Medicaid waiver OK’d for Pa. but plan must clear with budget
Consumer confidence, new home sales highlight Tuesday's economic calendarUnitedHealthcare CEO kept a low public profile. Then he was shot to death in New York
During an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) warned against efforts to bring Ukraine into NATO. According to the Missouri Republican, such a move would risk a “from now until forever” conflict with Russia. Partial transcript as follows: INGRAHAM: Well, the deal that Biden and company scotched at the beginning of this war, before the war started. That would have avoided the war. It looks like what they’re going to end up with is worse than they would have gotten had they not done this at all. That’s what it looks like at least. It could change. But now, Senator, Zelenskyy has a magic solution to end the war. Watch. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, PRESIDENT, UKRAINE (VIA TRANSLATOR): If we want to stop the hot stage of the war, we should take on the NATO umbrella, the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control. (END VIDEO CLIP) INGRAHAM: Your reaction, Senator. HAWLEY: No, absolutely not. They should not put any part of Ukraine in NATO. And listen, this administration is already risking World War III by greenlighting the use of American weapons into Russian territory. What will happen if Moscow responds by sending a weapon, a missile, you name it, into the territory of a NATO country, we’ll all be at war. The idea that now we would expand NATO to include Ukraine is extremely dangerous. It is a recipe for constant conflict, including American soldiers boots on the ground in Europe from now until forever. It is a disastrous idea. It’s exactly the wrong thing to do. And listen, here’s another point about the need to settle this conflict. What the Biden administration has been telling senators behind closed doors for literally two years now, Laura, is that there will have to be a negotiated peace. The Secretary of State was saying that two years ago. So out in public, they’re saying, war forever. Behind closed doors, they’re saying, well, we’re going to have to negotiate. INGRAHAM: Yes. HAWLEY: They just don’t want to make the hard choices to do it. And here we are. Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poorNone
On Monday, faced with the impossibility of passing the social security budget, and despite the many concessions made to the far right, French Prime Minister Michel Barnier decided to use Article 49.3 of the Constitution, which allows the government to force through legislation unless a motion of no confidence is passed. The primary aim was to implement the social security budget. This decision opens up the possibility for members of parliament to table a motion of censure against Barnier’s government. On Monday evening, the left-wing parties (124 MPs) and right-wing parties (Marine Le Pen’s RN and Eric Ciotti’s supporters, 140 MPs) decided to submit a motion of no confidence. These motions of no confidence will be analysed and voted on in the National Assembly no earlier than the evening of Wednesday, 4 December. To bring down the government, a majority of the 577 MPs must support them. To obtain a majority, the left-wing parties must vote with the far-right RN on the same motion of censure. This would lead to the fall of the government. At this stage, this is the most likely scenario, as Le Pen has indicated that her party is prepared to vote in favour of the motion of censure tabled by left-wing MPs. While a last-minute twist is still possible, all indications are that the government will have fallen by the end of the week, less than three months after its appointment. This will usher in a new period of political uncertainty. There will be no dissolution of the National Assembly or early elections before July 2025, as the Constitution provides for a minimum period of one year between elections. Then, based on the forces present, President Emmanuel Macron will have to appoint a new prime minister. Two scenarios are possible: either a new government is appointed in December, or there is no new government until the end of 2024. Given the challenges in appointing Barnier as prime minister, the likelihood of finding a replacement quickly is highly uncertain. With an extremely polarised National Assembly divided into three major camps – left, centre-right and extreme right – who are unable to reach a compromise, the risk of a new vote of no confidence for any new government is very high. In any case, it is almost certain that there will not be a majority to pass a state budget or a social security budget before the end of the year. The last few weeks have shown that MPs and Senators are extremely divided on how to restore public finances and that a consensus is virtually impossible. It seems unlikely that France will have a 2025 budget. However, this doesn’t imply a shutdown where France can’t meet its financial obligations. A provisional budget, likely mirroring the 2024 budget, will probably be implemented. Such a budget will not rectify the trajectory of public spending. The public deficit is expected to exceed 6% of GDP in 2024. The Barnier government had hoped to reduce it to 5% by 2025, but without a budget voted for in 2025, this target will not be met. The provisional budget will be slightly restrictive, as tax scales will not be adjusted for inflation, but will not contain any real savings measures. As a result, it will not be enough to set the trajectory of French public finances in the desired direction and will not respect the commitments made by France to the European authorities. At a time when economic growth in France is slowing markedly, this is bad news. The public deficit will remain high, debt will continue to grow and the next government – whenever that may be – will have an even tougher task to put public finances right. In short, the political situation will delay and likely complicate the recovery of public finances, but it will eventually occur. The only difference is that the starting point will be later. This French political stand-off is just one more negative for the euro. With the eurozone economy facing the threat of tariffs in 2025 and the region lacking any prospect of cohesive fiscal support, the potential fall of the French government merely adds to views that the ECB will have to do the heavy lifting in 2025. Notably, short-dated yield spreads have moved