, said, “This harmful and inappropriate message to workers weakens faith in the board’s procedures and the reliability of the election outcomes.” READ ON FOR MORE
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Jerome Powell and Janet Yellen Testify About the Economy. The Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell and Fed Chairman Janet Yellen testified on Capitol Hill today about the state of the economy. Reference: jerome powell education.
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