New York Federal Reserve President John Williams said Friday he expects the central bank can lower its key interest rate from here as labor market weakness poses a bigger economic threat than higher inflation.

With divisions in the central bank running high over the future of rates, Williams took the side of the doves who still see policy as a bit restrictive when it comes to economic growth.

“I view monetary policy as being modestly restrictive, although somewhat less so than before our recent actions,” he said in remarks for a speech in Santiago, Chile. “Therefore, I still see room for a further adjustment in the near term to the target range for the federal funds rate to move the stance of policy closer to the range of neutral, thereby maintaining the balance between the achievement of our two goals.

(CNBC - Continue Reading)

President Trump’s turn against Russia’s economy is ripping through oil markets. The price of Russian oil is trading at its biggest discount to Brent since 2023. Ships laden with sanctioned crude are adrift at sea. And big importers, such as China and India, are now seeking to buy crude from elsewhere.

U.S. sanctions announced last month on Russia’s largest oil producers, Lukoil and Rosneft, finally kicked in on Friday. The measures are already starting to reshape global supply lines and test Moscow’s ability to sell crude, the lifeblood of its economy. Markets may eventually adjust, as they largely did to earlier wartime restrictions. And a peace plan drafted by the Trump administration has raised the prospect of sanctions being lifted.

For now, though, the crackdown is reverberating through the global oil trade. The price of Russia’s flagship oil grade is down around 17% since the U.S. sanctions were announced as international demand drops. Meanwhile, the price of Brent crude, the global yardstick, edged up.

(WSJ - Continue Reading)

President Trump said he wants Ukraine to accept a sweeping U.S. deal to end the four-year conflict by Thanksgiving, giving Kyiv less than a week to decide whether to agree to a draft plan that would hand major concessions to Russia.

“Thursday is, we think, an appropriate time,” Trump told Fox News Radio’s Brian Kilmeade in response to a question about whether he’s given Ukraine a deadline to agree to the plan. “We’re in it for one thing. We want the killing to stop.” Trump suggested he may extend the deadline “if things are working well.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged Friday his country was facing one of the biggest challenges in its history after the Trump administration drafted a plan to end Russia’s nearly four-year war.

(WSJ - Continue Reading)

Google's AI infrastructure boss told employees that the company has to double its compute capacity every six months in order to meet demand for artificial intelligence services. At an all-hands meeting on Nov. 6, Amin Vahdat, a vice president at Google Cloud, gave a presentation, viewed by CNBC, titled “AI Infrastructure,” which included a slide on “AI compute demand.” The slide said, “Now we must double every 6 months.... the next 1000x in 4-5 years.”

“The competition in AI infrastructure is the most critical and also the most expensive part of the AI race,” Vahdat said at the meeting, where Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and CFO Anat Ashkenazi also took questions from employees.

(CNBC - Continue Reading)