The Fed Saw Risks Shifting in September, Minutes Reveal

WSJ What’s News

The Wall Street Journal

News, Daily News

4 • 4K Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

P.M. Edition for Oct. 8. Minutes from the September meeting of the Federal Reserve offered more details about divisions among the governors and how they are thinking about rate cuts for the rest of this year. But as WSJ chief economics correspondent Nick Timiraos tells us, the government shutdown could complicate the Fed’s balancing act. Plus, as the country’s top drugmakers are set to meet in early December, WSJ White House reporter Annie Linskey discusses how family members of President Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick are poised to benefit from efforts to remake the industry. And advertisers, who spend tens of millions of dollars per year on digital ads, are pushing tech companies for more transparency around how those digital ads work. We hear from WSJ reporter Patrick Coffee about the proposal and why advertisers are asking for these standards. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	former FBI director James Comey pleads not guilty to charges of lying to Congress.
0:09.8	Plus, what the minutes from the Federal Reserve's latest meeting reveal about future rate cuts.
0:15.2	And why advertisers are asking big tech for more transparency around digital ad sales.
0:20.6	The concern is that as more and more of the digital ads that are sold go through these
0:27.2	same platforms, that the advertisers themselves, and the companies that buy ads on their behalf,
0:32.9	as well as the media publishers will have less and less say in what they're ultimately paying for
0:40.3	and what they're getting. It's Wednesday, October 8th. I'm Alex O'Sullough for the Wall Street Journal.
0:45.7	This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today.
0:55.3	Minutes from the Federal Reserve's meeting last month are out today, and they reveal that
0:59.6	officials were divided over how much farther they should lower interest rates.
1:03.4	For more, I'm joined now by WSJ Chief Economics correspondent, Nick Timrose.
1:08.1	Nick, we had talked on the show last month about how that last Fed meeting was kind of a strange one.
1:13.3	It was Fed Governor Stephen Myron's first meeting, and it was in the middle of President Trump's effort to get Lisa Cook fired.
1:19.1	Did that tension play out in the minutes?
1:21.4	It didn't. And the minutes are normally a fairly sanitized document. They don't paint with bright colors. They paint in different hues of beige.
1:31.9	And so they didn't draw a lot of new insights into how the debate is unfolding.
1:38.1	The Fed is widely expected to lower interest rates at its next meeting. What did these minutes
1:42.8	reveal about how likely that is to happen?
1:45.6	So the minutes show that most officials thought it would, quote, likely be appropriate to ease
1:51.4	policy further over the remainder of the year. And this is from the September meeting. There's only
1:57.3	three months left in the year. So it's a pretty strong hint that this one interest rate cut was not being considered in isolation from at least one more, if not two more, this year.
2:10.6	And the economic projections that the 19 meeting participants submitted at this meeting showed that a narrow majority expect
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