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National

The federal judge who declared the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional has issued an order saying the law can remain in effect while his ruling is appealed.

The bottom line: The order by Judge Reed O'Connor isn't a surprise, but it gives more certainty to the health care system — at least for now — and avoids the chaos that would have resulted if the ruling had immediately gone into effect. O'Connor noted that "many everyday Americans would otherwise face great uncertainty during the pendency of appeal."

Judge says Affordable Care Act will stay in place during appeal

It avoids the chaos that would have resulted if the ruling had gone into effect immediately.

A screenshot of the Affordable Care Act enrollment website

The Affordable Care Act enrollment website. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Health Care

Affordable Care Act

Health

The minimum wage will rise in 20 states and nearly two dozen cities in 2019, including $1-an-hour increases for employers in Massachusetts and Maine and for California businesses with more than 25 workers, the Associated Press reports. 

The big picture: The federal minimum wage has been set at $7.25 an hour since 2009, but 29 states and the District of Columbia have enacted higher wages since then. The new increases will raise 20 states to even higher levels.

The states that are giving their workers raises next year: 

Go deeper: Minimum wage hikes have earned workers $68 billion per year since 2012

Minimum wage will go up in 20 states in 2019

The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 since 2009.

Workers protesting the current minimum wage

Workers protesting the current minimum wage. Photo: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images

Business

Minimum wage

Sen. Lindsey Graham backed away Sunday from his criticisms of President Trump's decision to withdraw from Syria, telling reporters that Trump shared "some things I didn't know" during a lunch at the White House that "make me feel a lot better about where we're headed in Syria." 

Why it matters: Graham's initial goal for the lunch was to change Trump's mind on his decision to pull out of Syria. Graham was a vocal critic of Trump's decision to pull out when it was initially announced, and said it could be a "costly mistake" down the line.

Lindsey Graham syria

"He promised to destroy ISIS. He's going to keep that promise. We're not there yet, but as I said today, we're on the 10 yard line. "

The backstory: Graham has consistently been a senator Trump would lean on when making foreign policy decisions, but was ignored when Trump made his decision on Syria. 

Graham backs down on Syria after lunch with Trump

Graham said Trump shared "some things I didn't know" about Syria.

Sen. Lindsey Graham. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Politics

Lindsey Graham

2024 will be an election year like no other, as President Biden seeks re-election amid economic uncertainty, two wars and questions about his age. His likely foe, former President Trump, faces felony charges and vows revenge on his political enemies. Meanwhile, Americans generally are dissatisfied with those choices and are divided over immigration, race, education and more.

Politics & Policy

The deadly wildfire in Paradise, California last month was "utterly predictable," and forgotten lessons and ignored warnings made the deaths and destruction worse, a Los Angeles Times investigation concluded.

Why it matters: The fire killed 86 people, and climate change is likely to make future wildfires even more destructive — so the issue of how to keep people safe has taken on new urgency. Paradise "ignored repeated warnings of the risk its residents faced, crafted no plan to evacuate the area all at once, entrusted public alerts to a system prone to fire, and did not sound citywide orders to flee even as a hail of fire rained down," the Times reported.

Go deeper: Why it's so hard to issue a fire warning

California wildfire was deadlier because of ignored warnings

A Los Angeles Times investigation concludes the destruction was "utterly predictable."

The remains of a house destroyed by the fire in Paradise, California

The remains of a house destroyed by the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif. in November. Photo: Jane Tyska/Digital First Media/The Mercury News via Getty Images

U.S. News

California wildfires

Climate change

Breaking climate science and policy coverage as extreme weather events reshape communities. Keep tabs on the race to a low carbon economy, which may be bumpy as governments, climate tech startups and major oil and gas companies race to find their niche amid the changing energy landscape.

Energy & Climate

The decline of journalist killings in the last 6 years has ended, with 94 journalists and news media staffers killed around the world in 2018, the AP reports.

By the numbers: The deadliest place for journalists this year was Afghanistan, where 16 killings occurred, followed by Mexico with 11, Yemen with 9, and Syria with 8. The numbers come from the International Federation of Journalists, an international trade group, in a report set for release Monday.

More journalists killed in 2018, ending recent decline

94 journalists were killed this year, per the International Federation of Journalists.

Jamal Khashoggi portrait next to candlelight at vigil.

Slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Photo: Chris McGrath/Getty Images

Journalism

Media

Afghanistan

Latin America and Latinos

Top stories & latest news on the Federal Reserve, real-time data, plus the biggest shifts happening in the U.S. and global economy.

Economy

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Economy & Business

Capital

Axios Capital

Here's Matt Egan's summary of one month in the stock market, for CNN: "Not one but two 1,000-point plunges for the Dow. And a powerful comeback... easily one of Wall Street's wildest months since 2008... A real roller-coaster. A wild ride."

The month in question? February 2018. With all the other crazy going on in the world this year, you can be forgiven if you've forgotten all of February's noise already.

Stock market volatility is a fact of life. Irregular spikes in volatility — including the one we're in the middle of right now — are also normal. (Ben Carlson has a great chart of stock-market volatility going back to 1928 which also shows just how normal it is.) The difference this time is that market volatility has become politicized, thanks to numerous presidential tweets.

That said, if you enjoy rollercoaster rides at Christmas, last week would have made you really happy. The Dow's intraday range was 548 points in a half-day session on Monday, 1,166 points on Wednesday, 871 points on Thursday, and 401 points on Friday. (On Tuesday the market was closed.)

