The Show Notes: Blue State Students, Violence in Mexico, & The Superbubble
Welcome! A Democrat defeated Sarah Palin in a House race in Alaska last night.
Markets are down for a fifth consecutive session following Powell’s speech.
NEW: Twitter will finally let you edit tweets - if you pay.
Editors note: We apologize for the excessive number of links behind paywalls. We try to link to as much free content as possible but the news cycle had other plans today.
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Tweet of the day:
National Test Score Fall
The national test scores for 9-year-old students have fallen to a two-decade low following the COVID-19 pandemic. For the first time since the 1970s, the average American 9-year-old backtracked in math and lost significant ground in reading. The New York Times (paywall) covers the story but fails to mention the effort put forth by red states like Georgia to get students back in the classroom ASAP while teachers’ unions in blue states kept kids locked out. In fact, let’s all remember this article from The Atlantic accusing Georgia Governor Brian Kemp of human sacrifice. Greg has the best tweet:
Grantham’s “Superbubble” Warning
Famed investor Jeremy Grantham is warning the stock market is in the midst of a superbubble due to a “dangerous mix” of overvalued stocks, commodity supply, housing issues, and hawkishness from the Federal Reserve. Bloomberg (paywall) has the recap:
“My bet is that we're going to have a fairly tough time of it economically and financially before this is washed through the system,’’ Grantham said. “What I don't know is: Does that get out of hand like it did in the ‘30s, is it pretty well contained as it was in 2000 or is it somewhere in the middle?"
Grantham’s prediction comes one week after Jerome Powell’s pointed speech queled market speculation that the Federal Reserve would back off of rate hikes in the near future. As noted at the top of the email, markets are down for the fifth consecutive session since Powell spoke. Go deeper here.
Violence In Mexico
The government of Mexico continues to lose control as cartel activity escalates across the county. In an attempt to slow surging violence, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador replaced the Federal Police with a civilian-led organization called the National Guard. Three years later, cartels are thriving and the government has lost half of its intelligence capabilities used to fight cartels. Reports indicate the National Guard often times shows up late to active shootings and made about a third of the arrests the Federal Police made three years ago. This is from The New York Times (paywall):
“Yet in Celaya, the restaurant attack was just a normal Wednesday afternoon. Seemingly everyone in this city of some 500,000 people in central Mexico knows someone killed or missing. Homicides in the city were up 32 percent in the first four months of the year compared to the same period in 2021. Community volunteers meet weekly to search for bodies. The government is rarely able to prevent violence or bring its perpetrators to justice.”
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Read the thread:
The rest of the news:
🚨 U.S. Forces Ordered to Stop Using Gender Pronouns to Improve ‘Lethality’ - Washington Free Beacon
🚨 Thousands of Xcel customers locked out of thermostats during 'energy emergency' - Denver7
How the DOJ has built a case against Trump for obstruction - NY Post
Jobless claims total 232,000, the lowest level in two months - CNBC
🚨 How Alaska's ranked-choice voting system works - CNN
🚨 The Verdict Is in for El Salvador’s Bitcoin Experiment: It Failed - National Review
This is the minimum amount of cash you need to be prepared for an unexpected emergency, new data finds - CNBC
🚨 Fetterman has a 79% chance of beating Dr Oz - FiveThirtyEight
Outrage as Berkeley is now demanding students wear masks if they are not vaccinated against FLU - Dailymail
Taiwanese troops shoot down drone over island outpost - AP News
Stephen Colbert officially loses ratings battle to Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld - Fansided
🚨 Republicans are readying lawsuits to block Biden’s student debt plan - WAPO (paywall)
Democratic Midterm Prospects Improve as Races Heat Up, WSJ Poll Finds - WSJ (paywall)
Tweets that caught my eye: