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TORONTO — Canada's main stock index lost more than 100 points Tuesday ahead of an expected interest rate cut Wednesday, while U.S. markets were also down. The S&P/TSX composite index closed down 121.09 points at 25,504.33. In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 154.10 points at 44,247.83. The S&P 500 index was down 17.94 points at 6,034.91, while the Nasdaq composite was down 49.45 points at 19,687.24. “Relative to the churn we have seen in the markets the last few days ... today being a little bit of a boring day would be fairly welcome for many investors,” said Stephen Duench, vice-president and portfolio manager for AGF Investments Inc. Wednesday is set to be more exciting, with an interest rate cut expected in Canada and important consumer inflation data coming in the U.S. “I do expect a little bit more fireworks tomorrow,” said Duench. The Bank of Canada is widely expected to announce an outsized cut Wednesday of half a percentage point, he said. “Anything other than that would be a surprise.” The U.S. Federal Reserve has its last decision of the year scheduled for next week, and market watchers are leaning toward a smaller quarter-percentage-point cut there, said Duench. It would be the third cut this year after the central bank hiked rates to a two-decade high to fight inflation. The inflation report will be the last significant data point before the central bank’s decision, Duench said. If the inflation report shows price growth is proving more stubborn than expected, that could change the Fed’s thinking on rates next week, he said. “Maybe that's part of the reason we've seen churn in the market the last few days in the U.S.” Beneath the surface, there was some movement in the tech sector, where Oracle sank 6.7 per cent after its latest earnings report missed expectations. Meanwhile, Google's stock price rose by more than five per cent. The company on Tuesday unveiled its new chip meant for quantum computing. Duench said after the advent of artificial technology led a rally earlier this year, quantum computing could be another frontier for investors to keep an eye on. The Canadian dollar traded for 70.59 cents US compared with 70.77 cents US on Monday. The January crude oil contract was up 12 cents at US$68.59 per barrel and the January natural gas contract was down two cents at US$3.16 per mmBTU. The February gold contract was up US$32.60 at US$2,718.40 an ounce and the March copper contract was down less than a penny at US$4.27 a pound. — With files from The Associated Press This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 10, 2024. Companies in this story: (TSX:GSPTSE, TSX:CADUSD) Rosa Saba, The Canadian Press
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NonePLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Newly married and sworn as a Naval officer, left his tiny hometown in 1946 hoping to climb the ranks and see the world. Less than a decade later, the death of his father and namesake, a merchant farmer and local politician who went by “Mr. Earl,” prompted the submariner and his wife, Rosalynn, to return to the rural life of Plains, Georgia, they thought they’d escaped. The lieutenant never would be an admiral. Instead, he became commander in chief. Years after his presidency ended in humbling defeat, he would add a Nobel Peace Prize, awarded not for his White House accomplishments but “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” The life of James Earl Carter Jr., the 39th and longest-lived U.S. president, ended Sunday at the age of 100 where it began: Plains, the town of 600 that fueled his political rise, welcomed him after his fall and sustained him during 40 years of service that redefined what it means to be a former president. With the stubborn confidence of an engineer and an optimism rooted in his Baptist faith, Carter described his motivations in politics and beyond in the same way: an almost missionary zeal to solve problems and improve lives. Carter was raised amid racism, abject poverty and hard rural living — realities that shaped both his deliberate politics and emphasis on human rights. “He always felt a responsibility to help people,” said Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend of Carter’s in Plains. “And when he couldn’t make change wherever he was, he decided he had to go higher.” Carter’s path, , pitted moral imperatives against political pragmatism; and it defied typical labels of American politics, especially caricatures of one-term presidents as failures. “We shouldn’t judge presidents by how popular they are in