Federal Reserve Lowers Rates, But Less Than Trump Wants
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.5 • 24.9K Ratings
🗓️ 19 September 2025
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, financial correspondent Maria Aspan, congressional correspondent Barbara Sprunt, and senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | On the TED Radio Hour podcast, Astro Teller leads Alphabet's secret lab behind successful projects like self-driving cars and high-profile flops like Google Glass. |
| 0:12.5 | We were too, too early in that case. |
| 0:15.0 | The CEO of Alphabet's Moonshot Factory on innovation and getting the timing right. |
| 0:20.8 | Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:24.8 | Hi, this is Susan. |
| 0:26.2 | And Dan at Newark International Airport. |
| 0:28.2 | Getting ready to depart for a trip to Prague and Amsterdam. |
| 0:31.3 | This podcast was recorded at 12.40 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, September 19th, 2025. |
| 0:38.2 | Things may have changed by the time you hear it. |
| 0:40.9 | But two MFAs, one baby, three cross-country moves, and one pandemic later, |
| 0:46.3 | will finally be enjoying a vacation that has been in the making since March 2020. |
| 0:50.8 | An extra big thanks to Nina Nance for watching our kiddo, making this all possible in the first place. Enjoy the show. What an earned vacation. And ditching the kid. Yeah. Now that. Now that is a vacation. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. |
| 1:11.8 | And NPR financial correspondent Maria Aspen is also here. Hi, Maria. Hey there. Great to be with you. |
| 1:17.1 | And today on the show, we're talking about the Federal Reserve's decision this week to lower interest |
| 1:21.5 | rates slightly and what political and economic forces are at play. But let's back up first, Maria. Can you give us a quick update on the |
| 1:29.2 | state of the economy? So I'll give you an analogy and then the data. The analogy I think about is |
| 1:34.1 | imagine you're at a summer picnic, cloudless seeming sky, sunny day, and you get into the picnic and you |
| 1:42.8 | look away. And then 20 minutes later, you look up in a different |
| 1:45.7 | direction and there's this mass of storm clouds that you didn't notice before gathering. |
| 1:51.8 | It's not clear that it's going to rain or when or how bad it's going to be, but suddenly |
| 1:58.0 | you're feeling a lot less confident that things are sunny and bright. |
| 2:02.6 | And that's kind of where we are with the economy. The data is still generally good, right? |
... |
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