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Powell's presentation marked a heel turn from earlier this year. Stocks tanked in July after Powell described the Fed's first interest rate cut in a decade as a "mid-cycle adjustment," because investors interpreted the remark as a signal the relief monetary policymakers were providing was only temporary. Now, however, "the cuts look much more permanent," Grant Thornton chief economist Diane Swonk wrote in a note. "The vote to hold rates unchanged was unanimous, the first time that all agreed on what the Fed should be doing since May 2019."

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"Markets liked Mr. Powell's assertion that he would want to see a 'significant' and 'persistent' increase in inflation before he would want to raise rates, and he again drew attention to the undershoot to the target in recent years," Pantheon Macroeconomics chief economist Ian Sheperdson wrote in a note. "Mr. Powell's view is not shared by all his colleagues, given that most of them expect rates to rise slightly over the next three years while core inflation is expected to be little changed. But markets put much more weight on the views of the Chair; that's probably the right approach."

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Units leased for a median of $3,502 after subtracting the value of concessions -- just $19 short of the record high, reached in July, according to a report Thursday by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate. While rents have climbed in every month in 2019, November's 8.7% jump from a year earlier was the biggest since September 2012 and followed two much-smaller increases.

These very different men share remarkable, unflattering similarities. Each is ill briefed, hazy on the facts and implications of his policy proposals, uneasy under scrutiny and belligerent when challenged.

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Mr. Corbyn may believe, delusional though it is, that he really can restructure British capitalism overnight without damaging the economy. His stubborn moral certainty means he's deceiving himself along with everybody else. Most politicians, of course, have ambitions beyond their competence and dreams they can't deliver.

Mr. Johnson is playing another game entirely. Amoral and power-hungry, he's lying with knowledge, calculation and abandon. He and his advisers have made a ruthless and sinister decision -- to subvert and smash up British political culture. They have learned from the successes of the Vote Leave campaign, which Mr. Johnson fronted, and, it seems, from Team Trump.

The old assumptions -- that truth matters, that lies shame the liar, that in a democracy the press and the public must have a right to interrogate those who seek the top jobs -- have all been swept aside by the Tories' conviction that in an inattentive, dissatisfied, cacophonous world, victory will go to the most compelling entertainer, the most plausible and shameless deceiver, the leader who can drill home a repetitive and seductive incantation. Facts and details will be irrelevant so long as voters feel a politician is on their side.

This chart shows the more than $320 billion of total repo market support from the Fed since Sept. 17, when for the central bank began pumping in daily liquidity after overnight lending rates jumped to almost 10% from nearly 2%.

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The goal was to keep banks flush as they deal with month-end funding issues, corporate tax payments, and the deluge of Treasury debt being sold by the federal government to fund its deficit.

Shortly thereafter, former New York Fed markets group head Brian Sack, now director of global economics at hedge fund D.E. Shaw Group, coauthored an article saying that the Fed could get a better control of overnight rates if it were to boost banking system reserves by purchasing $250 billion of Treasury debt.

But the Fed's total support already has eclipsed that threshold with the expansion of daily operations, the introduction of longer-term loans, and its balance sheet expansion through monthly T-bill purchases.

"This is now far bigger than anyone thought this was going to be," Bianco said. "I think they're hoping the market will magically fix itself. I don't see why it would.

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"The Fed really hasn't figured out the problem," said Bryce Doty, a senior portfolio manager at Sit Fixed Income in Minneapolis. "But they kind of have created their own problem."

By that, Doty meant the Fed's rescue operations have worked in terms of supplying banks with quick and cheap funding, but less so when it comes to luring them back to funding each other.

The new rule would limit states from waiving those standards, instead restricting their use to those areas that have a 6 percent unemployment rate or higher. The national unemployment rate in October was 3.6 percent.

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"This Administration is out of touch with families who are struggling to make ends meet by working seasonal jobs or part time jobs with unreliable hours," Stabenow said. "Seasonal holiday workers, workers in Northern Michigan's tourism industry, and workers with unreliable hours like waiters and waitresses are the kinds of workers hurt by this proposal."

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"There's a reason Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly rejected this callous proposal in the Farm Bill and instead focused on bipartisan job training opportunities that actually help families find good paying jobs," she said.

