The Fed’s first rate cut in 4 years
FT News Briefing
Forhecz Topher
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 19 September 2024
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Federal Reserve’s interest rate easing began with a half-point cut, and the UK’s financial watchdog has stepped up pressure on banks to offer more attractive interest rates on deposits. The FT’s Mehul Srivastava unravels the supply chain behind the pagers that exploded in Lebanon this week.
Mentioned in this podcast:
Federal Reserve cuts rates by half a point and signals era of easing has begun
UK regulator pushes banks to give savers better value even as rates fall
From Taipei to Budapest: the mysterious trail of exploding pagers
London and New York cocoa prices in rare divergence as shortages bite
The FT News Briefing is produced by Niamh Rowe, Fiona Symon, Sonja Hutson, Kasia Broussalian and Marc Filippino. Additional help from Breen Turner, Sam Giovinco, Peter Barber, Michael Lello, David da Silva and Gavin Kallmann. Our engineer is Monica Lopez. Topher Forhecz is the FT’s executive producer. The FT’s global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. The show’s theme song is by Metaphor Music.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The UK's energy partner. |
| 0:06.0 | Learn more at equinore. |
| 0:10.0 | At Aquinore. |
| 0:11.0 | The UK. |
| 0:12.0 | Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Thursday, September 19th, and this is your |
| 0:18.9 | FT news briefing. The Fed made quite a statement with its first rate cut and the UK's financial |
| 0:26.8 | watchdog wants to give Savers a little pick-me-up. Plus exploding pagers and walkie-talkies across Lebanon show just how vulnerable Hezbollah really is. |
| 0:38.8 | And where this to have happened, say, during a war time, you truly would have crippled because you need to communicate with your colleagues far away. |
| 0:46.2 | I'm Sonia Hudson, and here's the news |
| 0:48.3 | you need to start your day. The U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates yesterday for the first time in four years. |
| 1:08.0 | And it was a big one, half a percentage point. Fed Chair Jay Powell said that the U.S. economy is in a good place and |
| 1:16.7 | this rate cut is going to keep it that way. |
| 1:19.4 | More specifically, the economy is growing at a solid pace. |
| 1:22.0 | Inflation is coming down closer to our 2% objective over time. |
| 1:26.0 | And the labor market is still in solid shape. |
| 1:29.0 | I'm joined now by the F.T.'s U.S. economics editor Colby Smith to unpack all this. |
| 1:34.4 | Hi Colby. |
| 1:35.3 | Hi Sonia. |
| 1:36.5 | So half a percentage point is a pretty sizable cut. |
| 1:40.1 | How significant is this move? |
| 1:42.2 | So it's pretty significant. |
| 1:43.2 | I mean in the past, what we've seen from the Fed is that they opt for these larger decisions |
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