Newsmax has posted my column on the 2023 stock market outlook. It includes a couple of paragraphs that were not in the New York Sun version of the column. The headline is "Market May Surprise on the Bullish Side in 2023."

The New York Times has a conversation between David Brooks and Bret Stephens on the future of the Republican Party. It's uneven but worth a look. Highlights:

[Brooks:] Size-of-government arguments are going to be less salient. Values, identity and social status issues will be more salient. I think the core driver of politics across the Western democracies is this: In society after society, highly educated professionals have formed a Brahmin class. The top of the ladder go to competitive colleges, marry each other, send their kids to elite schools and live in the same neighborhoods. This class dominates the media, the academy, Hollywood, tech and the corporate sector.

Many people on the middle and bottom have risen up to say, we don't want to be ruled by those guys. To hell with their economic, cultural and political power. We'll vote for anybody who can smash their machine. The Republican Party is the party of this protest movement.

From the front of the business section of today's New York Times (January 6, 2023):

a budding crop of economists and major market investors see a firm chance that the economy will avoid a recession, or scrape by with a brief stall in growth, as cooled consumer spending and the easing of pandemic-era disruptions help inflation gingerly trend toward more tolerable levels — a hopeful outcome widely called a soft landing.

"The possibility of getting a soft landing is greater than the market believes," said Jason Draho, an economist and the head of Americas asset allocation for UBS Global Wealth Management. "Inflation has now come down faster than some recently expected, and the labor market has held up better than expected."...

"It's 50-50, but I have to take a side, right? So I take the side of no recession," said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody's Analytics. "I can make the case on either side of this pretty easily, but I think with a little bit of luck and some tough policymaking, we can make our way through."

Two from the archives that might be useful context for those following with interest the difficulty Kevin McCarthy is having sealing the speakership of the House:

1) Our 2010 review of "Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders," by Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, and Kevin McCarthy. The review concluded: "These guys are, after all, politicians, a fact that occasionally shines through. Mr. McCarthy was elected to Congress in 2006 after the retirement of his 'mentor and friend,' Bill Thomas, for whom Mr. McCarthy had worked for 15 years starting at age 22. Mr. Thomas had served 28 years in Congress, which makes the complaint elsewhere in the book, directed at Democratic House committee chairs, that 'the people who are making the nation's energy and tax policy for America's small business haven't been in the private sector for over three decades,' ring a bit hollow."

The photo cutline on my January 2 New York Sun column accurately described the column's contents: "Hardly anyone is saying this publicly, but the stock market could be in for a repeat of the 2009 rebound."

Lo and behold, January 4 at noon, the vice chairman of $951 billion asset manager Blackstone, Byron Wien, and Joe Zidle, Chief Investment Strategist in the Private Wealth Solutions group at Blackstone, released their "Ten Surprises of 2023."

From the release: "Byron defines a 'surprise' as an event that the average investor would only assign a one out of three chance of taking place but which Byron believes is 'probable,' having a better than 50% likelihood of happening. Byron started the tradition in 1986 when he was the Chief U.S. Investment Strategist at Morgan Stanley."

Surprise number 4 on the Wien list is "Despite Fed tightening, the market reaches a bottom by mid-year and begins a recovery comparable to 2009."

What the U.S. stock market will do in 2023 is the topic of my column this week. Please check out the full column in the New York Sun ("Happy New Year — 2022 Was the Worst Year for Stocks Since 2008/History suggests this could lead to an upswing in the year just begun.")

National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" devoted eight minutes this week to having Shereen Marisol Meraji interview Tricia Hersey, the author of Rest Is Resistance. From the transcript:

HERSEY: Rest is a form of resistance because it pushes back and disrupts white supremacy and capitalism.....

MERAJI: I really want to talk more about tenet No. 1 - rest is a form of resistance because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy....

Even the New York Times acknowledges in a news article: "Across New York City, where Democrats outnumber Republicans seven to one, there are signs of Republicans making inroads. In the most recent midterm elections, every county in the city voted more Republican than it did in the 2020 presidential election, and three Democratic members of the State Assembly lost to Republicans in South Brooklyn."

The Times highlights Ari Kagan, a New York City Council member who, like Senator Sinema, is leaving the Democratic Party:

Mr. Kagan said that he believed that the Democratic Party, especially in New York, had drifted too far to the left.

"It's not me leaving the Democratic Party," Mr. Kagan said. "The Democratic Party started to leave me."

Senator Elizabeth Warren's upcoming reelection race is an opportunity for Mayor Bloomberg to exact retribution for her attack on him in the 2020 presidential campaign, I write in my column this week. Please check out the full column at Newsmax ("How Bloomberg Has a Chance Against Warren for '24") and at the New York Sun ("Elizabeth Warren's 2024 Campaign Is Mike Bloomberg's Best Opportunity for Revenge").

For the Philanthropy Roundtable, I made a trip to the Bronx and wrote an article about what Ian Rowe and his team are doing up there at Vertex Partnership Academies. I found it quite inspiring. Please check the article out: "New Bronx School Teaching Students Their Futures Are in Their Control."

"Henry Rosovsky, an Educator, Is Mourned," is the headline over my latest piece for Education Next, worth checking out by clicking the hyperlinked headline if you are interested in higher education, Afro-American studies, or Jewish life at Harvard.

Visiting First Lady Jill Biden at the White House, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, claimed President Biden has done "more than any other president since FDR, and maybe more than FDR." I've got a report about this up at Education Next.

Senator Sinema's decision to leave Senator Charles Schumer's Democratic Party is the topic of my column this week. Please check it out at Newsmax ("Sinema Departure Is Defeat for Schumer") and at the New York Sun ("Sinema Departure Is Defeat for Schumer.")

The 2024 Republican presidential primary will be a chance for the party to sort through some of the unresolved issues, I write this week. Please check out the full column at Newsmax ("Is GOP Too Eager to Transform Itself?") and at the New York Sun ("Intra-Republican Policy Fights Will Enliven 2024 Campaign").

From a Wall Street Journal account of the labor strife at the New York Times, where unionized employees are staging a walkout: "The negotiations have centered around pay, retirement and other benefits. The company recently offered a choice between keeping a pension plan or selecting a new 401(k) plan, a change from its initial proposal of replacing the pension with the 401(k)."