All eyes on the Fed

The Federal Reserve is widely expected to cut interest rates on Wednesday for the first time since March 2020, after raising them to the highest level in years to tame post-pandemic inflation. For weeks, investors have been debating the size of the cut. And on the eve of the decision, there’s still not much more clarity about whether the cut will be 25 or 50 basis points. One bank economist called it “essentially a coin flip.” US retail sales surprisingly increased in August and a resilient consumer could complicate the picture, especially given that inflation continues to slow and the economy overall remains strong. Investors are also looking for clues around future cuts by turning to the history books and looking back to Alan Greenspan’s Fed of the 1990s, which successfully averted a recession. Meanwhile, former New York Fed President Bill Dudley says the Fed should make a big statement now in Bloomberg Opinion. Here’s your markets wrap. —Margaret Sutherlin

Under mounting legal challenges, and complaints from users and parents, Instagram unveiled new privacy and parental-control measures targeting teen users. The new controls make teen accounts private by default, limit who those users can send private messages to, and put teens in the “most restrictive” tier when it comes to viewing sensitive content, such as posts that show people fighting or certain cosmetic procedures. The new settings represent the company’s most aggressive effort to date to protect younger users, and come after years of criticism that Instagram, which is owned by Facebook parent company Meta Platforms Inc., has failed to adequately protect young people online. Meta was sued last year by a group of more than 30 states alleging the company’s apps are harming young people, and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg appeared at a congressional hearing earlier this year on child safety where Meta was criticized for enabling sexual exploitation. (Zuckerberg has fought in court to avoid facing personal liability for any alleged harm.)

Hundreds of pagers belonging to Hezbollah militants exploded at the same time across Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least eight people and injuring 2,700, according to health officials. Lebanon accused Israel of orchestrating the attack; Israel declined to comment. The attack is likely to ratchet up Middle East tensions again. Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group based in Lebanon, and Israel have been trading fire on a near-daily basis since the war in Gaza began almost a year ago.

Some of Ukraine’s allies are starting to talk about how the fight against Russia’s invasion might end, raising concerns in several other Western capitals that these efforts could lead to Kyiv being forced into a premature cease-fire. As part of their discussions of strategy for the next year, officials are more seriously gaming out how a negotiated end to the conflict and an off-ramp could take shape. Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelenskiy has been adamant, publicly and privately, that ceding territory to Russia would be unfair. With no sign that Russia has scaled back its objectives, the prospect of real negotiations still remains distant, they said.

America’s counties that desperately need new workers aren’t where migrants are settling. Immigration is at the forefront of the presidential race, especially in key battleground states. In those states, about 72% of migrants in 2023 went to counties that voted for President Joe Biden. Less than a third went to counties that voted for Trump, a new Bloomberg analysis found.

When it comes to steel, China is king, producing more than 1 billion tons a year, well over half the world’s output. But now it’s wobbling. And just as it shook the global industry during its rise to become the metal’s super-producer, a decline from peak steel has the potential to be no less turbulent. Quite simply, a domestic construction slump means there’s too much steel and too little demand. For the rest of the world, the fear is that it will become more of a dumping ground for excess product, cutting prices, driving plants out of business and putting workers out of jobs.

JPMorgan could take over Apple’s credit card portfolio that rival Goldman Sachs has been trying to ditch. The biggest US bank is among a slew of credit-card issuers that have explored taking over the Apple card. The Goldman tie-up, initially launched about five years ago, was part of an effort to cement the Wall Street giant’s consumer-banking foray, which it has since abandoned.

The Bill Hwang saga continues. The US Justice Department reopened a probe of the banks that collectively lost billions of dollars in the collapse of Hwang’s investment firm — mere months after scoring a conviction against him for deceiving those very firms. Investigators are zeroing in on how Hwang’s lenders unwound more than $150 billion in bets placed by his family office, Archegos, and if there was any collusion.

In the world of Bloomberg Businessweek’s rankings of the best business schools, some things don’t seem to change — like this year’s top program in the US. But look a little closer and there are surprises among the schools that have moved up and down the list. And with more questions now than ever around the value of an MBA, here’s one way to calculate if that degree is really worth it.

Get the Bloomberg Evening Briefing: If you were forwarded this newsletter, sign up here to receive Bloomberg’s flagship briefing in your mailbox daily.

Bloomberg Tech: Humanity has always relied on technology to drive growth. With the emergence of artificial intelligence, society is being asked to trust tech with economies, media and health like never before. Join visionaries, investors and business leaders in London on Oct. 22 to discuss the risks and rewards of this new age. Speakers include Monzo CEO TS Anil, Cohere Co-Founder and CEO Aidan Gomez, ŌURA CEO Tom Hale and ASML President & CEO Christophe Fouquet. Buy tickets today.