Raphael Stevens

This week’s gathering of the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee carries an uncommon air of mystery.
Will it be the traditional quarter-percentage-point, or 25-basis-point, rate reduction, or will the Fed take an aggressive first step and go 50 basis points, or half a point? Fed watchers are unsure.
Beyond the quarter vs. half debate, this will be an action-packed Fed meeting, with updates on projections for rates cuts in the future as well as adjustments to economic estimates.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell takes a question from a reporter during a news conference following a Federal Open Market Committee meeting at the William McChesney Martin Jr. Federal Reserve Board Building on July 31, 2024 in Washington, DC. 
Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

For all the hype that goes into them, Federal Reserve meetings are usually pretty predictable affairs. Policymakers telegraph their intentions ahead of time, markets react, and everyone has at least a general idea of what’s going to happen.
Not this time.

This week’s gathering of the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee carries an uncommon air of mystery. While markets have made up their collective mind that the Fed is going to lower interest rates, there’s a vigorous debate over how far policymakers will go.
Will it be the traditional quarter-percentage-point, or 25-basis-point, rate reduction, or will the Fed take an aggressive first step and go 50, or half a point?
Fed watchers are unsure, setting up the potential for an FOMC meeting that could be even more impactful than usual. The meeting wraps up Wednesday afternoon, with the release of the Fed’s rate decision coming at 2 p.m. ET.
“I hope they cut 50 basis points, but I suspect they’ll cut 25. My hope is 50, because I think rates are just too high,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “They have achieved their mandate for full employment and inflation back at target, and that’s not consistent with a five and a half percent-ish funds rate target. So I think they need to normalize rates quickly and have a lot of room to do so.”
Pricing in the derivatives market around what the Fed will do has been volatile.

Until late last week, traders had locked in on a 25-basis-point cut. Then on Friday, sentiment suddenly shifted, putting a half point on the table. As of Wednesday afternoon, fed funds futures traders were pricing in about a 63% chance of the bigger move, a comparatively low level of conviction against previous meetings. One basis point equals 0.01%.
Many on Wall Street continued to predict the Fed’s first step would be a more cautious one.
“The experience of tightening, although it seemed to work, didn’t work exactly how they thought it was going to, so easing should be viewed with just as much uncertainty,” said Tom Simons, U.S. economist at Jefferies. “Thus, if you’re uncertain, you shouldn’t rush.”
“They should move quickly here,” Zandi said, expressing the more dovish view. “Otherwise they run the risk of something breaking.”
The debate inside the FOMC meeting room should be interesting, and with an unusual division among officials who generally have voted in unison.

“My guess is they’re split,” former Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan told CNBC on Tuesday. “There’ll be some around the table who feel as I do, that they’re a little bit late, and they’d like to get on their front foot and would prefer not to spend the fall chasing the economy. There’ll be others that, from a risk management point of view, just want to be more careful.”
Beyond the 25 vs. 50 debate, this will be an action-packed Fed meeting. Here’s a breakdown of what’s on tap:

The rate wait

The FOMC has been holding its benchmark fed funds rate in a range between 5.25%-5.5% since it last hiked in July 2023.
That’s the highest it’s been in 23 years and has held there despite the Fed’s preferred inflation measure falling from 3.3% to 2.5% and the unemployment rate rising from 3.5% to 4.2% during that time.
In recent weeks, Chair Jerome Powell and his fellow policymakers have left no doubt that a cut is coming at this meeting. Deciding by how much will involve a calculus between fighting inflation while staying mindful that the labor market has slowed considerably in the past several months.
“For the Fed, it comes down to deciding which is a more significant risk — reigniting inflation pressures if they cut by 50 bps, or threatening recession if they cut by just 25 bps,” Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, said in written commentary. “Having already been criticized for responding to the inflation crisis too slowly, the Fed will likely be wary of being reactive, rather than proactive, to the risk of recession.”

The ‘dot plot’

Perhaps just as important as the rate cut will be the signals meeting participants send about where they expect rates to go from here.
That will happen via the “dot plot,” a grid in which each official will signal how they see things unfolding over the next several years. The September plot will offer the first outlook for 2027.
In June, FOMC members penciled in just one rate cut through the end of the year. That almost surely will accelerate, with markets pricing in the equivalent of up to five, or 1.25 percentage points, worth of cuts (assuming 25 basis point moves) with only three meetings left.
In all, traders see the Fed hacking away at rates next year, taking off 2.5 percentage points from the current overnight borrowing rate before stopping, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch gauge of futures contracts.
“That feels overly aggressive, unless you know the economy is going to start to weaken more significantly,” Zandi said of the market’s outlook. Moody’s expects quarter-point cuts at each of the three remaining meetings this year, including this week’s.

