The Economist: “Government debt is one of humanity’s great inventions. It allows societies to store wealth, fight crises and build for the future. After Britain’s superior access to credit helped it defeat Napoleon in 1815, one historian likened the country’s credit lines to Aladdin’s lamp. Two centuries later, during the covid-19 pandemic, much of the world looked on with similar astonishment as rich countries borrowed freely to splurge on support for households and health care.”

“The magic of borrowing, though, comes with a temptation—one that David Hume and Alexander Hamilton worried about in the late 18th century. If a country is sufficiently creditworthy to cover its existing debts, it is in a position to borrow more. Having manageable debts means you can manage more debt. And so it is all too easy for debt to grow.”

“If this goes on for too long, governments start to face pushback. The bond markets which meet their need for debt start to charge them more. New borrowing gets harder—and so does rolling over old debts. If governments do not then tighten their belts, the country’s all-important creditworthiness erodes in a way which can easily spiral out of control.”

“JPMorgan announced Monday that it’s planning a $1.5 trillion investment initiative aimed at bolstering sectors critical to the U.S. economy over the next decade, including up to $10 billion in direct equity and venture investments,” Axios reports.

“Gold — typically a safe-haven in times of turmoil — is soaring at the same time the stock market is hitting new highs, an unusual dynamic that is troubling some market insiders,” Axios reports.

“The rally in gold reflects investors’ desire to diversify away from dollar-denominated assets as trust in the U.S. slowly erodes, they say.”

“Gold futures on Tuesday topped a record high of over $4,000 an ounce for the first time, putting the precious metal on track for its best year since 1979 — a year of double-digit inflation, a Mideast oil crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. So far this year, the price of gold is up 51%.”

Wall Street Journal: Gold rally points to eroding faith in central banks worldwide.

“The Trump administration on Monday defended its plan to mint a $1 coin bearing the image of President Trump despite the fact that an 1866 law dictates that only the deceased can appear on U.S. currency,” the New York Times reports.

“Initial designs for the coins released by the U.S. treasurer last week stirred controversy and accusations that the Trump administration was violating the law so that Mr. Trump could honor himself by putting his face on a coin. The 1866 law enshrined a tradition that individuals could appear on U.S. currency only posthumously to avoid the appearance that America was a monarchy.”

“But in a post on Monday, the Treasury Department said that featuring Mr. Trump on a coin in celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday was authorized under the Circulating Collectible Coin Redesign Act of 2020.”

“The Treasury Department is considering producing a one-dollar coin featuring President Donald Trump to commemorate the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence next year,” Politico reports.

“The draft design of the coin, which was overseen by the Office of the U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach, features Trump’s profile on one side of the coin. The opposite side depicts Trump with a clenched fist in front of an American flag alongside the words ‘FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT.'”

“The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook to keep her job for now and scheduled arguments in January to weigh President Trump’s bid to fire her,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The justices on several occasions have allowed Trump to fire officials at other government agencies, but they also have signaled they believe the Fed is unique and enjoys more protections from presidential intervention. By placing the case on its argument calendar, the court buys itself more time to consider the issue.”

Wall Street Journal: “Zohran Mamdani, 33, shocked the world when he handily won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor running as a proud socialist. Mamdani’s victory has variously been attributed to his charisma, his adroit use of social media, his ability to bring South Asian residents into city politics and the warts of his leading opponents.”

“But it is also something else: the flowering of a movement that began to gestate nearly 20 years ago, when the misery of the financial crisis proved formative for a generation then just coming of age.”

President Trump posted a cartoon image depicting him firing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.

Lawyers for Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook argued that the Supreme Court should reject President Trump’s request that he be allowed to fire her pending the outcome of her lawsuit challenging her removal, CNBC reports.

From the filing: “The President’s stay application asks this Court to act on an emergency basis to eviscerate the independence of the Federal Reserve Board.”

Financial Times: “Austan Goolsbee backed the quarter-point reduction to US borrowing costs at last week’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting. But the Chicago Fed president told the Financial Times that he could be less willing to support further cuts at forthcoming policy votes.”

Vanity Fair: “The president promised a ‘golden age,’ but Americans buying actual gold to hedge against an unstable economy is probably not what he had in mind.”

“Gold—it’s not only the decoration of choice for Donald Trump’s White House, but, it seems, the asset of choice for investors skittish about the economy he’s overseeing.”

“Gold prices have been surging lately, climbing to a record high Tuesday amid declining value of the U.S. dollar, political instability, and anxiety over the president’s signature tariffs—the latest sign that his economy may not exactly be the ‘miracle’ he promised he’d deliver on the campaign trail.”

“Paul Atkins is laying the groundwork for a major regulatory overhaul that could tilt the balance of power between public companies and their shareholders in favor of corporate America,” Politico reports.

“In his first year as Securities and Exchange Commission chair, Atkins is acting quickly to pull back on how much information Wall Street giants, gadflies and the public at large may get about a company’s financial health as well as their ability to take those companies to court.”

“Wall Street thinks interest rates are poised to come down faster than the Federal Reserve does—a wager that is already boosting the economy and markets by making it cheaper for Americans to borrow,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Eric Trump has said growing demand for cryptocurrencies could ‘save the US dollar’ by attracting investment flows from around the world into America,” the Financial Times reports.

He claimed the digital assets boom would channel “trillions . . . from around the world in wonky currencies” towards the U.S. 

“If President Donald Trump hoped that putting a close ally at the Federal Reserve would grab headlines, White House economic adviser Stephen Miran’s dissent and way-below consensus interest rate projection on Wednesday delivered,” Reuters reports.

“If the hope was to have someone on the inside to get the Fed to lower interest rates as sharply as Trump wants, Miran’s lone dissent was evidence the gambit had failed, at least for now.”

Axios: Fed meeting hints at new future of the central bank.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said on Wednesday he would comply with a subpoena to hand over any files or records associated with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Politico reports.