Fed Raises Rates for the First Time in 3yrs & What Happened to Ed Sheeran’s Tour

Good morning brood daily show. I'm Neil Friman and I'm Toby Howell. Today Japan hits an unthinkable age threshold. Then for the first time in three years, the Fed has hiked interest rates. It's Thursday, September 17th. Let's ride! They're calling it one of the best takes of all time and idea that will forever change the way you order food at a diner. On a podcast yesterday, Big Cat from Barstool noted how when you're having breakfast out, you always want to eat pancakes but you never want to order pancakes for yourself because you don't want to just do pancakes. How to solve this dilemma? Pancakes for the table. It alleviates pancake anxiety for everyone, unlocking them to order something more substantive like eggs while also having one or two pancakes placed in the middle of the table. Toby, how have we not heard about this before? I would expand it too to include pretty much any sweet breakfast dish. Be the guy who orders the cinnamon roll that everyone is eyeing or the french toast or the waffle. And actually now that I'm saying that, expand it to include any appetizer, not even just that breakfast. There's always something on the menu like a pig's in a blanket or a fried pickles that you don't want to be the person caught ordering for yourself, but you would definitely eat it if it arrived at the table. So maybe take it upon yourself, be the table captain, take the plunge or the pancakes or the pigs in the blanket, make everyone happy. And now a word from our sponsor Hotels.com. Neil, you ever stay in a colonial hotel? No, why? Because I just did on this work trip and they don't have Wi-Fi or plumbing. Sounds like you could use business preferences from Hotels.com. It helps travelers find the right hotel faster by remembering their go-to work trip requirements. Travelers set their preferences once, including fully refundable stays, Wi-Fi, breakfast, gym access and more, then future business trips searches automatically surface matching hotels. That way you can book work trips faster. Just set your preferences once and get results tailored to your business travel needs. Plus get up to 20% off select hotels instantly with member discounts and earn rewards on future travel. Sign up for their free rewards program and start earning on every workstay at Hotels.com/morningbrew. That's Hotels.com/morningbrew. Lowell T-Members 18 Plus. Kevin Warsch, the quarterback of the economy, said, "Hut, hut, hike!" yesterday. Going into the feds meeting, the combination of hotter than expected inflation and skyrocketing oil prices meant it was all but certain a rate hike was coming. Markets priced it at a 90% chance and Warsch delivered. The 25 basis point increase in the federal front's rate was the first time the fed had raised rates since the Biden administration. The decision will not go well with President Trump, who has loudly called for lower rates in a bid to stimulate the economy. Interest rates in the United States should be 1% or less he posted on truth social. After starting his tenure without a clear plan for addressing rising prices, Warsch and the fed calmed fears that under pressure from the president, he would be too soft on inflation. Yesterday's hike was a 12-0 unanimous decision. The first unanimous fed decision since May of 2025. The plain fact is that inflation is too high, Warsch said at his press conference. So where does this leave us now? Well, nearly back to where we started when Trump took office in 2025 with decade high interest rates. The economy has held up well under the strain of those higher rates, but there are significantly more questions now, namely a war in the Middle East putting pressure on prices. At the beginning of the year, oil was $60 a barrel and markets were pricing in three rate cuts. Now, oil prices are above $100 a barrel and the fed's dot-pilot is showing the possibility of more heights to come. It is amazing how quickly things can change. And it's amazing how things can change, not just from the beginning of the year, but from July, which was the last federal reserve meeting. At that press conference, Kevin Warsch tried to explain why the fed didn't cut interest rates. And he didn't do a very good job of it. He didn't provide many explanations. There were three dissents at that meeting. Three fed governors did want to hike rates. Warsch got up there at the press conference didn't really say much. Markets puked after this time, though, however, he did explain what he saw that led the fed to raise interest rates. It was a completely unanimous decision. So at least from analyst perspective, they're looking at Warsch's performance and they're saying, wow, that is, you learned a lot, buddy, from July to September. Thank you. And the big thing to know is that the fed usually doesn't hike interest rates once or cut interest rates once. When it makes a decision that it needs to, lower interest rates or hike interest rates, it usually happens at least twice. So we're entering a regime now of higher interest rates for a while. So why is the fed hiking now? Well, it's