Matt Grossman

Anxiety about the economic impact of a second Trump administration is reaching a fever pitch overseas a week before Election Day.

A Texas community-bank operator caught up in last year's regional-banking crisis has agreed to improve its risk-management practices. Industry Bancshares, which runs six banks in eastern Texas, was among the lenders hit last year after a rapid rise in interest rates slashed the value of its long-term bond assets. Under an order from the Federal Reserve and the Texas Department of Banking, Industry has agreed to submit plans to improve its risk and liquidity management, as well as a strategic plan and budget for 2025, within 90 days.

(Matt Grossman is a political science professor and director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University. His interview with City Pulse editor and publisher Berl Schwartz has been edited for clarity and condensed.)

The core version of the Fed’s preferred 12-month inflation gauge ticked back up to 2.8% as expected last month.

Fed officials had been hoping this fall for a clean downtrend in inflation, allowing them to focus more fully on preventing an economic downturn. The data hasn't cooperated. Over the 12 months through October, the Fed's preferred inflation gauge shows prices up 2.8% on a core basis, according to th

The number of job openings in the U.S. increased in October, bucking a trend of falling vacancies for most of the past two years.

Fed Governor Adriana Kugler said that a tide of new immigrant workers and a rise in labor productivity have strengthened the U.S. economy, and noted that she and her Fed colleagues are still moving their policy stance from restrictive to neutral.

For many investors, Friday's jobs report confirmed expectations that the Federal Reserve is on track to cut interest rates again this month.

Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack dissented against the Fed's decision to cut rates by a quarter point and would have preferred to hold rates steady at their previous level of 4.5% to 4.75%, the Fed says. Hammack becomes the second Fed policy voter to dissent against a rate cut this year, after Fed governor Michelle Bowman dissented against the half-point rate cut in September. In a speech earlier this month, Hammack had voiced skepticism about whether the Fed should continue to cut interest rates given the persistence of inflation.

U.S. growth was better than initially thought in the three months through September, signaling that the economy accelerated heading into the end of the year. The economy grew by an annualized 3.1% in the third quarter, a finalized Commerce Department estimate showed Thursday. That compares with