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Good morning. Today is Thursday, April 7th, and I'm your host Rina Schirbel. Our top stories today.

Fed calls for shrinking balance, commercial drone deliveries take off, and Euronav andave and Frontline merge.

Leading today's news, all Federal Open Market Committee members agreed that the Federal Reserve

will have to adopt a faster pace in shrinking its balance sheet than it took over the 2017-2019 period

according to the March 15-16 FOMC meeting minutes that were released on Wednesday.

The minutes said,

participants generally agreed that monthly caps of about 60 billion

for Treasury securities and about 35 billion for agency MBS

would likely be appropriate. Some of the officials, though,

said they'd be comfortable with relatively high

monthly caps or no caps. The process for reducing the balance sheet could start as

early as the May meeting they said. According to the minutes, participants also generally agreed that the caps could be phased in over a period of three months or modestly longer if market conditions warrant.

They also reaffirmed that the balance sheet reduction should be done over time in a predictable manner,

primarily by adjusting the amounts reinvested of principal payments received from securities held on its balance sheet. Many participants said they preferred a 50 basis point

interest rate hike at the March meeting, but a number of them judged that a 25 basis point hike

would be more appropriate due to the greater near term

uncertainty resulting from Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

However, many of the FOMC members said one or more 50 basis point rate hike

could be warranted if inflationary pressures stay high or intensify.

A few of the officials saw a significant risk that elevated inflation and inflation expectations

...