their day. That’s a very narrow way of assessing them,” Carter biographer Jonathan Alter told the Associated Press. “We should judge them by how they changed the country and the world for the better. On that score, Jimmy Carter is not in the first rank of American presidents, but he stands up quite well.” Later in life, Carter conceded that many Americans, even those too young to remember his tenure, judged him ineffective for failing to contain inflation or interest rates, end the energy crisis or quickly bring home American hostages in Iran. He gained admirers instead for his work at The Carter Center — advocating globally for public health, human rights and democracy since 1982 — and the decades he and Rosalynn wore hardhats and swung hammers with Habitat for Humanity. Yet the common view that he was better after the Oval Office than in it annoyed Carter, and his allies relished him living long enough to see historians reassess his presidency. “He doesn’t quite fit in today’s terms” of a left-right, red-blue scoreboard, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who visited the former president multiple times during his own White House bid. At various points in his political career, Carter labeled himself “progressive” or “conservative” — sometimes both at once. His most ambitious health care bill failed — perhaps one of his biggest legislative disappointments — because it didn’t go far enough to suit liberals. Republicans, especially after his 1980 defeat, cast him as a left-wing cartoon. It would be easiest to classify Carter as a centrist, Buttigieg said, “but there’s also something radical about the depth of his commitment to looking after those who are left out of society and out of the economy.” Indeed, Carter’s legacy is stitched with complexities, contradictions and evolutions — personal and political. The self-styled peacemaker was a war-trained Naval Academy graduate who promised Democratic challenger Ted Kennedy that he’d “kick his ass.” But he campaigned with a call to treat everyone with “respect and compassion and with love.” Carter vowed to restore America’s virtue after the shame of Vietnam and Watergate, and his technocratic, good-government approach didn’t suit Republicans who tagged government itself as the problem. It also sometimes put Carter at odds with fellow Democrats. The result still was a notable legislative record, with wins on the environment, education, and mental health care. He dramatically expanded federally protected lands, began deregulating air travel, railroads and trucking, and he put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy. As a fiscal hawk, Carter added a relative pittance to the national debt, unlike successors from both parties. Carter nonetheless struggled to make his achievements resonate with the electorate he charmed in 1976. Quoting Bob Dylan and grinning enthusiastically, he had promised voters he would “never tell a lie.” Once in Washington, though, he led like a joyless engineer, insisting his ideas would become reality and he’d be rewarded politically if only he could convince enough people with facts and logic. This served him well at Camp David, where he brokered peace between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Epypt’s Anwar Sadat, an experience that later sparked the idea of The Carter Center in Atlanta. Carter’s tenacity helped the center grow to a global force that monitored elections across five continents, enabled his freelance diplomacy and sent public health experts across the developing world. The center’s wins were personal for Carter, who hoped to outlive the last Guinea worm parasite, and nearly did. As president, though, the approach fell short when he urged consumers beleaguered by energy costs to turn down their thermostats. Or when he tried to be the nation’s cheerleader, beseeching Americans to overcome a collective “crisis of confidence.” Republican Ronald Reagan exploited Carter’s lecturing tone with a belittling quip in their lone 1980 debate. “There you go again,” the former Hollywood actor said in response to a wonky answer from the sitting president. “The Great Communicator” outpaced Carter in all but six states. Carter later suggested he “tried to do too much, too soon” and mused that he was incompatible with Washington culture: media figures, lobbyists and Georgetown social elites who looked down on the as “country come to town.” Carter carefully navigated divides on race and class on his way to the Oval Office. , Carter was raised in the mostly Black community of Archery, just outside Plains, by a progressive mother and white supremacist father. Their