Lisa decides what she wants to do for her next science project: she'll let Bart make lots of decisions. Lisa then reads online that snacks are a great way to give your brain power, and she thinks that maybe that's why the British drink tea and eat scones at 4pm. Lisa is reading online that around 4pm, people are tired of making decisions and she discovers around 4pm that Maggie is having trouble choosing which of two toys she'll play with, and chooses not to play with either one. Lisa uses Bart as an unwitting test subject in her science experiment on the effects of decision fatigue. CNN Sans ™ & © 2016 Cable News Network.Decisions, Decisions is a Bart Simpson story first printed in Bart Simpson #74. Market holidays and trading hours provided by Copp Clark Limited. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices Copyright S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and/or its affiliates. Standard & Poor’s and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor’s Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN.

Chicago Mercantile: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. US market indices are shown in real time, except for the S&P 500 which is refreshed every two minutes. Your CNN account Log in to your CNN account That’s given the Fed the confidence “to go ahead and raise interest rates now for the third time since the March events,” Powell said, referring to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank which sent shock waves across the global banking system. First-quarter GDP data shows that the economy is still expanding despite the risks of a downturn. On the spending front, the latest retail data shows that spending is continuing to grow, albeit at a slower pace than in prior months. GDP and spending data are informing the Fed’s decisionsīesides inflation data, which has been a major factor for hiking interest rates, Powell said GDP and spending data are also carrying a lot of weight in the decisions Fed officials make on rates. “There’s a lot of uncertainty between what happens with the next meeting cycle, let alone the next year.” It could happen next year if inflation stays consistently near the Fed’s target, Powell said, but that’s a big if. But the only definitive answer he’s given is that it won’t happen this year. Powell often gets asked questions that aim to get some clarity on what Fed officials would need to see to start cutting interest rates. “We’d be comfortable cutting rates when we’re comfortable cutting rates,” Powell said when he was asked if he’d consider cutting rates if the inflation rate was a hairline above 2% and wouldn’t budge any further.

Still no inklings of when to expect a rate cut Powell doesn’t agree, however – although he said Fed staff are predicting “a noticeable slowdown in growth starting later this year.” That’s why many economists, including some at the Fed, were predicting we’d be in a recession around this time last year. That’s generally been difficult because the higher interest rates go, the higher the unemployment rate goes, which increases the likelihood of a recession. That would mean that the central bank could get inflation down to its 2% target causing minimal damage to the economy. Powell still believes the Fed can achieve what’s known as a “soft landing.” He said on Wednesday, “given the resilience of the economy recently are no longer forecasting a recession.” That is to say, it wasn’t vastly different from the prior report cards Powell delivered after the other meetings this year.

Wednesday’s report card likely won’t sway the economic outlook’s “grade point average” for the whole year. That followed the Fed’s decision to hold rates steady at its June meeting for the first time since it began its rate-hiking campaign to tame inflation in March 2022. The latest move - to raise interest rates by a quarter point - came on Wednesday. This comes along with each decision the central bank makes on interest rates. Roughly every six weeks Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell delivers a report card that rates the economy’s future performance.

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