Federal Reserve raises interest rates for the 1st time since 2023
Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh speaks during a news conference on July 29, 2026, in Washington, D.C. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — The Federal Reserve raised interest rates on Wednesday in an effort to battle back a monthslong surge of inflation set off by the Iran war. The move marks the central bank’s first rate increase since July 2023.
The central bank hiked its benchmark rate a quarter of a percentage point, putting interest rates at a level between 3.75% and 4%.
That figure marks a significant drop from a recent peak attained in 2023, but borrowing costs remain well above a 0% rate established at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A 12-member policymaking board voted unanimously in favor of the rate increase.
“The plain fact is that inflation is too high and has been for too long,” Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said at a press conference in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. “The committee’s unanimous vote shows our resolve to achieve price stability on a timelier basis.”
The move appears aimed at containing a recent bout of price increases. Global oil prices are hovering near a four-month high and the average price for a gallon of gasoline tops $4.30, according to AAA.
The U.S. economy has shown signs of additional strain in recent days, including a bond selloff that is pushing up borrowing costs for credit cards and mortgages.
The price woes previously divided central bankers eager to contain inflation but reluctant to cool off the economy and weaken the labor market.
The Fed opted to hold interest rates steady at its most recent meeting in July. Three of the 12 members on the Fed’s policymaking board, however, voted in favor of a rate hike, marking the largest number of dissenters casting ballots in the same direction in a decade.
Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh, who took the helm of the central bank in May, has vowed to cool off persistently elevated price increases.
“The Fed’s predominant focus right now should be on prices,” Warsh said in remarks last month at the Fed’s annual summer gathering in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
Prices rose 3.4% in August compared to a year earlier, maintaining the same level from the prior month, federal government data last week showed.
Inflation stands more than a percentage point higher than the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2%.
Despite a stubborn bout of inflation, the economy remains fairly robust by some measures.
A blockbuster jobs report earlier this month showed employers added 162,000 workers in August, demonstrating continued resilience for the nation’s labor market. The economy grew over three months ending in June, defying fear of a downturn triggered by the Iran war.
Fighting in the Middle East kept global crude prices above $105 a barrel as of Wednesday, which amounted to a rise of about 50% since the Iran war broke out in late February.
The average price of a gallon of gas in the U.S. stands at $4.36, putting it more than $1.30 higher than before the war, AAA data showed.
Record-high diesel prices have raised transport costs for many everyday products, including groceries, clothes and furniture.
The war in Iran, which began with a large-scale U.S.-Israeli attack in the winter, prompted Iran’s near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which facilitates one-fifth of global crude supply. Saudi Arabia over the weekend shut down a key pipeline bypassing the strait, which further constrained oil delivery and put upward pressure on prices.
Apple CEO John Ternus speaks during the keynote address at Apple’s “Surprise and Shine” event at the company’s corporate headquarters on Sept. 9, 2026, in Cupertino, California. (Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Apple announced its first-ever foldable iPhone at its annual products event on Wednesday as customers worldwide watched for fresh products, as well as the debut of Apple CEO John Ternus.
The foldable smartphone, called iPhone Duo, folds open like a book, producing one continuous screen that is 80% larger than the company’s latest version of the iPhone Pro, the company said, adding that when opened it will also be the thinnest iPhone ever.
The screen will be compatible with the iPhone Pencil, currently available only for iPad users, and can also be unlocked with Apple Watch, according to Apple.
iPhone Duo will come in two colors, Apple said — Star White and Night Sky — and can also be used partially folded.
The announcement marked Apple’s splashy entry into a long-existing product category. Foldable phones came onto the market in 2018, but they account for a small fraction of smartphone sales.
“Others have created a foldable that feels like two phones awkwardly stuck together,” Ternus said, adding that iPhone Duo will “redesign the experience of using a foldable phone.”
Prices for the iPhone Duo start at $1,999. It will be available for pre-order on Oct. 16 and in-store on Oct. 23, Apple said.
The company also unveiled the latest models of its smartphone: iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. The products boast an improved camera, a bolstered memory chip and a longer battery life compared to their predecessors, Apple said. Each of the models is also equipped to integrate Apple Intelligence, the company’s AI capability.
The price of the iPhone 18 Pro starts at $1,199, while the iPhone 18 Pro Max starts at $1,299. Both smartphones are available for pre-order on Sept. 12 and in-store on Sept. 18, according to Apple.
The glossy showcase comes days after Ternus took the helm of the tech giant on Sept. 1, after having worked at the company for 25 years. Ternus replaced former CEO Tim Cook, who succeeded co-founder Steve Jobs in 2011.
The world’s second-largest company, as measured by market capitalization, depends largely on its smartphone business while offering an array of other products such as its iPad, Apple Watch and MacBook.
