Texas Candidate Found Inspiration in Her Daughter...and Hillary Clinton
Texas has not elected a freshman female congresswoman to a full term in over 22 years. Laura Moser is hoping to change that by running to represent the state's seventh congressional district in this year's midterm elections. She joins Cheddar to discuss why the time is right to challenge the 17-year Republican incumbent John Culberson.
Moser is one of approximately 50 women running for Congress in Texas. She explains why she doesn't think the wave would have been possible had Hillary Clinton been elected president in 2016. The first-time candidate puts her race in the context of this year's women's marches, #MeToo, and Time's Up movements.
Moser explains how her five-year-old daughter Claudia helped inspire her to run for office. She says explaining Clinton's loss to her served as an impetus for launching her campaign. Moser has worked in journalism and publishing in addition to launching a political engagement app called Daily Action.
Stocks closed mixed on Wednesday, but two indexes - the Dow and the S&P 500 - ended the session with a new record. Akshata Bailkeri, Equity Analyst at Bruderman Asset Management, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where she says there is a consensus for robust consumer spreading in 2022, especially as the Omicron variant is proving to be milder than other COVID-19 strains.
John Quelch, Dean of Miami Herbert Business School, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he says the retail giant is acting in accordance to President Biden's new law banning goods from China's Xinjiang region. Quelch also elaborates on the importance of China in Walmart's overall strategy.
Cheddar's Chloe Aiello has our cannabis year-in-review, breaking down how several states legalized adult recreational use and greenlit medicinal use in 2021. She noted that while a cannabis legalization and decriminalization bill was introduced in Congress this year, potential FDA involvement in the industry, as well as a 25 percent excise tax, killed any chance the bill had of moving forward. Aiello also speculated that some form of cannabis reform could be rolled out in 2022, as the midterm elections draw closer.
Jim Worden, Chief Investment Officer at Wealth Consulting Group, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he says the period between Christmas and New Year's is difficult to predict due to a lack of institutional volume, with the Omicron variant adding even more uncertainty on Wall Street.
Prices at the pump this year reached a seven-year high, and a new forecast from GasBuddy shared with CNN predicts that gas prices will only continue to rise in 2022 and that the national average could even reach $4.00 a gallon; however, analysts at GasBuddy say anything could happen when it comes to gas prices in the future, as the pandemic has made it difficult to make any predictions about the economy. Consumer Energy Alliance federal policy advisor Michael Zehr joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
