• Kirra Dickinson, 28, ditched corporate life in 2022 for her mental health and to create content. 
• She chose to "descend the corporate ladder," a phrase a millennial comedian coined on TikTok. 
• A career coach says it's common among millennials and Gen Zers uninspired by their career paths.

Despite years of believing it was the only path, a Los Angeles-based millennial decided against climbing the corporate ladder. Now, she's happier than ever.

Kirra Dickinson, a 27-year-old content creator and manifestation coach, told Business Insider she spent years in technology research after graduating from UC Berkeley. Growing up, she felt "a lot of pressure" to get a traditional job to support herself and her family financially.

So, that's exactly what she did post-college. Her first job was as a design strategist for Fidelity in Boston before she pivoted to UX research. Eventually, she said she landed a job at Salesforce in Southern California.

When Dickinson was 26 and "reaching a peak" in her career, she found herself completely uninspired with work, to the point it was affecting her mental health.

"All I was thinking of is, 'Oh my gosh, this is going to suck. And I really don't want to do this. I really don't want to work with these people,'" she said.

At the same time, Dickinson was building a following on social media, posting lifestyle content, reviews, and tutorials, and getting a few brand deals here and there.

In 2022, she took a leap. "I was like, 'If I can pay my bills, that's fine. I have enough in savings and reserve investments. So we're just going to do an experiment and are going to quit corporate for a year," she said. "'If I don't like it, I can always come back.'"

Uninspiring leadership and the gig economy are drawing young professionals away from the corporate ladder

Dickinson is among many young professionals disillusioned by corporate life and the lack of work-life balance it can sometimes entail.

Octavia Goredema, a career coach and author of the book "Prep, Push, Pivot: Essential Career Strategies for Underrepresented Women" told BI she's increasingly noticing millennials and Gen Zers gravitating to the gig economy outside their 9-to-5 jobs, contributing to a general lack of ambition to climb the corporate ladder.

"Maybe they're investing, maybe they're working on a venture with friends on the weekends, maybe there's another skill that they have that they monetize in some way," Goredema said.

She also often hears younger clients say they don't want to become managers because it looks more stressful than it's worth.

"When they look above them at the roles that they could move into, in theory, they don't see anything that looks appealing," she said, adding that usually, it's because company leaders appear visibly under pressure and under-supported.

Anti-corporate ladder sentiment is also rife on social media. On April 7, New York-based comedian Aaron Yin posted a TikTok describing his career ambitions — or lack thereof.

In the video, which has over 1.1 million views, Yin said he is electing to "descend the corporate ladder" to better his health.

While he acknowledged some people aspire to be managers and to get "chewed out" by a CEO, he said he isn't one of them.

Yin said he doesn't want to be promoted or make more money because the added stress would mean spending more on "therapy and food."

Yin did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. However, his video prompted a surge of comments from users who said they, too, have chosen not to climb the corporate ladder to prioritize their happiness.

Like some commentators on Yin's video, Dickinson said she felt "relieved" after ditching the corporate ladder.

Not only that — she said she wound up making more money than her Salesforce salary after signing a deal with modeling agency NEXT, dedicating her time to coaching clients on manifestation, and launching a podcast.

"It is hard to walk away from that security," Dickinson said, referring to the corporate world. Still, she has no regrets about doing so to ride the "roller coaster" of an untraditional career path.

"It keeps things fresh," Dickinson said.

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• Applications to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program are paused through July.
• It's a result of the program's transition away from servicer MOHELA to several federal servicers.
• During this time, borrowers can still submit applications, but they will not be processed.

Some student-loan borrowers hoping for debt relief might have to wait a few months.

Beginning on May 1, the Education Department placed a pause on any processing of applications to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which forgives student debt for government and nonprofit workers after ten years of qualifying payments.

This pause is happening to allow PSLF accounts to be transferred away from student-loan company MOHELA, which was previously the sole servicer tasked with managing the program. During this transition, several different companies will assume management over PSLF accounts, but borrowers will be able to check their PSLF status directly through studentaid.gov rather than through one of the servicers.

The transition is expected to be completed in July, after which borrowers will regain access to their account information. In the meantime, though, while borrowers can still submit PSLF applications, they will not be processed until the pause ends, and they will also be unable to access their PSLF history on MOHELA's portal.

