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Almost 30 years ago, in May 1994, a former Arkansas state clerk, Paula Jones, filed a sexual-harassment suit against President Bill Clinton. She said that in 1991, as governor of Arkansas, he lured her to a hotel room in Little Rock, pushed down his trousers and urged her to perform a sex act, but she rebuffed him.
Mr Clinton denied the story, and his lawyers said he was immune to civil litigation while in office. A federal judge eventually threw out Ms Jones’s claim, but not before the Supreme Court rejected Mr Clinton’s argument about immunity, finding—hilariously—that the suit would be a minimal distraction. In fact, information was secretly passing between the investigation by Ken Starr, the independent counsel in the ever-branching inquiry known as Whitewater, and Ms Jones’s lawyers.
Those lawyers asked during Mr Clinton’s deposition in the Jones case whether he had been involved with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky, and his denial led to the charges of perjury and obstruction for which the Republican House of Representatives impeached him. The Senate acquitted him in 1999 in a bipartisan vote. For anyone, like Lexington, who slogged through the sexual, political and legal muck of those years, then looked up on the bright clear morning of September 11th 2001 to wonder if they had always had their priorities just right, it is hard not to watch a new documentary about Stephanie Clifford, “Stormy”, without some sense of déjà vu.
Ms Clifford, who performed under the name Stormy Daniels as a stripper and porn actress, has said Donald Trump had sex with her during a celebrity golf tournament in 2006. On the eve of the presidential election in 2016 Mr Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid Ms Clifford $130,000 to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Mr Trump has denied Ms Clifford’s story but acknowledged he reimbursed Mr Cohen, to stifle her “false and extortionist accusations”. That reimbursement is the basis for what will be the first-ever criminal trial of an American president, if it starts as scheduled next month. The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has accused Mr Trump of falsifying business records in order to commit another crime he has not specified, but which appears to be violating federal election law.
Probably because this episode involves Mr Trump and has played out in the social-media era, the drama seems even tawdrier and the price paid by the woman at the centre seems even greater than in the saga of Ms Jones. Ms Clifford now owes Mr Trump more than $600,000 because she lost a defamation suit against him and is liable for his lawyer’s fees. She has said her lawyer filed the suit against her wishes.
Like Ms Jones, Ms Clifford, who grew up poor in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was assailed as trailer trash, a gold-digger and a slut. Like Ms Jones, Ms Clifford, a registered Republican, said she had no political agenda. Both were exploited by some seeming allies. Also like Ms Jones, Ms Clifford was buoyed by (and attacked for) her new celebrity. After the Wall Street Journal revealed her claims about Mr Trump in January 2018, she embarked on a “Making America Horny Again” strip tour and discovered older women and gay men crowding her venues. “This is going to be the best day of my life,” she says in “Stormy”, with touching sincerity, as she prepares to appear on “Saturday Night Live”.
But the picture, never bright, steadily darkens during the documentary. Ms Clifford stays on the road not only to pay her bills but to protect her daughter from the uproar. Her marriage disintegrates. The lawyer who filed the defamation suit, Michael Avenatti, turns out to have embezzled from her (he is serving 19 years for crimes against her and other clients). Her book royalties dry up as fans realise their money might go to Mr Trump. Then Mr Bragg files his charges, and the insults on social media turn to death threats. Ms Clifford is shown, near tears, reading some aloud: “Kill yourself” and “You just signed your death warrant.”
Not just for the right but for the left it can seem as if history started anew with Mr Trump. In the documentary the precedent of the Clinton era goes unexplored. It ought to make just about everyone squirm. The establishment news media was less fascinated by Ms Jones at first than it was by Ms Clifford. Back then it was Republicans who were scandalised by the president, while Democrats, including many feminists, were scandalised by the women who accused him. Then it was a conservative prosecutor who seemed determined to whipsaw a civil complaint into criminal charges; now it is a progressive prosecutor electing to test a novel legal theory against a former president, after federal prosecutors chose not to pursue a similar case. Back then the accused claimed to be the victim and turned the prosecutor’s choice to his political advantage. So far that history is repeating itself.
Eye of the Stormy
Poignantly, the one person in “Stormy” heard questioning their choices is Ms Clifford. She has said she is not a victim, and that when Mr Trump surprised her by seeking sex during what she thought was an appointment for dinner, she complied. She says Mr Trump “wasn’t wrong” when he was overheard saying, on the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, that women would let him do what he wanted. “The hardest part about all of this is I feel like I’m partially responsible for every woman that could have come after me,” she says, in an act of brutal self-examination one longs for others in this sad story to perform instead.
