The waiting game: For 6½ years, the Federal Reserve has held its key interest rate near zero, and for nearly that long the financial world has speculated about when the Fed will start raising it. Don’t look for it soon. As The Associated Press reports, most economists say a still-subpar economy and still-low inflation will keep rates at record lows at least until September. On Wednesday, the Fed could clarify its plans after ending its latest policy meeting. Analysts caution, though, against expecting any specific guidance on the Fed’s timetable for a rate hike because there are still too many uncertainties surrounding the U.S. economy. Read the full story.
No small change: A glitch that disabled registers at thousands of Starbucks stores on Friday serves as a reminder of the invisible systems restaurants rely on to run increasingly sophisticated operations. As The Associated Press reports, registers that once merely rang up tabs and stored cash have evolved into hubs that can collect enormous volumes of data and carry out many tasks. They process credit cards, send orders to computer screens in kitchens and help run loyalty programs. In the industry, they’re called point-of-sale, or POS, systems, and they vary greatly in what they can do. The register malfunction that forced Starbucks to close stores last week was surprisingly large; it affected all company-owned stores in the U.S. and Canada, or more than 60 percent of roughly 13,500 locations. Read the full story.
Here’s the pitch: President Barack Obama, facing a bitter struggle within his own party on free trade, warns that China will step into the economic vacuum the U.S. will create if it fails to complete and enact a proposed free-trade deal with Asia. “If we don’t write the rules, China will write the rules out in that region,” Obama says in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “We will be shut out—American businesses and American agriculture. That will mean a loss of U.S. jobs.” Obama also warned of rising anti-globalization sentiment in Washington, D.C., reflected in Democratic opposition to the trade agreement, Republican efforts to kill the Export-Import Bank and congressional unwillingness to approve new rules for operation of the International Monetary Fund. Read the full story.
