Axios

General Motors' big bet on self-driving cars suffered another blow this weekend with the departure of Kyle Vogt as CEO of Cruise, the autonomous vehicle company he co-founded, Nathan writes.

Why it matters: As GM's self-driving car division, Cruise's future is immersed in uncertainty after pulling its vehicles off the road amid swirling safety questions, Nathan and Axios' Kia Kokalitcheva write.

• GM has invested billions in the company, heralding its robotaxis as key to transitioning to a safer, self-driving world.

Catch up quick: After an incident in San Francisco during which one of Cruise's cars dragged a pedestrian who had been hit by a human-driven vehicle, California regulators last month pulled Cruise's permit to operate cars without safety drivers.

Las Vegas closed out its first Formula One Grand Prix in four decades over the weekend — the latest sign of the city's desire to become the "sports and entertainment capital of the world."

Why it matters: Construction to accommodate the event, which transformed part of the Strip into a track for vehicles racing over 200 miles an hour, disrupted the lives of locals for nearly a year.

In coming months, a debate will begin on how the Fed should approach its monetary policy. Its every-five-years "framework review" is on track to begin in 2024 and conclude in 2025.

Driving the news: But in Boston Friday, there was some early discussion of what it should entail, as a former top official argued that the last version of the framework, released in 2020, may have contributed to the outburst of inflation in 2021.

What they're saying: Don Kohn, former vice chair of the central bank, emphasized that the 2020 framework wasn't the main reason for inflation: "For crying out loud, it was the COVID distortion, supply and demand, etc.," he said.

• But he does say that it made "the inflation a bit higher and more persistent than otherwise" would have been the case. "That has its costs," he said.
• He pointed to "several asymmetries" in the 2020 framework in which policy reacted to employment below the perceived maximum, but not above.

The intrigue: "I think when the committee goes back to review… its framework, a framework should produce acceptable results for the dual mandate under a wide variety of circumstances," said Kohn, an influential voice among global central bankers.

Of note: When reporters asked Boston Fed president Susan Collins about the framework review Friday evening, she said: "I think it's important to emphasize that over the medium to longer run, and that two parts of our dual mandate are really complementary, and they're intertwined."

If you are in charge of setting interest rates for a major economy, aiming for low inflation and ample jobs, what's the best tack: Should you adjust rates quickly or gradually?

Why it matters: That is the choice the world's leading central banks faced in 2022 as high inflation took root. Their different choices  — and results — could shed light on which strategy is best in the future.

• At a Boston Fed conference Friday, former Bank of England official Kristin Forbes laid out the relative trade-offs of central banks that acted as tortoises and those that were hares in the monetary tightening cycle of the last two years.

Flashback: Some central banks (the tortoises) largely held to the past pattern of moving slowly and relying on small, quarter percentage point rate hikes; meanwhile, the hares ripped up the playbook quickly, and hiked rates 0.75 percentage points or more at a time.

• The tortoises included the Bank of England and the central banks of New Zealand and Norway. The hares include the U.S. Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the central banks of Sweden, Australia and Canada.

What they're saying: "Each of these strategies does have some important advantages and disadvantages," said Forbes, an economist at MIT.

• With a tortoise strategy, she said, you can "tighten a little, see how it's affecting the labor market, see how that's feeding through into inflation and then see if you need to do more."
• "Also by moving more slowly in the tortoise strategy, that allows entities to adjust and reduces the risk that something breaks," she said.
• "Households have more time to plan ahead. Companies have more time to plan ahead and financial institutions have more time to plan ahead if you move more slowly."

Yes, but: "The tortoises also took longer to get where they already thought they needed to be," Forbes said. By contrast, the hares' more aggressive action may have helped strengthen the central banks' credibility, and thus made it less likely that inflation become entrenched.

• "By tackling inflation more aggressively … you're less likely to see changes in the economy that could make inflation stickier. For example, you're less likely to see people build inflation indexation into contracts," she said.
• That means in the hare approach you might end up doing less tightening overall, "and then you might actually have less impact on unemployment in the labor market."

The big picture: Forbes then compared the economic results of the tortoises and hares, and found the hares have achieved both bigger reductions in inflation and less labor market pain.

• She acknowledges many caveats. This is more a simple back-of-envelope exercise rather than a rigorous model, though Forbes said a more sophisticated version of the analysis — accounting for many more variables — is in the works.

The bottom line: So far, at least, the central banks that have moved fast have gotten better results for their economies than those that took it slow. Whether that has broader lessons for the future is still an open question, however.

The U.S. housing market has shattered the stereotypical American dream, as the dominant group of homebuyers ages and moves without young children.

Why it matters: The median homebuyer age has jumped 10 years — to 49 —  in two decades, new data shows, as the housing affordability crisis deepens.

Argentina, back in its familiar position of being a fiscal and economic disaster zone, has elected a classic chaos agent, in the form of right-wing economist Javier Milei.

Why it matters: Milei ran as an ultra-libertarian — but without much support in Parliament, it's not clear how much change he can really effect.

International students flocked to the U.S. in record numbers last year, including a 35% increase in those coming from India.

Why it matters: Booming demand from India for American education is offsetting a decline in the number of students from China, which fell for a third straight year.

The latest round of Black Friday sales is getting started and will continue throughout Thanksgiving week.

Why it matters: Retailers are rolling out deals and discounts in hopes that inflation-weary consumers will shop online and in stores.