Even allowing for the documentary’s sympathetic viewpoint, Ms Clifford’s courage is unmistakable. She says she will not give up “because I’m telling the truth”. But she offers a devastating coda for the furore that has consumed her life. “This is just pointless,” she says. “I have no hope at all, any more.” ■
Guests and attendeess mingle and walk through the atrium during the IMF/World Bank Group Spring Meetings at the IMF headquarters in Washington, DC, on April 24, 2025.
Jim Watson | Afp | Getty Images
After years dominated by the pandemic, supply chains, energy and inflation, there was a new topic topping the agenda at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s Spring Meetings this year: tariffs.
The IMF set the tone by kicking off the week with the release of its latest economic forecasts, which cut growth outlooks for the U.S., U.K. and many Asian countries. While economists, central bankers and politicians have been engaged in panels and behind-the-scenes talks, many are attempting to work out whether trade tensions between China and the U.S. are — or perhaps are not — cooling.
These were some of the main messages from ECB members this week.
Christine Lagarde, European Central Bank president
On inflation and monetary policy:
“We’re heading towards our [inflation] target in the course of 2025, so that disinflationary process is so much on track that we are nearing completion. But we have the shocks, you know, and the shocks will be a dampen on GDP. It’s a negative shock to demand.”
“The net impact on inflation will depend on what countermeasures are eventually taken by Europe. Then we have to take into account the [German] fiscal push by the defense investments, by the infrastructure fund.”
“We have seen successive movements, you know, announcement [of U.S. tariffs], and then a pause, and then some exemptions. So we have to be very attentive… Either we cut, either we pause, but we will be data dependent to the extreme.”
On market moves:
“When we had done our projections, we anticipated that… the dollar would appreciate, the euro would depreciate. It’s not what we saw. And there have been some counter-intuitive movements in various categories.”
“The German market has obviously been shocked in a positive way by the program soon to be put in place by the German government, with a commitment to defense, with a commitment to a big fund for infrastructure development.”
Klaas Knot, The Netherlands Bank president
On tariff uncertainty:
“If I look back over the last 14 years, in the initial days of the pandemic I think that was comparable uncertainty to what we have now.”
“In the short run, it’s crystal clear that the uncertainty that is created by the unpredictability of the tariff actions by the U.S. government works as a strong negative factor for growth. Basically, uncertainty is like a tax without revenue.”
On the inflation impact:
“In the short run, we will have lower growth. We will probably also have lower inflation. As we also see, the euro is appreciating as energy prices have also come down. So together with the sort of negative factor uncertainty in the short run, it’s crystal clear that it will accelerate the disinflation.”
“But in the medium term, the inflation outlook is not all that clear. I think there are still these negative factors. But in the medium term, you might get retaliation. You might get the disruption of global value chains, which might also be inflationary in other parts of the world than the U.S. only. And then, of course, we have the fiscal policy coming in in Europe. So this is actually a time in which you need projections.”
On a June rate cut and market pricing for two more ECB rate cuts in 2025:
“I’m fully open minded. I think it’s way too early to already take a position on June, whether it would be another cut. It will fully depend on these projections.”
“I would need to see a more structured analysis of the impact on the inflation profile ahead of us, and only then can I say whether the market is pricing fair or whether I don’t.”
Robert Holzmann, Austrian National Bank governor
On the need to wait for more data and news on tariffs:
“We have not seen this uncertainty now for years… unless the uncertainty subsides, by the right decisions, we will have to hold back a number of our decisions, and hence, we don’t know yet in what direction monetary policy should be best moved.”
“Before looking at data in detail, the question is, what kind of political decisions will be taken? Is it that we will have some tariff increases? Is it that we will have strong tariff increases? Is it that we will have retribution by high counter tariffs?”
On the ECB’s April rate cut:
“I think there’s a broad consensus [on rates]. But of course, at the margin, people differ.”
“My assessment is that at this time, it wasn’t clear yet to what extent [tariff] countermeasures were being taken. Because with countermeasures in Europe, prices may have increased. Without countermeasures, quite likely the price pressure is downward. And for the time being, we don’t know yet the direction.”
On the direction of interest rates:
“I think if the recent noises about an arrangement [on trade] were to be true, in this case, quite likely it is more towards the downside than the upside with regard to prices. But this can be changed with different decisions and the result of which, we may even imagine in [the] other direction. For the time being, no, it will be down.”
“There may be further cuts this year, but the number is still outstanding.”
Mārtiņš Kazāks, Bank of Latvia governor
On opportunity from tariffs:
“With all this uncertainty and vulnerability, this is also the time of opportunities for Europe.”
“It’s a time for Europe to grasp all the aspects of being an economic superpower and becoming a really fully-fledged political and geopolitical superpower, and this requires doing all the decisions that in the past, were not carried out fully.”
“This requires political will, political guts to make those decisions, and to strengthen the European economy and assert its place in a global world.”
On market reaction to tariffs:
“So far it seems to be relatively orderly … but if one looks at the spillovers to Europe, the financial markets are working more or less fine, we haven’t seen spreads exploding or anything like that.”
“But in terms, however, of the macro scenarios, this uncertainty is extremely elevated in the sense that, given the possible outcomes, the multiple scenarios and their probabilities are very similar with the baseline [tariff] scenario.”
US President Donald Trump speaks during a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister of Norway Jonas Gahr Store in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on April 24, 2025.
Saul Loeb | Afp | Getty Images
President Donald Trump denied that an aggressive bond market sell-off influenced his decision earlier this month to hold off on aggressive “reciprocal” tariffs against U.S. trading partners.
“I wasn’t worried,” Trump said in a Time magazine interview during which he was asked about financial market tumult after his April 2 “liberation day” announcement.
In the decree, Trump slapped 10% across-the-board duties against all U.S. imports and released list of tariffs against dozens of other nations. The extra levies were based on trade deficits the U.S. had against the respective countries and raised fears about inflation, a potential recession and disruption of long-held trade agreements.
Markets recoiled following the release. Treasury yields initially headed lower but quickly snapped higher. The 10-year yield rose half a percentage point in just a few days, one of its quickest moves ever, as investors also ditched stocks and the U.S. dollar.
Ultimately, Trump issued a 90-day stay on the reciprocal tariffs to allow time for negotiation. But he said it wasn’t because of the market tumult.
“No, it wasn’t for that reason,” Trump told Time in the interview from Tuesday that was published Friday. “I’m doing that until we come up with the numbers that I want to come up with. I’ve met with a lot of countries. I’ve talked on the telephone. I don’t even want them to come in.”
Yields have since moved lower, with the 10-year most recently around 4.28%, about a quarter percentage point higher than its recent low. Trump had said when he made the decision to hold off that the bond market had gotten the “yips.”
“The bond market was getting the yips, but I wasn’t. Because I know what we have,” he said. “I know what we have, but I also know we won’t have it for long if we allowed four more years of the gross incompetence. This thing was just running — it was running as a free spirit. This was — this was the most incompetent president in history.”
Though negotiations over tariffs are ongoing, Trump added that he would consider it a “total victory” even if the U.S. has levies as high as 50% still in place a year from now.
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The Bank of England is focused on the potential impact of U.S. tariffs on U.K. economic growth if there is a slowdown in global trade, the central bank’s governor Andrew Bailey said Thursday.
“We’re certainly quite focused on the growth shock,” Bailey told CNBC’s Sara Eisen in an interview at the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings.
Going into its May 8 monetary policy meeting, the central bank will consider “arguments on both sides” around the impact of tariffs on growth and domestic supply constraints on inflation, Bailey said.
“There is clearly a growth issue we start with, with weak growth … but a big question mark is how much of that is caused by the weak demand, how much of it is caused by a weak supply side,” he continued.
“Because the weak supply side, of course, unfortunately, has the sort of the upside effect on inflation. So we’ve got to balance those two. But I think the trade issue is now the new part of that story.”
Inflation could be pulled in either direction by wider forces, with a redirection of trade exports into other markets being disinflationary, but a retaliation on U.S. tariffs by the U.K. government — which he stressed did not appear likely — pushing up inflation.
Bailey added that he did not see the U.K. as being close to a recession at present, but that it was clear economic uncertainty was weighing on business and consumer confidence.
IMF downgrade
The IMF earlier this week downgraded its 2025 growth forecast for the U.K. to 1.1% from 1.6%, citing the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs, higher borrowing costs and increased energy prices.
However, economic forecasting remains mired in uncertainty as countries engage in negotiations with U.S. officials over Trump’s swingeing universal tariff policy, currently on pause. The U.S. has imposed 25% tariffs on steel, aluminum and autos and a 10% levy on other British exports.
U.K. policymakers have expressed hopes of reaching a trade deal with the White House, with U.S. Vice President J. D. Vance saying there is a “good chance” of an agreement.
Bailey told CNBC on Thursday that he would be “very encouraged if the U.K. does make a deal,” but that its economy was very open and services-oriented, so it would still be impacted by a wider slowdown in growth or trade.
He also noted that inflation would increase from the current 2.6% in the coming readings due to effects from markets such as energy prices and water bills, but that the bump up would be “nothing like what we saw a few years ago.”
The Bank of England held interest rates at 4.5% at its March meeting, before Trump shocked the world with the scale of his tariff announcement.
Markets now see the BOE slashing rates to 4% by its August meeting.