Shares of Apple have surged 22% in value over the past six months, far outpacing the S&P 500’s growth of 13% over that period.
The expected announcement of a foldable iPhone marks Apple’s latest effort to weigh in with a standout option in an existing product category, often at a higher price point.
In 2024, the company unveiled Apple Vision Pro, a mixed reality headset meant to compete with Meta Quest and other early-to-market offerings. At the time, the most affordable version of Apple Vision Pro sold for $3,499.
Apple also unveiled AI-driven features across several key products in 2024, heralding its long-awaited entry into the high-stakes AI race. The AI capability, dubbed Apple Intelligence, amounts to the “next big step for Apple,” Cook said at the time.
Apple released Apple Watch in 2014, referring to it then as the company’s latest “category-defining product.”
A cargo ship remains anchored on May 16, 2026 in the Strait of Hormuz near Larak Island, Iran. (Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Global oil prices on Wednesday fell to their lowest level since before the outbreak of the Iran war.
Brent crude futures, the benchmark index for worldwide trading, dropped to $73.50 a barrel. That figure, which amounted to a nearly 5% decline on Wednesday, marked the lowest price since Feb. 27, the day before the Middle East conflict began.
Stock prices, meanwhile, ticked higher Wednesday after a down day Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 105 points, or 0.2%, while the S&P 500 increased 0.2%. The tech-heavy Nasdaq rose 0.2%.Gas prices fell below $4 per gallon last week, crossing the milestone as oil costs eased in response to negotiations between the U.S. and Iran to end the war.
The national average price of a gallon of gas stands at $3.92, marking a decline of 58 cents, or 13%, over the past month, AAA data showed. Gas prices, however, remain 94 cents higher than where they stood before the Iran war.
The Middle East conflict prompted the Iranian closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a maritime trading route that facilitates the transport of about one-fifth of the global oil supply. The standoff triggered one of the largest oil shocks ever recorded, sending gasoline prices higher.
Delegations from the United States and Iran arrived over the weekend at the Bürgenstock resort in Switzerland, where they began negotiations aimed at a war-ending deal based on a memorandum of understanding signed last week by both countries.
The memorandum in part called on Iran to allow commercial shipping to resume through the strait, and to do so toll-free for the next 60 days.
In a social media post on Wednesday, President Donald Trump said Iran told him that there would be “no tolls, no insurance costs” and “no other charges of any kind” for ships traveling through the strait.
Claims to the contrary are “troublemaking” false reports, Trump said in the post.
In this June 27, 2016 file photo Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve and president and founder of Greenspan Associates, speaks during a Bloomberg Television interview in Washington, D.C. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images, FILE)
(NEW YORK) — Alan Greenspan, the longtime chairman of the Federal Reserve, has died, his wife confirmed. He was 100 years old.
“Alan passed away at our home this morning at the age of 100 from complications of Parkinson’s Disease,” Andrea Mitchell, his wife and a chief correspondent at NBC News, said in a statement published by the network on Monday.
The economist is remembered for leading the American central bank amid periods of historic U.S. economic expansion, while critics have also said his policies contributed to and exacerbated the mortgage crisis and financial crash of 2008.
Greenspan, a libertarian Republican, became the 13th chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System two months before the stock market crash on Oct. 19,1987, known as Black Monday. He was credited with moving quickly to alleviate investors’ fears after the crash and was instrumental in ensuring the Federal Reserve made plenty of money available to alleviate the impact on financial markets. Stocks quickly rebounded.
He was appointed Fed chair by four different presidents during his career, first by Ronald Reagan in 1987. Greenspan continued to serve as Fed chairman under presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He steered the U.S. economy through the economic boom in the 1990s, the dotcom bubble, and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. His final term as chair ended on Jan. 31, 2006.
Under his leadership, the Fed fostered a distaste for regulation and promoted very low interest rates in the early 2000s — two phenomena critics say encouraged a bubble in housing prices that eventually burst with disastrous effects on the global economy.
During his tenure, and before the financial crisis began, the nation experienced one of the longest periods of economic growth in its history.
A decorated economist, first inspired by music
Greenspan was born on March 6, 1926, in New York City, the only child of Herbert Greenspan, a stockbroker, and Rose Goldsmith Greenspan, a retail worker. His parents divorced when he was 4 years old, and he was raised mainly by his mother and his grandparents.
An aspiring musician, Greenspan attended Juilliard for a year and played saxophone and clarinet before dropping out and enrolling at New York University. He went on to gain his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in economics from New York University. He also engaged in some advanced graduate work at Columbia University in New York, where he studied under the influential economist Arthur Burns.
