Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Thursday, September 23rd,

and this is your FT News Briefing.

The Federal Reserve's timeline for raising interest rates seems to be inching closer,

and the U.S. State Department Advisor defends the new security pact with the UK and Australia.

Meanwhile, some big names are lining up behind a former Treasury Secretary's private equity fund.

Plus, market analysts are debating whether the crisis at one of China's biggest

property developers could wreak havoc on global markets. The FT's James King reminds us that China's

not a free market financial system. The government in Beijing says to the banks, okay,

I need you to start bailing out a certain property developer. Those banks cannot but follow the

orders of the central government. I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

The Federal Reserve meeting yesterday was a bit of a doozy.

It was really quite important, possibly the most important meeting of the year.

That's the FT's Washington Bureau Chief James Plyde, pretty much summing it up. He said,

the Fed's signal that's ready to start slowing its 120 billion dollar a month asset purchases.

That's the bond buying program to support the U.S. economy during the pandemic.

He also said the Fed's starting to contemplate interest rate increases starting next year.

The takeaway is that the Fed believes that the economy is strong enough that it can live without

massive monetary support. So it's brushing away some of the concerns about the Delta variant

on the U.S. recovery. It's confident that sort of the fiscal policy environment will be conducive

to stronger and more sustainable growth. It shows the inflationary concerns that have flared up

this year are not expected to deliver a massive blow to the economy. Either the Fed is confident

that inflation will be transitory. It will start to raise interest rates maybe sooner than it

...