Overnight Finance: Fed holds rates steady | Yellen mum on future | Urgency for tax reform grows | Ryan expects more hurricane relief aid | DOJ to begin paying Madoff victims

Fed holds off on September rate hike, announces plans for debt sell-off: The Federal Reserve will hold interest rates steady, it announced Wednesday. The central bank also said it would begin selling off securities it bought at the height of the financial crisis next month.

The Federal Open Markets Committee, which is in charge of the Fed’s monetary policy, said it would hold off on increasing rates beyond the 1 to 1.25 percent target range as inflation lingers below the 2 percent target range. The Fed last raised rates in June, the second rate rise in 2017.

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The Fed also outlined its plans to sell off $4.5 trillion in securities it purchased during the 2007-2008 financial panic to stabilize markets. Next month, the bank will begin selling $6 billion per month of Treasury bonds it holds and $4 billion per month in agency debt and mortgage-backed securities. The bank will increase those caps by $6 billion every three months, until the bank is selling off $30 billion in Treasury bonds and $20 billion in debt each month.

The central bank had been waiting for the economy to stabilize to sell off these assets: http://bit.ly/2hiLm5w.

 

Yellen mum on whether she’ll lead Fed again: Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen on Wednesday declined to say whether she expected to be leading the central bank after her first term ends in February 2018.

Yellen said that she hadn’t spoken recently with President Trump, and wouldn’t say whether she’d like to return to lead the Fed, or whether he’d re-appoint her as chair.

“I have said that I intended to serve out my term as chair and I’m really not going to comment … beyond there,” Yellen said during a Wednesday press conference.

Trump is currently mulling who, if anyone, should replace Yellen in February. He has offered mild praise of Yellen after calling her “obviously political” during the 2016 campaign, insisting she held down interest rates under President Obama to make the economy look stronger than it actually was.

Trump has praised Yellen’s work leading the Fed since he took office and said he was considering asking her to serve as chair again. I’ve got more here: http://bit.ly/2hjT2EP.

 

Urgency felt as tax reform lags: The business community is stepping up its campaign for tax reform as the window of time to pass legislation narrows.

Republicans are aiming to pass legislation by the end of the year. Business advocates have warned that if action is significantly delayed, there could be adverse economic consequences.

Key GOP lawmakers and the White House are planning to release a tax framework next week, and the business community hopes that step will help create momentum.

Trade groups representing small and large businesses say a tax code rewrite would boost the economy, jobs and wages — and they aren’t going to rest until a bill becomes law. The Hill’s Naomi Jagoda reports: http://bit.ly/2hkIjd0.

 

Errant Equifax tweet sends breach victims to site flagged for phishing: Beleaguered credit agency Equifax tweeted a link to a would-be phishing site to a victim of its massive breach rather than the breach information site it intended.

The exchange happened Monday evening when a current customer of Equifax’s credit monitoring service TrustedID asked if he could cancel that subscription in exchange for the free year of TrustedID offered to victims.

“Hi! For more information about the product and enrollment, please visit: [the url of the fake site] -Tim,” tweeted Equifax from its official account.

Equifax apparently intended to send a link to equifaxsecurity2017.com, the site with information on how to sign up for TrustedID. Instead, the tweet rewrote equifaxsecurity2017 as securityequifax2017: http://bit.ly/2hjnvml.

Happy Wednesday and welcome back to Overnight Finance. I’m Sylvan Lane, and here’s your nightly guide to everything affecting your bills, bank account and bottom line.

See something I missed? Let me know at slane@digital-stage.thehill.com or tweet me @SylvanLane. And if you like your newsletter, you can subscribe to it here: http://bit.ly/1NxxW2N.

 

Senate Dems file bill to eliminate debt ceiling: Three Senate Democrats are pushing legislation to eliminate the debt ceiling, an idea recently backed by President Trump. 

Democratic Sens. Chris Coons (Del.), Brian Schatz (Hawaii) and Michael Bennet (Colo.) have filed the End the Threat of Default Act, which would repeal the borrowing cap. 

“We should instead work together in a bipartisan manner not just to raise the debt limit without conditions, drama, or delay, but also to eliminate it once and for all,” Bennet wrote in a Medium post on Wednesday. 

