Fed holds rates as inflation fears grow
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Hey guys, it's Mark checking in from my time off. I wanted to let you know about the FT Weekend Festival happening on Saturday, September 5th at Kenwood House Gardens in London or online wherever you are. Spend the day with FT journalists, leading voices, and forward thinkers across business, politics, economics, culture, and the arts. As a podcast listener, you're going to save 10% on tickets with the code FT podcast. Just visit ft.com slash festival to find out more. We'll have that link in the show notes.
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Thursday, July 30th, and this is your FT News Briefing. Meta and Microsoft reported earnings yesterday. And how much wiggle room does the new Fed chair have to keep interest rates on hold?
Walsh has been very, very consistent in terms of saying he will fight inflation. However, that begs the question, why not raise interest rates?
Plus, UK oil and gas companies are giving the North Sea the cold shoulder. I'm Sonia Hudson in for Mark Filippino, and here's the news you need to start your day.
You might remember in yesterday's show, the FT's Rob Armstrong laid out a dilemma for big tech companies as they report their earnings.
Can one of these companies get the mix right of strong AI growth without the overwhelming and terrifying AI spending?
Get that balance wrong and investors will sell off the company's stock. Well, Meta and Microsoft both reported earnings yesterday. So we asked Rob if they managed to thread the needle.
The most important thing was that neither company increased its target for AI capital expenditure, for AI investment. So that takes care of the spending side of the seesaw between spending and growth that these companies are sitting on. But there was two different stories on the growth side. Microsoft came through with growth in its intelligent cloud business that pleased markets, whereas Meta's guidance for growth in the months to come, disappointed. And so Meta's shares are down and Microsoft's are up.
That's the FT's U.S. financial commentator, Rob Armstrong. He also hosts the Unhedged podcast. We've got a link to that in the show notes.
The Federal Reserve kept interest rates steady yesterday for the fifth meeting in a row, despite pressure to raise them. Inflation is still running above the central bank's target, and the Iran war is adding more fuel to the fire.
What headlines open the FT News Briefing today?
Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said at his press conference yesterday that the central bank is committed to bringing down inflation.
We are on the job. We will deliver. We are focused like a laser on making sure we can do it. But the suggestion that we're going to be able to do it with our magic wand is one I want to disabuse you and everyone else of.
Here to tell us more is the FT's U.S. economics editor, Claire Jones. Hi, Claire. Hi, Sonia. OK, so at first glance, these ideas might seem in conflict with each other. The Fed is committed to bringing down inflation, but it didn't do anything with its main tool to address that yesterday, which is interest rates. Why?
It's a great question, Sonia, and it's one that was asked time and again during yesterday's press conference. Walsh has been very, very consistent in terms of saying he will fight inflation, that he's not happy with the status quo, where inflation has been above the Fed's 2% goal for the past five years. However, that begs the question, why not raise interest rates? And the best answer Walsh could give was that markets have done some of the heavy lifting for them.
Market judgments have moved up on what nominal rates are across the Treasury curve.
He noted that in the intermeeting period, we've seen markets pricing a greater chance of a rate rise to come.
Rates are higher today than they were 42 days ago.
The yields on the 2-year and the 10-year, which are both very sensitive to expectations for interest rates and have a big impact on the borrowing costs US households and businesses pay, have edged up by 0.2 percentage points. That's almost the same impact as a quarter point rate rise from the Fed.
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