Hello I'm Simon Long, the finance editor at The Economist, and this is Money Talks.

Coming up this week, how big a headache is the hack of Equifax?

And if there's somebody else who can claim to be you,

based on what they've taken from this credit reporting agency,

then we have a big problem.

And in China, what are the iEs, and why should we care?

So it's a kind of legal quick fix to the problem of foreign businesses owning sensitive assets in China.

But first, President Donald Trump has a rare opportunity to influence America's Central Bank.

With the resignation of the Vice Chair of the US Federal Reserve, Stanley Fisher last week, the board there is severely depleted.

Four out of seven board seats are now vacant, leaving the smallest number of governors in the Fed's history.

Precious mounting for President Trump to name his candidates

and to confirm whether or not he will replace the US Fed Chair Janet Yellen.

Henry Kerr, our U.S. economics editor, joins us from New York.

Henry, before we talk about the choices for this succession, this is presumably quite an important

week for the Fed. Just next week there's a meeting of its rate-setting

Open Markets Committee.

Yes, exactly. So next week it's widely expected that the Fed's going to announce the beginning of the reversal of Kui.

That is during and after the financial crisis, it bought a lot of assets with newly created money

and it's going to start running down that balance sheet.

So this is quite an important announcement

and it's happening at the same time

as all these vacancies have appeared.

...