“There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know.” — John Kenneth Galbraith

1. GM Plans Multibillion-Dollar EV Push With Michigan Plants — GM said it would convert a suburban Detroit factory into a center for the production of electric pickup trucks and build a battery-cell plant in Lansing, Mich. It plans to spend $4 billion to convert its Orion Assembly factory to build plug-in trucks and will split the cost of the $2.6 billion battery factory with partner LG Energy Solution. On top of this spending, GM plans to invest about $500 million into two assembly plants near Lansing.
Altogether, GM plans to contribute nearly $6 billion of the $7 billion in the total costs for the projects, a figure that the car company says is its single largest investment in history. The spending is expected to create 4,000 jobs in the state, the auto maker said. Plans for the Orion revamp and the new battery-cell plant were first reported last month by The Wall Street Journal.
2. Federal Reserve Tees Up March Interest-Rate Increase — Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank’s rate-setting committee was ready to raise rates at its March 15-16 meeting. “The economy no longer needs sustained monetary-policy support,” he said. The central bank approved one final round of asset purchases, which will bring that stimulus program to a conclusion by March. Officials continued deliberations at their two-day meeting over how and when to shrink the Fed’s $9 trillion securities portfolio, which has more than doubled since March 2020. The Fed cut short-term interest rates to near zero and started buying bonds to lower long-term rates in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S. economy, triggering financial-market volatility and a deep, short recession.
3. Tesla Posts Record Annual Profit — Elon Musk’s electric-vehicle maker posted a $5.5 billion annual profit on $53.8 billion of sales last year, after increasing vehicle deliveries at its fastest pace in years. That is up from $721 million in profit and $31.5 billion in sales in 2020, when Tesla generated its first full-year profit, and ahead of Wall Street’s expectations. Tesla delivered more than 936,000 vehicles globally last year, up 87% from 2020, despite global computer-chip shortages that constrained vehicle production across the auto industry.
4. U.S. Economy Grows as Fourth-Quarter GDP Shows Strongest Year in Decades — Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services, in the fourth quarter grew to 6.9% annual rate. The gain reflected solid spending by households, much of it occurring early in the quarter, and companies pushed to restock their shelves to overcome persistent supply shortages. Output grew 5.5% in all of 2021, when comparing the fourth quarter to the same period a year earlier. The economy hasn’t grown that fast since 1984, during President Ronald Reagan’s first term, when the country was rebounding from a double-dip recession and an era of high inflation.

The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com:

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