Bennet added that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin “has repeatedly agreed with each of his predecessors that the debt limit is not a matter for negotiation, rejecting arguments that raising it should be conditioned on other policies being attached.” http://bit.ly/2hjBx7J.

 

Majority would join class-action suit against Equifax if hit by breach, poll says: A majority of American adults say they would join a class-action lawsuit against Equifax if they were affected by the massive data breached disclosed by the credit reporting firm earlier this month.

A new poll from Morning Consult found that 69 percent of U.S. adults would be likely to take part in a class-action lawsuit against the company if they discovered their personal information was compromised in the breach — including 44 percent who said they would be “very likely” to do so.

Equifax has been under fire since disclosing the breach, which affected as many as 143 million U.S. consumers, on Sept. 7. Dozens of class-action lawsuits against the credit reporting firm have piled up in less than two weeks.

The Massachusetts attorney general also sued Equifax this week, accusing the company of failing to protect data on as many as 3 million residents of the state: http://bit.ly/2hj5pAN.

 

Ryan: More hurricane aid likely coming in October: Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Wednesday he expects Congress will approve more emergency aid in October to help communities affected by recent hurricanes.

Ryan made the remarks during a day-long tour with a bipartisan congressional delegation surveying areas in Florida hit by Hurricane Irma. He said lawmakers are still waiting for official estimates of how much money will be needed before crafting another funding package.

“As we assess and we get more information from the administration, I’m sure that we’re going to do another what we call a ‘supplemental’ sometime in October once we have a full assessment of what is needed,” Ryan said during a press conference in Miami.

The funding would be in addition to the $15 billion in disaster recovery aid Congress passed earlier this month for victims of Hurricane Harvey, which primarily battered the Texas coast: http://bit.ly/2hkgYYz.

AT&T CEO: Failure to pass tax reform would be ‘bad indictment’ for GOP: AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said Wednesday it would be a “bad indictment” of Republicans’ effectiveness if they can’t enact tax reform while controlling both chambers of Congress and the White House 

“I absolutely believe, and I think you’re beginning to understand, that the people in the Senate and Congress believe that if they don’t get tax reform done, it may be political survival for them,” Stephenson said at an event hosted by the Business Roundtable.

Stephenson added that “if you’re a Republican, you better have it done before the primary season begins.”

Stephenson was one of several business leaders who pressed for tax reform at the event Wednesday. Several of the CEOs said that taxes should be a bipartisan issue and that both sides of the aisle see a need to overhaul the code: http://bit.ly/2hk0zTR.

 

DOJ to begin paying victims of Bernie Madoff scheme: The Department of Justice will begin compensating the victims of Bernie Madoff’s multibillion dollar Ponzi scheme in the next few months, Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) announced on Wednesday.

Buchanan said he got a response this week to a letter he wrote Attorney General Jeff Sessions in May complaining that victims had yet to see a dime from the $4 billion victim fund that was created in 2012. 

Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd told Buchanan in a letter dated Sept. 18 that the Justice Department “is poised to issue initial distributions from the Assets Forfeiture Fund by the end of 2017” and that victims whose petitions have been approved have been notified. 

“These distributions will represent the largest return of forfeited funds to victims in the history of the Department’s asset forfeiture program,” Boyd wrote: http://bit.ly/2hjMOF2.

 

Bloomberg: Border wall ‘impossible to build’: Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Wednesday that President Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico is “not very practical” and “almost impossible to build.” 

“I think a wall is not very practical. Number one, it would be almost impossible to build,” Bloomberg told CNN’s Jake Tapper, when asked if he would support wall funding if tied to a bill reviving a program protecting young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children. http://bit.ly/2hjFaui.

 

Good reads from around the web

• Marketwatch: Toys ‘R’ Us bankruptcy could push retail loan default rate past 10 percent by year-end: Fitch
• Financial Times: Investors left in the dark over the shape of a ‘Trumpian’ Fed
• Bloomberg: Citigroup joins corporate climate fight with swift energy pledge

 

Write us with tips, suggestions and news: slane@digital-stage.thehill.com, vneedham@digital-stage.thehill.com, njagoda@digital-stage.thehill.com and nelis@digital-stage.thehill.com. Follow us on Twitter: @SylvanLane,  @VickofTheHill, @NJagoda and @NivElis