against EUR/USD as this French crisis comes to a head, pushing EUR/USD back below 1.05. Seasonally the dollar is weak in December. Europe will remain a drag on EUR/USD into year-end. With both the French and German governments in limbo, any EUR/USD bounce will have to be driven by softer US data and a dovish 25bp rate cut from the Fed on 18 December. Overall, we have a year-end target for EUR/USD at 1.05, but see the risks skewed towards the 1.02/03 area. Typically, EUR/CHF comes under pressure when European politics hit the headlines. We are a little surprised it is still trading above 0.93 and expect it to press 0.92 should it become clear that the Swiss National Bank cannot cut rates as deeply as the ECB next year. French bond spreads already reflect a lot of pessimism The 10y yield spread of French government bonds over their German peers widened to 88bp on Monday. Further widening looks likely as politics enters a new phase of elevated uncertainty. Looking at relative valuation across the entire eurozone bond spectrum, there are two key takeaways. First, the spillover to other markets has been limited. Italy, for instance, is still at spread levels closer to their tightest since 2021. Second, markets had been wary about the prospects of quickly solving French fiscal problems to begin with, reflecting an expectation of looming rating downgrades. Following the latest widening, French 10y spreads over swaps are more in line with an “A-“ rating rather than its current “AA-“ – three notches lower. In fact, French spreads are already well above Spain’s and now are on a par with those of Greece. Government fragility was always part of the picture, even if not expected to come to a head quite so soon. Though it may take a while, a clearer picture going forward should allow spreads to recover from these stretched levels. However, France won’t be able to avoid a more lasting downgrade in its implied rating by the market, making the spread levels against Bunds seen before June’s elections seem quite distant. Source: INGAP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EST
While processor speeds and memory storage capacities have surged in recent decades, overall computer performance remains constrained by data transfers, where the CPU must retrieve and process data from memory, creating a bottleneck. Hardware technologies enabling some operations to run in-memory have been in development for some time, but software that allows computers to perform processing operations directly in RAM, bypassing the CPU, has not been properly addressed. According to a report on , researchers at Technion (the Israel Institute of Technology) have developed a solution. The memory wall problem "With some computations now handled by the memory, we need new software," explains Shahar Kvatinsky from the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Technion. "This new software has to be based on new instructions that support in-memory computations. This new computation method is so different from the conventional one that it renders some of the existing building blocks of computer science unusable. Therefore, we need to write new code, which requires a lot of time and effort from software developers." Kvatinsky has been exploring solutions to "the memory wall problem" - the bottleneck created by the use of different hardware components for computation - for years. His research group, led by Ph.D. student Orian Leitersdorf in collaboration with researcher Ronny Ronen, has developed PyPIM (Python Processing-in-Memory), a platform that integrates in-memory computing with the popular programming language. PyPIM transforms high-level Python commands into machine-level instructions executed directly within the computer's memory. The team at Technion believes this new platform will enable developers to write software for PIM computers with ease. Alongside PyPIM, the researchers have created a simulation tool to aid in hardware development and evaluate performance improvements compared to conventional computers. The researchers' findings were recently showcased at the IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture in Austin, Texas, and a paper detailing their work has been made available on the .
SUNRISE, Fla. — Aleksander Barkov and Carter Verhaeghe had power-play goals, Sam Reinhart had a short-handed score and the Florida Panthers beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 5-1 on Wednesday night for only their second win in eight games. Mackie Samoskevich also scored for Florida, Sam Bennett got an empty-net goal and Sergei Bobrovsky stopped 24 shots for the Panthers. Verhaeghe also had two assists. Mitch Marner scored for the Maple Leads, who lost for the second time in the last nine games and saw their lead in the Atlantic Division over Florida cut to one point. Anthony Stolarz stopped 19 shots for Toronto. The Maple Leafs lost forward Bobby McMann in the second period with a lower body injury. Takeaways Maple Leafs: Stolarz, defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson and forward Steven Lorentz — all Panthers last season — got their Stanley Cup championship rings in a Wedneday morning ceremony. Panthers coach Paul Maurice, general manager Bill Zito and a number of Panthers players also were present to celebrate with their former teammates. “Worth the wait,” Lorentz said. Panthers: Florida was without Anton Lundell, who left Monday's game after a puck was deflected into his face. He took part in the morning skate Wednesday but wasn't in the game lineup. Key moment Samoskevich's goal put Florida up 2-0 — it came 50 seconds after Barkov opened the scoring — and was a very good sign for the Panthers. They're now 4-0-0 when the former Michigan star gets a goal. Florida Panthers center Sam Reinhart, center, celebrates with center Aleksander Barkov (16) and defenseman Gustav Forsling, right, after scoring a goal during the second period of an NHL hockey game against the Toronto Maple Leafs, Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024, in Sunrise, Fla. Credit: AP/Lynne Sladky Key stat Reinhart has four short-handed goals this season. The only team — besides Florida — with four short-handed goals this season is Columbus, and 20 NHL clubs entered Wednesday with no more than one such goal this season. Up next The Maple Leafs visit Tampa Bay on Saturday, while the Panthers visit Carolina on Friday to start a home-and-home, with the return Saturday in Sunrise.
