15 Aug
2016
Fed Rates, Hackers, Zika, and more – TenCount 8.15.16
- The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged at its meeting last month, but it hinted of a growing chance that rates would increase later this year. On Wednesday, Fed watchers will try to read the tea leaves from that session when the Fed releases the minutes of that July meeting, at which one member of the Federal Open Market Committee voted for a quarter-point increase.
- The Fed won’t meet again until Sept. 20, but Fed watchers this week will also have their eyes on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer price report, due out Tuesday morning. Analysts expect little change in prices, meaning that continued low inflation could let the Fed continue to lean in the direction of keeping rates steady.
- The stock market has been heating up this summer, and last week saw a rare occurrence: On Thursday, the three major stock indexes hit all-time highs on the same day, something that hadn’t happened since 1999. On Friday stocks were mixed, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Standard & Poor’s 500 are still up 6.6 percent and 6.8 percent, respectively, for the year, with the Nasdaq Composite index up 4.5 percent.
- Stock prices have been rising as a lot of investor cash has remained on the sidelines, a factor that could push prices yet higher after fund managers return from their summer vacations and aim to be fully invested by the time the end of the third quarter comes along, when portfolios are reported to investors. Not everyone is optimistic, however: Mohamed A. El-Erian, bond guru and chief economic adviser at Allianz, wrote last week that the nation’s retirement system could be taking the course of the Titanic.
- The Urban Institute, as part of a continuing series on issues affecting the mortgage industry, takes a look at the state of mortgage servicing on Wednesday. With cost inputs for servicing distressed loans rising and many of the players in the market having changed in recent years, the seminar aims to answer questions about changing cost structures and compensation models.
- A week after President Obama chastised Congress for leaving town for seven weeks without appropriating needed funds for Zika vaccine research, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell transferred $81 million away from biomedical, antipoverty and other programs to keep researchers from running out of money before fiscal yearend. Nevertheless, more funding will be needed, the administration said.
- The Federal Communications Commission finds itself back in a familiar spot after a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that Congress has not given the agency the authority to preempt state laws that restrict municipalities’ ability to offer high-speed broadband Internet service. A number of states, encouraged by telecommunications companies, have put such restrictions in place; the F.C.C. believes those laws are anticompetitive. The F.C.C. can appeal for a hearing before the full Sixth Circuit court or appeal to the Supreme Court.
- Used to be that one’s cell phone was the only respite from those annoying marketing robocalls that so plague the landline phone. Now that many of us have begun getting the calls on our cell phones, the F.C.C. is convening a special task force “that is committed to developing comprehensive solutions to prevent, detect and filter unwanted robocalls.” The task force, chaired by AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, meets for the first time Friday.
- American intelligence officials knew that Russian hackers had infiltrated the Democratic Party’s computer systems a year ago and briefed top members of Congress months before the Democratic National Committee became aware of the hack, Reuters reported Friday. But no one told the Democratic National Committee about the hacking for fear that the hackers would figure out that they were being monitored and how they had been traced. The publication of internal emails of top Democratic party officials led to the resignations of several D.N.C. executives.
- Thomas J. Curry, the Comptroller of the Currency, and other influential leaders will engage in a thought-provoking conversation about the most important issues and policies facing the marketplace lending industry at the MPL Summit, Sept. 13 at the Marriott Marquis in Washington. The summit seeks to create opportunity for responsible industry participants to propose standards and provide regulators and policymakers with consensus viewpoints on the regulation of marketplace lending.