Economic projections

The dot plot is part of the FOMC’s Summary of Economic Projections, which provides unofficial forecasts for unemployment, gross domestic product and inflation as well.
The biggest adjustment for the SEP likely will come with unemployment, which the committee almost certainly will ratchet up from the 4.0% end-year forecast in June. The jobless rate currently stands at 4.2%.
Core inflation, pegged in June at 2.8% for the full year, likely will be revised lower, as it last stood at 2.6% in July.
“Inflation appears on track to undershoot the FOMC’s June projections, and the higher prints at the start of the year increasingly look more like residual seasonality than reacceleration. A key theme of the meeting will therefore be a shift in focus to labor market risks,” Goldman Sachs economists said in a note.

The statement and the Powell presser

In addition to adjustments to the dot plot and SEP, the committee’s post-meeting statement will have to change to reflect the expected rate cut along with any additional forward guidance the committee will add.
Released at 2 p.m. ET, the statement and the SEP are the first things to which the market will react, followed by the Powell press conference at 2:30.
Goldman expects the FOMC “will likely revise its statement to sound more confident on inflation, describe the risks to inflation and employment as more balanced, and re-emphasize its commitment to maintaining maximum employment.”
“I don’t think that they’re going to be particularly specific about any kind of forward guidance,” said Simons, the Jefferies economist. “Forward guidance at this point in the cycle is of little use when the Fed doesn’t actually know what they’re going to do.” More

“The Fed should act in the way that the data indicates that they should act. Period,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., chair of the House Financial Services Committee.
Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, John Hickenlooper of Colorado and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island have called for the Fed to cut its benchmark rate by three-quarters of a percentage point, which is higher than the most aggressive market expectations.
Former President Donald Trump said in an August press conference that he believes he should get a say on monetary policy if he wins in November.

U.S. Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., speaks to members of the media outside the office of U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Oct. 3, 2023.
Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images

Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., sharply criticized other politicians on Tuesday for making public comments about what the Federal Reserve should do with its interest rate policy.
McHenry, the outgoing chair of the House Financial Services Committee, said it was an ‘”outrage” that some politicians are publicly lobbying the central bank about rate cuts.

“The outrage to me is … for instance, if you’re on the right, you say the Fed should be independent, except I think right now they should do this. And on the left, the same,” said McHenry, who is retiring from Congress at the end of this term.
“Senators that are trying to direct the Fed on rate policy are really demeaning their role. … They’re demeaning their role as a United States Senator,” he added.
McHenry’s comments came one day before the U.S. central bank is widely expected to start cutting interest rates for the first time since 2020. Coming in the middle of a presidential election cycle, the change in Fed policy has stirred speculation as to whether the central bank would be influenced by political considerations. Chair Jerome Powell, first appointed by Trump and reappointed by President Joe Biden, has repeatedly denied that is a factor.
On Monday, Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, John Hickenlooper of Colorado and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island called for the Fed to cut its benchmark lending rate by 0.75 percentage points, which is higher than the most aggressive market expectations. Warren and Whitehouse are both running for reelection in November, while Hickenlooper’s term ends in 2026.
Republicans who have weighed in include former President Trump, who said in an August press conference that he believes he should get a say on monetary policy if he wins in November. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, also introduced a bill earlier this year that would abolish the Fed.

When asked about Trump’s remarks, McHenry said “all presidents think they should give an input” but that the central bankers should ignore statements from politicians.
“The Fed should act in the way that the data indicates that they should act. Period,” McHenry said.
The remarks came at a conference hosted by Georgetown University’s Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy.

Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO More

Many people expect to keep working because they need extra retirement income.
However, research shows workers often retire earlier than planned, perhaps due to a layoff or poor health.
That means workers can’t rely on delayed retirement as a financial plan. For those who are able, working longer is among the best ways to shore up one’s nest egg, though.

Alistair Berg | Digitalvision | Getty Images

Planning to work longer is a popular escape hatch for Americans who feel they’ve saved too little to support themselves in old age.
About 27% of workers intend to work in retirement because they need to supplement their income, according to a new CNBC and SurveyMonkey survey. They polled 6,657 U.S. adults in early August, including 2,603 who are retired and 4,054 who are working full time or part time, are self-employed or who own a business.

While working longer is among the best ways to shore up one’s nest egg, the plan may backfire, according to retirement experts.

Workers may not be able to work into their late 60s, early 70s or later due to an unexpected health complication or a layoff, for example.
“It sounds great on paper,” said Philip Chao, a certified financial planner and founder of Experiential Wealth, based in Cabin John, Maryland. “But reality could be very different.”
If workers lose those wages, they’d have to figure out another way to make their retirement savings last.

