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The Fed has cut rates, but it’s still battling hard to fulfill its famous dual mandate: Keep inflation low and employment high. To understand the recent furore over job numbers and its relation to interest rates, editor Peter Green spoke with Tim Mahedy, chief economist at economic consulting firm Access Macro.
BBTW: Is a recession now inevitable?Tim Mahedy: I don’t think it’s inevitable. I do think we’ve inched closer over the last year, and the data we keep getting, particularly in the labor market, shows us that we were closer than we thought last year. There are structural things happening with labor demand and supply that allow you to have fewer job gains every month and not have it be as worrying as it would have been 10 years ago. That said, the pace of job gains over the summer is below the break-even rate. I think we’re at a spot where we’ll start seeing the unemployment rate rise. We are tiptoeing towards that recession. It would require either a change in federal immigration and trade policy, or looser monetary policy to help us stave off a recession.
What got us here?It’s a bunch of things together: We had a big boom in immigration that lifted potential GDP and lifted the equilibrium interest rate, and also some productivity gains from AI. The underlying fundamentals of the economy were stronger in ‘23 and ‘24 than some of us initially thought, and that helped us absorb higher interest rates. Immigration has now gone the exact opposite direction. That’s going to have the opposite impact on potential growth and interest rates. Trade policy, very clearly, is going to be inflationary. It’s going to hurt consumption and investment, especially if it continues to roll out as it does in little announcements over time, in a sequence of one-time shocks. Restrictive monetary policy is also forming this cloud that is both changing the underlying fundamentals of the economy and creating cyclical risk.
What about jobs?Two things are happening. There’s both structural shifts happening in the labor market reducing the demand for labor and the supply — an aging population. College graduates are also not doing great in terms of long term unemployment. That’s really getting hollowed out because of AI. The other thing is that there was a surge in hiring post-pandemic that may have shifted demand from the future. So now we’re in a spot where people are over-hired.
The Fed cut rates by 25 basis points. Will that fix things?This is a really hard time to be making monetary policy. We don’t get these instances often where the dual mandate is truly in conflict.The core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index inflation rates have been increasing for five months. So we’re getting more and more inflation. At the same time, obviously, the labor market is weakening, so the Fed is stuck in a really tough spot where they’re going to have to pick between these things. What they’ve done is to try to split the difference.
Will that work? The New York Fed says we won’t see inflation down to the 2% target until the end of 2027.We’ve now had inflation above the target rate for 53 months. So, you’re talking about six and a half, seven years of inflation above 2% every single month. And you have to either acknowledge that risk and say we’re going to risk that and have inflation go even higher, to cut faster to avoid a labor market decline, or we’re going to have to really get inflation under control and we’re going to raise the risk of a recession. Going down the middle of the road is the most risky strategy.
Going forward, what should we be paying attention to in the job numbers?Look at the monthly pace of your core inflation, look at the concentration of job gains. At this moment, we’re adding jobs, but they’re concentrated in one sector. More than 80% of job gains this year have been in health care and social assistance. That’s a huge concentration. If we’re going to stay at this level of job gains, I’d like to see it spread out a bit. The economy is fragile, and just like your portfolio needs to be diversified, you want to see the economy adding jobs in lots of different places, even if it’s not a lot of jobs.
This interview has been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.
—Peter S. Green
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The short stackThe way people go to the movies has been changing but don’t be fooled into thinking the future is bleak for movie theaters. In fact, when you crunch the box office numbers they reveal some optimistic trends.
Some analysts panicked when James Camerons’ latest “Avatar” chapter debuted $20 million under box office projections on its opening weekend back in December 2022. But in due course, the film made five times that number in box office, and there is no reason to fret this summer’s box office, either, because numbers seem to be showing us that people tend to go out less for opening weekends of major movies than they used to. Instead, the secret to success for modern movies seems to lie in their long “legs.”
“Superman”, “Weapons,” and “F1: The Movie” each had solid opening weekends, but their real success was in their long legs. Not Aunt Gladys’ stellar gams, but the films’ weekend-to-weekend holds, with each making about three and a half times the amount of their debut weekend over the course of their theater runs. It means people actually liked these movies, told their friends and families to go, or returned themselves.
