Enjoy your interest rate cuts now, because they may not last after Ryan Seacrest ushers us into 2025.

The Federal Reserve slashed interest rates by a quarter-point yesterday, the third consecutive meeting where it has lowered borrowing costs. While the rate cut was widely expected, investors were much more keen to know: What are central bankers thinking about next year?

We got the answer yesterday: A projection of just two rate cuts in 2025, down from four the Fed had predicted in September.

So…why fewer rate cuts?

Inflation is being as stubborn as a mule, while the job market has stayed healthy, prompting the Fed to recalibrate its rate cut path. The central bank is trying to strike a delicate balance between lowering rates too fast (inflation go up) and lowering them too slowly (unemployment go up).

In the past few months, inflation has held frustratingly steady above the Fed’s 2% target, but unemployment has remained low, which has Fed Chair Powell taking his foot off the accelerator. “From this point forward it’s appropriate to move cautiously and look for progress on inflation,” he said yesterday.

Then there are the big question marks introduced by the incoming Trump administration. Economists widely view his plans re: tariffs, tax cuts, and mass deportations as inflationary, and the Fed did raise its forecast for inflation in 2025. But Powell was characteristically tight-lipped when talking about Trump, saying that it was too early to assess how tariffs (and his other proposed policies) would impact interest rates.

Let’s end on a high note, shall we? Powell hyped up the strong US economy as the envy of the world. “If you look around the world, there is a lot of slow growth and struggles with inflation. I feel very good about where the economy is,” he said.

Elon Musk rails against bill that would avert a government shutdown. Tuesday evening, Congressional leaders released the text of a three-month spending bill that would prevent a shutdown, which would happen on Saturday without a bill. But President-elect Trump—and Elon Musk—both say it’s too bloated with unrelated provisions, imperiling its passage. Musk wrote on X that the 1,547-page, bipartisan bill “is a crime,” adding in another post, “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” Trump also said he is “totally against” it, raising the prospect of a shutdown this weekend.

SCOTUS to take up TikTok sell-or-be-banned law on Jan. 10. TikTok will fight for its life at the Supreme Court, which said it will hear arguments on a law that would ban the app on Jan. 10—nine days before it would go into effect. TikTok argues the law, which compels its owner ByteDance to sell it or else face a ban in the US, violates the First Amendment on free speech grounds. Congress passed the measure earlier this year, citing national security concerns posed by such an immensely popular, Chinese-owned app. President-elect Trump is the wild card: He said earlier this week he has a “warm spot” in his heart for TikTok, and his DOJ will be responsible for enforcing the ban if the Supreme Court allows it to proceed.

First severe bird flu case reported in the US. The CDC said that a patient in Louisiana has been hospitalized with bird flu, the first confirmed severe case of the H5N1 illness in the US. More than 60 mild human cases of bird flu—the majority of them farmworkers—have been reported this year, following an outbreak that has killed 123 million poultry since 2022 and infected more than 860 dairy herds in 16 states since March. As for the severe case, the person had been in contact with birds—both sick and dead—in backyard flocks, the CDC said. Health officials stressed the risk to the human population remains low, but yesterday California declared an emergency over an outbreak of bird flu in dairy cattle.

Less flexibility for employees = lower headcount. That’s the conclusion of new research from Revelio Labs, a workforce intelligence firm, which found that companies requiring return-to-office for employees tend to grow their workforces more slowly than companies that allow hybrid work, the Washington Post reports.

Since June 2022, companies with hybrid work policies have increased their headcount by 1.6%. For businesses mandating that employees commute to the office, that growth rate is only 1%, the research reveals.

That could be intentional. Workers have long suspected that return-to-office mandates were used by companies to lay off employees without…laying off employees. And an Amazon executive seemed to confirm as much. After the company announced a five day in-office requirement starting in January, AWS CEO Matt Garman said if employees don’t want to comply, “that’s okay, there are other companies around.” (Amazon CEO Andy Jassy denied the policy was a “backdoor layoff.”)

But hiring fewer people means you’re also hiring fewer all-star people. A separate study from the University of Pittsburgh noted “brain drain as a significant cost of RTO mandates.” That research found companies requiring in-office work took “significantly longer” to fill job openings and suffered “abnormally high turnover.”

But the RTO push soldiers on. AT&T and Sweetgreen are now mandating more in-office work in the new year. However, Amazon is delaying its RTO mandate for some employees because there’s not enough office space.

Jimmy Donaldson has conquered YouTube. Now, the 26-year-old better known as MrBeast is taking his talents to a slightly bigger screen.

Today is the premiere of “Beast Games,” a “Squid Game”-inspired game show hosted by MrBeast that will stream exclusively on Amazon Prime Video over 10 episodes. It’s an expensive bet by Amazon (the deal was reportedly worth $100 million) that at least some of MrBeast’s world-leading 337 million followers on YouTube will follow him over to the streaming service.

Everything about this show is big:

• Amazon claims the show is the biggest live game show in history, with 1,000 players competing for a prize of $5 million, the biggest single prize in TV history.
• MrBeast says he spent more than $100 million on the show and claims he broke 40 world records along the way.

But reports of poor conditions for contestants, including a lack of food and medical care, has dogged the show for months. In September, MrBeast and Amazon were sued by five unnamed contestants alleging a “toxic and hostile” workplace, among other complaints. Donaldson said those claims were “blown out of proportion.”

Bottom line: In going from internet content creator to television star, MrBeast will attempt a career transition that’s tripped up other popular YouTubers. But the game show format seems like a good place to start: His real-life “Squid Game” video is his most popular ever on YouTube, with 678 million views.

Americans never let frivolities get in the way of time-honored traditions—so they schedule their weddings around dates when their local college football team isn’t playing.

According to a Washington Post analysis of data from The Knot, idle Saturdays are more popular for weddings than Saturdays when the hometown team is on the field for the majority of bigtime college football programs. In markets with current SEC teams, for example, more than 80% of bye week Saturdays had a higher wedding frequency than the national measure.

Let’s zero in on one day in one market: Oct. 22, 2022, in the area in and around Auburn, Alabama. With the Tigers on a bye week, that Saturday had 5.3% of weddings for the year, while nationally, 3.1% of weddings took place on that day. It’s a smart move—there’s nothing worse than having to split your attention between the fourth quarter on your phone and the beautiful couple exchanging their vows.