Hunger advocates have repeatedly emphasized that SNAP is intended to address hunger and not compel people to work. Many also noted that those affected are impoverished, tend to live in rural areas, often face mental health issues and disabilities. Black and Hispanic households, women and LGBTQ people would be disproportionately affected by the change.

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Even Extell's lower-priced luxury offerings are struggling to find an audience. At One Manhattan Square on the Lower East Side, just 202 of the project's 815 units were spoken for as of the end of September, the filing shows. Sales started four years ago.

At that building, Manhattan's largest new condo tower, Extell has tried several experiments to lure buyers, including allowing them to rent a unit while having their monthly payments go toward an eventual purchase. Another program allows takers to put down a 10% deposit and live in their apartments for free -- not including utilities -- on the promise that they'll take ownership within a year or forfeit their money.

One in eight owner-occupied homes in the U.S., or roughly nine million residences, are set to hit the market from 2017 through 2027 as the baby boomers start to die in larger numbers, according to an analysis by Issi Romem conducted while he was a senior director of housing and urban economics at Zillow. That is up from roughly 7 million homes in the prior decade.

By 2037, one quarter of the U.S. for-sale housing stock, or roughly 21 million homes will be vacated by seniors. That is more than twice the number of new properties built during a 10-year period that spanned the last housing bubble.

Most of these homes will be concentrated in traditional retirement communities in Arizona and Florida, according to Zillow, or parts of the Rust Belt that have been losing population for decades. A more modest infusion of new housing is expected in pricey coastal neighborhoods of New York or San Francisco where younger Americans are still flocking in large numbers.

On the face of it, this doesn't sound all bad. Dying homeowners have always needed to be replaced by younger ones and the U.S. has for a number of years suffered from a shortage of housing, a development that has dampened recent home sales activity and kept many millennials stuck in rentals.

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The pessimism about the deep seated problems in the global economy contrasts with more upbeat signals coming from financial markets, where investors are increasingly betting on an upswing next year depending on the latest twists in trade talks.

How did it come to this? Because Europe allowed it to come to this.

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What is Moria? It is where Europe's ideals--solidarity, human rights, a safe haven for victims of war and violence--dissolve in a tangle of bureaucracy, indifference, and lack of political will. It is the normalization of a humanitarian crisis. It is the moral failure of Europe.

Still, it's deeply depressing to attend a large gathering of executives, founders, and industry veterans, as I did at October's Money 20/20 conference, and hear the same, somber message repeated over and over again: The future of money will be predicated on the fact that the personal finances of the next generation are as fragile as a Fabergé egg. This, according to attendees and speakers, is both a problem and an opportunity. No one bothered mentioning that the sick state of the nation's finances isn't technology's problem to solve.

Then news broke on October 3 that Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi had vanished inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Almost immediately, bin Salman was implicated. As gruesome details emerged--a bone saw, body parts removed in suitcases--it didn't take long for investors or the general public to take issue with SoftBank's connection to the Saudi money. The company's stock plummeted 20%, losing some $20 billion in value.

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It was during this time, as pressures on SoftBank's stock price and Son's biggest backer mounted, that Son began to rethink his offer to Neumann. The pair had been arguing over who would ultimately control WeWork when the deal was done. On Christmas Eve, Son called Neumann to break the news that the deal they'd planned was off. Neumann was stunned and upset, and still desperate for cash. He managed to negotiate a revised $2 billion deal. Still feeling pressure for more capital, Neumann made another fateful move. On December 28, 2018, he filed confidential documents registering WeWork for an initial public offering.

Neither man knew it at that moment, but the move started a death clock ticking.

Reached for comment and Uber spokesperson told Gizmodo that ""We are challenging this preliminary but incorrect determination, because drivers are independent contractors in New Jersey and elsewhere."

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Uber's home state of California still leads the fight in enforcement, however, passing the contentious AB5 bill in September, opening up rideshare companies (and other businesses) to strict legal challenges for worker misclassification. Lyft, Uber, and other allies still intend to fight the law's implementation.

After the single worst IPO in history, Uber's share price has continued to fall, hovering at $26.25 per share at the time of this writing--nearly half of what it debuted at nine months ago.

But today, widespread public anger over the inequality and economic precarity that many Chileans see as a consequence of that system means that conservative economic policies may be more of a threat to political stability than a means of ensuring it.