Payments are also still due for borrowers during this period.

This transition is part of the Education Department's efforts to make the student-loan repayment system easier for borrowers to access. As Business Insider previously reported, many borrowers in PSLF have encountered challenges with MOHELA, including inaccurate payment counts toward PSLF, and strained servicer resources meant it was difficult for borrowers to get ahold of customer service.

The department has worked over the past few years to update borrowers' accounts and bring them closer to forgiveness — or discharge their loans if they met their qualifying payments — and the web streamlining is intended to improve the user experience on the front end.

Most recently, the department canceled $300 million in student debt for 4,600 PSLF borrowers, bringing the total debt relief through PSLF to $62.8 billion for 876,000 borrowers.

Still, it remains to be seen how effectively this transition will be completed. Additionally, BI first reported on Monday that MOHELA requested that over a million borrowers be transitioned from its portfolio to other servicers in the hopes that it could provide better service with a lighter load.

The Education Department agreed, and impacted borrowers have started receiving notices from MOHELA and their new servicer informing them of the change. In the meantime, the department has vowed to enforce oversight over servicers to ensure they are continuing to fulfill their contractual obligations to borrowers.

"The Department takes very seriously its responsibility to oversee servicers and ensure borrowers have a smooth and successful repayment experience," Federal Student Aid said in a recent blog post. "We will continue to monitor performance, communicate with servicers and borrowers, and take corrective action where needed."

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• Jeff Bezos spent nearly three decades at the helm of Amazon.
• His successor, Andy Jassy, has called him the "most unusual business leader of our era."
• Here's some of Bezos' most famous principles for running a team and business.

Andy Jassy has called him "arguably the most unusual business leader of our era."

In his 27 years at the helm of Amazon, Jeff Bezos taught his successor, Jassy, and others a lot about how to run one of the world's biggest businesses.

Here's some of the advice he's shared over the years about managing a team and company:

Think big picture

Bezos "always had a way of getting teams to think bigger," Jassy said at a 2017 talk.

"It was amazing to watch how many ideas came to him from teams — that I thought were really good ideas, and they were really good ideas — where Jeff kind of listened to them, thought about them and then really looked around corners and helped figure it out and said: 'Well, shouldn't we extend this idea? Shouldn't we look around this corner naturally to advance the idea beyond what we are thinking just now to really change the shape of what we've built?'" Jassy said.

"Big things start small. The biggest oak starts from an acorn," Bezos said in 2017.

Have high standards

Bezos' had high expectations that extended throughout the organization.

""When you run a big organization and you can't attend all of the meetings, you can set reasonably high standards — I'll say maybe even unreasonably high standards, reasonably high standards that people stretch to — it gives you a lot of leverage across the organization where you are not in all of those meetings," Jassy said.

Be "strategically patient and tactically impatient"

Bezos put an emphasis on speed while sticking to his long-term vision for the company.

"His conviction about long-term vision and where he wants to take something — and even when people tell him it is not possible, which by the way, all of the time people tell him it is not possible — he has a conviction about it and believes it is possible and is stubborn about that vision," Jassy said. "But, in the interim, even though it may take us a long time to get to where we want to go, he understands that speed disproportionately matters."

Determine meeting head count by 2 pizzas

Bezos famously employs a "two-pizza rule" for meetings: He limits them to only the number of people that could be fed with two pizzas.

He credits this with helping with productivity, speed, and collaboration.

Create narratives, not PowerPoints

Bezos has said Amazon has "the weirdest meeting culture you ever encounter." One of Bezos' meeting no-nos is PowerPoints, which he has banned in company meetings.

"For every meeting, someone from the meeting has prepared a six-page, narratively structured memo that has real sentences and topic sentences and verbs," he's said. "It's not just bullet points. It's supposed to create the context for the discussion we're about to have."

He's said his perfect meeting has days of prep and involves "a crisp document and a messy meeting."

In a 2004 email to his senior team, Bezos explained why he doesn't like PowerPoints.

"Powerpoint-style presentations somehow give permission to gloss over ideas, flatten out any sense of relative importance, and ignore the innerconnectedness of ideas," he wrote.

Bezos makes sure meeting attendees read through the memos.

