Some Asian markets are closed all this week for the Lunar New Year holiday. Sunday marked the first day of the Year of the Rabbit, said to be a symbol of happiness, prosperity, abundance, peace, elegance, and longevity. Our colleagues at MacKay Shields have also dubbed 2023 as “The Year of the Bond”, and it has indeed begun with rallies across corporate, government, and municipal markets.

Markets around the world were stunned when the gold standard credit rating of the United States of America was downgraded by Standard & Poor’s from triple-A to AA+ after the close on Friday, August 5, 2011. S&P had issued a negative outlook in July after warning that failure to reach a sufficient compromise on slashing the deficit would risk this action. They boldly told the world that “the effectiveness, stability and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges”.

This new year with its winds of change requires quite a bit of adjustment but, as with every new beginning, it brings a jolt of excitement, a yearning for change, for betterment. There may be worry but there is hope and underlying it all is our unquenchable American can-do spirit and drive. There are problems to solve and we will find the ways. We not only carry on, we prevail in new and challenging conditions.

The New Year begins with fireworks on Capitol Hill as Members of the Senate celebrate their swearings-in to the 118th Congress while Members of the House, not yet sworn in, are still voting to select their new Speaker. At this writing, horses are being traded but the outcome remains something less than certain. Historians have dusted off record books dating back to the 34th Congress which saw the longest and perhaps most divisive contest for the Speaker’s gavel. It lasted from December 3, 1855 to February 2, 1856 and involved 21 candidates and 133 ballots.