Thursday, October 31, 2024

Taking it slow

Bloomberg Evening Briefing Americas

Overall inflation in the US is now 2.1%, the lowest since early 2021 and just above the central bank's 2% goal. The Federal Reserve's preferred measure, however, posted its biggest monthly gain since April, bolstering the case for a slower pace of interest-rate cuts following last month's big reduction. The so-called core personal consumption expenditures price index, which strips out volatile food and energy items, increased 0.3% in September. On the jobs front, applications for unemployment benefits fell last week to their lowest since May. Initial claims decreased by 12,000 to 216,000 in the week ended Oct. 26. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 230,000 applications. Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, fell to 1.86 million in the previous week, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. 

What You Need to Know Today

A year ago, Citigroup Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser unveiled a plan to simplify the sprawling global bank—a plan that involved terminating 20,000 jobs. Now, a group of former Citigroup bankers is urging the firm's board to cancel bonuses for hundreds of managers, slash spending on consultants and take other steps to accelerate the company's turnaround. The group is demanding the panel claw back and halt millions of dollars in bonuses raked in by bosses across Citigroup for their work implementing Fraser's plan.

Jane Fraser, chief executive of Citigroup Photographer: Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg

BlackRock is looking to replicate the unique fund blueprint that helped Vanguard save clients billions of dollars on taxes over the course of two decades. BlackRock requested permission to create exchange-traded fund share classes of its mutual funds. Vanguard's patent on the multi-share class fund expired in 2023, and since the start of last year the frenzy over the product has picked up: 33 asset managers have now asked the US Securities and Exchange Commission for permission to recreate the model. BlackRock's Bitcoin fund, meanwhile, posted an unprecedented net inflow Wednesday as speculation over how the US election may play out stirs demand.

Private equity pioneer KKR is testing whether investors still crave the asset class after more than two years of sluggish dealmaking squeezed returns across the industry. The firm recently began gathering cash for its latest North America buyout fund and is said to be aiming to raise $20 billion while offering incentives to investors who sign up early in the form of a sizable check.

Ford plans to shut down the Michigan factory that produces its F-150 Lightning plug-in pickup truck, its signature electric vehicle, as demand for EVs continues to wane. The move is the latest blow to a model that had been a centerpiece of Ford's EV strategy and that Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley said would be "a test for adoption of electric vehicles." The automaker is to begin a seven-week shutdown in mid-November of the Dearborn plant visited by President Joe Biden in 2021, who drove a Lightning and declared "this sucker's quick."

A 2024 Ford F-150 Lightning  Photographer: Graham Hughes/Bloomberg

US Vice President Kamala Harris seized on a remark from Donald Trump that he would "protect" women if elected, whether they "like it or not," to assail him on women's rights in general and reproductive rights in particular. Trump's three Supreme Court appointees were critical to the elimination of the federal right to abortion, and the former president has reportedly expressed support for a federal abortion ban in the past, though he has shifted his stance repeatedly and now says he'd veto it. "It actually is, I think, very offensive to women in terms of not understanding their agency, their authority, their right and their ability to make decisions about their own lives, including their own bodies," Harris, 60, said Thursday ahead of a western-state campaign swing. Trump, 78, has been trying to move on (with the help of Biden) from the furor over his weekend rally in New York, where one speaker now-infamously insulted Puerto Rico. Trump today is reportedly traveling to New Mexico and Virginia in an unusual, late-campaign detour to traditionally Democratic-leaning states.

Donald Trump holds a press conference from inside a garbage truck at the airport in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Oct. 30, part of an effort to capitalize on a remark by Joe Biden as he discussed Trump's controversial Madison Square Garden rally.  Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America

The multitrillion-dollar tax cut bill Trump signed in 2017 largely benefitted the rich and corporations. Now, some of the provisions of that law, pushed through by then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell when the Republican Party controlled both houses of Congress, are expiring. Trump has said he wants to renew and expand the law, but that would require winning the election and the GOP gaining control of the Senate while holding on to the House. In the meantime, wealthy Americans are preparing to accelerate a huge transfer of wealth to their heirs by using the law's large estate-tax breaks—while they still can.

What You'll Need to Know Tomorrow

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