Workers often retire earlier than planned

A nonexistent ‘escape valve’

Americans generally use a later retirement age “as an escape valve which doesn’t necessarily exist,” Chao said. “But saying it and doing it are two totally different things.”
It could ultimately be a “very dangerous” assumption, Chao said.
Many people who retired earlier than planned, 35%, did so because of a hardship, such as a health problem or disability, according to the EBRI survey. Another 31% of them retired due to “changes at their company,” such as a layoff.  

It sounds great on paper. But reality could be very different.

Philip Chao
founder of Experiential Wealth

More than half, 56%, of full-time workers in their early 50s get pushed out of their jobs due to layoffs and other circumstances before they’re ready to retire, according to a 2018 Urban Institute paper. Often, such workers earn substantially less money if they ultimately find another job, the paper found.
Of course, some people exit the workforce early for positive reasons: More than a third, 35%, of people who retired earlier than anticipated did so because they could afford to, EBRI found.

There are benefits to working longer

Working longer — for those who can do it — is a financial boon, according to retirement experts.
For one, workers can delay drawing down their savings; that keeps their nest egg intact longer and may allow it to continue growing via investment profit and additional contributions. Workers can also delay claiming Social Security benefits, which can boost how much they receive.

Some people continue to work longer because they like it: About a quarter, 26%, of workers said they want to work in retirement, and 17% of retirees continue to work in some capacity because they enjoy it, according to the CNBC retirement survey.
Americans may also get non-financial benefits from working longer, such as improved health and longevity. However, research suggests such benefits depend on how much stress workers experience on the job, and the physical demands of their labor.
Working longer also appears to be more of a possibility for a growing share of older workers.
“A shift away from a manufacturing economy to one primarily focused on delivering services and information facilitates working to an older age,” Jeffrey Jones, a Gallup analyst, wrote. More

Latinas contributed $1.3 trillion to 2021 U.S. gross domestic product, up from $661 billion in 2010, according to a recent report funded by Bank of America.
The economic output of Latinas was more than Florida’s economy that year, with only the GDP of California, Texas and New York being larger.
Still, some economists believe that Latinas’ total contribution to the country’s GDP could actually be more than what’s being reflected in the data.

Miami Beach, Florida, Manolo, restaurant, employees at bakery counter. (Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Jeff Greenberg | Universal Images Group | Getty Images

Latinas are making substantial contributions to the U.S. economy.
The female Hispanic population contributed $1.3 trillion to gross domestic product in 2021, an increase from $661 billion in 2010, according to a recent report funded by Bank of America.

That marks a real GDP growth rate of 51.1% between 2010 and 2021, meaning an economic contribution that’s 2.7 times that of the non-Hispanic population.
The total output of U.S. Latinas in 2021 was also larger than the entire state of Florida that year, the report noted, citing data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In fact, only those from California, Texas and New York, respectively, were larger that year.

Despite those large figures, some economists think that U.S. Latinas could be contributing more to GDP than the report’s figure.
Belinda Román, an associate economics professor at St. Mary’s University, said that there’s activity in various areas that the data may not be capturing. Child care is one of those.
“A lot of that is uncompensated care,” she said in an interview with CNBC. “Interestingly, there are a lot of Latinas in that space that you’re not going to see in these numbers, so I think to some extent it may not be big enough actually.”

Economist Mónica García-Pérez also believes the figure could be bigger, saying that some of Latinas’ “unmeasured” contributions — such as being a stay-at-home mom that’s providing care for other neighbors’ kids, for example — allow “other groups to participate in the labor market.”
She also pointed to the occupational positions they hold more generally as posing some difficulty when assessing their contributions.
“This group is very sensitive to shocks, and it could be related to their presence in sectors where there’s a lot of mobility or turnover,” the Fayetteville State University economics professor said. She added that they tend to be concentrated in care and service industries, such as health care, retail and hospitality. This is what makes them a “moving piece” in economic cycles.
In the case of a recession, for instance, García-Pérez said Latinas are “likely to lose their job much faster being in the sectors they’re in,” as seen during the Covid-19 pandemic. “But they also may be more likely to be reincorporated in the market because the cost of entry and the type of positions they enter at have lower barriers.”

A growing force

When it comes to labor force participation, Latinas are outpacing other groups, the BofA report showed.
From 2000 to 2021, the participation rate for Latinas rose 7.5 percentage points. On the other hand, the participation rate of the non-Hispanic women in the same period was flat.
The group has also been more resilient than others. Although labor force growth slowed overall in 2020, the growth rates for Hispanic men and women were still positive. Conversely, the non-Latino labor force growth rate was negative that year, meaning that more people left the labor force than entered it.
Beyond that, Latina GDP grew more than five times the rate of non-Latino GDP between 2019 and 2021, gaining 7.7% compared to 1.5%. Meanwhile, the GDP of Hispanic men grew nearly four times the rate of non-Latino GDP in those years at 5.9%.
These contributions are notable given that Latino households were some of the hardest hit by the pandemic.
“When the economy broadly is most in need, that’s actually when we see the most dramatic contributions of U.S. Latinas,” said economist Matthew Fienup, the report’s co-author and executive director of the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting at California Lutheran University. “Whereas all Latinos are a source of economic strength, Latinas are drivers of vitality that the economy needs.”
“If Covid-19 couldn’t stop this growth, it’s hard to see what would,” said David Hayes-Bautista, report co-author and director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the School of Medicine at UCLA.

