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STEPHEN BRAUN WASHINGTON THE ASSOCIATED PRESS PUBLISHED DECEMBER 6, 2017 UPDATED DECEMBER 7, 2017 A whistleblower has told House Democrats that during President Donald Trump's inauguration speech, national security adviser Michael Flynn texted a former business associate to say a private nuclear reactor plan Flynn had lobbied for would also have his support in the White House. As the whistleblower chatted with Flynn's associate at an Inauguration Day celebration on Jan. 20, Flynn sent text messages saying the associate's nuclear proposal was "good to go," the whistleblower said. According to the whistleblower, Flynn also informed the associate that his business partners could move forward with their project, which aimed to construct a network of nuclear reactors across the Mideast with support from Russian and other international interests. While Flynn's agreement last week to plead guilty and co-operate with special counsel Ro...

Free Blog Counter With the ongoing synchronized pick-up in global growth, systemically important central banks will likely be more willing and able in 2018 to start and, in one case continue, the normalization of monetary policy. But what is true for the central banking community as a whole is more nuanced when assessed at the level of individual institutions. Here is the outlook in ascending degrees of policy difficulty and, therefore, of the risks of policy mistakes. The U.S. Federal Reserve is the most advanced in the policy-normalization process. It has stopped its unconventional program of security purchases, hiked rates four times and set out a plan for the gradual reduction of its balance sheet. The Fed will likely enter 2018 with another hike under its belt and a bigger window to normalize owing to the tax measures making their way through Congress. As such, markets may need to revise upward their implicit pricing of Fed actions to be more c...