Needless to say, there was no news driving those swings. (Also, stop measuring Dow swings in point terms. The crash of 1987 was vastly bigger, and that was only 508 points.)

Be smart: A stock price is the discounted present value of a company's future cashflows. Tiny adjustments to expected future growth rates, or even tinier adjustments to the discount rate being used, can result in large swings in the fair value of the stock.

We see shares trading at a specific price, but conceptually it might be better to think of them as a probability distribution. Right now, those probabilities are wider and more uncertain than at any point since the financial crisis.

Legend avers that an alert young man once found himself in the immediate presence of the late Mr. J. P. Morgan. Seeking to improve the golden moment, he ventured to inquire Mr. Morgan’s opinion as to the future course of the stock market. The alleged reply has become classic: “Young man, I believe the market is going to fluctuate.”It did. It always has. Perhaps it always will.

Laurence H. Sloan, Security Speculation: The Dazzling Adventure (1926)

The return of an old friend

Stock market volatility is a fact of life.

Stock market

Data: Sovereign Default Database; Chart: Naema Ahmed/Axios

For all the geopolitical chaos in the world, one thing has never been safer: Lending money to governments.

Why it matters: It’s been well over a decade since defaulted sovereign debt accounted for even 1% of total world debt. Mega-defaults by Argentina and Greece generated plenty of headlines, but ultimately were relatively small by historical standards. As sovereign debt burdens rise around the world, however, these golden days won’t last forever. Government debt that feels perfectly safe today could turn out to be plenty risky tomorrow.

The most recent data, which includes all sovereign defaults up to the end of 2017, shows that defaulted sovereign debt accounts for just 0.3% of all world public debt. That’s an all-time low, and is down sharply from the high point of 6.2% reached in both 1987 and 1990.

Puerto Rico is included in the 0.3% figure, as are the other big outstanding sovereign debtors — Sudan, Iraq, and Venezuela.

The total number of sovereigns in default is also hitting new lows. It now stands at 79, the lowest number since 1981.

Be smart: Sovereign debt won’t look this healthy forever. "Looking ahead, we expect sovereign defaults to pick up again over the next decade," write the banks' David Beers and Jamshid Mavalwalla.

The biggest risk on the horizon: Italy, which alone has $2.8 trillion in sovereign debt outstanding, or about 4.3% of total world public debt. That’s 11.5 times the $216 billion in default today.

The bad years in the late 1980s were dominated by defaulted bank loans. Today, countries borrow very little directly from banks. But Italy's banks have more than 10% of their assets — some $425 billion — invested in Italian government bonds.

The "doom loop," where the sovereign and its banks bring each other down, remains a very real worry.

Go deeper: The podcast I recently recorded with the doyen of sovereign debt restructuring, Lee Buchheit, was easily my favorite episode of 2018.

The safety of sovereign debt

But the low level of risk is not a guarantee.

Debt

World

"Medicare for All" is the idea that's been getting attention from progressive Democrats, but Forbes flags another one that could get attention over the next two years: letting people buy into Medicare between the ages of 55 and 64.

Between the lines: It's a more incremental, centrist option for Medicare expansion than the sweeping idea that's generating excitement in Democratic circles. (Bill Clinton floated a version of it during his presidency, and moderate House Democrats are its main backers now.) But as Forbes points out, Sen. Sherrod Brown, a possible Democratic presidential candidate, has sponsored a version of Medicare at 55 — so it could get attention if he runs.

The light alternative to Medicare for All

It's incremental and centrist, but it could get attention over the next two years.

Sen. Sherrod Brown is a sponsor of the proposal. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Medicare

One of the most important trends likely to drive the 2020 presidential race: A growing disillusion with capitalism as practiced, and a coming struggle over how to recast this pillar of the Western order.

The bottom line: You could hardly challenge a more basic part of who we are as Americans and Westerners. 

Polling shows a rising number of young Americans prefer socialism to capitalism.

Gallup found this summer: "Americans aged 18 to 29 are as positive about socialism (51%) as they are about capitalism (45%)."

That's "a 12-point decline in young adults' positive views of capitalism in just the past two years and a marked shift since 2010, when 68% viewed it positively."

Why it matters: The main messengers of this coming steamroller are nowhere near the fringe. They're mainstream thinkers with ideas like, "We must rethink the purpose of the corporation" and "The crisis of democratic capitalism" (both from Financial Times columnist Martin Wolf).

The thinking is captured in a clutch of must-read new books by Paul Collier, Jonathan Tepper and Oren Cass; and a growing body of academic papers in the U.S. and Europe. 

What they are mostly doing is connecting the dots of what we all realize by now: Flaws in the system — including forgetting about so much of society — are largely to blame for widespread disaffection with establishment institutions, leaders and answers. 

The evidence of something profoundly amiss is visible in: 

Almost four decades of largely flat wages for the vast majority of workers.

Four decades of meager productivity gains.

An anemic number of new startups, and relatively few IPOs.

If you remember one thing: All that bigness that you see around you — outsized cities, companies and individuals gobbling up most of the economic pie — is not normal.

For the economic system to become more inclusive, competitive, and deliver for more people, some or a lot of that bigness may have to be broken up. 

Axios' Felix Salmon notes: The past four decades have seen massive global increases in wealth and income and productivity, thanks almost entirely to capitalism. (Look where South Korea was 40 years ago!)

So flattened wages in the U.S. reflects the way the benefits of capitalism wound up getting spread across the globe, rather than being concentrated in the West.

The coming reckoning for capitalism

It's one of the most important trends likely to drive the 2020 presidential race.

Axios

Sunday's top stories