Catherine O'Hara, Emmy-winning comedian of 'Schitt's Creek' and 'SCTV' fame, has died at 71 | Catherine O'Hara, comedy star of 'Home Alone' and 'Schitt's Creek,' dies at 71 | Canadian comedy legend Catherine O'Hara, who lit up SCTV and stole scenes on Schitt's Creek, dead at 71

Good morning, and welcome to HigherIQ. It's Sunday, February 1st. Quick correction from our earlier briefing today: we said it was Groundhog Day. It's not. Groundhog Day is tomorrow—Monday, February 2nd. Phil makes his prediction at Gobbler's Knob around 7:20 AM Eastern. We got ahead of ourselves, so our apologies to you and Phil. Anyway— we've got two stories today. First, we're going to talk about Catherine O'Hara, who passed away Friday at 71. If you grew up watching Home Alone, laughed at Beetlejuice, or binged Schitt's Creek, you know her work—even if you didn't know her name. We'll talk about why she was so good at what she did, and why so many people in comedy considered her one of the greats. Then we'll shift to something that sounds boring but affects your wallet more than almost anything else: the Federal Reserve just got a new boss. We'll explain why you should care. Let's get into it. Catherine O'Hara died Friday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 71. Her representatives said it was after a brief illness. No other details yet. If you're under 40, you probably know her as Moira Rose from Schitt's Creek—the former soap opera star with the wigs and the unplaceable accent who used words like "frippet" and "pettifogging" and somehow made you love her anyway. If you're a little older, she's the mom from Home Alone, or the eccentric sculptor Delia Deetz in Beetlejuice, or Sally's voice in The Nightmare Before Christmas. But here's what made her different from a lot of comedic actors: she came up through improv. O'Hara started at Second City in Toronto in her early twenties. She was an understudy to Gilda Radner before Radner left for Saturday Night Live. Fun fact: O'Hara was actually hired for SNL too, but quit before ever appearing on air. She went to SCTV instead—the Canadian sketch show that launched her, Eugene Levy, John Candy, Martin Short, Rick Moranis, and a bunch of other legends. That improv training shows up in everything she did. Watch her in any Christopher Guest movie—Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind—and you're watching someone who can build a character in real time, find the joke, and commit completely. Guest's movies are largely improvised. O'Hara wasn't just delivering lines someone wrote. She was creating. Eugene Levy, who worked with her for over fifty years—from Second City to SCTV to the Guest movies to Schitt's Creek—released a statement Friday. "I had the honor of knowing and working with the great Catherine O'Hara for over fifty years," he wrote. "I cherished our working relationship, but most of all our friendship. And I will miss her." Macaulay Culkin, her Home Alone co-star, posted a photo of them together from the movie alongside a recent recreation of the same pose. "Mama, I thought we had time," he wrote. "I wanted more." What's striking about O'Hara's career is how consistent it was. She didn't have a big breakout followed by a fade. She just kept working, kept being funny, kept getting better. Schitt's Creek started in 2015, when she was 61. It became one of the most beloved comedies of the decade. She won an Emmy for it in 2020—her second, forty years after her first for writing on SCTV. In her acceptance speech, she thanked Eugene and Dan Levy for "the opportunity to play a woman of a certain age, my age, who gets to fully be her ridiculous self." That might be the best description of what she did: she played ridiculous people and made them feel real. Moira Rose is absurd—the wigs, the accent, the dramatics—but you believe her. You even root for her. That's hard to do. Most actors playing "eccentric" tip into caricature. O'Hara found the humanity underneath. The HigherIQ take: There's something worth noting about her improv background. The core principle of improv is "yes, and"—you accept what your scene partner gives you and build on it. O'Hara spent fifty years doing that, and it made her one of the most collaborative, adaptable performers in comedy. She could work with anyone because she was always listening, always responding, always building. That's a skill that goes way beyond acting. She's survived by her husband, Bo Welch—a production designer she met on the set of Beetlejuice—and their two sons. Alright, shifting gears: on Friday, President Trump nominated Kevin Warsh to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve. If your eyes just glazed over, we get it. But stick with us for two minutes, because this person will have more influence over your mortgage rate, your credit card APR, and your car payment than almost anyone else in government. Quick refresher: the Fed controls interest rates. When they raise rates, borrowing gets expensive—mortgages, car loans, credit cards all cost more. When they cut rates, borrowing gets cheaper. The Fed chair doesn't decide alone—there's a committee—but the chair sets the tone and is the public face. When the Fed chair speaks, markets move. A single sentence can swing the stock market by hundreds of points. So who's Warsh? He's 55, a Wall Street veteran, and he served on the Fed board from 2006 to 2011—meaning he helped coordinate the response to the 2008 financial crisis. He was the youngest Fed governor in history when he was appointed at 35. By most accounts, he's qualified. Here's where it gets interesting. But first, a quick explainer. When inflation is high—meaning prices are rising fast—the Fed raises interest rates to cool things down. Higher rates make borrowing expensive, so people and businesses spend less, demand drops, and prices stabilize. The trade-off? It can slow the economy and cost jobs. When the economy is weak, the Fed does the opposite: cuts rates to make borrowing cheap, which encourages spending and hiring. People who favor keeping rates high to fight inflation are called "hawks." People who favor cutting rates to boost growth are called "doves." It's a philosophical divide about which risk is worse: inflation getting out of control, or the economy slowing too much. Back then, Warsh was a hawk—he wanted higher rates to fight inflation, even when unemployment was near 10%. He opposed the Fed's aggressive stimulus. But in the past year, he flipped. He started publicly calling for rate cuts and criticized the Fed for moving too slowly. The timing is notable: this happened right as Trump was making clear he wanted a Fed chair who would slash rates. Some economists have called it opportunistic. Others say views evolve. You can decide. Meanwhile, the Justice Department recently opened a criminal investigation into current Fed chair Jerome Powell. Powell called it a political attack. Republican Senator Thom Tillis said he'll block Warsh's confirmation until the investigation is resolved. Why does Fed independence matter? Because when central banks become political tools, bad things happen. Turkey's central bank lost its independence a few years ago—inflation hit 85%. Argentina's has been politically captured for decades—inflation topped 200% last year. The U.S. isn't headed there. But Fed independence is why the dollar is the world's reserve currency. It's why people trust Treasury bonds. Chip away at that credibility, and it's hard to rebuild. One more thing: February is historically the second-worst month for stocks, behind September. For the Nasdaq, it's actually the worst going back to 2000. Should you panic? No. Monthly returns are basically a coin flip. But the longer you hold, the better your odds—10-year holds are positive 94% of the time. The boring strategy wins. The HigherIQ take: Watch what Warsh does, not what he says. If he's confirmed, pay attention to whether Fed decisions track economic data or political pressure. The early signals will tell you a lot. Two very different stories today. One about a woman who spent fifty years making people laugh by saying "yes, and" to whatever came her way. One about a guy who might run the most powerful financial institution in the world—and whether he'll say "yes" to the data or to the pressure. Different arenas. Same question: are you building something real, or just playing to the room? Stay informed, stay curious—and if you need a laugh this week, go watch Best in Show. Catherine O'Hara would approve.