"We read in the room. Just like high-school kids, executives will bluff their way through the meeting as if they've read the memo. So you have to carve out time so everyone has actually read the memo — they are not just pretending," he said.

Bezos has also assigned summer reading to top executives before.

Get customer input

Bezos' email is public, and while it's hard to imagine the jet-setting centibillionaire responded to any customers, he says he sometimes forwarded their concerns or feedback to the relevant departments.

"I see most of those emails. I see them and I forward them to the executives in charge of the area with a question mark. It's shorthand [for], 'Can you look into this?' 'Why is this happening?'" he said in 2018.

Bezos made a big point at Amazon of being focused on "customer obsession, as opposed to competitor obsession."

"Often companies say they are focused on customers, but they really spend most of their energy reacting to and talking about competitors," he said.

In fact, much of Amazon's success can be traced back to Bezos soliciting customer input in the company's early days.

In 1997, Bezos emailed 1,000 customers asking what they'd like to see the company sell. One customer said they wished Bezos sold windshield wiper blades because they needed new ones.

"I thought to myself, 'We can sell anything this way,'" Bezos said.

"Disagree and commit"

In his 2016 letter to shareholders, Bezos talked about the importance of the "disagree and commit" strategy in decision-making.

"If you have conviction on a particular direction even though there's no consensus, it's helpful to say, 'Look, I know we disagree on this but will you gamble with me on it? Disagree and commit?' By the time you're at this point, no one can know the answer for sure, and you'll probably get a quick yes," he wrote.

Categorize decisions, and make them sooner than you think

Bezos wrote in his 2015 shareholder letter that he distinguishes Type 1 and Type 2 decisions. Type 1 decisions are high-impact and have a big influence on the company's strategy, while Type 2 decisions have lower stakes and can be more easily reversed if necessary.

Bezos says Type 1 decisions take up most of your time, while Type 2 decisions should be delegated or grouped with other smaller decisions for later.

Bezos believes you should make decisions with 70% of the information you wish you had, and iterate from there. He says he does this because if you waited for all of the data you wanted, you'd be acting too slowly.

In addition, Bezos likes to make decisions in the mornings.

"He said, 'Normally, I make important decisions around 10:30 a.m. I'll discuss it the day before, I'll sleep on it, and in the morning I'll actually make the decision,'" Italian fashion designer Brunello Cucinelli told The Wall Street Journal's Lane Florsheim in 2020.

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• The CEO and cofounder of Palantir isn't a fan of campus protests against Israel.
• He called the protests "pagan" and joked that some protesters should travel to North Korea.
• He also said he had "fantasies of using drone-enabled technology to exact revenge" on his enemies.

Alex Karp, the CEO and cofounder of Palantir, said at a high-profile Washington, DC-based event that he wants to send college student protesters to North Korea as part of an "exchange program" to give them perspective.

Politico was the first to report Karp's comments at The Hill and Valley Forum on Wednesday, which was live-streamed on YouTube. Other speakers at the event included the cofounder of AI startup Anthropic, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and several other members of Congress.

In a conversation about AI's impact on warfare in Ukraine and Israel, Jacob Helberg, the senior policy advisor to the CEO at Palantir, mentioned "pro-Hamas slogans" chanted at "very prestigious universities."

Karp claimed that some campus protesters were even pro-North Korean.

"We're gonna do an exchange program sponsored by Karp," he said. "A couple months in North Korea, nice-tasting flavored bark. See how you feel about that."

Earlier in the chat, Karp took a shot at anti-Israel protests at Columbia University, where NYPD officers arrested 300 protesters earlier this week.

"Look at Columbia," he said. "There is literally no way to explain the investment in our elite schools, and the output is a pagan religion — a pagan religion of mediocrity and discrimination and intolerance, and violence."

He added that he thinks a "double standard" has spread across campuses where protesters dedicate themselves to "an architecture of antidiscrimination while dressing in masks and excluding the population that's been most discriminated for the last 3,000 years."

Palantir did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

President Joe Biden commented Thursday morning on the protests in a press conference, saying they haven't led him to reconsider his stance on Israel.

Karp also said at the conference that he's fantasized about drone-striking his VC competitors.

