Chapter 1: What recent merger involves Trump's media company and a fusion energy firm?
President Trump's media company struck a $6 billion deal to merge with a fusion power company. Plus, November inflation dropped to 2.7%. But why are economists taking the report with a grain of salt?
Even before this report came out, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell was warning that there could be potential distortions and really playing down the data.
And the Kennedy Center's board voted to rename it as the Trump Kennedy Center. It's Thursday, December 18th. I'm Sabrina Siddiqui for The Wall Street Journal, sitting in for Alex Ossola. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said today that inflation fell to 2.7% in November, lower than economists expected.
Chapter 2: Why did economists express caution about the November inflation report?
It was also down from 3% in September, and there was no October report because of the government shutdown. Economists have warned that the shutdown caused issues with data collection for the November report that may have distorted those numbers. Chow Dang, a Wall Street Journal reporter covering the U.S. economy, joins us now to discuss.
Chow, you write that economists feel the inflation rate might be understated in this report. Why is that?
Well, there was a government shutdown that lasted to mid-November that prevented the Labor Department from collecting some of the data that they normally would have to compile the report. So even going into today's release, economists were warning that some of the technical workarounds the agency had to use meant that the November figure might be biased a bit downwards.
Because the Labor Bureau wasn't able to collect data in October, Economists think that they made this assumption that housing costs didn't move much that month. And because the housing component composes a big part of the headline inflation, that workaround could have put downward pressure on the headline inflation reading.
And then because the government shutdown lasted through November 12th, at that point, when the labor statistics officials came back to survey data, it was right around Black Friday and Thanksgiving where you traditionally see a lot of holiday discounting. And so, again, some of the numbers collected could have been distorted by that.
And what's the thinking around how this affects the Fed's approach to interest rates?
The Federal Reserve will have December inflation numbers before it meets next time to talk about interest rates. So in some ways, it's going to be waiting for that. Even before this report came out, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell was warning that there could be potential distortions and really playing down the data.
That was The Wall Street Journal's Chao Deng. Stock markets turned higher after the inflation reading, with the Nasdaq leading the gains and closing up 1.4%. The S&P and Dow both rose by less than 1%. Trump Media and Technology Group will merge with fusion energy company TAE Technologies in a merger valued at $6 billion.
The merger would split ownership of the combined company roughly down the middle. With this deal, President Trump's media company aims to capitalize on the artificial intelligence boom's need for power. The combined company says it'll start building a fusion power plant next year and hopes to generate its first power in 2031. But fusion energy isn't yet considered to be commercially viable.
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Chapter 3: What factors may have distorted the November inflation data?
And from there, they will find a way to contact ISIS members or more experienced ISIS supervisors. Sometimes it's access to tutorials. And from that point on, the tools to carry an attack basically are in the hands of these perpetrators. There's a lot of content that really detail how to carry such attacks. And all of that would be accessible through basically remote access.
You don't need face-to-face contact with anybody.
The attackers in Australia were linked to Islamic State. Do authorities consider them ISIS lone wolves? And what are other recent examples of similar style attacks?
In this case, we have a flag found in a car belonging to one of the perpetrators in Australia. That was an Islamic State flag. In Manchester a few months ago, a similar attack, this time on a synagogue. Again, it was proved that it was an Islamic State-inspired attack because the perpetrator called the emergency services and claimed the attack as an Islamic State attack.
Another example in the US, in New Orleans on New Year's Day, the perpetrator posting a video just before the attack and basically saying he was doing it on behalf of the Islamic State. None of these people had ever traveled, that we know, to specific Islamic State camps. We don't have that final conclusion for the Sydney perpetrators. We know they went to the Philippines.
But as far as we know, in all these cases, there was never any evidence of a direct, you know, physical connection to the group.
And how does that differ from how the group used to operate?
So if we think about the Paris attacks that killed 130 people in 2015, these perpetrators had been sort of in Syria, fought with ISIS and prepared the attacks in ISIS-controlled territory before coming back to France. So we had a clear template of really Islamic State members perpetrating the attack with the consent, of course, of the group. Here it's very different.
We don't know about any operational connection. let alone physical connection of going to territories, you know, controlled by the group.
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