When U.S. and Iranian negotiators sit down in Switzerland on Friday after nearly four months of war, the stakes couldn’t be higher as they face an array of hurdles that could derail efforts to reach a comprehensive peace agreement.
Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh announced on Wednesday a wide-ranging project to review key aspects of central bank policy making, in a move that indicated any near-term moves to change how the Fed manages its massive stock of bonds lay well off in the future.
Short-term U.S. interest-rate futures are now pricing in a bigger chance that the Federal Reserve will deliver a rate hike by September than opt to keep rates where they are.
U.S. stock indexes lost some ground on Wednesday, after the Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged, as expected, but signaled a rate hike later this year after the first meeting led by new Fed Chair Kevin Warsh.
Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh appears not to have submitted an interest-rate-path projection as part of the central bank’s quarterly forecasts, a break from past practice that may suggest he is already at work on his promised “regime change” for the Fed just three weeks into his tenure.
Nearly half of Federal Reserve policymakers have lost faith that merely holding borrowing costs steady will be enough to bring inflation back down to their 2% target in the face of the oil price surge after the Iran war.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday he believed progress would be made in coming weeks on broadening access to leading U.S. AI models, as G7 leaders pledged closer coordination on the risks and opportunities of frontier AI.
Group of Seven leaders agreed on Wednesday to step up coordination to cut their countries’ reliance on China for critical minerals, including plans to align stockpiling and launch a new platform with an expanded role for the International Energy Agency.