home had no running water or electricity but the future president still grew up with the relative advantages of a locally prominent, land-owning family in a system of Jim Crow segregation. He wrote of President Franklin Roosevelt’s towering presence and his family’s Democratic Party roots, but his father soured on FDR, and Jimmy Carter never campaigned or governed as a New Deal liberal. He offered himself as a small-town peanut farmer with an understated style, carrying his own luggage, bunking with supporters during his first presidential campaign and always using his nickname. And he began his political career in a whites-only Democratic Party. As private citizens, he and Rosalynn supported integration as early as the 1950s and believed it inevitable. Carter refused to join the White Citizens Council in Plains and spoke out in his Baptist church against denying Black people access to worship services. “This is not my house; this is not your house,” he said in a churchwide meeting, reminding fellow parishioners their sanctuary belonged to God. Yet as the appointed chairman of Sumter County schools he never pushed to desegregate, thinking it impractical after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board decision. And while presidential candidate Carter would hail the 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed by fellow Democrat Lyndon Johnson when Carter was a state senator, there is no record of Carter publicly supporting it at the time. Carter overcame a ballot-stuffing opponent to win his legislative seat, then lost the 1966 governor’s race to an arch-segregationist. He won four years later by avoiding explicit mentions of race and campaigning to the right of his rival, who he mocked as “Cufflinks Carl” — the insult of an ascendant politician who never saw himself as part the establishment. Carter’s rural and small-town coalition in 1970 would match any victorious Republican electoral map in 2024. Once elected, though, Carter shocked his white conservative supporters — and landed on the cover of Time magazine — by declaring that “the time for racial discrimination is over.” Before making the jump to Washington, Carter befriended the family of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., whom he’d never sought out as he eyed the governor’s office. Carter lamented his foot-dragging on school integration as a “mistake.” But he also met, conspicuously, with Alabama’s segregationist Gov. George Wallace to accept his primary rival’s endorsement ahead of the 1976 Democratic convention. “He very shrewdly took advantage of his own Southerness,” said Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee professor and expert on Carter’s campaigns. A coalition of Black voters and white moderate Democrats ultimately made Carter the last Democratic presidential nominee to sweep the Deep South. Then, just as he did in Georgia, he used his power in office to appoint more non-whites than all his predecessors had, combined. He once acknowledged “the secret shame” of white Americans who didn’t fight segregation. But he also told Alter that doing more would have sacrificed his political viability – and thus everything he accomplished in office and after. King’s daughter, Bernice King, described Carter as wisely “strategic” in winning higher offices to enact change. “He was a leader of conscience,” she said in an interview. Rosalynn Carter, who at the age of 96, was identified by both husband and wife as the “more political” of the pair; she sat in on Cabinet meetings and urged him to postpone certain priorities, like pressing the Senate to relinquish control of the Panama Canal. “Let that go until the second term,” she would sometimes say. The president, recalled her former aide Kathy Cade, retorted that he was “going to do what’s right” even if “it might cut short the time I have.” Rosalynn held firm, Cade said: “She’d remind him you have to win to govern.” Carter also was the first president to appoint multiple women as Cabinet officers. Yet by his own telling, his career sprouted from chauvinism in the Carters’ early marriage: He did not consult Rosalynn when deciding to move back to Plains in 1953 or before launching his state Senate bid a decade later. Many years later, he called it “inconceivable” that he didn’t confer with the woman he described as his “full partner,” at home, in government and at The Carter Center. “We developed a partnership when we were working in the farm supply business, and it continued when Jimmy got involved in politics,” Rosalynn Carter told AP in 2021. So deep was their trust that when Carter remained tethered