essentially made no progress towards one of its core mandates, which is keeping inflation around its 2% target. It has been above that since mid 2025. Last year's rate cuts were in insurance, actually, against the other part of the fed's mandate. They didn't want the labor market to break down, but that downturn in the labor market never really fully materialized. Unemployment has remained pretty low. Hiring has remained strong. So essentially, they've looked at the economy and said, it can take higher rates for now. And then on the inflation side of things, it has been very complicated because there are three big things that have happened. One tariffs, the tariff regime rolled out, which kind of throws sand into the gears of the global economy and just raises prices to the Iran war broke out and cross in energy shock. That's probably the biggest thing. And then actually three, the enormous AI investment boom that has been propping up the economy has actually been working against the Fed a little bit because it is adding this big supply and this big injection of activity to the economy, causing it to run a little bit hotter than it would have the AI boom not happen. So those three-headed monster is the thing that is keeping inflation higher than the Fed wants it to be. Yeah, and we're spoke about that. He said, this summer's inflation readings do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved. He noted that too many categories are still posting increases above 3% on both a six to 12-month basis. And I found these anecdotes about how oil prices seep into broader inflation really revealing. We've talked about how oil prices are now above $100 of barrel. But that really does influence everything in the economy and raises prices across the board. A bunch of business owners talk to the Wall Street Journal about how oil prices does create higher prices and cost for their business. And these are a wide array of industries. There's this company, Ambiq's Manufacturing and New Hampshire that sells plastic components to power distribution companies. The thing is their resin that is used to make this chemical substance that goes into their products is created through crude oil. So this summer, they've had to increase prices 10% to 21% on all of their products. Then there's this farmer in rural Pennsylvania. The cost of trucking hay from three counties away is now up 15%. Campbell's is raising prices on more than half of its portfolio. And Chlorox, because their glad trash bags are also made from resin, is increasing the cost of their glad trash bags that you buy either on Amazon or at your local convenience store or supermarket. So all these things are influenced by crude oil prices, which is why they run up from 60 to 100 is influencing everything across the economy. And why you're seeing Kevin Wars say inflation is much too hot. I need to raise interest rates. And it's not going to be the last time they do it. Moving on to news that might help cushion the blow of that raid hike. Americans are richer than ever. According to the annual census report on financial well-being, median household income rose 2.6% last year to 87,460, a new record and eclipsing the high water mark from right before COVID. Meanwhile, the official poverty rate fell for the second consecutive year to reach a new all-time low. 10.2% of the population was in poverty, down 0.5 percentage points from the previous year and the lowest level on record. Well as Fargo economist Shannon Green told the Wall Street Journal, this is a signal that the economy may be finally finding its groove coming out of the pandemic. There is a but of course a big but don't laugh. These income gains were not spread evenly exacerbating the gap between the have and the have knots income for the wealthiest 10% of Americans increased 1.7% but income for the bottom 10% didn't budge at all. That means the top 10% earned just over 13 times the poorest households up from 12.7 times in 2024 and just shy of the record 13.5 in 2021 Toby, are you feeling flush? So that means we can see these aggregate in median figures go up but they can also coexist with a lot more financial pressure, the further down you go on the income distribution. So if that feels like there's a split-screen economy or a case-shaped economy, whatever you want to put it, that absolutely can be the case even though you are seeing the big number go up when it comes to a wealth building for a lot of American households. And we're not seeing just a split-screen economy but. between high-income households and lower-income households, but also between men and women. This was a great report for women, women median earnings for the full-time, for the full-year, for full-time work in 2025, grew 3.2% from 2024. Men didn't see a statistically significant change at all. When you look at the labor market, women have gained 765,000 jobs since December 2024. Men have lost 6,000 in the same time span, and we also saw that on the most recent job report in which women gained 98% of all the jobs added, so perhaps this is a more structural reformation of the economy where women