Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of 44. Sunrise is 7:05 and sunset 4:22 for 9h 16m 48s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 89.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1938, in London, the Crystal Palace is destroyed by fire.
By Philip Henry Delamotte (1821–1889) – Smithsonian Libraries, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2183219
Jeanna Smialek and report Fed Officials Hint That Rate Increases Are Over, and Investors Celebrate (Stocks and bonds were buoyed after even inflation-focused Federal Reserve officials suggested that rates may stay steady):
Taken together with other recent remarks from Fed officials, the latest comments offer an increasingly clear signal that central bank policymakers may be finished with their campaign to increase interest rates in a bid to slow demand and cool inflation. Interest rates are already set to a range of 5.25 to 5.5 percent. The Fed’s next meeting will take place on Dec. 12-13, and investors are overwhelmingly betting that the central bank will hold rates steady, as policymakers did at their last two meetings.
….
Fed officials have been nervously watching continued strength in the economy: Gross domestic product expanded at a breakneck 4.9 percent annual rate [later revised to 5.2] in the third quarter. The concern has been that continued solid demand will give companies the wherewithal to continue raising prices quickly.
But recently, job growth has eased and consumer price inflationhas shown meaningful signs of a broad-based slowdown. That is giving policymakers more confidence that their current policy setting is aggressive enough to wrestle price increases fully under control.
Positive national economic news is an early Christmas present from Americans to America.
Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, Elk:
In Whitewater, where cronyism’s grown old,
A gift of rates, in whispered tales told.
Will it line pockets of the favored few,
Or lead to a path just and true,
For a community’s dream to unfold.
That’s everything: not the favored few but rather broad-based gains for ordinary residents. Neither Whitewater nor any town should squander opportunity that if seized would benefit many.
Fifteen thousand is a bigger number than fifteen.