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At equinore. UK. Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Monday, March 18th, and this is your

FT news briefing. Central banks around the world are meeting this week to discuss interest rates.

And there are finally some reasons to be optimistic about South Africa's economy.

Plus, a few big companies are taking on a watchdog for labor in the U.S.

I'm Kasha Bruthalian and here's the news you need to start your day. The It's a big week for Central Banks. The U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan

will all be making important announcements

about interest rates in the coming days.

But recent events are making those announcements a bit more complicated.

In just one example, inflation unexpectedly increased in the

U.S. last week. That's raised some pretty serious doubts about the Fed's timeline

for cutting rates.

We'll be following these meetings throughout the week and we'll have updates as they come.

A U.S. agency that enforces laws related to unions is facing an existential threat.

Four big U.S. companies, that's Trader Joe's, Starbucks, Amazon, and SpaceX,

are all challenging the authority of the National Labor Relations Board in court.

Here to talk about what that could mean for the organization and the labor

movement is the F.T. Taylor Nicole Rogers. Hey Taylor.

Hey!

So can you give me a little bit of a background here? What does the NLRB do and just how important is it?

It's pretty important if you have a job.

...