"I historically have been one that would rage against Silicon Valley venture people," he said. "And I had all sorts of fantasies of using drone-enabled technology to exact revenge — especially targeted — in violation of all norms."

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• Hunterbrook Media is a hedge fund that also does journalism. Or maybe a journalism startup that also runs a hedge fund. 
• Will that work? A new story in the New Yorker wonders if you can combine those things.
• One thing the story makes clear: Having well-connected parents is useful for startup founders.

Can a hedge fund also be an investigative journalism outfit?

That's a provocative question, generated by the existence of Hunterbrook Media, the combination hedge fund/investigative journalism outfit that launched this spring.

The idea in a nutshell: Hunterbrook's small team of investigative journalists look for stories about companies that could also be attractive targets for a hedge fund to invest in or — more likely — bet against. Then the journalists tell Hunterbrook's hedge fund arm about the stories they will publish about the company, so the fund can short the company (or invest in it).

You can read more about that via the New Yorker's Clare Malone's excellent look at Hunterbrook, though it's way too soon to assess how any of this will work.

Read the New Yorker's story on Hunterbrook

Hunterbrook's first big published investigation was into mortgage underwriter United Wholesale Mortgage, and before publication, Hunterbrook's fund went short on UWM and long on rival Rocket Mortgage; a month later, UWM shares are up Rocket is down slightly. ("We're just getting started, but early signs are that it's working," the company told my colleague Bradley Saacks last month.)

But Malone's piece also raises a different question: What kind of background do you need to raise $10 million for a media startup — and $100 million for a hedge fund — these days?

And that one does have an answer: It helps if you are very, very connected.

Malone never uses the epithet "nepo baby" to describe Hunterbrook cofounders Sam Koppelman and Nathaniel Horwitz. But they are indeed people who have successful and well-connected parents: Koppelman's father is screenwriter and TV showrunner Brian Koppelman; Horwitz's mother, Geraldine Brooks, is a much-lauded journalist and author, and so was his father, Tony Horwitz, who died in 2019.

That family history, of course, doesn't automatically convince people to give a couple of 20-something Harvard grads millions of dollars for their first forays into finance and journalism. But it certainly helps them meet people that will eventually do that.

And Malone spells that part out quite clearly:

""Nathaniel and Sam have a pretty ridiculous network," Matthew Termine, one of the Hunterbrook reporters on the U.W.M. investigation, told me. E-mails that Koppelman wrote to the chair of Sony Entertainment about his application to Harvard appeared in the 2014 Sony Pictures leak, as did a note to the school on his behalf from Matt Damon. (Koppelman's father co-wrote "Rounders" and "Ocean's Thirteen.") For a time, he dated the "Euphoria" star Maude Apatow. Horwitz, for his part, once wrote about a series of conversations he had with the Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes as her life and company crumbled.

Hunterbrook's advisers include Paul Steiger, the founder of ProPublica, and Daniel Okrent, the first public editor of the Times. Former Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Matt Murray and the financial journalist Bethany McLean gave notes on the U.W.M. investigation before publication. Hunterbrook's hedge fund has raised a hundred million dollars, and the company received seed funding from, among others, the venture arm of Laurene Powell Jobs's Emerson Collective and the hedge-fund billionaire Marc Lasry, who, Brian Koppelman once told the Financial Times, helped the "Billions" showrunner develop an "understanding of the billionaire psyche."

So, again: None of Horwitz and Koppelmans' family histories and networks will make their company succeed. But it certainly didn't hurt them getting out of the gate.

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• Express filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April, and it's closing 95 branded stores in the US.
• I visited some of its NYC locations to see what the merchandise looks like.
• One analyst said Express failed to adapt to the post-pandemic world of remote work.

Express has been a clothing retailer staple in malls across the US for years but filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April and will close 95 stores.

So, I visited two Express locations destined to shut soon. One thing I found: there's no need to rush to get these deals.

Express was known as a place to get business casual clothes before the boom of remote work in 2020, but the style choices and high prices left me uncertain about exactly who its target audience is in 2024.

That seems to be backed up by Neil Saunders, managing director of retail analysis GlobalData, who told Business Insider:

"The formal and smart-casual market for both men and women has softened over recent years because of a rise from working from home and the casualization of fashion."

He continued: "This puts Express firmly on the wrong side of trends, and, in our view, the chain made too little effort to adapt."

