Locator: 44495B.
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Hiatus Between November 5, 2024 - January 20, 2025: Twelve Weeks
Biden-Trump Transition
December 15 - December 21, 2024: Week Seven
The transition works this way, this cycle:
- Biden's emphasis is on pardons and commutations;
- setting up Trump for failure; Biden will fade away
- Trump's focus is to look presidential well before inauguration
- putting his administration (and "Shadow Government") in place;
- nominations: being named
- executive orders being drafted
The Florida White House:
- Trump is the president, simply waiting to make it official, January 20th (unchanged from last week)
- surrounding himself with "self-made billionaires"
- those billionaires not named to his administration are making pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago
- to state their case why they are worthy
- sort of reminds me of the three wise men making their way to Bethlehem
- in this case: Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Tim Cook
- Mar-a-Lago's chief of staff: Elon Musk
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The Top Stories
Top story of the week:
- Federal government passed continuing resolution to keep government open / operating through March
- Musk, Trump provided mixed messages throughout the process
Top international non-energy story:
- Trudeau's government likely to fail but as of December 22, 2024, still the prime minister
Top international energy story:
Top national non-energy story:
- stock market volatility; after the Fed's meeting, the US equity markets tanked, but then recovered before the week ended;
- the Fed cut rates by 25 basis points as expected, but JPow, playing the role of Scrooge this year, said he expected only two more cuts in the entire 2025 year when traders were banking on four more cuts; all of a sudden the Fed sounds more hawkish
- interestingly, after the Fed meeting, US economic numbers came in stronger than ever
- tech stocks led the market slump;
- Apple / AAPL finished the week hitting an all-time high.
Top national energy story:
Focus on fracking: current link here. Generally updated late Sunday night.
Top North Dakota non-energy story:
Top North Dakota energy story:
Geoff Simon's quick connects: link here.
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