It’s true that the Federal Reserve appears willing to lower interest rates further this year. But recent minutes from the central bank’s September meetings reveal that many members have expressed caution—driven by concerns over percolating US inflation.

“Most judged that it likely would be appropriate to ease policy further over the remainder of this year,” according to minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee’s Sept. 16-17 gathering. But the record of the meeting also showed “a majority of participants emphasized upside risks to their outlooks for inflation.”

In a note to clients, Stephen Stanley, chief US economist at Santander US Capital Markets, pointed to “significant differences of opinion within the committee regarding just about everything important.”

“We should not be surprised that there is a wide range of opinion within the FOMC on what to do next,” he said. No worries on Wall Street though, as investors Wednesday were still buying everything in sight. Here’s Bloomberg Television’s closing bell. —David E. Rovella

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The tariff cash doesn’t seem to helping things as far as America’s yawning debt is concerned. The federal government logged a $1.8 trillion budget deficit for the 2025 fiscal year, little changed from 2024 despite a surge in revenues from President Donald Trump’s trade war.

The shortfall for the year that ended Sept. 30 was just $8 billion less than 2024, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. The news comes as the massive Republican tax-and-spending bill pushed through earlier this year is set to drive the US national debt beyond $40 trillion.

Indeed, the “big beautiful bill” is already biting. Receipts from corporate income taxes decreased 15% compared to 2024, in part due to the new legislation, which allows corporations to take larger deductions for certain investments in 2025. As for Trump’s tariffs, the bulk of them have been ruled illegal by a federal appeals court, though the ruling has been stayed pending a determination by the Supreme Court. If it affirms the judgment of two lower courts, all of that money may have to be paid back.

And the damage keeps spreading. An asset manager controlled by a unit of Jefferies Financial Group piled almost a quarter of its $3 billion trade finance portfolio into receivables tied to auto parts supplier First Brands Group. 

The supplier of wiper blades and oil filters filed for bankruptcy last week after a debt refinancing was derailed by investor scrutiny. Jefferies had been marketing the refinancing for the company, and many of Wall Street’s biggest names have faced losses on their exposure to First Brands. Court documents from earlier this month showed funds under the UBS Group umbrella face more than half a billion dollars of exposure to the auto supplier. (Meanwhile BlackRock is said to have requested to pull some money it invested in the Jefferies fund.)

It’s the latest blowup in the murky world of trade finance, a sector that’s been hit by numerous frauds in recent years, often leaving banks and insurers facing losses. The biggest bust in the industry came in 2021, you may remember, when Greensill Capital filed for insolvency after channeling bank deposits and insurance funds into short-term loans to risky companies. That ultimately contributed to the collapse of a European bank by the name of Credit Suisse.

It’s an era that began 17 years ago with the biggest financial disaster since the Great Depression. That’s when Wall Street—led in part by Lehman Brothers—nearly took down the global economy. Since then, a small piece of that doomed bank has continued to exist. But no more.

Lehman’s London unit can finally close. A UK judge ruled Wednesday that the administration of Lehman Brothers International Europe could be concluded with the company having satisfied all of its creditors. The administration of the firm began after the collapse of its US parent in one of the biggest bankruptcies in history.

Richard Fuld, former chief executive of Lehman Brothers, during a Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission hearing in Washington in 2010. Photographer: Brendan Smialowski

The failure, while a financial catastrophe at the time, turned out to be unexpectedly lucrative down the line, with insolvency practitioners at PricewaterhouseCoopers able to recover almost £28 billion ($37.5 billion) from the international unit—a “remarkably successful” outcome, according to Judge Robert Hildyard.

Picking clean Lehman’s corpse has kept a legion of accountants, lawyers and hedge funds busy for the best part of two decades. PwC has been paid £1 billion for its work on LBIE, with another £489 million paid out in legal costs since 2008, according to the latest progress report from the administrators.

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