The clothes I saw felt like they were in line with last year's obsessions — like metallic styles as seen at Beyoncé's Renaissance Tour. Everything else also seemed a bit dated. Maybe I, a 24-year-old, am not the target audience, but I noticed that the options didn't fit the "clean girl," "mob wife," or "y2k" aesthetics dominating social media right now.

I also work from home most days, so business casual makes up less than 50% of my wardrobe. But I can't say the slim-leg editor pants from Express fall into my ideal work attire.

The other thing that surprised me when I visited the two soon-to-be-closed locations in New York City was the prices. Even taking 30%-50% off Express's clothes didn't bring items down to a cost I'd see as "affordable" — like H&M or Gap.

Although the signs said, "Everything must go," marking down a $248 blazer to $209 didn't feel more urgent than any other seasonal sale.

Saunders told BI that the clothing at Express "is poor in that it is overpriced, lacks differentiation, and comes across as very bland."

I wouldn't go so far in my description, but I think many styles could be found elsewhere at a much lower price point for the quality.

Meantime, other than the big signs, it looks like business as usual in the Express stores I visited. The sales associate who rang up my items even offered to sign me up for the rewards program.

When asked if it mattered since the store was closing, he said it'd take $10 off my total of $71 for the pair of pants and blue tank top I bought.

An investment group led by brand management firm WHP Global is considering acquiring "a substantial majority" of the company, according to a statement from Express on April 22. Some existing lenders committed $35 million to support ongoing operations.

Representatives for Express declined to comment and directed BI to the news release announcing the filing. CEO Stewart Glendinning has said the company is "taking an important step that will strengthen our financial position."

"Bankruptcy will allow Express to reset the business, including shutting down a number of badly performing stores," Saunders said.

All in all, Express would need some serious overhauling to appeal to a critically online — and dare I say fashion forward — Gen Zer like myself. But it's a good place to stock up on some new job interview clothes at a (small) discount.

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• Russia needs to keep its war with Ukraine going or risk an economic hard landing, Elina Ribakova wrote for the Financial Times.
• The country's military industry has been a major driver of structural economic strength during the war.
• If the conflict ends, a recession could unfold, adding pressure on the Kremlin, Ribakova said.

Russia has seen strong growth lately, but the fate of the nation's economy hangs on whether it can keep militarizing — something only accomplished by keeping the Ukraine war going, a think-tank analyst wrote in the Financial Times.

According to the International Monetary Fund, Russia's GDP is set to considerably outpace other Western economies this year, forecasted to grow 3.2%. But while this may look good on paper, the country is actually at risk of a hard landing if war efforts cease, Elina Ribakova said.

"Contrary to the expectations that economic constraints would hinder Russia's capacity to sustain fighting, the specter of economic collapse might push Vladimir Putin and his officials to double down on militarization and seek further confrontation, even if aggression against Ukraine hits a standstill," the Peterson Institute for International Economics analyst said. 

Since Moscow's Ukraine invasion in 2022, its economic success is chiefly thanks to military-industrial expansions, heavily bolstered by fiscal support from the Kremlin.

According to the senior fellow, direct military spending has more tripled since the war's start, now accounting for 6% of GDP. That number is likely to be much higher, she said, as a large portion of government expenditures are not publicly known.

That's brought profit to regions that have struggled for years, and are now seeing huge upside from the production shift. Local governments are reporting a surge in jobs, production facilities, and enterprises, Ribakova cited.

In total, military-industrial establishments have exploded across the country, rising from 2,000 to 6,000 in the war's timeframe. These employ more than 3.5 million workers.

At this point, the pivot towards war-based growth is structural, and aggression needs to keep up to preserve the economy, she said.

"Reversing the structural investments made in the war will present a monumental challenge. For decades," Ribakova wrote. "Russia has struggled with under-investment and regional inequality, with only a handful of primarily commodity-producing regions being the net contributors to the budget transfer system."

If hostilities were to end, a Russian recession isn't unlikely. To avoid such a conflict at home, this only incentivizes Moscow to keep its fight going:

"Should the authorities attempt to halt militarisation, a hard landing could add pressure to the government, which already resorts to oppression to maintain power," she wrote. "Internal conflicts over limited resources may also intensify."