focus jobs like healthcare are gaining their accounting for the vast majority of the job gains, where jobs where men are more prominent are not gaining at all or even losing jobs. And just zooming out, 2025 is a particularly interesting year because it really is the last baseline number we got before the economic effects of the US-Iran War start to seep into the economy. It also comes before a lot of the federal safety net changes that the Trump administration has put forth came into effect. So we will have a pretty nice A and B test to see how the economy reacts both through higher oil prices, but also to things like snap benefits being cut in the rest of what the administration has stripped away from whatever you want to call it. The welfare state or the federal safety net, this will be a literal, we can see what happened in 2025 with record median household income and see if that changes now that a lot of these things have been stripped away. Moving on, if your iPhone was connected to Wi-Fi as you slept, you likely woke up this week with a brand new set of features thanks to iOS 27, most notably a Siri that is actually helpful. The off-delayed revamp of Siri is finally here with Apple promising it will deliver a lot of the AI-powered features it's been lacking. Amongst them, unlike your date last night, it can actually hold an ongoing conversation. So when you ask it, what's the weather, the follow-up question of should I wear a sweater or a cardigan isn't met with stunned silence? In addition to chatting, Siri can now draft emails, handle more complex queries, and even take actions in certain iPhone apps, and worry not, it can still set one heck of a kitchen timer. New CEO John Ternis has taken to calling the iPhone an intelligent personal hub where you can run your life through a combination of Apple hardware and software. Early reviews in the new Siri do find it a lot more capable than the series of old, but as Apple was getting its house in order, it may have already been surpassed by even more capable AI agents that can do everything Siri can and more. Outside of Siri, there were a couple of new updates, including a better spell check powered by AI, as well as way better search across photos, email, messages, and more. Nail, we just got a new hardware update from Apple with the release of its first foldable iPhone, but this software update might be even more important for the company's plans going forward. Yeah, MacWorld said iOS 27 is Apple's best update in years fixing nearly every issue we had with iOS 26. Fast or cleaner, more responsive in the new Siri AI is actually useful. So it's getting a lot of great reviews. The thing is Apple's notorious for putting things on our phone by default, like that YouTube album, but not Siri AI. So if you just downloaded iOS 27, like I did last night, you will not see Siri AI just pop up on your phone magically. You have to go into settings and select Apple Intelligence Siri, then apply for a wait list. This is like blind to college again, I'm getting PTSD. And then you will get on this wait list. And then a few hours later, you will get Siri AI to try Siri AI. And there are a few guardrails as well. Perhaps you won't even see that on your phone. Well, you need an iPhone 16 model or later or an iPhone 15 pro or iPhone 15 pro max language. It only serves English right now and it's coming to a few more languages later on. And also if you're in the European Union listening to this a little later in the day, you will also not see Siri AI because there's a tussle between the EU and an Apple over the digital markets act that they haven't quite resolved. So this is for kind of iPhone 16 model or later Americans who are operating their iPhone in English. And that goes into your settings app and you can download Siri AI to Siri AI to see what all the hype is about. So does this get them back in the game? That's the big question. Are they finally not just the worst chatbot on the market? And yes, Apple did improve it. They made it so it shifted from a really like static voice assistant to a chatbot that you can actually chat with. That was their goal. And yet if you look at what's going on at kind of the cutting edge of the AI market, people have already moved from chatbots onto agencies are things that can book and change travel for you. They can fill out online forums. They can cancel appointments. They can get reservations on your behalf. Basically they're functioning like a personal secretary for your entire digital life. And we've talked about instinct. This is a startup that was founded with 11 people. It has been valued at two and a half billion dollars, might get up to an 11 billion dollars, actually doing what series trying to do within iMessage and then you look at meta two. They are coming. Their muse assistant was downloaded 600,000 times in its first five days. That is chatgbts trajectory right there. So Apple does the thing that it does where it shows up late to a lot of these technology parties and says that hey, we are the mature option. Our software is very polished. You have privacy within our ecosystem. But a lot of people are saying maybe you're too late to the game already because we've moved on from chatbots to AI agents. We want to talk about one other feature that is an iOS 27 that may prove useful to some of you. Well, now you can temporarily hide your location from someone without sending them an alert. So if you wanted to turn off, if you didn't want your parents or your kids, we've talked about kids tracking their parents to see where you are, but you don't want to send an alert because this is what would happen previously. You can just turn it off for that particular person and it'll say that they'll have to search for you within the Find My app. And if they do see you, they'll, they won't see your location. It will just simply say no location found off network. So it's kind of that sneaky thing. So this might be useful. Apple says, Apple said it'll be useful when planning a surprise party. But also, I have to say that this did pop off on our adultery, the subreddit for adultery. They said, this is the most exciting thing I've read since they unveiled hidden apps three years ago. This really the story is the first time I learned there was an R adultery subreddit, but another one said, now if I can get my card to do the same thing, apparently they're trading tips over there on our adultery. All right. We're going to take a quick break and come back with Niels numbers right after this. Every day, shareholders meet to discuss important matters about the companies you invest in. Now, you can easily make your voice heard too. Vanguard investor choice makes it easy to set your proxy voting preference for your eligible Vanguard index funds. In just a few clicks, you can have a say on important shareholder topics like executive pay and director elections, visit vanguard.com/investorchoice to learn more. It's your shares. It's your voice. It's easy. Vanguard investors own shares of their index funds and those funds own shares of the companies they invest in, Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor. Oh, what is happening? I'm just excited for what a howling good time families can have at any of great wolf lodges, 22 locations across the country. Splosh away in the indoor water park where it is always 84 degrees. There's a massive wave pool, a laser river, and tons of water slides. There's also a bunch of great dining options, spacious suites, and complimentary daily events like nightly dance parties all under one roof. Book your stay at greatwolf.com that's greatwolf.com. Neil, welcome to my podcasting command center. Toby, this is a podcast studio. Yeah, but I always wanted a command center. Then you should check out perplexity computer. Instead of opening every dashboard yourself, perplexity computer connects to the tools you already use and builds a command center that gives you a complete picture of your business. Before you wake up, it can pull together your revenue, ad spend, margin, inventory, email performance, and more. For a limited time, try perplexity computer for free at pplx.ai/brue. That's pplx.ai/brue to try computer today. Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats in the week's news that will make you feel like you just got updated to a new operating system. My first number is zero, which is how many Atlantic hurricanes have formed so far this year, nearly four months into the season. This hasn't happened in a very, very long time. The most recent year, the first Atlantic hurricane came this late was in 1941 when one formed on this day, September 17th. Forecasters don't expect a hurricane to magically appear today or at least for the next week. So we are in virtually unprecedented territory here. The Erie Quiet owes itself to one main factor, El Nino. The weather pattern, which is unusually powerful this year, heats up water in the Pacific Ocean, and while that creates a tempest of stormy conditions over there, it tends to put a damper on hurricane activity in the Atlantic. For example, there's been this strong vertical wind shear over the tropical Atlantic this summer that's acting like a guard dog and smashed up in the many storms before they can grow into hurricanes. Toby, if you extend this to last hurricane season, it's now been nearly two years since a hurricane made landfall in the continental United States, but I'm going to stop there because I don't want to jinx anything. We are living through a history right now. So the accumulated cyclone energy, it's A-C-E-Ace and measures the overall tropical cyclone activity during A-C-E-Ace. Right now, the 2026-Ace is running at just 7% of normal. That puts 2026 at 77 out of 77 seasons since A-C-E-Ace began being tracked since 1950. So we are quite literally living through an anomaly as we speak. And no one's really complaining because obviously hurricanes can be very destructive when they make landfall. And specifically, they can be very destructive in the Gulf region where a lot of America's oil refineries lie. So in a year where refineries are at the utmost premium that you want to keep every single one you can up and running the fact that no Gulf refinerie has been disrupted by a hurricane or a tropical storm, it's kind of a blessing in disguise. Not even in disguise, it's just a blessing for that industry that they don't have to deal with these destructive storms. Would be crazy if we got to the end of hurricane season, which ends in November, without a single Atlantic hurricane. I know everyone in Florida listening right now is like, I don't know, you just jinxed it, but could happen El Nino is so strong. Out in the Pacific, there's a ton of storms out in the Atlantic, there's just calm. For my next number, Japan has more than 100,000 people who are at least 100 years old, breaching the mark for the first time ever. According to the latest health ministry data, there are now 177,677 centenarians in Japan up 8,000 from last year. In 1963, there were just 153 people aged 100 or older, 1000 in 1981 and 10,000 in 1998. What stood out to me is the gender breakdown. Women account for 88% of Japan's centenarians. That's due to a variety of reasons. One, women simply live longer than men. Two, many men in that generation died during World War Two. Three, men are more likely to drink and smoke. And four, they're more likely to work in industrial settings with more health hazards. Plus, many men find it tougher to carry on when their spouse dies, while women are more involved in their communities, a mental health boost that extends longevity. 100,000 citizens pushing past the 100 mark would be caused to celebrate if it weren't for how few babies are being born to replace them. Japan is on the verge of an acute demographic crisis from low birth rates, with the population expected to plunge to 87 million by 2070 from a peak of 128 million. The stat that always blows my mind is that sales of adult diapers have been higher than baby diapers for more than a decade in Japan. This is the 56 consecutive year Japan's centenarian population has increased. So that is a lot more old people coming into the fore. My big question, whenever I hear data like this, is how much can we trust it? Because actually, you go back to a study from South Justin Newman. He's this researcher, a University College of London Center, and he basically disagrees with a lot of the demographer data that is out there. He researches centenarians and has found that super centenarians are often associated with weak record-keeping more than anything else. The famous Japan example is authorities in 2010 went to congratulate Japan's oldest living person. Instead, they showed up and found that he'd actually been dead since 1978, and his family was arrested for collecting three decades of his checks, basically. So there is some level fraud that goes on whenever you get up into really high ages and centenarians, but Japan obviously is clearly a hotspot for people living past 100. My final number is a Tom Holland shout-out. The 30-year-old actor has become the highest-grossing lead actor in history. That is, the movies he started have made more money at the box office than any other lead actor. Like the Knicks and your tomato plant, Tom Holland had an epic summer that pushed him over the top. The Odyssey in which he played telemicus has grossed $1.7 billion globally, and Spider-Man, brand new day in which he played Spider-Man, is at $2.5 billion. That put Holland's box office total at more than $15.5 billion ahead of second place Zoe Saldana at $15.47 billion. Rounding out the top five is Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, and Robert Downey Jr. For sensing a pattern, it's that everyone on this list has starred in multiple superhero movies, or in Saldana's case, the Avatar franchise. But Holland vaulted ahead things to hugely successful four Spider-Man movies, three of which have now ad over a billy, plus a couple of MCU movies, The Odyssey, and Uncharted. If you're wondering who the highest-grossing actor is period, not necessarily a lead actor, some estimate it's either Samuel L. Jackson or Stanley himself. I mean, Tom Holland definitely an MCU merchant. If you go past the Odyssey, which has made $1.7 billion, his non-marvel successes is talked by Uncharted at $407 million, but then you get to do little at $251 million, and then the impossible $198 million, which by the way some people say is Tom Holland's best film. He was only I think like 14 or 15 when he recorded it, and it came out in 2012. So, can't fault the man for securing the Spider-Man bag, but his IMBD outside of MCU is quite scarce. And the crown may not be his for that much longer. We've got Avengers Doomsday coming out in December, and Robert Downey Jr. is starring in that movie. He has $14.3 billion in box office grosses. It's likely that he will surpass Tom Holland once that movie comes out and probably makes $2 billion. All right, let's print to the finish with some final headlines. Ed Sheeran's tour is on the verge of unraveling, after all four of his opening acts, both current and future, dropped out in support of Macklemore, a Sheeran opener who voiced support for Palestine at a concert in New Jersey earlier this month and was cut off from upcoming performances. On Monday, Macklemore said that some