Hey Reader,
HAPPY NEW YEAR!! 🥳🪅 2025 is here! A new year brings a lot of new things to look forward to. We have a lot of goals here for you. We want to continue to improve our operations, capacity, and ability to deliver life changing experiences. Let's start 2025 off right!
News Brief:
A Confluence of Cold Weather
A polar vortex is happening resulting in an arctic blast and freezing temperature across the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Union. This cold front rolled in over the weekend and could last into early to mid February. There is also a chance of precipitation over the course of the next two weeks that will likely result in snowfall and slush. The UK has already gotten heavy snow with more expected to come. The United States has a storm moving from west to east with heavy snowfall expected to land in the mid-Atlantic region within the next 24-48 hours. This is a developing weather pattern and meteorologists generally don't know what to expect as this low pressure vortex continues to make its way across the U.S. and Europe. Travel advisories and cold temperature warnings are in effect in various places, as well as some school closures.
Justin Trudeau is Considering Resigning
Canada's prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is contemplating resigning and could make the announcement this week. Trudeau has been prime minister of Canada as the head of the Liberal Party for nine years. He has been waning popularity for some time due to his inability to deliver on campaign promises and unforeseen political misfortunes, like the COVID-19 pandemic and its fallout. Liberal Party leaders are now urging Trudeau to step down citing poor poll numbers. Things appear to have come to a point when Trudeau recently allegedly engaged in what were considered unserious machinations by his finance minister. That minister ultimately decided to quit and out Trudeau's behavior in a letter. Canada has a federal election in October this year and the results of this episode could impact the outcome.
There appears to be headwinds throughout leadership in the western world as highlighted here. That aspect of this is interesting because either it's liberal policies that are failing westernized societies or it's specifically the liberal politicians who tend to be slow at adopting party reforms if they do so at all, who are failing. It's easier if it's the politicians and not the policies because at least the politicians can be changed. If the constant failures of liberal rule is policy based, then that becomes more challenging because ideologies are difficult to usurp and one side of the more broad political spectrum being stronger than the other, doesn't necessarily lend itself to the benefit of the paycheck to paycheck working class and adjacent individuals and people groups.
China Moderates their Stock Exchange
China has been in an economic quandary since the COVID-19 pandemic. They have not been able to stabilize and maintain growth. That said, 2024 was the first year since the pandemic that China has seen a net gain in their stock market index, the CSI 300. Some are pointing to the stimulus that China announced late last year as the reason China's market did well to end the year. Things have been speculatory in the Chinese market for a while and with Donald Trump set to be back in the White House this year, and promising large tariffs, Chinese investors are spooked. Consumers aren't consuming at the rate they did pre-pandemic, inflation is still with most if not all of the developed world in some capacity, and investors are grappling with ways to make more money. This news comes after the U.S. Federal Reserve had its last meeting for 2024, where they cut interest rates, but also projected slow or concerning growth for 2025. Economies are artificially inflated via central bank interest rates especially in the U.S. as to not let inflation get out of hand, by putting down pressure on consumer behavior. In China, four mutual funds were asked to not sell more stocks than they bought on a given day. This is becoming a common practice in China and the idea is that while there may be pressure to sell, even if large institution stock holders take a hit and lose some value on their investment, at least the stock market overall won't face the threat of mass and or panic selling, which could cause stocks to bottom out. The "everything bubble" exists, money is less real today than it has ever been, and (again) westernized governments (not exclusive to governments in the west, but all governments who share in some aspects of western ideals) across the planet have to work to not usher in a mass economic destabilization.
Highlights
Here are a couple highlights from my X(Twitter) account, posted last week. like and share them, and follow me on X.
Encouragement for Your Week
This week I want to encourage you to deploy healthy boundaries. It's a new year and it would be naive to think that malevolent forces aren't on the prowl. The evils that nouns do aren't all that important to know. What is important to know is that regardless of context, managing your space is important at least to start this year, if not throughout the entirety of it. If you don't ensure that you are guarded from all types of people, places, and things that may be inclined for one reason or another to stunt your progress, you could potentially find yourself in fights you already won. Now is not the time to re-litigate the past and anyone or anything trying to distract you with doing so, is opposed to your future. It's up to you to make 2025 one of if not your best year yet!
There are more great things to come so be sure to stay connected with us throughout this year via the Newsletter and our other media. You can also contact me by responding to this email directly or via the Life with Ken contact page.
Have a year defining week!