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• Google's landmark antitrust trial concludes in DC this week.
• The outcome will have massive implications for other tech giants facing scrutiny from regulators.
• Google could be completely cleared — or be forced to break up.

Google is about to learn its fate.

Google's landmark antitrust trial is wrapping up this week in DC with closing arguments, capping off a yearslong saga.

And its not just Alphabet that needs to pay attention. The findings in the case will have massive regulatory implications for not just the world's biggest search engine, but also fellow tech behemoths like Amazon, Apple, and Meta.

The 10-week trial, presided over by US District Judge Amit Mehta, featured testimony from the likes of Microsoft chief Satya Nadella and Google CEO Sundar Pichai — the defense's star witness.

The Department of Justice first filed suit in 2020, alleging that Google's deals making it the default search engine provider for device makers like Apple blocked off healthy competition.

Google says its deals aren't exclusive, and that users can always switch their default browsers — though one government expert testified in September it wasn't that easy.

Google also argued it simply makes good search products, and noted that the rise of AI technology has increased competition.

"People don't use Google because they have to — they use it because they want to," Google's president of global affairs, Kent Walker previously told Business Insider in a statement.

In the end, Judge Mehta could clear Google or find it liable, which could result in changes to its search engine contracts. Mehta could even bar Google from making future deals around its search engine.

Worse (and perhaps least likely) Google could be ordered to make structural changes.

The trial provided a glimpse at Google's massive search deals

Though the trial wasn't publicly broadcast, certain exhibits and moments of testimony have given us a glimpse into Google's inner workings.

In November, an apparent slip-up by an expert witness for Google revealed the company pays Apple a staggering 36% of the ad revenues it gets when people search in Safari.

It also emerged at trial that Google spent $26 billion in 2021 to be the default search engine for various smartphone makers — with Apple's cut being $18 billion, according to The New York Times.

In 2022, that figure climbed to an eye-watering $20 billion," new court documents revealed.

As part of the trial, an email from Satya Nadella was made public that highlighted Microsoft's concerns about Google's AI prowess all the way back in 2019.

Still, Google has tried to downplay its power. In his testimony, Google SVP Prabhakar Raghavan noted the search giant is referred to as "Grandpa Google" in some circles and cited execs' fears that its influence might be dwindling.

Apple, Amazon, and Meta face similar regulatory battles

Google's antitrust case is the most consequential since Microsoft faced comparable DOJ scrutiny in the late nineties.

DOJ lawyers have even argued that the ruling against Microsoft at the time paved the way for Google and Apple to become the behemoths they are today, the AP reports. Microsoft settled in 2001 after agreeing to restructure its business.

The DOJ filed an antitrust suit against Apple in March, alleging the iPhone maker was suppressing app development and worsening the quality of cross-platform messaging, among other claims.

And in September, the FTC sued Amazon for inflating prices on its marketplace and overcharging smaller sellers.

The agency previously sued Meta in a bid to force it to sell Instagram and WhatsApp, which it said marked a monopoly.

US regulators are clearly taking aim at Big Tech again.

Mehta's decision — which could come later this summer or early in the fall, the AP reported — will be the biggest signal yet about how likely the government's other regulatory battles are to succeed.

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• The Fed likely won't cut interest rates until after a recession arrives, according to GlobalData TS Lombard.
• The research firm said Fed Chair Powell is likely to fall into the trap of being reactionary when it comes to rate decisions.
• "By not cutting now, pre-emptive is off the table," chief US economist Steven Blitz said.

---

The Federal Reserve is making a big mistake by not cutting interest rates right now, according to GlobalData TS Lombard chief US economist Steven Blitz.

By waiting to loosen monetary policy, Fed chairman Jerome Powell is falling into the trap of being reactionary rather than anticipatory when it comes to interest rate decisions.

Blitz said in a note on Wednesday that Powell is all but guaranteeing that they won't cut interest rates until after a recession has arrived, and by then, it will be too little too late for lower interest rates to have the intended effect of stimulating the economy. 

Powell said at the central bank's policy meeting on Wednesday that one way he would cut interest rates is if there was a surprise significant hike in unemployment, regardless of where inflation is. That comment "cements" Blitz's thinking that the Fed will be too late to the party. 

