Finance

Less than a week after taking his seat, Fed Governor Stephen Miran outlined the reasons why he thinks the central bank’s benchmark interest rate is far too high and should be lowered aggressively.
Miran thinks the federal funds rate, a level that banks charge each other for overnight lending but that influences a wide variety of other rates, should be in the low-2% area.

Stephen Miran, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, following a television interview outside the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, June 17, 2025.
Aaron Schwartz | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Less than a week after taking his seat, Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran on Monday outlined the reasons why he thinks the central bank’s benchmark interest rate is far too high and should be lowered aggressively.
Changes in tax and immigration policy along with easing rental costs, deregulation and incoming revenue for tariffs are creating a different economic landscape that allow the Fed to cut its benchmark rate by nearly 2 percentage points from its current level, the central banker said in remarks before the Economic Club of New York.

“The Federal Reserve has been entrusted with the important goal of promoting price stability for the good of all American households and businesses, and I am committed to bringing inflation sustainably back to 2 percent,” he said. “However, leaving policy restrictive by such a large degree brings significant risks for the Fed’s employment mandate.”
Miran sees the confluence of policy changes from the White House lowering the neutral level of interest that neither restricts nor promotes growth. In remarks heavy with data and citations on theory and interest rate models such as the Taylor Rule, Miran said current monetary policy is significantly more restrictive than the prevailing attitude among his fellow policymakers.
Using standard policy rules, Miran thinks the federal funds rate, a level that banks charge each other for overnight lending but that influences a wide variety of other rates, should be in the low-2% area. The current funds rate following last week’s reduction is targeted between 4%-4.25%.
“The upshot is that monetary policy is well into restrictive territory,” he said. “Leaving short-term interest rates roughly 2 percentage points too tight risks unnecessary layoffs and higher unemployment.”
The views, however, put Miran well outside consensus on the Federal Open Market Committee, where the current approach advocates more caution and a tepid move lower in rates over the next several years.

At its meeting last week, the FOMC voted 11-1 to lower by a quarter percentage point. Miran was the sole dissenter, opting for a half-point cut and putting his individual dot on the committee’s “dot plot” of expectations in a place that would imply another 1.25 percentage points in reductions this year.
Earlier Monday, St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem, who like Miran is a voter on the FOMC this year, said he sees little room for further cuts. Likewise, Atlanta President Raphael Bostic — who doesn’t vote this year — also told The Wall Street Journal he would not support further reductions this year.
President Donald Trump appointed Miran to the Fed position following former Governor Adriana Kugler’s surprise resignation in early August. Like Trump, Miran has been a harsh Fed critic, though he and others described the air at the meeting as collegial and professional.
Miran pressed his case Monday for lower rates, insisting that inflation is on its way down, particularly in the housing market where cooling rents that had not shown up in the data now will become more apparent.
Though pushing for cuts, Miran said he is optimistic about economic growth, two positions that under conventional thinking would be at odds.
“My view is that policy is roughly 2 points too restrictive, which is considerably restrictive,” he said during a question-and-answer session after his speech. “Even though I am expecting growth to be a little better in the future, that could get derailed unnecessarily so and create an output gap where one need not exist if we don’t get policy closer to neutral.”
He further cited other administration policies, such as its clamp down on immigration, its move to lower business regulations and cut taxes, and the revenue that will be generated from tariffs and its impact on the budget deficit as disinflationary factors.
“Labor market statistics and anecdotal evidence suggest border policy is exerting a major impact on the economy,” he said. “America’s regulatory patchwork has become a material impediment to growth.”
Economists at the Fed and elsewhere continue to worry that Trump’s tariffs will have a longer-term upward push on inflation. However, Miran said “relatively small changes in some goods prices have led to what I view as unreasonable levels of concern.”
Recent inflation readings, though, have shown prices moving higher and further away from the Fed’s 2% inflation mandate.
Miran is expected to fill the remainder of a term that expires in Jan. 31, 2026, then move back to his position as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. He peppered his speech with references to CEA research. More

St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem on Monday reiterated his support for last week’s interest rate cut but said he is wary about going much further.
“I believe there is limited room for easing further without policy becoming overly accommodative, and we should tread cautiously” on further reductions, he said.

Alberto Musalem, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, speaks to the Economic Club of New York, in New York City, U.S., Feb. 20, 2025.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters

St. Louis Federal Reserve President Alberto Musalem on Monday reiterated his support for last week’s interest rate cut, but said he is wary about going much further.
Speaking less than a week after the Federal Open Market Committee lowered its key overnight borrowing rate by a quarter percentage point, the central bank official advocated caution as he continues to worry about inflation.

