Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, May 5th, and this is your FT News Briefing.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen rattled financial markets on Tuesday when she suggested that

interest rates may have to rise, and US states are offering everything from beard a marijuana to

get people vaccinated. Plus, there's a scarcity of women in the top ranks of European Central Banking.

Two of them spoke to the FT about hidden barriers to gender equality and how they want to bring

more women into Central Bank leadership roles. I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start

your day. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen yesterday warned the US may need to raise interest rates

to keep the economy from overheating. Her comments exacerbated a sell-off in technology stocks,

than as that composite index finished Tuesday down almost 2%. Now Yellen's suggestion runs

counter to repeated statements by Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell. He's indicated the US Central

Bank would not raise rates until 2023, the earliest. The FT's US markets editor Eric Platte

explains what happened. So Secretary Yellen was speaking at a conference held by the magazine The

Atlantic, and she was discussing whether or not all the stimulus being pushed by the Biden

administration was going to be sustainable for the US economy. In talking, she said interest rates

may have to rise to keep the economy from overheating. Now Secretary Yellen, she used to work at the

Fed, she doesn't currently work at the Fed, but this really spooked financial markets, and its

answer reverberations really throughout stock markets, where investors are really nervous about

inflation, and whether or not this growth is going to be uncontrollable. This, and then comments

from Jen Psaki at the White House that inflationary pressures are something that they're really

monitoring, is just providing extra fuel to this idea that maybe inflation could be rearing its head.

Now Eric, didn't Janet Yellen a former chair of the Federal Reserve know that what she was saying

might in those spooked markets? Yes, and I think this is what prompted the kind of walking back of

...