to the White House in 1980 as 52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, it was Rosalynn who campaigned on her husband’s behalf. “I just loved it,” she said, despite the bitterness of defeat. Fair or not, the label of a disastrous presidency had leading Democrats keep their distance, at least publicly, for many years, but Carter managed to remain relevant, writing books and weighing in on societal challenges. He lamented widening wealth gaps and the influence of money in politics. He voted for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and later declared that America had devolved from fully functioning democracy to “oligarchy.” Yet looking ahead to 2020, with Sanders running again, Carter warned Democrats not to lest they help re-elect President Donald Trump. Carter scolded the Republican for his serial lies and threats to democracy, and chided the U.S. establishment for misunderstanding Trump’s populist appeal. He delighted in yearly convocations with Emory University freshmen, often asking them to guess how much he’d raised in his two general election campaigns. “Zero,” he’d gesture with a smile, explaining the public financing system candidates now avoid so they can raise billions. Carter still remained quite practical in partnering with wealthy corporations and foundations to advance Carter Center programs. Carter recognized that economic woes and the Iran crisis doomed his presidency, but offered no apologies for appointing Paul Volcker as the Federal Reserve chairman whose interest rate hikes would not curb inflation until Reagan’s presidency. He was proud of getting all the hostages home without starting a shooting war, even though Tehran would not free them until Reagan’s Inauguration Day. “Carter didn’t look at it” as a failure, Alter emphasized. “He said, ‘They came home safely.’ And that’s what he wanted.” Well into their 90s, the Carters greeted visitors at Plains’ Maranatha Baptist Church, where he taught Sunday School and where he will have his last funeral before being buried on . Carter, who made the congregation’s collection plates in his woodworking shop, still garnered headlines there, calling for women’s rights within religious institutions, many of which, he said, “subjugate” women in church and society. Carter was not one to dwell on regrets. “I am at peace with the accomplishments, regret the unrealized goals and utilize my former political position to enhance everything we do,” he wrote around his 90th birthday. The politician who had supposedly hated Washington politics also enjoyed hosting Democratic presidential contenders as again. Carter sat with Buttigieg for the final time March 1, 2020, hours before the Indiana mayor ended his campaign and endorsed eventual winner Joe Biden. “He asked me how I thought the campaign was going,” Buttigieg said, recalling that Carter flashed his signature grin and nodded along as the young candidate, born a year after Carter left office, “put the best face” on the walloping he endured the day before in South Carolina. Never breaking his smile, the 95-year-old host fired back, “I think you ought to drop out.” “So matter of fact,” Buttigieg said with a laugh. “It was somehow encouraging.” Carter had lived enough, won plenty and lost enough to take the long view. “He talked a lot about coming from nowhere,” Buttigieg said, not just to attain the presidency but to leverage “all of the instruments you have in life” and “make the world more peaceful.” In his farewell address as president, Carter said as much to the country that had embraced and rejected him. “The struggle for human rights overrides all differences of color, nation or language,” he declared. “Those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity and who suffer for the sake of justice — they are the patriots of this cause.” Carter pledged to remain engaged with and for them as he returned “home to the South where I was born and raised,” home to Plains, where that young lieutenant had indeed become “a fellow citizen of the world.” —-
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SoundHound AI To Participate in Investor Conferences in DecemberPINE BLUFF, Ark. (AP) — Quintell Quinn ran for 154 yards and two touchdowns to lead Texas Southern to a 31-23 victory over Arkansas-Pine Bluff on Saturday. Quinn scored on a 32-yard run to open the scoring midway through the first quarter, and his 75-yard touchdown run gave Texas Southern a 17-13 lead with 6:59 remaining in the third. A little more than three minutes later, Jace Wilson threw a 21-yard touchdown pass to Trenton Leary that stretched the Tigers' lead to 24-13.
