The daily business briefing: July 29, 2021

Fed chair downplays Delta variant threat to economy, the Senate votes to advance $1 trillion infrastructure compromise, and more

Jerome Powell
(Image credit: Win McNamee/Getty Images)

1. Fed chair says Delta variant poses little risk to economy, for now

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday at the close of a two-day policy meeting that the Delta variant of the coronavirus poses only a limited threat to the U.S. economy. "What we've seen is with successive waves of COVID over the past year and some months now," Powell said, "there has tended to be less in the way of economic implications from each wave. We will see whether that is the case with the Delta variety, but it's certainly not an unreasonable expectation." The Fed said in its statement following the meeting that the economy was moving closer to the progress necessary to justify reducing its $120 billion economy-boosting monthly bond purchases. It held interest rates near zero as expected.

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.