Why the Fed won’t hop on the rate-cutting bandwagon just yet

Make Me Smart

The European Central Bank is joining Canada in cutting interest rates after months and months of holding them steady. But the U.S. Federal Reserve isn’t likely to follow suit, at least not yet. We’ll explain why. Then, we’ll dig deeper into the political and financial motivations for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s abrupt decision to block congestion pricing in New York City. Plus, what antitrust investigations into Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI could mean for AI mania.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

• “European Central Bank Cuts Interest Rates for the First Time Since 2019” from The New York Times
• “ECB: Interest rates are coming down in Europe. The Fed won’t follow yet” from CNN
• “Canada becomes first G7 nation to cut interest rates” from Reuters
• “Advocates for congestion pricing want Governor Hochul to think about long-term benefits” from ABC7 New York
• “Big Auto And The Death Of Traffic Congestion Reform” from The Lever
• “Banerji: Seeing a true mania in Nvidia and meme stock trading” from CNBC
• “Angel Reese: People watch WNBA for me too, not just one person!” from ESPN
• “The ugly discourse surrounding Caitlin Clark” from The Washington Post

Join us tomorrow for Economics on Tap! The YouTube livestream starts at 3:30 p.m. Pacific time, 6:30 p.m. Eastern. We’ll have news, drinks, and play a round of Half Full/Half Empty!