There have been a few other surprising trends in recent box office numbers. First up, reboots originally bound for streaming have outperformed. Both “Freakier Friday” and the summer’s biggest winner “Lilo & Stitch (2025)” were originally bound for streaming, so Disney would’ve been thrilled if they brought in any money at all, and they did in fact bring in a lot. The Lindsay Lohan reboot bought in almost $150 million and the Lilo and Stitch remake made $423 million domestically.
Different kinds of movies were making a splash in a way they haven’t in a while, with two R-rated horror films, “Weapons” and “Final Destination: Bloodlines” cracking the top 10 domestic summer box office and A24’s romantic dramedy ”Materialists” making over $100 million globally.
There were some surprising losses with films like Pixar’s “Elio” and “Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning”, which made $600 million globally but needed to make around $800 million to justify its $400 million production budget. But those aren’t the main story. Film going culture is rebuilding itself, and the future looks bright with great holds, studios making their streaming content profitable, and variety returning to the big screen.
NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is rising toward more records on Thursday as Nvidia and Intel lead a rally for technology stocks after announcing a deal that includes a $5 billion investment.
The S&P 500 rose 0.7% and was on track to top its all-time high, which was set at the start of the week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 212 points, or 0.5%, as of 10:45 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1% higher. Both were likewise flirting with records.
Intel soared 26% and was heading toward its best day since 1987 after Nvidia said it would buy $5 billion of the chipmaker’s stock. It’s part of a collaboration where the pair will develop products for data centers and personal computers. Nvidia climbed 2.9% and was by far the strongest force lifting the S&P 500 because it’s Wall Street’s most valuable company.
Encouraging reports on the economy, meanwhile, helped send Treasury yields spurting in the bond market. One report said that growth in manufacturing in the mid-Atlantic region was much stronger than economists expected. Another said that fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week than expected.
The report could indicate the pace of layoffs is slowing, and it was a relief after the prior week’s data showed a disconcerting leap to a four-year high. The job market has slowed so much that the Federal Reserve on Wednesday cut its main interest rate for the first time this year in order to give it some help.
The Fed also indicated more cuts may be on the way this year and next, though Chair Jerome Powell warned that the Fed is stuck in a precarious position and may have to change course quickly. That’s because the economy is in the unusual situation where the job market is slowing when inflation is remaining stubbornly high at the same time.
The Fed is in charge of fixing both, but it has only one tool to do that. And helping one by moving interest rates often hurts the other in the short term.
Expectations are high on Wall Street for the Fed to keep cutting interest rates, and a halt in cuts could send stocks tumbling. Critics say stock prices have already shot too high and become too expensive, in part because of the heavy bets on continued cuts in rates.
On Wall Street, Novo Nordisk saw its stock that trades in the United States rise 6.9% after the Danish company said a newly published study showed its once-daily pill version of Wegovy helped people lose significant weight. It also said that its Ozempic product reduced the risk of heart attack, stroke and death for patients versus another treatment for people with type 2 diabetes.
Meta Platforms was one of the strongest stocks pushing the S&P 500 upward. It climbed 1.4% a day after unveiling its latest smart glasses powered by artificial-intelligence technology, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg said could be controlled by barely perceptible movements through a neural wristband.
On the losing end of Wall Street, the company behind Olive Garden and other restaurant chains sank 9.5% after it reported a profit for the latest quarter that was below analysts’ expectations. Darden Restaurants also raised its forecast for revenue growth this fiscal year, but not by much more than analysts expected.
Cracker Barrel fell 1.7% after the restaurant chain likewise reported a weaker profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It also gave a forecast for revenue in its upcoming fiscal year that fell short of analysts’, as the controversy over its planned logo change continues to play out.
The Walt Disney Co. slipped 0.6% after the entertainment giant announced that its ABC television division had suspended Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show indefinitely after comments that he made about Charlie Kirk’s killing led a group of ABC-affiliated stations to say they would not air the show.
Earlier in the day, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr called Kimmel’s comments “truly sick” and said his agency has a strong case for holding Kimmel, ABC and Disney accountable for spreading misinformation.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose in Europe following a mixed performance in Asia.
London’s FTSE 100 added 0.3% after the Bank of England held its main interest rate steady.
