Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh on Tuesday told House lawmakers that the central bank’s policymakers have “no tolerance for persistently elevated inflation” in his first testimony as Fed chief.

Warsh said in his prepared testimony for the House Financial Services Committee that concerns about inflation influenced the Fed’s decision to hold the benchmark federal funds rate steady at a range of 3.5% to 3.75% at the Fed’s June meeting.

“The Fed’s number one objective is to get monetary policy right – or as near to it as we possibly can. That is our clear and constant aim, the star we steer by,” he said. “And if we get policy right – and we will – the inflation surge of the last five years will be a thing of the past.”

“My colleagues and I recognize that high inflation has been an undue burden on American households and businesses. While monthly price fluctuations are inevitable – especially in an unsettled world – underlying inflation over longer time horizons is determined largely by monetary policy,” Warsh said.

“The members of our Committee have no tolerance for persistently elevated inflation. And we share a resolute commitment to restoring price stability,” he added.

FED POLICYMAKERS’ INFLATION WORRIES WEIGHED ON RATE CUT OUTLOOK AT WARSH’S FIRST MEETING

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh told the House Financial Services Committee that the central bank won’t tolerate persistently elevated inflation. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Warsh was asked about how he would respond if President Donald Trump targeted him or other policymakers in an effort to influence interest rate policy, and the chairman emphasized the Fed is an independent central bank – which the Supreme Court recently affirmed.

“The Supreme Court said that the Federal Reserve and the conduct of monetary policy is independent. To the extent there were questions about it, the Court answered those questions,” Warsh said, adding he would continue to do his job if the president were to attempt to fire him.

Warsh went on to say that his goal for the Fed “is for there to be no politics. To the extent there’s politics there, we’re going to get rid of them.” 

The Federal Reserve is tasked by Congress with pursuing a dual mandate of fostering full employment and price stability in line with a long-run 2% inflation target. Warsh said the Fed will be attentive to both sides of the mandate, though he noted the inflation portion of the mandate is further from the goal at this time.

“In my view, the two parts of the mandate are not in conflict. This is not an either or proposition. The more we can do to deliver low and stable prices, the more we can get it such that people aren’t worried about inflation, the more employers are going to want to hire more workers,” he explained.

“You gave us a remit, we take both parts of it seriously,” Warsh said. “As we look out the window now, the labor markets look to be in pretty good balance. We’ve got some work to do on the inflation front.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates on Warsh’s testimony.

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What impact do hormones have on women with ADHD? A first of its kind study by Kings College and Queen Mary University in London is putting the link to the test, by asking 50 women who have ADHD and are taking medication for it to track their menstrual cycle. They will log the impact it has on their ADHD symptoms, and daily life more broadly. Report academic Dr Jessica Agnew-Blais and Laura Mears-Reynolds from the charity ADHDAF+ join presenter Nuala McGovern to discuss.

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Workers’ unions have previously warned against job losses in South Africa’s mining sector, which employs almost half a million people, external and accounts for more than 4% of national GDP, external.

De Beers is majority-owned by Anglo American, which is reportedly trying to sell it and shift focus to the growing copper market, external fuelled by the recent AI boom.

At the Venetia mine, De Beers has pledged to use those two years of downtime to make infrastructure more “efficient” with increased “capacity”, external, ready to reopen production once market conditions improve.

Times remain tough across the industry, which has seen the International Diamond Consultants’ rough diamond price index almost halve since 2022.

Lab-grown diamonds have gained in popularity in recent years, as consumers voice ethical concerns about miners’ pay and working conditions as well as environmental damage.

Yet De Beers and other established firms have cashed in on those industry changes too, producing their own lab-grown versions at a snip of the price one would pay for natural diamonds.

De Beers is not the first large producer to scale down operations in recent years, but it does occupy a particular place in the public imagination owing to its long history dating back to 1871.

Its founder was Cecil Rhodes, the English colonist whose forces dispossessed indigenous Africans of their land and denied them basic rights

He became a millionaire in the process and justified their disenfranchisement and racial segregation, external to Cape Town’s Parliament several years later, saying “the natives are children… they are just emerging from barbarism, external“.

His legacy in southern Africa has become a lightning rod for discussions about “decolonising” institutions which continue to bear his name.

This includes those that have statues of him and scholarships founded on his enormous wealth – like the UK’s University of Oxford, whose past Rhodes Scholars, external include ex-US President Bill Clinton and former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

The small businesses behind Britain’s live music industry have been handed a rare piece of good news, as the government’s first long-term music strategy promises a £45 million growth fund, lighter-touch festival licensing and a two-year freeze on business rates bills for venues.

