🗞️Government Funding Fiasco And Starbucks Workers Strike

December 20th, 2024

Good Evening 🇺🇸,

What happened today,

• As of writing this The House of Representatives finally voted to pass a stopgap funding bill to keep the government running into March, the bill now heads to the Senate for a vote and to avoid a shutdown

• The Biden administration announced that it would forgive another $4.28 billion in student loan debt for about 55,000 borrowers who work in public service

• Richard Allen, convicted of killing two teenage girls in the woods near Delphi, Indiana in 2017, was sentenced to 130 years in prison

• Starbucks workers say they'll be striking tomorrow in Chicago, L.A. and Seattle, and that the strike will spread to 100s of stores by Christmas eve if there's no progress on wage increases before then

• TikTok says banning it would cost U.S. small businesses and creators $1.3 billion in the first month per CNBC

• Party City is closing all of its stores and corporate employees were told today is their last day of employment

• The PCE price index, the Fed’s preferred inflation measure, showed an increase of just 0.1% from October and a 2.4% annual rate, both below expectations

• The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is suing the operator of the Zelle payments network and the three U.S. banks that dominate transactions on it, alleging that the firms failed to properly investigate fraud complaints or give victims reimbursements

• DOW up 1.18%/ S&P up 1.09%

• At least two people were killed and more than 60 were injured after a car plowed through a crowded Christmas market in Germany

Plus: A cool post on what percentage of households have air conditioning amongst different countries

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Quote of the day: “We cannot solve problems with the kind of thinking we employed when we came up with them.” —Albert Einstein

Have a great weekend!

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