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The economy continued to expand and manufacturing activity expanded but shutdown hurt in some areas and China worries persist.

Stocks may well rebound in the new year. But for now, Jerome Powell has put a giant lump of coal in America’s Christmas stocking.

FFederal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powel revealed the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) brought the prediction down to two rate hikes in 2019 from three in light of the quarter percent rate hike announced Wednesday afternoon.

Economists are not very worried about a recession next year. But 50 percent think the next recession will start in 2020.

“Maybe he wants Trump to lose,” Cramer said on the financial news networks’ “Squawk on the Street” program.

Fed officials think the economy is strong enough to justify rates marching steadily upwards.

Housing starts and mortgage applications were lower than expected. It may be time for the Fed to rethink its plan to hike interest rates further.

“Navigating by the stars can sound straightforward. Guiding policy by the stars in practice, however, has been quite challenging,” Powell said.

The GDPNow forecast has been climbing higher following the releases of good economic data. On May 25, the measure foresaw four percent GDP growth. This rose to 4.7 percent Thursday and ticked even higher on Friday following the better than expected jobs report for May.

Two of Donald Trump’s front-runners for Fed Chairman represent “the monetary policies that have favored the affluent and done little or nothing for the real economy,” says the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board. Current Chair Janet Yellen and Fed Board alum Jay Powell are, according to the publication, a continuation of the same failed Fed policies that led “so many working-class voters [to turn] to Mr. Trump in 2016.”

Mexico’s central bank was forced to pledge up to 12 percent of the nation’s total foreign exchange reserves to prevent a disastrous run on the peso currency, which has already fallen by 20 percent since the U.S. elections on November 8.

U.S. stocks crashed 2.5 percent on Friday, September 9 as Wall Street woke up to the risk of “Two Bumps and a Stumble” — i.e. when it takes two interest rate hikes to generate a market reaction.

Chairman Janet Yellen says the Federal Reserve is delaying hiking interest rates, so the rapidly inflating real-estate bubble seems headed toward another crisis.

With the appointment of Neel Kashkari as President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, former Goldman Sachs executives will hold 4 of the 5 Fed Presidents’ seats on the powerful Federal Open Markets Committee that controls U.S. interests rates.

At the Jackson Hole Economic Summit the American Principles Project demonstrated that the people can’t be fooled in the long term by monetary magic forever. In a national poll by McLaughlin & McLaughlin 1,000 respondents were asked if they would support the Gold Standard in the United States. 39% replied yes, 15% replied no, and 46% were undecided. That is more than a 2:1 ratio for favorability.

These results and the margin between approve and disapprove are better than recent polls on the Federal Reserve or its recent leaders as shown in recent Gallup polls over the last two years: Negative on the Fed and its leaders are very high, while negatives on Gold are very low.

From its founding until the beginning of the 20th century, the United States went from a non-economy to being the world’s largest and wealthiest economy. It achieved this feat on the gold standard mostly, with no central bank, (except for 36 years), and with little or no central planning.

It was a very deep depression, as deep as the one that succeeded in 1929. But in this case, the government did not intervene, and it was over in less than two years. Was this a coincidence? Grant does not think it was. He believes, as this writer does, that present government interventions have deepened our current economic malaise and are retarding a full recovery.

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel revealed Tuesday at the California Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes that the company is planning for an initial public offering (IPO). He said the company, recently valued at $15 billion, had no desire to be acquired in a merger like the Facebook’s $3 billion offer two years ago. Then, in a refreshing twist for such a young captain of industry, Spiegel warned that the Fed’s “easy money policy” and low interest have created a tech bubble and it’s only a “matter of time till it bursts.”