By Nick Timiraos The Federal Reserve voted to lower interest rates by a half percentage point, opting for a bolder start in making its first reduction since 2020. The long-anticipated pivot followed an all-out fight against inflation the central bank launched two years ago. Eleven of 12 Fed voters backed the cut, which will bring the […]
By Andy Medici The Internal Revenue Service plans to deny tens of thousands of improper Employee Retention Credit applications even as it promises to renew processing legitimate claims. The agency in an announcement this week said it had taken the time since its Sept. 14 moratorium on processing new ERC applications to analyze the more than 1 million ERC […]
By Isabel Hart Mass General Brigham, Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology all celebrated a joint milestone yesterday: Their collaborative research operation, the Ragon Institute, opened its new headquarters in Cambridge. The new location at 600 Main St. in Kendall Square is less than a quarter-mile from the institute’s previous address at 400 Technology Square. The new site […]
Inflation slowed down on an annual basis in August, with the Consumer Price Index rising by 2.5 percent compared to a year ago. This is a noticeable drop from July’s 2.9 percent and a significant decline from the peak of 9.1 percent seen in 2022. Next week, Federal Reserve officials are expected to lower interest […]
By Jane Lanhee Lee Riverlane, a startup that makes semiconductors to help reduce quantum computing errors, raised $75 million in its latest round of funding. The round was led by Europe’s Planet First Partners, which focuses on climate tech investments. Venture capital firm ETF Partners and Singapore’s EDBI also joined. It marked the latest in a […]
A little more than a month ago, we predicted in this space that the backlog of major, crucial bills that piled up toward the end of the legislative session would get short shrift, since lawmakers would be consumed with trying to pass the perennially late state budget. Unfortunately, the month of July played out exactly as we […]
By Andy Medici Companies are dialing back pay raises in 2025, an expected outcome of a continually cooling labor market. That means workers should expect, on average, 3.5% pay increases in 2025 compared to the average 3.6% seen so far in 2024, according to the latest Payscale Salary Budget survey. Those are both down from the 4% average pay […]
By Greg Ryan The downtown Boston office market has captured the lion’s share of local attention — and alarm — since Covid-19 upended the five-day, in-office workweek. But now there’s cause for concern across the Charles River for the 12 million square feet of offices in Cambridge. A CBRE report this month found that, for the first time since the […]
By Nick Timiraos While Federal Reserve officials aren’t likely to change interest rates in the coming week, their meeting will nonetheless be one of the most consequential in a while. At each of their four meetings this year, interest-rate cuts have been a question for later. This time, though, inflation and labor-market developments should allow officials to signal […]
By Michael Mackenzie and Liz Capo McCormick Bond traders are piling into bets that the US economy is on the verge of deteriorating so quickly that the Federal Reserve will need to start easing monetary policy aggressively — potentially before their next scheduled meeting — to head off a recession. Previous worries about the risk of elevated inflation have virtually disappeared, swiftly […]