WASHINGTON — The House Ethics Committee on Monday accused Matt Gaetz of "regularly" paying for sex, including with a 17-year-old girl, and purchasing and using illicit drugs as a member of Congress, as lawmakers released the conclusions of a nearly four-year investigation that helped sink his nomination for attorney general. The 37-page report by the bipartisan panel includes explicit details of sex-filled parties and vacations that Gaetz, now 42, took part in from 2017 to 2020 while the Republican represented Florida's western Panhandle. Congressional investigators concluded that Gaetz violated multiple state laws related to sexual misconduct while in office, though not federal sex trafficking laws. They also found that Gaetz "knowingly and willfully sought to impede and obstruct" the committee's work. "The Committee determined there is substantial evidence that Representative Gaetz violated House Rules and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress," the report said. Before the report came out, Gaetz denied any wrongdoing and criticized the committee's process. "Giving funds to someone you are dating — that they didn't ask for — and that isn't 'charged' for sex is now prostitution?!?" he posted on X, the website formerly known as Twitter. "There is a reason they did this to me in a Christmas Eve-Eve report and not in a courtroom of any kind where I could present evidence and challenge witnesses." Gaetz, who was first elected in 2017, spent the majority of his time in Washington enmeshed in scandals that ultimately derailed his selection by President-elect Donald Trump to lead the Justice Department. Gaetz abruptly resigned from Congress last month. His political future is uncertain, although Gaetz has indicated interest in running for the open Senate seat in Florida. The committee painted a damning portrait of Gaetz's conduct, using dozens of pages of exhibits, including text messages and financial records, travel receipts, checks and online payments, to document a party and drug-fueled lifestyle. The committee said it compiled the evidence after issuing 29 subpoenas for documents and testimony and contacting more than two dozen witnesses. In addition to soliciting prostitution, the report said Gaetz "accepted gifts, including transportation and lodging in connection with a 2018 trip to the Bahamas, in excess of permissible amounts." That same year, investigators said Gaetz arranged for a staffer to obtain a passport for a woman with whom he was sexually involved, falsely telling the State Department that she was his constituent. In some of the text exchanges made public, he appeared to be inviting various women to events, getaways or parties, and arranging airplane travel and lodging. At one point he asked one woman if she had a "cute black dress" to wear. There were also discussions of shipping goods. One of the exhibits was a text exchange that appeared to be between two of the women concerned about their cash flow and payments. In another, a person asked Gaetz for help to pay an educational expense. Regarding the 17-year-old girl, the report said there was no evidence Gaetz knew she was a minor when he had sex with her. The woman told the committee she did not tell Gaetz she was under 18 at the time and that he learned she was a minor more than a month after the party. But Gaetz stayed in touch with her after that and met up with her for "commercial sex" again less than six months after she turned 18, according to the committee. Florida law says it is a felony for a person 24 or older to have sex with a minor. The law does not allow a claim of ignorance or misrepresentation of a minor's age as a defense. Joel Leppard, who represents two women who told the committee that Gaetz paid them for sex, said the findings "vindicate" the accounts of his clients and "demonstrate their credibility." "We appreciate the Committee's commitment to transparency in releasing this comprehensive report so the truth can be known," Leppard said in a statement. At least one Republican joined all five Democrats on the committee earlier this month in voting to release the report despite initial opposition from GOP lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, to publishing findings about a former member of Congress. While ethics reports have previously been released after a member's resignation, it is extremely rare. On behalf of the Republicans who voted against making the report public, the committee chairman, Rep. Michael Guest of Mississippi, wrote that while the members did not challenge the findings, "we take great exception that the majority deviated from the Committee's well-established standards," to drop any investigation when a person is not longer a member of the chamber. Guest added that releasing this report sets a precedent that "is a dangerous departure with potentially catastrophic consequences." But Maryland Rep. Glenn Ivey, a Democratic member of the committee, said that for transparency, it was crucial for the public and Congress as an institution to read the findings. "I think that's important for my colleagues here in the House to know how the committee reviews certain acts," he told The Associated Press. "Some of these were obviously conduct that crossed the line, but some of them weren't." Mounting a last-ditch effort to halt the publication of the report, Gaetz filed a lawsuit Monday asking a federal court to intervene. He cited what he called "untruthful and defamatory information" that would "significantly damage" his "standing and reputation in the community." Gaetz's complaint argued that he was no longer under the committee's jurisdiction because he had resigned from Congress. The often secretive, bipartisan committee has investigated claims against Gaetz since 2021. But its work became more urgent last month when Trump picked him shortly after the Nov. 5 election Day to be the nation's top law enforcement officer. Gaetz resigned from Congress that same day, putting him outside the purview of the committee's jurisdiction. But Democrats had pressed to make the report public even after Gaetz was no longer in the House and had withdrawn from consideration for Trump's Cabinet. A vote on the House floor this month to force the report's release failed; all but one Republican voted against it. The committee detailed its start-and-stop investigation over the past several years, which was halted for a time as the Justice Department conducted its own inquiry of Gaetz. Federal prosecutors never brought a case against him. Lawmakers said they asked the Justice Department for information about its investigation, but the agency refused to hand over information, saying it does not disclose information about investigations that do not result in charges. The committee then subpoenaed the department for records. After a back-and-forth between department officials and the committee, the department only handed over "publicly reported information about the testimony of a deceased individual," according to the committee's report. The report said Gaetz was "uncooperative" throughout the committee's investigation. He provided "minimal documentation" in response to the committee's requests, it said. "He also did not agree to a voluntary interview."
