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| Presented By Meta |
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| Axios AM |
| By Mike Allen · Mar 05, 2023 |
| 🥞 Good Sunday morning! Axios' Erica Pandey, at erica@axios.com, is your guide. - Smart Brevity™ count: 1,194 words ... 4½ minutes. Edited by Donica Phifer.
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| 1 big thing: Economy still hot |
 Data: YouGov. Chart: Axios Visuals Markets tremble at the Fed's every twitch. And yet, it doesn't seem to have much effect on the actual economy, Axios' Felix Salmon writes. - Why it matters: The Fed's main policy tool — more important even than its ability to set interest rates or print money — is the trust that Americans have in its power. But increasingly, it seems to have power only over the relatively narrow realm of the financial and housing markets.
Where it stands: According to public opinion, the U.S. is seemingly in a semi-permanent recession, and the Fed has failed to improve matters. 🥊 Reality check: The economy is hot, unemployment is at record lows, and there's no sign of a downturn any time soon. - A recession is inevitable eventually. But economists' forecasts for when it might arrive keep on getting pushed back.
- If the U.S. economy does enter a recession soon, it'll be because the Fed has been hiking rates more aggressively than any time since 1980.
Between the lines: A lot of the Americans who think we're in a recession are deeply upset about inflation. - Inflation has come down since the Fed started tightening. But it's far from clear that inflation came down because of Fed hikes.
"The increase in interest rates has slowed several sectors of the economy, most notably housing and commercial real estate," Atlanta Fed president Raphael Bostic said last week. - "However, other parts of the economy have not slowed so much."
- "Consumer spending has remained robust," he said, adding that GDP growth figures are still running "stronger than expected".
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| 2. 📈 Credit-card debt soars |
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| Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios |
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| Voracious spending and historically high inflation have helped drive credit card debt to a record high of almost $1 trillion — and credit card issuers are offering all sorts of incentives to lure new customers. - Why it matters: Travel points, cash back and other perks can be a siren song for many Americans who are spending their way through rising prices, even amidst ambient concerns about an eventual recession, Axios' Javier E. David reports.
- There's been an uptick in the number of people struggling to make payments, Federal Reserve data shows.
Case in point: This week, DoorDash and Chase unveiled a new Mastercard-branded rewards card for power users of the food delivery platform. - Among other perks, cardholders get 4% cash back on DoorDash/Caviar orders, a free year of the DashPass subscription service (worth $10 per month), and $100 cash back after spending $500.
🥊 Reality check: For consumers who don't pay their balances in full every month, the costs can really add up. The DoorDash-Chase card's APR carries a variable rate between 19.49% to 28.24%. |
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| 3. 🦊 Revealed: Zoom of Fox's post-2020 agony |
| Window display at Fox News headquarters on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan in 2019 shows (from left) Bret Baier, Martha MacCallum, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images The N.Y. Times' Peter Baker obtained a recording of a post-election Zoom that shows Fox News executives debating whether they should've held back their early-yet-accurate projection that Joe Biden won Arizona. Baker writes that Fox officials mused during the Nov. 16, 2020, meeting that perhaps they should abandon a "sophisticated new election-projecting system in which Fox had invested millions of dollars and revert to the slower, less accurate model." - "Or maybe they should base calls not solely on numbers but on how viewers might react."
Context: The Dominion filings show Fox officials knew President Trump's claims were bogus — but gave airtime to deniers anyway. Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott says on the Zoom call: "Listen, it's one of the sad realities: If we hadn't called Arizona, those three or four days following Election Day, our ratings would have been bigger ... The mystery would have been still hanging out there." Bret Baier — Fox News' chief political anchor, and co-anchor of Election Night coverage — said during the Zoom: "We are still getting bombarded ... It became really hurtful ... I know the statistics and the numbers, but there has to be, like, this other layer" so they can "think beyond, about the implications." - A person in the meeting told The Times that Baier "had been talking about process because he was upset the Decision Desk had made the Arizona call without letting the anchors know first."
Fox News said in a statement to Axios: "FOX News stood by the Arizona call despite intense scrutiny. Given the extremely narrow 0.3% margin and a new projection mechanism that no other network had, of course there would be a wide-ranging postmortem surrounding the call and how it was executed no matter the candidates." |
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| A message from Meta |
| The metaverse will give doctors new tools to make decisions faster |
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| In the ER, every second counts. Doctors will use the metaverse to visualize scans and make decisions faster — to help patients get the specialty care they need in a timely manner. The metaverse may be virtual, but the impact will be real. Explore more possibilities with the metaverse. |
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| 4. 📸 Trapped in 10 feet of snow |
| Photo: Watchara Phomicinda/The Orange County Register via AP Above: A man shovels snow off the roof of a store in Crestline, Calif., in the San Bernardino Mountains on Friday. Crews in California are working to rescue residents who have been stranded in the mountains for days with snow piled up higher than their front doors — and are quickly running out of food, the L.A. Times reports. - One team found a pair of teen hikers who had been huddling in a tent for warmth for three days.
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| 5. 🇨🇳 Trump slams China on trade |
| Former President Trump takes the stage last evening at CPAC in National Harbor, Md. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images President Trump escalated his attacks on China at CPAC last evening, testing his ability to move the U.S. toward a more confrontational approach on trade with the communist nation. - Why it matters: Trump is trying to return to the White House by running against two adversaries — President Biden and China, Axios' Hans Nichols writes.
Trump trounced potential 2024 primary opponents in yesterday's CPAC straw poll. Screenshot: Fox News The speech was the live version of a campaign video Trump released last week, in which he essentially called for the decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies. - On Capitol Hill, his latest calls didn't spark outrage, like they did in 2016. Democrats and Republicans agree the U.S. needs to rely less on China.
- As president, Trump imposed a series of tariffs on China — and President Biden has kept them on the books.
The bottom line: Positions that once were unthinkable — such as imposing 25% tariffs on America's third biggest trading partner — are now consensus views. |
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| 6. Long COVID mirrors concussions |
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| Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios |
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| A University of Denver study finds that people experiencing long COVID share similarities with people diagnosed and recovering from a concussion, Axios Denver's Alayna Alvarez writes. - Why it matters: The study could provide a roadmap for millions of Americans at a time when long COVID diagnoses and treatments continue to evade medical experts.
Read the study. |
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| 7. 🏥 Data du jour |
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| Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios |
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| The majority of men — 55% — don't get regular health screenings, a Cleveland Clinic survey found. - Why it matters: Dodging doctor visits can have serious consequences for men as they age, the N.Y. Times reports (subscription.)
Consider this: Men die younger than women, per the CDC. - Two of their leading causes of death are heart disease and diabetes — both conditions that doctors check for during routine visits.
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| 8. 🏃 Pic to go |
| Photo: Franck Robichon/Pool via AP Runners at the start of the Tokyo Marathon this morning. - Ethiopian Deso Gelmisa won the men's race, which came down to the last 100 meters, in 2:04:53.
- Kenya's Rosemary Wanjiru took the women's title in 2:16:28.
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| A message from Meta |
| Augmented reality will help firefighters with search and rescue |
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| One day, firefighters will use the metaverse to navigate burning buildings more quickly. The result: Crucial seconds can be saved when lives are on the line. The metaverse may be virtual, but the impact will be real. Explore more possibilities with the metaverse. |
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