The Intelligence: Fed reckoning
Economist Podcasts
The Economist
4.3 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 21 March 2024
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
America’s central bank left rates untouched, to widespread market delight. Why is this economic cycle confounding expectations so much, and how to bring it to a gentle end? We look at the modern fortunes of Vodafone, a once-mighty telecoms firm that is slimming down to get healthier (11:21). And why Britain’s system for protecting its historic buildings from change…needs to change (16:10).
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Transcript
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| 1:06.6 | The Economist. |
| 1:13.9 | Hello and welcome to the intelligence from The Economist. |
| 1:17.1 | I'm your host, Jason Palmer. |
| 1:19.0 | Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. |
| 1:38.2 | From modest beginnings in military radios, the British firm Vodafone became an enormous global telecommunications brand, hoovering up other businesses left and right. |
| 1:42.8 | Now it's having to sell them off in order to get itself back to its former health. |
| 1:52.0 | And Britain has an enviable record in keeping its cherished old architecture from being modernized or knocked down, thanks to a process called listing buildings. |
| 1:55.0 | A certain irony then that that system is a tangled bureaucracy that needs updating. |
| 2:06.3 | First up, though. |
| 2:20.0 | The Dow Jones Stock Market Index, the S&P 500, the NASDAQ, they all hit record highs yesterday. |
| 2:23.3 | Why? Just a few words from this man. |
| 2:27.8 | Inflation has eased substantially while the labor market has remained strong. |
| 2:29.7 | And that is very good news. |
| 2:31.8 | But inflation is still too high. |
... |
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