Thursday, January 9, 2025

Stock markets will suspend trading this Thursday, taking a traditional pause for the funeral of a former head of state. James Earl Carter, Jr., known as Jimmy even during his years in the White House (1977-80), was the 39th President of the U.S. He lived to be 100 — the first ex-president in 235 years of presidents to do so.

Carter was also a highly visible altruist following his tenure in office, helping build houses for the poor via his connection with Habitat for Humanity, among other things. The former Georgia governor had been a nuclear engineer while serving in the U.S. Navy and, famously, a peanut farmer in his home town of Plains, GA. He was a progressive liberal by political orientation, and originally an outgoing advocate for the Civil Rights movement in the South.

His four years in office were at times quite turbulent, most especially pronounced by the Iran Hostage Crisis, which marred his final year as president. (The hostages were not released until the very day his successor, Ronald Reagan, took office.) But a formal remembrance of a U.S. Presidency is granted to all who have held the position, not just those with an historically favorable record during their terms.

FedSpeak Today, Following Minutes from Last FOMC Meeting

A significant number of Fed members will make public addresses today. These include Philadelphia’s Patrick Harker, Boston’s Susan Collins, Richmond’s Tom Barkin, Kansas City’s Jeffrey Schmid and Fed Governor Michelle Bowman. These speeches will no doubt be focused on the Fed’s plans for cutting interest rates in 2025.

Yesterday’s release of the minutes from the December 17-18 Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting revealed no new real surprises, though we did note an increase in concern regarding how the incoming Trump administration’s policies may augment the trajectory the economy has been on over the past four years. These include tariffs on foreign imports increasing prices of goods here in the U.S. and deporting a high number of immigrants, which threatens to gut the domestic labor force, especially on the low-income side.

Friday’s Jobs Numbers the Big News of the Week