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    Musk, Trump, A.I. and Other DealBook Summit Highlights

    The economy, inflation, tariffs, the future of media, pardon politics and other big topics that made headlines this year.Jeff Bezos was cautiously optimistic that President-elect Donald Trump would be more measured in his second term.Michael M. Santiago/Getty ImagesFour takeaways from the DealBook Summit The U.S. election dominated the news agenda this year, and the two people at the center of Donald Trump’s win came up in nearly every conversation yesterday at the DealBook Summit. The president-elect and Elon Musk may not have been in the room, but questions about how they will shape business and politics were front and center.The general view of the day was cautious optimism, even among those who had publicly criticized Trump and Musk — or been targeted by them.But many questions remain. What will Trump and Musk mean for government, business and the economy? Will they succeed in cutting regulation and government spending? And will they go after their perceived enemies and rivals?Here are four big themes from this year’s event.What will happen with the economy?Most of the speakers were willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt, or at least played down worries about his most disruptive policy ideas.Jay Powell, the Fed chair, addressed one of the biggest questions hanging over the next administration: Will the president-elect go after the central bank’s independence? No, Powell said emphatically. The Fed, he said, was created by Congress and its autonomy is “the law of the land.”“There is very, very broad support for that set of ideas in Congress in both political parties, on both sides of the Hill, and that’s what really matters,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    The Biggest Takeaways From the DealBook Summit With Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman and More

    Serena Williams, Jerome H. Powell, Jeff Bezos and other leaders across business and technology discussed artificial intelligence, inflation, the media and what the world would look like under a second Donald J. Trump presidency.Mr. Bezos, for one, thinks the president-elect has “a good chance of succeeding.”Elon Musk wasn’t in the room, but he was present throughout at the DealBook Summit. The speakers were largely optimistic about his efforts in the new administration.The event, hosted by Andrew Ross Sorkin, founder of DealBook, has taken place since 2011.Here are five main themes:Inflation is still an issue, but there’s a chance for growth.Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, said the economy was in a “very good place.” Inflation has come down, and the labor market has rebounded. The big takeaway for investors: The central bank can afford to be more cautious when it considers lowering interest rates, Mr. Powell said. (The next Fed meeting will be Dec. 17-18.)Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Citadel and a top donor to the Republican Party, placed the blame for inflation squarely on the Biden administration, which, he argued, “put this country on an inflationary path that was unprecedented in our lifetime.” Mr. Powell has “had to deal with cleaning up the mess,” he added.Former President Bill Clinton said inflation was the “fundamental problem” that helped Mr. Trump return to the White House.“The average person had not really lived through something like this for 40 years, since the ’70s,” Mr. Clinton said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Serena Williams Reflects on Her Life and Legacy in a New Docuseries

    “In the Arena: Serena Williams,” an eight-part documentary on ESPN+, revisits the highs and lows of the star’s career and considers her impact on tennis and beyond.In March 2001, Serena Williams, then just 19, was booed mercilessly by the crowd during the tournament final of the Indian Wells Open in California. The jeering included racist slurs, and it was arguably the most terrifying and scarring thing that ever happened to Williams during her spectacular career.In “In the Arena: Serena Williams,” an eight-part documentary streaming on ESPN+ — the final episode premieres on Wednesday — the retired star looks back on how she was shaped by the experience.“Having to go through those scathing, nasty, awful things just because of the color of my skin opened a lot of doors for other people,” she said. “I have been able to provide a platform for Black girls and Black women to be proud of who they are.”I welcomed Williams’s newfound ease in talking so explicitly about race and her continued impact on women’s sports. One of the most visible athletes of all time, she has been the subject of countless interviews and biographies during her career, but she did not often seem eager to reveal much about her private life. This has changed in the past few years with projects like the HBO documentary “Being Serena” (2018), about her pregnancy and struggle to return to tennis, and her active posting on Instagram. She was also an executive producer of “King Richard,” the 2021, Oscar-winning biopic of her father, Richard Williams.But “In the Arena” reveals still more layers of its subject. Directed by Gotham Chopra, it features candid interviews with Williams and her relatives, friends and tennis contemporaries, including her sisters, Venus Williams and Isha Price; her fellow legend Roger Federer; and the former tennis star and current television commentator Mary Joe Fernández. Serena is also an executive producer.The series is a follow-up to “Man in the Arena: Tom Brady” (2021), which was also directed by Chopra and was produced by Brady’s 199 Productions. But tennis is far more solitary than a team sport like football. Spectators’ eyes are laser-focused on the players and their bodies, a reality that was originally made more fraught because of Williams’s race and class status in the predominately white world of tennis.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More