Daily Pulse: Suspense at the Fed, Code in New York Schools, and Email Power Plays

The Fed starts its hugely important meeting out of which it’s actually more likely than not nothing will come out. The benchmark short-term interest rate could go up for the first time in a decade, but the odds are stronger for the decision to come in the October or December Fed meeting. What could delay the decision is that inflation is decidedly not reaching the target of 2% the Fed has set. (Or is that really the target? Here’s a roundup of the Fed’s evermoving horizon.) The August consumer price index will be announced at 12.30 pm ET and is expected unchanged. Raised or not, the rate would still be historically rather low.

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Get ready for a beer merger. Anheuser-Busch InBev is making a bid for one of its biggest competitors: SABMiller. If two of the world's biggest brewers join forces, the company will have a market cap of around $276 billion and annual sales of $55 billion. Stocks rose for both companies, although the New York Times points out that "any deal between the brewing giants would most likely face significant regulatory scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic, given the breadth of brands the two companies control."

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Within 10 years, every school kid in New York City will have the opportunity to learn computer science. Mayor Bill de Blasio will announce today a plan to make teaching the subject a requirement for all public schools. (Middle and high schools can make it an elective and it will not yet be a graduation requirement.)

De Blasio’s plan addresses the STEM skills gap, and not in a small way -- New York City’s Department of Education is the largest in the US and watches over 1.1 million students. It follows similar commitments by public schools in Chicago and San Francisco. The plan might even make public schools more attractive in a city where better off parents usually resort to private education. But it faces a major bottleneck: teachers. Too few are trained in the subject and the academic teaching of computer science can often lag far behind the standards and languages actually used by the industry. And in computer science more than in any other domain, the people who are good at it find far more lucrative opportunities using their skills rather than transmitting them. New York’s salvation will likely be in partnering with tech companies and existing online training programs.

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Your bank or your jobs. The battle over the Export-Import Bank intensifies: GE announced it’s moving 500 jobs abroad to bid on contracts with the support of other countries’ export agencies. The Ex-Im Bank supported US manufacturers by financing their foreign clients with credit and loan guarantees. It was, if you will, to US manufacturers what Ford’s financial branch is to your car dealership. One doesn’t just buy a Dreamliner or a satellite cash.

The Ex-Im bank’s charter lapsed at the end of June and most Congressional Republicans refuse to renew it, arguing it’s a perfect example of government being involved where it shouldn’t be. But because every other manufacturing nation has such an export agency -- usually far more generous than the Ex-Im Bank ever was -- US companies say they’re losing business to foreign competitors. Boeing already pointed the finger at Ex-Im, or rather its loss, in August after announcing it would cut “several hundred” jobs. GE’s 500 jobs are an insignificant fraction of its US workforce but a strong message nonetheless.

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#Quote

"My story may have turned out very differently if a door to a safe haven was closed to me forty years ago."

- Winnie Byanyima, Oxfam executive director and LinkedIn Influencer, on her experience as a refugee from Uganda

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Reefer madness. The Colorado recreational marijuana industry is expecting a major pay day: all sales are 25% off today. Because of a quirk in state tax law and because it underestimated how much tax revenue it would bring in this year, Colorado is forced to suspend for 24 hours a 10% sales tax on pot and a 15% excise on marijuana growers. In its first year of legally selling the drug, the state collected $70 million in marijuana tax revenue, far more than the $42 million it earned from alcohol. Fear not, taxes return Thursday.

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Upstairs, downstairs. Don’t fool yourself if you think you’re a great egalitarian: we word emails to our bosses vastly differently from emails to our colleagues and subordinates. So much so than an outside reader could guess whom you’re addressing without knowing any of the context. If you don’t believe me, play Wonkblog’s game. (I’m 6/6.) Georgia Tech’s Eric Gilbert studied thousands of emails released in the Enron investigation and found, or confirmed, a few insights into corporate life. Attached documents tend to go from subordinate to boss because higher-ups get to delegate afternoons in front of an Excel spreadsheet. People are more likely to think through emails to bosses, while emails to peers and subordinates are written “as you think.” Employees are more likely to use the word “weekend,” usually because -- sigh -- they offer unprompted to work over it, while bosses more often use the word “promotion,” hopefully to offer one.

“At work, email is the performance of power and hierarchy captured in text.”

- Georgia Tech’s Eric Gilbert to Wonkblog

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• Missed the last update? Then check out John C. Abell's 'More Layoffs at Hewlett Packard, Crude Exports, A Facebook Dislike'
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Photo: High-wire artist Kane Petersen successfully walks a tightrope 300 meters above the ground at Eureka Skydeck on September 16, 2015 in Melbourne, Australia. The walk was the highest tightrope walk ever attempted in the Southern Hemisphere. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images)