HOW DOES IT MAKE YOU FEEL?

With inflation now coming under control, the Federal Reserve is reportedly finally preparing to cut interest rates at an upcoming meeting. Lower borrowing costs could help stimulate investment, and will directly lower the cost of buying homes through lower mortgage rates. It’s hard to imagine any world in which the good news of lower inflation causing the good news of lower interest rates isn’t itself good news.

But somehow, CNBC manages to make it sound not-so-great, squawking in a headline that lower interest rates “could make your next trip abroad more expensive.” They follow-up in a subhead, with an explanation of why a strong dollar “gives a ‘discount’ overseas,” and an anecdote about a guy who got a great steak in Japan for “like $12” — a culinary bargain potentially under threat by the knock-on effects of lower interest rates. The whole thing would make you think that the cost of an overseas holiday is more important for people’s sense of economic well-being than the cost of a mortgage or credit card APRs. And even for vacation-taking consumers of financial news, that’s quite a stretch… but it’s still the headline because there’s nothing more on-trend for journalists than turning good news into bad news.

Make it make sense.

in the US are paid less than $15/hour. This is well less than half the proportion of workers paid less than $15 just two years ago.

of back taxes have been collected by the IRS from millionaires this year. The money came as a result of going after the small number of taxpayers who owed more than $250,000 and had incomes above $1 million.

would be charged on annual income above four hundred thousand euros, according to a new proposal by the New Popular Front in France. Several years ago, a key leader in the group had proposed a 100% marginal tax on such income.

For years, economic commentators have been trying to get people to understand that even when inflation is “lower”, prices still rise, because lower inflation means a slower rate of increase rather than a decline in price levels. So the lower inflation we’ve all been hoping for doesn’t really mean the same thing as the lower prices we would really love to see.

Lots of us missed this given all the other news of recent days, but new data out last week shows that we’re starting to get both: prices as measured by the Consumer Price Index actually fell in June, after being unchanged in May. Driving the shift: a decline in gas prices, and slowing rates of increase to housing costs and groceries. Higher price levels are never going to feel great, but the chart shows that more than four years after the pandemic took hold, corporate price increases may finally be on pause.

chart showing monthly change in CPI over past year, including sharply lower rates the past two months

Essentially everybody on all sides of the presidential debate agrees that there are major differences between the policies likely to be pursued by Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And most observers have a fairly strong opinion about which candidate they prefer.

But at least one corporate CEO doesn’t see it like the rest of us, because David Zaslav of Warner Brothers Discovery recently told people that he wasn’t particularly concerned about who gets elected president this year. Rather, his only concern is that no matter which candidate wins, “we just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to to be even better.” Despite Zaslav’s apparent concerns about regulation, his company has already consolidated ownership of media properties including HBO, Cinemax, Warner Brothers, HGTV, Discovery, CNN, Food Network, DC Comics, Cartoon Network, and many, many, many more.

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