... [But] the Chilean political crisis is not unique to Chile. It carries unmistakable echoes of a problem that is at the center of political conflict all over the developed world.

As free trade, new technologies, the rise of China, and other seismic changes have reshaped the world's economies, political divisions have emerged between those who gain from the current system and those who do not.

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In much of Europe and the United States, onetime industrial towns declined as economic growth accrued to large, globally connected cities, instead. For many, even those who have seen modest objective improvements in their own standards of living, watching others surge ahead while they struggle has left them feeling angry and disillusioned. In many countries, trust in institutions is falling, surveys show.

The same economic changes have shattered longstanding political coalitions, weakening mainstream parties. Far-right populists and other outsider politicians have moved to fill the vacuum left behind.

And with no effective channels for public anger, mass frustration has erupted into protest movements like France's Yellow Vests and the demonstrations in Chile.''

Masayoshi Son, SoftBank's chief executive, was hailed as a kingmaker in 2016 when he unveiled the Vision Fund. Using the cash hoard, Mr. Son poured money into fledgling companies across the world, many of which have a business model of hiring contractors who deliver their services. Above all, he urged these start-ups to grow as fast as possible.

Many of the young companies used SoftBank's cash to dangle incentives and other payments to quickly attract as many workers as they could. But when they failed to make a profit and SoftBank changed its tune on growth, the companies often slashed or reneged on those same incentives.

"I definitely understand how that would make lots and lots of extremely rich people uncomfortable," said Mr. Hanauer, co-founder of a Seattle-based venture capital firm and an early investor in Amazon. "But I'm more worried about our democracy."

"Don't get me wrong," he added. "I would prefer 3 percent." But even at 6 percent, he said, "we would all survive and continue to be rich and fly around in our planes."

He pointed out that most Americans had been living with meager income growth for decades, while the silk-thin layer at the top shoveled in enormous gains, cumulatively more than 400 percent since 1980.

"All you're doing is saying to the richest percent of Americans that the rate of growth of your assets and wealth will now match what has happened to other Americans over the last 40 years," Mr. Hanauer said.

One lawsuit filed by Tesla shareholders alleges Musk engineered the purchase of SolarCity, in which he was the majority shareholder, as a a bailout of the troubled solar panel company. That case is heading for trial in March.

Over the past two years, Tesla's electric car business has been beleaguered with manufacturing problems related to its rollout of the new Model 3 sedan. The company's latest earnings report signals the firm may be at a turning point. It posted a $342 million profit, indicating it's making bigger margins on car sales.

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Musk also invited Einhorn to tour the Tesla factory and learn more about the company, adding "I'm certain your investors would appreciate you getting smart on Tesla."

Einhorn responded Friday, in an open letter challenging Musk to identify inaccuracies in Greenlight's shareholder letter and accepting the invitation to visit Tesla factories, writing, "I think facility visits would be fun (can we start in Buffalo?). I might learn the difference between your alien dreadnought factory and cars made by hand in a tent."

For one, Walgreens WBA, already has $15 billion in debt on its balance sheet. A potential bidder would need to add more leverage to fund the purchase. That would leave the drugstore chain particularly vulnerable when the credit cycle turns -- which is looking increasingly likely.

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the share of new leveraged loans with no maintenance covenants -- requiring the borrower to maintain certain financial buffers such as a debt-to-Ebitda ratio, or earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, of less than five times -- has tripled since 2007, the U.K. central bank said.

Banks are already struggling as investors steer clear of hefty private-equity debt package. Take Bain Capital's $4 billion buyout of market-research firm Kantar in July. The U.S. private-equity firm lined up 11 banks to assemble a $3 billion debt package.

But after an underwhelming reaction from the market, the banks had to restructure the debt package to make it more palatable to investors. This included raising the pricing on the loans and tightening the covenants.

Secondly, Walgreens finances aren't looking so good. The company's profit in the fourth quarter plunged 55% to $677 million, compared with the same quarter in 2018.

What we're most concerned about is how rent regulation harms the very class of person it is designed to help -- the renter. (It's not so fundamentally bothersome that property values don't soar to endless heights -- after all, homes are ultimately places to live, first and foremost).