This Week in Words: December 22 - 28, 2018

There were more natural disasters in Indonesia this week, following on the heels of the September earthquake that killed 2,100 people. A volcanic eruption caused a tsunami, and the country’s tsunami warning system failed. Many people could not evacuate their homes in time to avoid the crush of water, leaving at least 400 people dead and many more missing.

The stock market is having an historically awful end of the year. The market has seen the biggest December losses since the 1930s. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is doing his best to calm investors and assure them that this downturn is just a momentary event, and not a sign of worse things to come. Mercurial means “ easily changeable and unstable” and assuage means “to convince or satisfy.”

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis resigned after President Trump abruptly announced the withdraw of all U.S. troops from Syria, a move that's not supported by senior military officials. Mattis' resignation was supposed to be effective in February, but after reading his resignation letter President Trump proclaimed that Mattis will leave on January 1st. Many politicians and policy experts are praising Mattis as a steadying force in the Trump White House.

The federal government is shut down, which means that many federal offices are closed and federal employees do not get their paychecks on time. It looks like the shut down could last into the new year until the new Congress is sworn in, in January. In order to reopen the government, Congress must pass a spending bill which President Trump must then sign. Trump vetoed a previously passed bill because it did not provide funding for a border wall.

With the government shutdown in full effect, there is a lot of talk about who exactly is to blame. President Trump has blamed both Republican leadership and Democrats in Congress for not making border security a priority. Democrats counter that they have been willing to negotiate on the broader issue of border security, but they feel the construction of a wall is a waste of money and point out that the bill under consideration won’t even fully fund the wall.

In the midst of poor stock market performance, President Trump has publicly criticized the Federal Reserve for raising interest rates. In previous administrations, presidents did not openly admonish the Federal Reserve, which is supposed to be a non-political, independent agency. It is rumored that President Trump has privately threatened to fire the head of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, but White House spokespersons are eager to tamp down those reports.

The parents of a man who died from injuries he suffered as a prisoner in a North Korean jail was awarded almost $500 million this week in a U.S. district court. The verdict is a symbolic message to North Korea, and legal experts do not expect the Warmbier family to collect any money from a historically hostile country with no formal diplomatic relations with the U.S.

An eight-year-old boy from Guatemala died in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol. This is the second such incident this month, following the death of a seven-year-old girl, also from Guatemala. In both of these cases, the children and their parents were in custody on charges of illegally crossing the border into the United States. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is now looking into the medical care given to people in custody.

After a disagreement over a military draft bill, the Israeli parliament has been dissolved. This action moves up the election for Prime Minister from November to April. The current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is under investigation for corruption. These developments come at a bad time for the United States, which had hoped to start peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Any peace plan will need the prime minister's full participation.

Even though the stock market is in trouble, other signs, like consumer confidence, indicate a healthy U.S. economy. A report out this week says that holiday sales were the strongest they have been in six years. There have also been significant wage increases in certain industries. Stability and volatility are opposites. You can visualize volatility as roller coaster that's always going up and down, up and down.