"By not cutting now, pre-emptive is off the table and this, in turn, guarantees that when they do cut it will be too late to avoid recession – the usual course of events," Blitz said.

Of course, Powell said during his press conference that if inflation gets back down to the Fed's long-term target of 2%, they would have flexibility in reducing interest rates, but that last mile of getting inflation back down to the target level appears out of reach for now based on a string of hotter-than-expected inflation reports so far this year.

And if inflation sees a sharp rebound to 5%, "they obviously hike" interest rates, Blitz said.

But the reactionary nature of the Federal Reserve hits on something market watchers have been cautioning about for a while, including Jeremy Siegel, who has argued that the Fed was too late to the game in hiking interest rates in 2022 when inflation was running out of control in 2021. 

All-in, according to Blitz, it means that interest rates could stay at current levels for longer-than-expected, especially since it appears there will be no recession this year. 

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• House lawmakers criticized the National Guard over enlistment bonuses owed to more than 13,000 soldiers.
• Nearly 4,000 soldiers have since left the service without bonuses, which can total up to $20,000.
• Due in part to staffing issues and system outages, the delay comes amid the Army's recruiting crisis.

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is demanding answers from the Army National Guard on its plans to pay delinquent enlistment bonuses to the thousands of soldiers who are owed.

In a letter Tuesday to Gen. Daniel Hokanson, the National Guard's top officer, Reps. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona; Mike Waltz, a Florida Republican; and Trent Kelly, a Republican from Mississippi, questioned how the service component has seemingly bungled how it pays its troops after Military.com reported it is behind on paying about 13,000 soldiers their enlistment bonuses.

Most recently, the Army National Guard sent out thousands of letters to former soldiers regarding potentially missed bonuses — asking them to figure out whether they're owed money. The Guard pointed them to a series of bureaucratic and time-consuming hurdles, including gathering service documentation that may be difficult to obtain.

"Civilians are not required to navigate through an extensive, monthslong claims process just to get the payments they were promised doing their job," lawmakers wrote to Hokanson. "It is deeply disappointing that the Guard believes that they can withhold payment when it involves our men and women in uniform."

The issue has gotten so out of control, nearly 4,000 of those 13,000 soldiers are estimated to have completed an entire contract, usually four to six years, and have since left the Guard without bonuses initially promised when they signed up. The bonuses can be up to $20,000.

Instead of outright telling those former service members what they are owed, the Army National Guard has instead placed the onus on them to figure it out. It's also unclear whether the Guard has updated addresses for veterans or why it can't parse through who is and isn't owed a bonus.

The lawmakers in the group are all veterans. Kelly serves as the National Guard assistant adjutant general in Mississippi.

In the letter, they included a series of questions for the Guard, including whether it has an appeals process for veterans who may end up being denied payments; how the Guard plans to support those without proper documentation; and why Guard officials burdened veterans to begin with.

"Beyond severely impacting recruitment and retention, it signals a lack of respect for their service," the lawmakers added in the letter. "Particularly for our enlisted men and women."

Soldiers are typically paid their bonuses in two chunks: when they complete their initial training and halfway through their contract. The National Guard Bureau aims for bonuses to be paid out within 30 days of those milestones, but that is not codified into policy. On average, it takes six months for soldiers to be paid when the process runs smoothly.

Meanwhile, the bonus backlog has been ongoing for years and is due to a variety of issues.

Some Guard officials have described to Military.com that some states have poorly trained or poorly performing staff to process the benefits. It isn't uncommon for state-level staff to manually track bonuses on pieces of paper or dry-erase boards, leading to numerous errors.

The backlog was particularly inflamed by two 10-month outages of the Army National Guard Incentive Management System, or GIMS, which manages bonuses. The system crashed in 2018 due to a fire in the Pentagon's servers and again in 2021 in an unrelated incident.

The news also comes amid an ongoing recruiting crisis. While there's little evidence enlistment bonuses have much of a direct impact on recruiting, they do sweeten the deal and can direct applicants to jobs in the service that are in more desperate need of being filled.

The Army is also in the midst of reviewing its education benefits for possible cuts as costs have ballooned, Military.com first reported. Congress and some veteran advocacy groups have signaled they would put up enormous resistance to the service cutting benefits.

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