Following the COVID-19 pandemic, active listings for single-family homes fell conspicuously due to public health concerns and mandated stay-in-place orders. Naturally, this framework sparked a demand bottleneck, cynically benefiting homebuilders as society gradually normalized. However, incoming political shifts could present concerns for the broader housing market. Specifically, President-elect Donald Trump throughout the campaign trail for the 2024 election broadcasted anti-immigration sentiments . Combined with his proposed tariffs on building materials , Trump's policies could drive construction costs higher. Potentially, such a development could negatively impact demand as most Americans have struggled to get ahead of the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle. Still, it's not all doom and gloom. Despite historically high mortgage rates, several Sun Belt cities may be poised for explosive sales growth in 2025 , according to projections from sites like Realtor.com. Several cities in Texas have consistently placed in the top rankings regarding housing demand. Further, booming areas such as Miami, Virginia Beach, Richmond and Charlotte may reignite currently deflated sentiment for homebuilding stocks. The Direxion ETF: For investors that view the glass as half-full, the Direxion Daily Homebuilders & Supplies Bull 3X Shares NAIL offer the ultimate in speculation. A leveraged exchange-traded fund, NAIL seeks a return that is 300% of the performance of the Dow Jones U.S. Select Home Construction Index. Fundamentally, one of the benefits of a 3X-leveraged fund is convenience. Typically, traders seeking to magnify their returns over a short time period use options, which introduce complexities. In contrast, investors can buy units of the NAIL ETF, much like buying shares of a publicly traded company. Further, NAIL covers a basket of securities, including names like DR Horton Inc DHI and Lennar Corp LEN LEN . However, as a 3X-leveraged ETF, NAIL carries significant volatility risks. Notably, Direxion states that the fund should not be expected to provide three times the benchmark index's cumulative return for periods greater than a day. That's because exposure lasting longer than a day may expose the trader to valuation decay due to the effects of daily compounding. Nevertheless, weekly returns of the NAIL fund over the trailing five years reflects an upward bias. Of the past 261 weeks, 146 weeks saw a positive return, reflecting a success ratio of 55.94%. What's more, there have been 12 weeks (not including last week) where NAIL lost 20% of value or more. Of this dataset, eight of the following weeks generated positive returns, with an average performance of 25.55% up. Interestingly, in the business week ending Dec. 20, the 3X bull fund lost 21.66% of value. The NAIL ETF: Although the leveraged housing fund was looking strong up until late November, economic and political uncertainties saw the ETF go negative for the year. At the moment, the technical backdrop isn't enticing, with NAIL falling through its 50- and 200-day moving averages in late November and early December, respectively. On the positive side, NAIL is trading above the critical $80 level, which previously acted as support throughout 2021. Moving forward, it's imperative that the bulls establish a baseline of support here. This seems credible given the aforementioned upward bias, especially following a severe weekly correction. Featured image by Oleksandr Pidvalnyi from Pixabay . © 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.Northern Trust Corp. stock underperforms Monday when compared to competitors
Former President Jimmy Carter dies at age 100