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.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen appeared on 60 Minutes this past Sunday to present her views on the state of the U.S. economy, the risk of recession and the widespread costs of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Ending that war, she contended, would be the single best thing we can do for the global economy but, until then, the U.S. will continue to fund Ukraine for “as long as it takes”. As for America, the nation’s 78th Secretary presented a rather rosy outlook for the coming year, one in which, absent an unanticipated shock, inflation will be “much lower”.

On Rolling Stone’s list of the greatest songs of all times, the Ray Charles version of “Georgia on My Mind” ranks as number 44. The soul singer known as Brother Ray was in fact a native of Georgia, born in 1930, the same year that Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell penned the lyrics. He recorded the classic tune thirty years later on his album The Genius Hits the Road and, in 1979, his rendition became the official state song of Georgia. The Peach State was the last of the original thirteen American colonies to be founded, the fourth state to enter the Union in 1788, the fifth to secede in 1861, and the last to be readmitted in 1870. This week, it is on the mind of millions of people around the world — not for its role as host of the Masters Tournament, or as the birthplace of the civil rights movement, the home of former president Jimmy Carter and baseball legend Ty Cobb — but in the political battle for a U.S. Senate seat and momentum going into the next cycle.

The global population climbed to 8 billion people on Tuesday, November 15, according to the United Nations, up from 5.3 billion in 1990. More than half of us — an estimated 5 billion — from every nation, ethnicity, faith, age range, income level and occupation will watch some or most of the FIFA World Cup games during the 29 days of competition underway in Qatar. Not billions but millions of people around the world also tune in to the monthly press conferences held by Jerome Powell, the head of the U.S. central bank. These events are shorter in duration and much less exciting than the World Cup games but produce just as much if not more wagering.

The 2024 presidential campaign season is off to a start already with Tuesday’s announcement by former president Donald J. Trump. The launch of his third bid for the Oval Office came just one week after the mid-term elections flipped the U.S. House to Republican rule by a slim margin but left the Senate under Democratic control, likely reliant once again upon Vice President Harris to cast tie-breaking votes depending on the outcome of the December 6 runoff in Georgia.

More than 18 million veterans who have served our country in the active military, naval or air service will be honored this week at parades, dinners, award ceremonies and other events commemorating their sacrifice and service. A grateful nation pauses once a year to thank all those who have defended our many freedoms — including the one we just exercised with spirit this week. An estimated 42 million early ballots were cast in the midterm elections and, by the time all the tallies are final, this could be the second midterm in a row where voters exceeded 100 million.