Drivers of change

Since the late 1970s, the share of Latinas with a job has grown. Specifically, the employment-to-population ratio for the group has surged from 41.6% in December 1978 to 56% in December 2023, per data from the Economic Policy Institute.
By comparison, the ratio for Black women — who alongside Latinas experience the most severe wage gaps relative to white, non-Hispanic men — has advanced 11.9 percentage points. The metric for women overall has climbed by 8.8 percentage points in that period.
“Some of this is an expansion of opportunities for women,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at EPI. Part of this is also due to a lack of wage growth for typical workers over the past few decades, she said. “Because it can be hard to get ahead, households may have had to put in more work hours to do better.”
That seems to be paying off to some extent. The growth in labor force participation as well as a rise in educational attainment are resulting in income gains for the group, notably about 2.5 times that of non-Hispanic women from 2010 to 2021, the BofA’s report co-authors found.

Brooklyn Puerto Rico Day Parade on June 13, 2021 on Knickerbocker Avenue in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York.
Andrew Lichtenstein | Corbis News | Getty Images

Hayes-Bautista also cited intergenerational shifts and Hispanic women’s more rapid population growth over the Hispanic male and non-Latino populations as another catalyst of Latinas’ economic output.
“What we started to see in about the year 2000 is that the immigrant first-generation started to age out of the labor force,” he said. “As they age out, their shoes are being filled by their daughters and granddaughters, who are twice as numerous in terms of population size, and they’re bringing much higher levels of human capital.”
Latinas have especially bolstered the contributions of Latinos as a whole. Fienup told CNBC that Latinos’ total contributions have pushed labor force growth positive in certain regions across the country at times when the non-Latino labor force was contracting.
“We expect that dynamic to be increasingly important over the next three decades,” he said. “What we’re seeing now is really just the beginning of what will be an increasingly important story in the United States economy.” More

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Tuesday proposed a new rule forcing banks to keep more detailed records for customers of fintech apps after the failure of tech firm Synapse resulted in thousands of Americans being locked out of their accounts.
The rule, aimed at accounts opened by fintech firms that partner with banks, would make the institution maintain records of who owns the account and the daily balances attributed to the owner, according to an FDIC memo.
Fintech apps often use a type of account where many customers’ funds are pooled into a single large account, relying on either the fintech or a third party to maintain ledgers of transactions and ownership.

Tsingha25 | Istock | Getty Images

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. on Tuesday proposed a new rule forcing banks to keep detailed records for customers of fintech apps after the failure of tech firm Synapse resulted in thousands of Americans being locked out of their accounts.
The rule, aimed at accounts opened by fintech firms that partner with banks, would make the institution maintain records of who owns it and the daily balances attributed to the owner, according to an FDIC memo.

Fintech apps often lean on a practice where many customers’ funds are pooled into a single large account at a bank, which relies on either the fintech or a third party to maintain ledgers of transactions and ownership.
That situation exposed customers to the risk that the nonbanks involved would keep shoddy or incomplete records, making it hard to determine who to pay out in the event of a failure. That’s what happened in the Synapse collapse, which impacted more than 100,000 users of fintech apps including Yotta and Juno. Customers with funds in these “for benefit of” accounts have been unable to access their money since May.
“In many cases, it was advertised that the funds were FDIC-insured, and consumers may have believed that their funds would remain safe and accessible due to representations made regarding placement of those funds in” FDIC-member banks, the regulator said in its memo.
Keeping better records would allow the FDIC to quickly pay depositors in the event of a bank failure by helping to satisfy conditions needed for “pass-through insurance,” FDIC officials said Tuesday in a briefing.
While FDIC insurance doesn’t get paid out in the event the fintech provider fails, like in the Synapse situation, enhanced records would help a bankruptcy court determine who is owed what, the officials added.

If approved by the FDIC board of governors in a vote Tuesday, the rule will get published in the Federal Register for a 60-day comment period.
Separately, the FDIC also released a statement on its policy on bank mergers, which would heighten scrutiny of the impacts of consolidation, especially for deals creating banks with more than $100 billion in assets.
Bank mergers slowed under the Biden administration, drawing criticism from industry analysts who say that consolidation would create more robust competitors for the likes of megabanks including JPMorgan Chase.

Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO More