Chicago Federal Reserve president Austan Goolsbee said he is undecided about whether to cut interest rates again in December.

The threshold for cutting again is higher, he said, given inflation concerns and lack of official economic data.

"I'm not decided going into the December meeting," Goolsbee told Yahoo Finance in an interview Monday. "I am nervous about the inflation side of the ledger, where you've seen inflation above the target for 4.5 years and it's trending the wrong way."

(Continue Reading - Yahoo)

Federal Reserve officials on Monday continued pressing competing views of where the economy stands and the risks facing it, a debate set to intensify ahead of the U.S. central bank's next policy meeting and in the absence of data suspended due to the federal government shutdown.

In an appearance on the Bloomberg Surveillance television program, Fed Governor Stephen Miran restated the case for deep interest rate cuts that he has laid out since joining the central bank's Board of Governors in September, and expanded his rationale to argue that buoyant stock and corporate credit markets are no reason to think monetary policy is too loose.

(Continue Reading - MSN)

Competition law in the EU (AAA/Stable) directly affects Fitch Ratings’ assessment of support for government-related entities (GREs). In Fitch’s view, the existence of restrictions limits the government’s incentives to support a GRE.

The decision to provide extraordinary support may result in legal and financial risks, which need to be considered by the state. Opening a sector to competition may reduce a GRE’s long-term importance to its government. Entities that are subject to EU competition law are less likely to have received high support, which tends to limit our assessment of the ‘precedents of support’ factor.

Fitch believes that EU competition law limits government support to a GRE and thus caps the support score. This cap varies based on whether a company has material restrictions on all activities or if it displays a mix of competitive and public-sector activities that are partially eligible for government support.

(Continue Reading - Fitch)

Tesla’s shareholders will decide this week whether the automaker should award its chief executive, Elon Musk, stock worth almost $1 trillion if he achieves a series of impossible-sounding goals. But there are big questions about how tough those goals really are.

Mr. Musk would acquire voting control over nearly 29 percent of Tesla shares if he met all of the targets in a 10-year performance plan. Among other things, the company would have to deploy one million humanlike robots and boost its stock market value to $8.5 trillion from $1.4 trillion today.

That sounds difficult. But the plan would also allow Tesla’s board of directors to grant Mr. Musk a portion of the shares even if he fell short. Some corporate governance experts said the board, which includes Mr. Musk’s brother and several longstanding friends and business associates, could award him shares regardless of his performance.

(Continue Reading - NYT)