venues in the U.S. were barring him from performing at the behest of Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium. Kraft acknowledged the band, saying in a statement that he wouldn't quote provide a platform for hate speech and mentioned the rapper's quote broader history of anti-Semitic rhetoric and imagery. Sheeran has tried to maintain a neutral stance, saying the decision to drop Macklemore was the promoters alone. He wrote, "I respect Macklemore's strength of purpose to stand up and shout out for what he believes. However, he went on, I choose to use my fame and platform to be a place of safety and sanctuary to maintain diplomacy and keep conversations open, not closed. That hasn't stopped a storm of online criticism landing on Sheeran for his attempt to play Switzerland and sparked a broader debate around free speech." His tour is scheduled to continue in Philadelphia on Saturday, but you look at resale ticket prices and they are down. Of his next 10 dates, nine have seen price decreases in the last three days according to ticket data and tickets to the Philly Show specifically have on 17% in the last three days. Finally, what's the best airport in America? That would be Minneapolis St. Paul, which was crowned by a JD Power Survey as America's top large-sized airport. Perhaps that handle less passengers, Tanca ranked the first in the next year down while Charleston was number one amongst smaller-sized airports. In general, the survey showed passengers are getting happier with the quality of US airports, with satisfaction ratings rising for the third straight year. Why? Well, airports are pouring money into renovations. Michael Taylor, JD Power's managing director of travel, hospitality, and retail said, "Nearly every airport has undertaken a significant capital improvement project aimed at streamlining passenger flow, adding attractive food and beverage options and improving overall passenger experience." But he followed it up with, "You have to spend at least a billion to impress people." Neil, do you think airports are getting better? I do. I have been impressed. I might pull Tom Hanks and just kind of move into a terminal for a few weeks. I mean, just think about the airports I've been to this summer. SFO, we were there. It was so nice. It was literally like a mall. You couldn't even see the gates. It didn't look like an airport. Detroit impressed me. LaGuardia continues to impress after that multi-billion-dollar improvement upgrade over the past couple of years. So I think airports are getting better. People are recognizing that and there's been a ton of money sunk in to make them feel a little less crappy, you know, LAX. We've lived there. Not that great. There are still airports that need to do well. And I think it just varies terminal by terminal so much. Like you can go to terminal 4 at JFK and get just an incredible experience. Meanwhile, terminal 8, not the best place to be. So it really depends on which terminals are doing renovations. I also looked at the complete list. It's also some that came lower on the list of large airports in these rankings. The last airport on that list was O'Hare followed by Newark and Denver. What is interesting to me about that is all three of those are United Hubs. So maybe United needs to go on a bit of a renovation spray. I know they've been working on Newark, but the fact is that O'Hare Newark and Denver to be the bottom three of large airports maybe doesn't speak so great about them. But yeah, overall very fascinating to see that people are actually enjoying their airport experience for the third straight year. Have you been to Minneapolis, St. Paul? I don't think I've ever flown through it. I have a few times, but not for at least 20 years. Does it? So I don't remember. We got to bring our Minneapolis correspondent Kyle Haggi. He'll give us a rundown on how the airport is. And finally, before we wrap up, we have to settle this debate that began on yesterday's show. Toby asked me if I knew the day of the week I was born on. And I said, yes, doesn't everyone. He didn't know and assume that few people knew the day of their birth. So we pulled our co-workers and turns out both of us were kind of wrong. A little over half did know their actual birth day, but many others did not. So I guess not much was resolved except to learn that this is a very divisive issue. Please lay in because I still feel like I'm right. We just need a bigger group of people. So please lay in and tell me if you actually do know the day that you're born on. That is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday to share your thoughts on the episode or anything else. Send an email to [email protected] or DM us on Instagram @NBDailyShow. Let's roll the credits. Emily Mill iron is our supervising producer. Raymond Lue is our senior producer. Our producer is Olivia Graham and our associate producer is Olivia Lake Technical Direction by Nina Miller. Heron makeup is asking if he can send the table pancakes their way. Devon Emory is our president and our shows a production of MorningBrew. Great. So today, Nail, let's run it back tomorrow.