South Korea’s Kospi rallied 1.4%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1.4% for two of the world’s bigger moves.
In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury jumped to 4.12% from 4.06% late Wednesday. It’s a notable move after it had briefly dropped below 4% on Wednesday, weighed down by expectations for continued cuts to interest rates by the Fed.
___
AP Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has used threats, lawsuits and government pressure as he remakes the American media landscape, unleashing his long-standing grievances against an industry that has mocked, criticized and scorned him for years.
He has extracted multimillion dollar settlements, forced companies into costly litigation and prompted changes to programming that he found objectionable.
In his latest victory, ABC announced on Wednesday that the Jimmy Kimmel show would be taken off the air for the comedian’s comments about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Kimmel’s remarks included references to the suspect’s disputed political ideology.
Hours before ABC’s decision, Brendan Carr, Trump’s handpicked head of the Federal Communications Commission, warned that ABC and its local affiliates could face repercussions if Kimmel was not punished.
“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” Carr said, referencing ABC’s parent company. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
It was the kind of brute force response that Trump and his loyalists have routinely flexed since the Republican president returned to the White House with a vow to retaliate against critics and political opponents. Trump’s reach has extended deep into the private sector, using the apparatus of the federal government to pressure companies to make changes that can reshape the public dialogue.
At a news conference Thursday during his state visit to Britain, Trump said Kimmel “said a horrible thing about a great gentleman known as Charlie Kirk.” The president said Kimmel “had very bad ratings and they should have fired him a long time ago.” He added: “You can call that free speech or not, he was fired for lack of talent.”
Trump has already reached settlements with ABC and CBS over their coverage He has filed defamation lawsuits against The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Republicans in Congress stripped federal funding from NPR and PBS. At the FCC, Carr has used his influence at the country’s communications regulator to target diversity, equity and inclusion programs and to root out what he describes as liberal bias.
Trump’s efforts appear to be escalating after Kirk’s assassination, with broader implications for the future of free speech protections that have been a bedrock of the American political system.
Attorney General Pam Bondi recently said that “we will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.” Her words alarmed advocates who fear an elastic definition of the term could be used to criminalize dissent.
The First Amendment is widely viewed as protecting even the most disparaging remarks, and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a 2017 decision that “speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend.”
Bondi later revised her comments to say she was focused on “hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence.”
Todd Blanche, Bondi’s deputy, suggested that protesters could have violated the law by yelling at Trump while he visited a restaurant near the White House.
“Is it sheer happenstance that individuals show up at a restaurant where the president is trying to enjoy dinner in Washington, D.C., and accost him with vile words and vile anger?” Blanche said. He said authorities could investigate whether it’s “part of an organized effort to inflict harm and terror and damage to the United States.”
Politics and comedy collide on late-night showsAs a celebrity real estate developer and reality television star before entering politics, Trump has been fixated on his public image and media coverage even more than most presidents.
He often complains about mockery from late-night comedy hosts, whose shows remain television landmarks even as their influence wanes in the country’s increasingly diffuse media environment.
The latest episode began Monday night, when Kimmel began talking about last week’s shooting of Kirk, which took place while Kirk was speaking on a college campus in Utah.
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said. He also compared Trump’s grief over the death to “how a 4-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
Trump allies said Kimmel was falsely suggesting that the shooter was right wing. Authorities have not formally presented a motive for the killing, but evidence indicates that he held liberal beliefs. Gov. Spencer Cox, R-Utah, has said “there clearly was a leftist ideology,”
On Wednesday, Carr appeared on a podcast hosted by Benny Johnson, a conservative commentator, and accused Kimmel of the “sickest conduct possible.” Carr said ”you could make a strong argument that this is sort of an intentional effort to mislead the American people about a very core fundamental fact.”
Carr placed the move against Kimmel in the broader context of Trump’s efforts to undermine the power of legacy media companies.
“He smashed the facade that they get to control what we say, what we think, the narrative around events,” Carr said. ”And we’re seeing a lot of consequences from President Trump doing that.”
Reminding affiliates that their broadcast licenses come with an “obligation to operate in the public interest,” Carr said “it’s time for them to step up” and say Kimmel’s content “isn’t something that we think serves the needs of our local communities.”
Kimmel faces corporate backlashIt didn’t take long for Nexstar Media Group, the country’s biggest operator of television stations, to echo some of Carr’s language.
“Continuing to give Mr. Kimmel a broadcast platform in the communities we serve is simply not in the public interest at the current time, and we have made the difficult decision to preempt his show in an effort to let cooler heads prevail as we move toward the resumption of respectful, constructive dialogue,” Andrew Alford, president of Nexstar’s broadcasting division, said in statement.
The controversy landed at a sensitive time for Nexstar, which needs FCC approval for its $6.2 billion acquisition of Tegna.
ABC soon announced that Kimmel would be taken off the air. It is unclear when or whether he would return. Kimmel has not commented publicly.
Later in the evening, the television company Sinclair said its stations would carry “a special in remembrance of Charlie Kirk” on Friday during Kimmel’s usual time slot. The company also asked Kimmel to apologize to Kirk’s family and donate money to Turning Point USA, the conservative group that Kirk turned into a political powerhouse.
The news of Kimmel’s suspension broke after midnight in Britain, but Trump soon posted on Truth Social, his social media platform, to celebrate what he called “Great News for America.”
“Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage to do what had to be done,” he wrote.
Then he said more dominoes should fall, calling for the cancellation of shows by Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers.
“Do it NBC!!!”
___
This story corrects the spelling of Nexstar.
NEW YORK (AP) — Nvidia, the world’s leading chipmaker, announced on Thursday that it’s investing $5 billion in Intel and will collaborate with the struggling semiconductor company.
The two companies will team up to work on custom data centers that form the backbone of artificial intelligence infrastructure as well as personal computer products, Nvidia said in a press release.
Nvidia said it will spend $5 billion to buy Intel common stock at $23.28 a share. The investment, which is subject to regulatory approvals, comes a month after the U.S. government took a 10% stake in Intel.
“This historic collaboration tightly couples NVIDIA’s AI and accelerated computing stack with Intel’s CPUs and the vast x86 ecosystem — a fusion of two world-class platforms," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said. “Together, we will expand our ecosystems and lay the foundation for the next era of computing.”
The two companies said they will work on “seamlessly connecting” their architectures.
In morning trading, Intel shares jumped 25%, its biggest one-day percentage gain in decades. Nvidia shares added 2%.
For data centers, Intel will make custom chips that Nvidia will use in its AI infrastructure platforms. While for PC products, Intel will build chips that integrate Nvidia technology.
The agreement provides a lifeline for Intel, which was a Silicon Valley pioneer that enjoyed decades of growth as its processors powered the personal computer boom, but fell into a slump after missing the shift to the mobile computing era unleashed by the iPhone’s 2007 debut.
Intel fell even farther behind in recent years amid the artificial intelligence boom that’s propelled Nvidia into the world’s most valuable company. Intel lost nearly $19 billion last year and another $3.7 billion in the first six months of this year, and expects to slash its workforce by a quarter by the end of 2025.
The U.S. government stepped in last month to secure a 10% stake, making it one of Intel’s biggest shareholders. Federal officials said they invested in Intel in order to bolster U.S. technology and domestic manufacturing.
The deal is “bullish for U.S. tech,” Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives said in a client note.
“This is a game-changer deal for Intel as it now brings them front and center into the AI game,” Ives said. “Along with the recent U.S. government investment for 10% (equity stake in Intel) this has been a golden few weeks for Intel after years of pain and frustration for investors.”
Nvidia, meanwhile, has soared because its specialized chips are underpinning the artificial intelligence boom. The chips, known as graphics processing units, or GPUs, are highly effective at developing powerful AI systems.
The deal between the two chipmakers comes as China moves to be less dependent on U.S. semiconductor technology. This week, Chinese officials reportedly forbade several large domestic technology companies from purchasing Nvidia chips, and Huawei announced that it was expanding its development of AI chips and manufacturing.
While Nvidia and Intel will work together to develop new chips, a manufacturing deal has yet to be struck between the two. The potential access to Intel’s chip foundries by Nvidia poses a risk to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, which currently manufactures the tech giant’s flagship processors.
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