Though short-lived, his music career was an influential portion of Greenspan’s life, and he considered the move into economics a logical progression. He saw the organization of economic data into sound fiscal modeling as analogous to the organization of musical notes into tunes, according to Greenspan biographer Justin Martin in his book, “Greenspan: The Man Behind Money.”
“I get the same kind of joy from solving a hard mathematical problem as I do from hearing a Haydn quartet,” Greenspan once told The New York Times Magazine.
Greenspan taught economics at NYU between 1953 and 1955 and then founded the economic consulting firm Townsend & Greenspan, where he served as chairman and president from 1954 to 1974. He returned to the firm in 1977 and stayed until 1987.
President Richard Nixon nominated Greenspan to chair the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1974, the first of many government economic positions he would hold. Nixon resigned as president hours after Greenspan was nominated, but he continued to serve under President Gerald Ford. Greenspan also served as a member of President Ronald Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board and was a consultant to the Congressional Budget Office.
In the private sector, Greenspan served as corporate director for many companies, including Alcoa, General Foods and J.P. Morgan & Co. He also served as a member of Time magazine’s Board of Economists and a senior adviser to the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity.
In 2002, Greenspan received an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his contribution to global economic stability. In 2005, President George W. Bush presented Greenspan with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
He held the position of Fed chairman from the time Reagan appointed him in 1987 until 2006, serving an unprecedented five terms under four presidents before being succeeded by Ben Bernanke.
Greenspan is credited by many with facilitating the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. One day after the Black Monday stock crash, Greenspan affirmed the Fed’s “readiness to serve as a source of liquidity to support the economic and financial system” and the central bank moved to encourage banks to lend on their normal terms. Unlike prior financial crises, the events of Black Monday notably were not followed by an economic recession or a banking crisis and less than two years later, the U.S. stock market surpassed its pre-crash highs.
During his tenure, Greenspan developed a reputation for being a consensus-builder and for his strong anti-inflation stance, focusing more on controlling prices than on promoting full employment. He led the Federal Reserve through several events with major economic consequences, including two U.S. recessions, the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
‘How could we have possibly got it so wrong?’
Starting in June 2003, the Federal Reserve set the federal funds rate, the rate at which banks typically borrow from each other, to one percent for a year. Though its intention was to lower the cost of borrowing and stimulate the economy, critics said the rate was too low and encouraged investments in risky subprime mortgage-backed securities, which they say contributed to the financial crisis in 2008.
The National Bureau of Economic Research, a research organization seen as an authority on measuring economic performance, later said that the recession officially began in December 2007.
In September 2007, Greenspan published a book that was both a memoir and economic commentary, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” in which he criticized the George W. Bush administration for overspending and admitted that he supported the administration’s tax cuts without stressing the need for spending cuts.
In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek in August 2012, Greenspan said, “one day before Lehman Brothers crashes, conventional wisdom was not even certain that we would fall into a recession.”
“In fact, we learned many months later that the downward trend had actually started,” Greenspan said. “How could we have possibly got it so wrong? I mean, I actually was saying, ‘Yes, recession is coming, not that we’re here yet.’ We didn’t know that it had already hit.”
In October 2008, Greenspan acknowledged to a congressional committee discussing financial regulation that, “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.”
After Greenspan finished his term as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2006, he established Greenspan Associates, an economic consulting firm in Washington, D.C.
With Greenspan as president, the firm had four employees as of October 2012. His client list has included giant finance clients like German firm Deutsche Bank and hedge fund Paulson & Co.
Personal life
Greenspan married artist Joan Mitchell in 1952. The couple divorced in 1953 after less than a year of marriage, and the marriage was later annulled. The two remained friends.
His first wife is remembered for introducing him to novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, with whom Greenspan shared a friendship, a belief in free-market economic ideals and a philosophy of objectivism. In his 30s and early 40s, Greenspan spent many hours sitting with Rand’s band of followers, known as the “Collective,” discussing topics including politics philosophy, current events and economics.
In addition to Burns at Columbia, Rand and her group were instrumental in helping hone Greenspan’s capitalist, free-market economic philosophy, according to Martin, Greenspan’s biographer.
The group’s open style of debate and discussion served Greenspan well in his various governmental roles. During his career in public service, he became known for a well-developed ability to communicate with Congress without offending those with opposing viewpoints or politicizing his messages.
Though he was said to back revamping the Social Security system and raising the retirement age, Greenspan was wary of how his public statements as Fed chairman might move markets. He rarely granted interviews. He was known for making openly ambiguous public statements about the state of the U.S. economy, once telling Congress, “If I’ve made myself too clear, you must have misunderstood me.”
Greenspan married NBC News correspondent Mitchell in 1997. Their marriage was officiated by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
“We’ve had the most wonderful marriage,” he told Bloomberg Businessweek in August 2012. “It gets better every year. We’re still very much together in love.”
