|
At its 56th annual meeting in Davos, the World Economic Forum will wrestle with war, economics, artificial intelligence and other pressing issues.
|
|
Senior Federal Reserve officials were in a good mood in January 2020 — but danger was brewing on the other side of the world.
|
|
Topic: Going GreenGovernancePoliticsBill Gates recently posted his new thinking on Climate Change declaring we've been thinking about it the wrong way. His article is sending shockwaves, some agreeing, some feeling he has betrayed the cause, and some like Trump declaring this is proof that climate change was a hoax. I definitely agree with Gates here (and not Trump, obviously) but his revelation speaks to something even bigger than climate change, and hints at what may be the greatest mistake in global political discussion about a wide range of topics, not just climate. We've been doing it wrong, and are paying a terrible price.
Gates' thesis is that the general climate community has been overstating the case for climate change. It's a major, serious problem, which he has personally done far more to address than almost anybody, but it's not the civilization-ending emergency crisis it is often painted as. This has stopped us from allocating our resources wisely to fight the true big problems like poverty and disease, which will do far more harm to people than even the worst that global warming threatens. The way to combat climate change not simply to stop emissions (which is good) but to give people the economic prosperity and tools to contend with the hardships to come, and many others.
Read Gates' own essay to get the full scop
|
|
Stocks spent most of Wednesday in positive territory, but went on a roller-coaster ride after the Federal Reserve, as expected, issued its third straight 75 basis point rate hike.
SEE MORE Hedge Funds' 21 Top Blue-Chip Stocks to Buy Now
The Fed's rate hike sparked plenty of chatter among Wall Street's experts, with the main focus on what the central bank plans to do next. Today's move brought the Fed's benchmark federal funds rate to between 3.0% and 3.25%, with projections from the 19 voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) targeting a range of 4.25% and 4.5% by year's end - a half-percentage point higher than where it was in June. Doing the math, that means rates need to rise another 1.25% over the central bank's remaining two meetings (in November and December).
"Today we heard and saw more of the same, and the market shouldn't be too surprised given the Fed and its officials telegraphed that more big hikes were in the cards for the foreseeable future," says Mike Loewengart, head of model portfolio construction at Morgan Stanley. "The market seems to have hoped beyond hope that they would hear some reference to an end to rate hikes on the horizon, but that's certainly not what we got today."
Sign up for Kiplinger's FREE Investing Weekly e-letter for stock, ETF and mutual fund recommendations, and other investing advice.
And that, in turn, sent the major market indexes moving quickly from green to red in the immediate aftermath of the Fed's announcement. However, the wild ride wasn't over, with stocks temporarily bouncing back before ultimately ending lower. At the close, the
|
|