Musalem characterized the cut as “a precautionary move intended to support the labor market at full employment and against further weakening.”
“The stance of monetary policy now lies between modestly restrictive and neutral, which I view as appropriate,” he added in prepared remarks for a speech to the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. “However, I believe there is limited room for easing further without policy becoming overly accommodative, and we should tread cautiously” on further reductions.
The full FOMC, in its closely watched “dot plot” grid of future rate projections, indicated that one official wanted no cuts this year, including last week’s, and eight others were content with just one more. However, a slight majority saw the need for at least two more cuts, implying one each at the two remaining meetings this year.
Musalem is a voting member this year on the FOMC.
Musalem said he sees financial conditions are “supportive,” is still concerned about the inflationary impact of tariffs and considers the current federal funds rate, now targeted between 4%-4.25%, as “close to neutral,” a level that neither boosts nor restricts economic growth.

While he said he sees risks tilting more towards the labor market than inflation, he cautioned against going too far.
“Putting too much weight on one goal at the expense of the other can lead to undesirable outcomes,” he said.
Other Fed officials also are reluctant to cut. Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic, who does not vote on the FOMC until 2027, said told the Wall Street Journal that he also doesn’t support additional reductions this year. More

President Donald Trump late Friday announced plans to impose a $100,000 fee on H-1B visas.
The move could deal a massive blow to companies — primarily in the technology and finance sectors — that rely heavily on highly skilled immigrants.
Amazon employed the most H-1B holders — more than 14,000 as of the end of June.
Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Google are also among the top 10 recipients for the fiscal year 2025.

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks as he sits next to a “Trump Gold Card” sign, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., Sept. 19, 2025.
Ken Cedeno | Reuters

Major technology companies and foreign governments are rushing to respond after President Donald Trump late Friday announced plans to impose a $100,000 fee on H-1B visas, threatening to upend the program that underpins America’s technology workforce.
The fee would apply to new H-1B applicants, not renewals or current visa holders, according to a White House official. It will first apply in the upcoming lottery cycle, and it does not apply to 2025 lottery winners, the person said. The White House also clarified that the new $100,000 fee is not an annual charge, as previously reported by several media outlets.

The move could deal a massive blow to companies — primarily in the technology and finance sectors — that rely heavily on highly skilled immigrants, particularly from India and China.
The announcement sent shockwaves through some of the country’s biggest tech and finance companies:

Amazon’s immigration team advised its H-1B and H-4 visa holders to remain in the U.S. and for those overseas to return before 12:01 a.m. ET on Sept. 21, according to internal messages viewed by CNBC.

JPMorgan Chase’s law firm sent a memo asking H-1B visa holders at the firm to remain in the U.S. and avoid international travel until further guidance, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Goldman Sachs told employees holding H-1B visas to exercise caution when traveling internationally based on guidance from immigration services firm Fragomen, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.

Microsoft also has reportedly advised H-1B visa holders to remain in the U.S. and for those overseas to return, warning that international travel could jeopardize their immigration status, according to emails seen by Reuters.

The fee represents the administration’s most aggressive move yet to restrict legal immigration. Since taking office in January, Trump has advanced a broad crackdown on both illegal and legal entry into the U.S., but Friday’s announcement marks the most significant attempt to clamp down on employment visas.
Amazon employed the most H-1B holders — more than 14,000 as of the end of June. Microsoft, Meta, Apple and Google had over 4,000 such visas each, among the top 10 recipients for the fiscal year 2025.

CNBC has reached out to all of the public companies on the top 10 H-1B recipient list for comment. The White House didn’t immediately respond to an email asking for comment.

“President Trump promised to put American workers first, and this commonsense action does just that by discouraging companies from spamming the system and driving down wages,” Taylor Rogers, a White House spokeswoman, told CNBC. “It also gives certainty to American businesses who actually want to bring high-skilled workers to our great country but have been trampled on by abuses of the system.”
‘Humanitarian consequences’
The announcement also disrupted the status quo overseas, where foreign governments scrambled to assess the impact of the new rules on their countries.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs said it is studying the visa restrictions and their implications, stressing that both Indian and U.S. industries share an interest in maintaining competitiveness in innovation. It also highlighted the likely disruption to individual families.
“This measure is likely to have humanitarian consequences by way of the disruption caused for families. Government hopes that these disruptions can be addressed suitably by the US authorities,” India’s Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement.
South Korea’s foreign ministry also said it is assessing the implications for Korean firms and skilled workers.
Below is a searchable list of the top 100 U.S. companies that have been H1-B recipients in fiscal year 2025.

