Scare me, please 👻
  Tonight: The shipping nightmare is just the latest in a long string of collective nightmares. That's why we need to make this Halloween a banger. Let's get into it. 🚢 MAYDAY  We'd love to stop writing about the supply chain crisis. Seriously. Trouble is, it just keeps getting worse.
How bad is it?
On Wednesday, business leaders urged the White House to deploy the National Guard to help alleviate port congestions. And President Biden announced that the Port of Los Angeles is shifting into 24/7 service, bringing it into alignment with operations at the neighboring Port of Long Beach. (Those two handle 40% of container traffic in the United States and have been severely backed up for months.)
That should double the number of hours the ports are working — an expansion that Biden said "has the potential to be a game changer."
Biden also called on the private sector to step up, noting that Walmart, Target, Home Depot, FedEx and UPS had all agreed to increase their overnight or off-peak operations.
BOTTOM LINE The initial jolt of the pandemic was so monumental, and so sudden, that we're still feeling the aftershocks. Although the economy is growing faster than most would have predicted a year ago, the Fed's mantra that the resulting inflation is "transitory" looks increasingly naïve.
Supply chain disruptions "will get worse before they get better," according to Moody's Analytics, and that will keep fueling inflation. That's partly because even if Biden pulls out all the stops, America's congestion is just one small piece of a giant, hugely interconnected and delicate global web.  🤝 SPONSOR CONTENT BY THE ASCENT  Join our (100% free) Personal Finance Boot Camp The Ascent by The Motley Fool wants to help you lead a smarter, happier, and richer life. So they created a free Personal Finance Bootcamp to make personal finance decisions easier and more transparent.
#️⃣ NUMBER OF THE DAY 16% As high as housing prices are, they have yet to peak, according to Goldman Sachs. Home prices, already at record highs, will grow another 16% by the end of 2022, the bank said.
The reason: Demand, fueled by ultra-low mortgage rates, continues to far outstrip supply. Goldman Sachs described today's homebuyers as "reluctant bulls" — eager to buy even though it kinda feels like a bad time. Rude, but…OK. 😈 SCARE ME, PLEASE  Friends, comrades: We've got just a couple of weeks left to make this Halloween a banger.
And perhaps I'm just getting old, but I believe we have let Halloween down in recent years, framing it as an evening just for children. This is incorrect.
Hear me out: If you're reading this, it means you've survived a pandemic — a literal horror, in the darkest timeline of the century so far. What's more metal than that? It is time for a night, nay a week, of exorcising our trauma via play-horror. I'm talking full costumes (chuck that Superman T-shirt/Clark Kent nonsense straight into the garbage), giant skeleton yard ornaments, "Thriller" on repeat. Make it cheesy, make it big. Give me the frights. Give me zombies. Most of all, give me candy.
There's some evidence y'all are on the same page already: Halloween retail sales are expected to hit a record $10.14 billion this year. (I think we can do better, honestly.)
Last year, trick or treating was hella lame – we didn't have vaccines, and Covid cases were surging, so people (rightly) skipped it entirely or tossed candy down chutes from their front doors. Boooooo. No more of that. Dress up, you jerks! What other day of the year do we have a free pass to get a little weird and try to scare the bejesus out of another? Think about it.
Need some inspiration? Here's my unofficial guide:
Acceptable costumes include:
Unacceptable costumes:
🔐 BROUGHT TO YOU BY VAULT BY CNN  Commemorate this historical moment with a limited edition NFT Vault by CNN is a series of limited edition collectible NFTs commemorating pivotal moments in history. In honor of LGBTQ+ History Month, this drop features two pivotal moments in the quest for equal rights: a turning point in AIDS awareness and a demand for recognition of same-sex relationships in 1987, and the fulfillment of that demand with federal protection for same-sex marriage in 2015.
🚀 QUOTE OF THE DAY  You look down, there's the blue down there and the black up there ... there is Mother Earth and comfort, and there is, is there death? I don't know, but is that death? Is that the way death is? ... It was so moving, this experience; it was something unbelievable. William Shatner, at age 90, became the oldest person to travel to space. The nearly 11-minute flight on Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin spacecraft blasted off Wednesday morning from a West Texas launch site and soared to nearly 350,000 feet above the Earth.
WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON? ✈️ Delta Air Lines took the unusual step of publicly disputing a rumor spread by an anti-vax podcast, which claimed that one of Delta's pilots recently died mid-flight days after getting a vaccine. No such thing happened.
🦑 "Squid Game" is Netflix's "biggest-ever series at launch," the company said, with 111 million accounts viewing it since mid-September.
🍟 Wendy's rolled out new french fries, and it is guaranteeing they'll arrive hot and crispy or it'll replace them for free.
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