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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Tuesday signaled a cautious approach to future interest rate cuts, in sharp contrast with other Fed officials who have called for a more urgent approach. In remarks in Providence, Rhode Island, Powell noted that there are risks to both of the Fed’s goals of seeking maximum employment and stable prices. But with the unemployment rate rising, he noted, the Fed agreed to cut its key rate last week. Yet he did not signal any further cuts on the horizon. If the Fed were to cut rates too aggressively, Powell said, we could leave the inflation job unfinished and need to reverse course later” and raise rates. But if the Fed keeps its rate too high for too long, “the labor market could soften unnecessarily,” he added. Powell’s remarks echoed the caution he expressed during a news conference last week, after the Fed announced its first rate cut this year. At that time he said, it’s challenging to know what to do. His approach is in sharp contrast to some members of the Fed’s rate-setting committee who are pushing for faster cuts. On Monday, Stephen Miran, whom President Donald Trump appointed to the Fed’s governing board, said that the Fed should quickly reduce its rate to as low as 2% to 2.5%, from its current level of about 4.1%. Miran is also a top adviser in the Trump administration and expects to return to the White House after his term expires in January, though Trump could appoint him to a longer term. And earlier Tuesday, Fed governor Michelle Bowman also said the central bank should cut more quickly. Bowman, who was appointed by Trump in his first term, said inflation appears to be cooling while the job market is stumbling, a combination that would support lower rates. When the Fed cuts its key rate, it often over time reduces other borrowing costs for things like mortgages, car loans, and business loans. It is time for the (Fed) to act decisively and proactively to address decreasing labor market dynamism and emerging signs of fragility, Bowman said in a speech in Asheville, North Carolina. We are at serious risk of already being behind the curve in addressing deteriorating labor market conditions. Should these conditions continue, I am concerned that we will need to adjust policy at a faster pace and to a larger degree going forward. Yet Powell’s comments showed little sign of such urgency. Other Fed officials have also expressed caution about cutting rates too fast, reflecting deepening divisions on the rate-setting committee. On Tuesday, Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve’s Chicago branch, said in an interview on CNBC that the Fed should move slowly given that inflation is above its 2% target. With inflation having been over the target for 4 1/2 years in a row, and rising, I think we need to be a little careful with getting overly up-front aggressive,” he said. Last week the Fed cut its key rate for the first time this year to about 4.1%, down from about 4.3%, and policymakers signaled they would likely reduce rates twice more. Fed officials said in a statement that their concerns about slower hiring had risen, though they noted that inflation is still above their 2% target. Christopher Rugaber, AP economics writer
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E-Commerce
British teenage boys aged 15 to 17 spend nearly 34 hours on average a week playing video games, a new report revealed. Thats almost five hours a day, seven days a week, and thats only according to parents estimates. The data was based on a survey of more than 1,000 parents of 7 to 17-year-olds, polled on Mumsnet, an internet forum for parents of children and teenagers. The research was commissioned by Ygam, an independent UK charity dedicated to preventing gaming and gambling harms among young people. The bulk of the group’s funding comes from GambleAware, a UK charity, with additional support from the UK gambling industry and other individual sources. While boys in the UK are bigger gamers than girls, the average time spent gaming for all genders has jumped 3.5 hours in the past year, to 20.4 hours per week, up from 16.8 hours in 2024. The average time children are expected to spend in a UK secondary school, meanwhile, is 32.5 hours. While these games often appear innocent to an observing parent, about half of parents noted gambling-like mechanisms in the games their child plays, including mystery boxes and loot boxes. As these in-game microtransactions involve spending money for a chance outcome, in essence, its analogous to gambling. Almost half (41 percent) of parents expressed concern about this exposure at such a young age. The fact that teenagers spend more time on hobbies like gaming than in the classroom is not, in itself, surprising. After all, most school days are finished by 5pm, leaving many hours for extracurricular activities. The data does, however, speak to the activity’s popularity among among young people. It is hard as a parent to manage it as there is so much peer pressure, one parent of an 11 or 12 year old boy told researchers. He was one of the last children in his class to get a console and really felt left behind as it was all that the rest of his class would talk about. Face-to-face time Teens are also spending far less face-to-face time with friends than they used to. For 38 percent of young men, gaming is the main way they socialize, with 75 percent of parents reporting that their child played video games where they were able to interact with people theyre not physically with. For parents, the social aspect of gaming culture can be a minefield. Fast Company recently reported on a wrongful death lawsuit filed against Roblox and Discord by the mother of a teenage boy. The 15-year-old died by suicide after allegedly being targeted by an adult sex predator posing as a child on the platforms. Unsupervised contact with strangers via game systems is one of parents top concerns. The chatrooms on these platforms cannot be monitored in the same way that games themselves can be, another parent of a teenage girl told researchers. There’s too much interaction with strangers which I definitely don’t like. I have added parental controls to my sons Xbox account and to his phone, but I dont think it filters out enough dangerous content, another parent of a young boy added. I find him talking to strangers when I didnt know he could. Hes now clear that he isnt allowed to do that, but hes 10. It should never have been possible in the first place. While parents also recognized the benefits of gaming for children, particularly in lowering stress levels and helping them to relax, the fear of the unknown increasingly eclipses those upsides. Its important that families are supported to keep gaming enjoyable by setting boundaries, establishing healthy gaming habits, and using the available controls to ensure the content children are exposed to is appropriate, said Helen Martin, interim chief executive of Ygam. Education has an essential role to play not just for young gamers, but also for the adults who care for them to help safeguard children and keep pace with our rapidly evolving digital world.
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E-Commerce
The Trump administration wants to redistribute $2.4 billion it pulled from California’s high-speed rail project as part of a new $5 billion program announced Monday to fund rail projects to boost passenger rail traffic nationwide. The new program’s rules for states and others wanting to participate remove any mention of diversity or climate change dating to the Biden administration. The new program will also put a priority on projects in areas with higher rates of birth and marriage and projects that improve safety at railroad crossings. The Trump administration has removed climate change and so-called DEI language from other grant requirements, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy took a jab at that Biden-era language and California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s rail project in his announcement. Our new National Railroad Partnership Program will emphasize safety our number one priority without the radical … DEI and green grant requirements. Instead of wasting dollars on Governor Newsoms high-speed rail boondoggle, these targeted investments will improve the lives of rail passengers, local drivers, and pedestrians,” Duffy said. The biggest chunk of this money, the Federal Railroad Administration announced, comes from the $4 billion that was pulled from the California project. The rest of the money comes from a combination of what was announced last year and what is in this years budget. President Donald Trump and Duffy have both criticized the decades-old California project for its cost overruns and many delays that have kept the train that’s designed to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles from becoming a reality. California officials said they will fight the effort to redistribute money they believe should be going to their project. They had already filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s decision to pull federal funding from the rail project. The FRAs decision to terminate federal funding for California high-speed rail was unlawful, unwarranted, and is being challenged in federal court. Now, their attempt to redirect a portion of that funding, currently the subject of litigation, is premature, said Micah Flores, a spokesman for the California High-Speed Rail Authority. The Authority has been prepared for this possibility and will take imminent legal action to block this misguided effort by the FRA. The focus on areas with higher birth and marriage rates reflects Trump’s executive orders that make spending that benefits American families a priority in his administration, according to an FRA spokesman. The Federal Railroad Administration said railroad crossings are important to address because more than 200 people a year are killed when trains collide with vehicles or pedestrians at crossings. That has long been something the government and railroads have worked to address, but it is costly to build bridges or underpasses that allow cars to safely bypass the tracks. Even though the money is targeted toward improving passenger rail, some of it will almost certainly go to improvements on the nation’s major freight railroads because Amtrak uses their tracks for most of its long-distance routes across the country. The administration also said it would give priority to projects that improve the traveling experience for families by adding amenities like nursing mothers’ rooms, expanded waiting areas and children’s play areas in train stations. Applications for this money are due by Jan. 7. Josh Funk, AP transportation writer Associated Press writer Sophie Austin contributed to this report.
Category:
E-Commerce
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