— CNBC’s Annie Palmer contributed to this report. More

“We got this fixed. Account recovery complete,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said Friday in a social media post.
The message comes just a few days after Durant and his agent Rich Kleiman joked about the predicament at CNBC’s Game Plan conference in Los Angeles.

Kevin Durant #35 of the Phoenix Suns looks on during the second half against the Houston Rockets at PHX Arena on March 30, 2025 in Phoenix, Arizona.
Chris Coduto | Getty Images

NBA star Kevin Durant has regained access to his bevy of bitcoins, years after getting locked out of his Coinbase account. 
“We got this fixed. Account recovery complete,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said Friday in a social media post, replying to a tweet about Durant being locked out of his account on the cryptocurrency exchange. 

The message comes just a few days after Durant and his agent Rich Kleiman joked about the predicament at CNBC’s Game Plan conference in Los Angeles.
“It’s just a process we haven’t been able to figure out,” Kleiman said Tuesday, referencing Coinbase’s account retrieval protocol. “But, bitcoin keeps going up … so, I mean, it’s only benefited us.” 
Durant purchased bitcoins on Coinbase in 2016, shortly after hearing about the token several times during a dinner with his then-Golden State Warriors teammates. 
Bitcoin was trading at between roughly $360 and $1,000 in 2016, CoinGecko’s data shows. Now, the digital asset is trading at around $116,000, according to the same crypto data provider. 

Stock chart icon

Bitcoin since 2016

Durant and his agent, who are investors in Coinbase Global and promote the business on their sports and entertainment website Boardroom, did not disclose the size of the basketball player’s bitcoin holdings on the trading platform.

The case has sparked a wider discussion about Coinbase’s customer services, with several users recounting on social media their difficulties receiving assistance from the company to regain access to their accounts and troubleshoot other issues. 
Their complaints form the latest calls for Coinbase to overhaul its support services. In May, Coinbase revealed that cybercriminals had bribed a few of its overseas customer support agents to leak customers’ personal data. In 2021, Coinbase clients expressed their frustrations over the company’s new live phone support line, with one dissatisfied user telling CNBC at the time that the service was “a joke.” 
On Friday, Armstrong addressed users’ latest concerns over the quality of the firm’s support services.
“We’re putting a big focus on getting better at customer support at both ends – improving products so fewer people need support, and providing a faster, higher quality experience when you do,” Armstrong said Friday in an X post. 
Coinbase did not immediately reply to CNBC’s request for additional comment on what measures it would take to improve its customer service. Earlier this week, the company told CNBC that it provides an around-the-clock assistance hotline for its users, in addition to offering self-help resources for basic troubleshooting. More

Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran told CNBC on Friday that he doesn’t anticipate President Donald Trump’s tariffs will cause inflation.
The governor also said he believes Trump’s border policies will give rise to disinflation.
Earlier this week, Miran dissented against the central bank cutting its key interest rate by a quarter-percentage point.

Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran said Friday that he doesn’t anticipate President Donald Trump’s tariffs will have an inflationary effect on the U.S. economy.
“I’m clearly in the minority in not being concerned about inflation from tariffs,” he said on CNBC’s “Money Movers.” “But that was also true in 2018-2019, and I think I probably could take a little victory lap about that.”

“There will always be relative price changes, but whether or not it’s inflation that’s macroeconomically significant of the type that monetary policy should respond to is a different question,” he added.
His comments come after the Fed governor was the lone dissenter among 12 Federal Open Market Committee voters from the central bank’s decision Wednesday to slash its benchmark overnight lending rate by a quarter-percentage point, instead calling for a half-point reduction.
When explaining the reason for his decision, Miran said he doesn’t “see any material inflation from tariffs.”
“I see no evidence that it’s occurred,” the policymaker said, pointing to the lack of difference in inflation rates between import-intensive core goods and overall core goods. “If you thought tariffs are driving inflation higher, you’d think imports would be differentially inflating at a higher pace.”
Miran additionally cited “no discernible trend difference” between U.S. core goods inflation and that in other countries. “If I thought that tariffs were driving any material inflation in the United States, I’d look for evidence,” he continued.

However, most measures show inflation running above the Fed’s 2% target this year, and the full committee’s forecast indicated it won’t come back to that level until 2028.
In the second half of the year, Miran expects growth to come in stronger, as he said economic headwinds such as uncertainty around Trump’s trade and tax policies caused growth in the first half to be weaker than he had hoped. He also believes Trump’s immigration policies will bring about disinflation in the economy.
“If you add millions of new immigrants into a country in a short period of time, it’s going to drive shelter prices up,” he said. “If you close that border, and then you have negative debt migration … that’s going to have a very disinflationary effect.”
The Senate confirmed Miran to the Fed Board of Governors on Monday, a day before this week’s policy meeting began. He had been picked by President Donald Trump in August to fill former Governor Adriana Kugler’s seat following her abrupt resignation.
Miran is set to serve on the board for the remainder of Kugler’s term, which expires on Jan. 31, 2026. He said during a confirmation hearing earlier this month that he will take an unpaid leave of absence from his position as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors while serving out the term rather than resign entirely.

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Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran told CNBC on Friday that he spoke only briefly to President Trump before this week’s interest-rate decision and was not pressured on how to vote.
Questions have been raised about potential conflicts for Miran taking a leave as head of the Council of Economic Advisers, rather than resigning. However, he called those concerns “a bit silly.”

Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran told CNBC on Friday that he spoke only briefly to President Donald Trump before this week’s interest-rate decision, and was not pressured on how to vote.
Miran, who voted against the quarter-percentage-point reduction in favor of a move twice that size, said he made his decision independently.

“He called me Tuesday morning to congratulate me, and that was it,” the central banker said during a “Money Movers” interview. “I did not talk to him about how I vote. I did not talk to him about about my dots in the [Summary] of Economic Projections.”
Not only did Miran vote against the quarter-point move, but also, his “dot” for where he sees the fed funds rate at the end of this year was well below the rest of the 19 participants at the Federal Open Market Committee meeting. He also views longer-term rates being lower than most of his new colleagues.
Questions over Fed independence have intensified since Trump took office for his second term in January.
The president has been pushing hard for the Fed to lower interest rates aggressively, openly name-calling Chair Jerome Powell, whom he has nicknamed “Too Late.” In previous administrations, pressure on the Fed generally was done in a more discrete manner.
Also, Trump has sought to oust Governor Lisa Cook, and has said he would litmus-test Powell’s replacement next year for a willingness to ease monetary policy.

Along those lines, questions have been raised about potential conflicts for Miran taking a leave as head of the Council of Economic Advisers, rather than resigning. However, he called those concerns “a bit silly” as he only intends to stay at the Fed until the unexpired term he is filling ends in January 2026.
“If the President told me that I was going to stay in the seat past January, I would just resign immediately. You know, there’d be no question about it,” he said. “The fact that people are saying this is, you know, that’s a motivator in terms of wanting to get my full views out there on Monday and walk through [them] in meticulous detail, because I do feel that I owe the world in accounting for why my views are so different.”
Miran speaks Monday to the Economic Club of New York, a prime platform for leaders in the business and political world on which Trump also has spoken.
Despite the controversial circumstances surrounding his appointment, Miran said the atmosphere at the meeting was collegial, including his interactions with Cook.
“Everybody was extremely welcoming and extremely kind and extremely cordial,” he said. “It was a very collegial environment, and I really appreciated that. And that includes Governor Cook.”
Earlier in the day, Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari offered a similar business-as-usual description of the atmosphere surrounding Miran’s arrival to the FOMC.
“This was like any other transition, where somebody comes in and everybody says, ‘Hey, welcome to the table,'” Kashkari said. “Then everybody went about their business as normal.”

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Exchange-traded funds focused on semiconductor stocks have grown in both assets and performance in recent years as the AI and chip boom dominate the latest bull market story.
Wall Street fund managers are packaging the new tech boom in a variety of ways, with a “fabless semi” ETF among the latest portfolio strategies.
While the U.S. stock market, as represented by the S&P 500, has become heavily concentrated in a small group of mega-cap tech stocks led by Nvidia, investing experts say for investors with a high risk tolerance, focused chip ETFs can offer differentiated return potential.

The AI boom and success of Nvidia, now the U.S. market’s largest stock, have made the semiconductor sector one of the most closely watched corners of the market. Nvidia’s rise to a market cap over $4 trillion has led to concerns about the S&P 500’s concentration in a handful of tech stocks. But in another respect, a focus on chip stocks as an investment theme can be worth a look for investors with an aggressive bent.
Wall Street is finding new ways to create more concentrated bets on the chip sector.

The VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH) has been the standard for investors looking to capture the sector’s growth. Its portfolio spans the global supply chain: Nvidia designs GPUs, TSMC manufactures them, and ASML supplies the necessary equipment. It has grown to nearly $30 billion, according to VettaFi, and is up close to 30% since the beginning of the year.
The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF and SPDR S&P 500 ET Trust (SPY), meanwhile, are up around 13%.
On CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this past Monday, VanEck’s product manager Nicholas Frasse said SMH has worked because of its team of winners at the top. The structure has been key to performance especially as demand for AI has risen. Nvidia was once a gaming chip company, and now it is the face of the AI build out.
On the chipmaker’s most recent earnings call, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang described its Blackwell platform as, “the next generation AI the world’s been waiting for,” and the head of the chip company added that demand was near “extraordinary.”
Its links across the tech sector and economy are growing: on Thursday, Nvidia announced it would invest $5 billion in Intel to co-develop data centers and PC chips, among the oldest of Silicon Valley’s old guard companies, which the Trump administration recently invested a 10% equity stake in as a matter of national security.

The popular VanEck fund isn’t the only ETF benefitting from the semiconductor industry’s success. The iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX) and the Invesco PHLX Semiconductor ETF (SOXQ) each offer slightly different chip exposures, and both of them have drawn in investors looking for ways to gain concentrated exposure to the chip story.
Many of the same chip names top the holdings across these ETFs, though exact weights do vary. But another fast-growing alternative is the SPDR S&P Semiconductor ETF (XSD), which differentiates itself with an equal-weighting approach to stocks held in its underlying index. This means smaller names like Astera Labs and Credo Technology get representation on par with Nvidia or Broadcom.
Case in point: Nvidia’s weight in the fund is currently under 3%, compared to a weighting of over 20% in the VanEck Semiconductor ETF; 12% in the Invesco ETF; and roughly 8% in the iShares fund. Nvidia’s current weight in the S&P 500 is roughly 8%.
The SPDR S&P Semiconductor ETF’s assets under management is $1.51 billion, according to VettaFi, a lot smaller than SMH or the iShares’ SOXX, at over $14 billion. But the fund is up roughly 26% since the beginning of the year, besting the iShares’ ETF performance.
SPDR S&P Semiconductor ETF Top Holdings

Astera Labs
Credo Technology
Impinj
Rigetti Computing
Rambus

Source: VettaFi
Because this fund provides a bet that is spread more broadly across the sector, it provides less single-stock concentration risk for investors.
“If the biggest weights are rising, pay attention to what’s happening in the rest of the space,” senior ETF & technical strategist at Strategas Securities Todd Sohn told CNBC. “It can benefit you on the upside and hurt you on the downside,” he said.
Another way to play the theme is the Invesco Semiconductors ETF (PSI) which as opposed to using a traditional stock index (Invesco’s SOXQ uses the PHLX Semiconductor Index), uses a custom index designed to pick semiconductor companies from the largest to the smallest caps based on changes in price momentum, earnings momentum, value and additional factors. That makes it different than some of the market-cap weighted or equal-weight chip funds, and it usually contains at least a few mid-cap chip designers and manufacturers that may not be included in larger ETFs, though overlap among chip names is to be expected in any of these portfolios.
Invesco Semiconductors ETF Top Holdings

Micron Technology
Lam Research
Broadcom
KLA Corporation
Qualcomm

Source: Vettafi
Invesco Semiconductors ETF is good for investors who are looking for exposure that isn’t dominated by mega-cap companies.
“If you are very bullish on growth in technology, then you’re going to want to add more semiconductor ETFs in your portfolio,” Sohn said.
A focus on fabless semiconductor companies is among the newest ETF products to hit the market. A fabless chipmaker designs and sells chips, but outsources manufacturing. VanEck launched the VanEck Fabless Semiconductor ETF (SMHX) on Aug. 27.
Sohn said this approach is for an investor who “wants more focused exposure on the type of company involved, as opposed to just the entire spectrum of the semiconductor space.”
In some respects, it isn’t all that different from what is already on offer within semi ETFs: Nvidia, for example, is its No. 1 holding, at over 18%. But there are pure-play fabless companies high among its holdings, such as Cadence Design Systems. And it includes some interesting takes on the theme, with power efficiency as part of the AI and chip story leading the fund to have Monolithic Power, a company working on chips that reduce energy use in data centers, among its top 10 holdings.
“We believe this is a super cycle,” Frasse said. “We’re in the very early innings.”

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