Turn It Up: Our Plan for Music, launched by Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy on Monday, sets out how ministers intend to grow a sector worth at least £8 billion to the economy. Crucially for the independent operators who make up most of it, the plan reaches beyond stadium headliners to the promoters, labels, managers and venues that develop talent.

The Music Growth Package, now boosted to £45 million after a £15 million injection from Arts Council England, will support more than 2,000 projects and at least 40,000 artists and music professionals over three years. For the first time, the funding will also be open to mid-career artists, band managers, labels and publishers, many of them small firms and freelancers.

For festival and event organisers, the licensing reforms may prove the most practical win. Temporary Event Notices will rise from 15 to 20 per year, with total event days up from 21 to 26, while festivals will be offered longer licences, a minimum of three years for new events and five years for existing ones. A 15 per cent business rates relief for live music venues has also been confirmed, with bills frozen for the next two years.

The Night Time Industries Association, which represents clubs, bars and late-night operators across the UK, worked alongside government and UK Music in shaping the plan and says many of the sector’s priorities are reflected in it.

Michael Kill, chief executive of the NTIA, said: “It is extremely encouraging to see the Government deliver a long term strategy that recognises music as one of the UK’s greatest cultural and economic assets. We have been proud to work alongside colleagues from across the industry to help shape this plan and it is positive to see that collaboration translate into meaningful action.”

“The success of UK music depends on every part of the ecosystem working together. That means supporting not only artists and venues, but also festivals, promoters, clubs, DJs, producers, electronic music and the independent businesses that develop talent and create opportunities across the country. These are all vital parts of our music landscape and deserve recognition and support.”

The warm words mark a change of tone from an association that only weeks ago branded the Chancellor’s summer VAT cut a ‘superficial fix’ that sidelined clubs and festivals. The underlying pressures have not gone away. Industry research has warned that the late-night economy could lose 10,000 businesses and 150,000 jobs by 2028 without intervention, even as music tourism delivers a record £11.2 billion for UK towns and cities.

Kill acknowledged as much. “The commitments to invest in grassroots music, reform festival licensing and support future talent are positive steps. There is still work ahead to secure the long term sustainability of venues, clubs and independent operators, but this plan provides a strong foundation and we look forward to continuing to work with government and industry partners to help deliver it.”

For the SMEs that keep Britain’s stages lit, the plan is a foundation rather than a fix. But after years of asking Whitehall to listen, the industry will settle for a government finally singing from the same song sheet.

Amy Ingham

Amy is a newly qualified journalist specialising in business journalism at Business Matters with responsibility for news content for what is now the UK’s largest print and online source of current business news.

Company continues to deal with the fallout of Rachel Reeves’ decision to raise online gambling tax

Rank Group, the owner of Grosvenor casino, has cut its workforce in an effort to rein in costs, as the firm continues to grapple with the effects of Rachel Reeves’ online gambling tax increase.

The Chancellor’s move to raise the Remote Gaming Duty (RGD) rate from 21 per cent to 40 per cent in last autumn’s Budget left the group scrambling to absorb the blow and safeguard revenue after it took effect in April.

The firm chose to slash marketing expenditure and supplier costs, alongside making “headcount reductions”, to offset spending and “the impact of the RGD increase”.

It elected to preserve targeted digital advertising and customer incentives, such as bonuses and loyalty rewards, to retain players on its digital gambling platforms despite the heightened levy.

However, chief executive Richard Harris, who was confirmed as the permanent head of the casino group earlier this week, acknowledged that the increase had triggered “significant cost and taxation headwinds”, as reported by City AM.

Shares rose 8.3 per cent in early trading to 102.3p, with the stock up 5.2 per cent since January.

The Maidenhead-headquartered group also confirmed that it had submitted a regulatory settlement proposal to the Gambling Commission, in a bid to avoid incurring a financial penalty.

The FTSE 250 firm offered to pay the gambling watchdog £5m, following an investigation into the Grosvenor casino licence that uncovered evidence of rule breaches. The regulator confirmed it was “minded to accept the settlement proposal” and is awaiting the formal documentation to proceed.

The payment is expected to be recorded as a separately disclosed item in a bid to avoid any distortion to reported profits.

The decision to retain targeted advertisements drove like-for-like digital net gaming revenue (NGR) up 12 per cent in the final quarter to £63.9m.

Grosvenor venues also posted a three per cent increase in NGR to £98.3m, despite the “disruption to international travel” triggered by the conflict in the Middle East, underpinned by strong gaming machine performance.

Mecca Bingo halls saw NGR reach £35.4m, while its Enracha venues reported NGR of £11.3m.

Sending cargo into orbit is getting cheaper faster than shipping freight did during the steamship revolution of the 1800s, and the cost could fall by more than 90 per cent again by 2040, according to Cambridge-led research that suggests space is fast becoming a marketplace rather than a moonshot.

The study, published in PNAS Nexus by the University of Cambridge’s Bennett School of Public Policy and the Politecnico Institute of Turin, analysed more than 4,400 launches between 1960 and 2025, the largest global dataset of rocket launches yet assembled.

The average cost of putting a kilogram into orbit has already dropped from $87,023 in 1960 to $3,868 in 2025, a fall of more than 95 per cent. Every time the world’s total volume of space cargo has doubled, the cost per kilogram has fallen by 21.2 per cent, outpacing the 15.5 per cent decline recorded for transatlantic wheat and cotton freight after the SS Savannah’s pioneering steam crossing in 1819. It is also falling faster than the cost of solar panels, long the textbook example of a technology getting cheap at speed.

“The cost of space launch technology is now falling faster than during one of history’s greatest transport revolutions,” said Alessio Terzi, the assistant professor who led the research.

“Steamships cut costs through explosive growth in global trade. Space technology, by contrast, has achieved even steeper declines at a far smaller scale. This suggests there is plenty of scope for further cost reductions and the industry may now be on the cusp of a comparable economic boom,” he said.

If the trend holds, the researchers project a kilogram to low-Earth orbit will cost $1,600 by 2030 and just $300 by 2040. SpaceX’s Starship rocket could bring costs down to about $1,000 a kilogram, making larger orbital projects far more viable.

For UK entrepreneurs, this is not an abstract race between billionaires. Britain’s space industry is dominated by small firms, with roughly 90 per cent of its businesses turning over less than £5 million, building the components, satellites and services that cheaper launches make commercially sensible. New business models are already emerging: London startup BioOrbit is exploring pharmaceutical production in low-Earth orbit, Space Solar is developing space-based solar power, and NATO’s innovation fund has backed a British startup building space factories.

“Rapidly falling launch costs could open the way to space colonisation and commercial activity far beyond low-Earth orbit. Ever cheaper launch costs could open up possibilities around solar power production in orbit, asteroid mining and a self-sustaining economy producing fuel, food and infrastructure in orbit or on the moon,” Terzi said.

The market has accelerated sharply since 2020, with payload launched into orbit growing by about 31 per cent a year, against 4 per cent annual growth between 2000 and 2019.

There is, however, a catch familiar to any small business dealing with a dominant supplier. SpaceX accounts for roughly 75 per cent of total payload sent to orbit, a grip on the market that Terzi has previously estimated exceeds the East India Company’s hold over shipping to the East Indies in the 19th century.

“Economic theory suggests that a profit-maximising quasi-monopolist will have a strong incentive to charge higher prices to potential clients, and some evidence already points in this direction,” the researchers said, warning that pricing power, along with geopolitical tension, could slow the decline.

The history of commercial spaceflight is also littered with expensive failures, as investors in Virgin Orbit’s bankruptcy can attest.

Still, the direction of travel is clear. “As launch costs fall and commercial activity expands, we are entering an era where spacefaring is like any other economy, driven by incentives, trade and investment, and economists should be paying more attention,” Terzi said. Business owners might reasonably conclude the same.

Jamie Young

Jamie Young is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, covering SME finance, employment law and Westminster policy since 2016. He has reported on every Budget and Autumn Statement since 2018, helped make sense of the ‘covid era’ and the bounce-back loan scheme from launch through the fraud investigations, and broke the magazine’s coverage of the 2024 late-payment reforms. He joined Business Matters straight from completing his BA in Administration from Exeter University and is NCTJ-qualified. Reach him at jyoung@cbmeg.co.uk

Inflation in the US eased last month as the cost of filling up at the pumps fell, official figures show.

Prices rose 3.5% in the year to June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), down from 4.2% recorded in May.

Gasoline prices decreased 9.7% last month, but are still much more expensive than a year ago. On Tuesday, the national average had risen to $3.86 a gallon from $3.79 a week ago, according to motorist advocacy group AAA.

However, while the rate of inflation has fallen, the easing of price rises could be short-lived due to the renewed conflict in the Middle East sending global oil prices up again.

The price of a barrel of Brent crude, which is the global benchmark for oil, hit $87 on Tuesday, an increase of almost $10 in the space of 24 hours.

The spike in the price of the commodity came after the fresh military strikes on Iran by the US this week, with President Donald Trump declaring a new naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz and a 20% charge on all cargo being shipped through the key waterway used for global trade.

The escalation has already led analysts to predict that inflation will rise in the coming months and that interest rate cuts are unlikely anytime soon.

“Gasoline prices are already back above June levels, meaning the next inflation report will heat up again,” said Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote Bank.

Ahead of his first address to the US Congress later, newly appointed Federal Reserve chairman Kevin Warsh said his committee had “no tolerance to persistently elevated inflation”.

“We share a resolute commitment to restoring price stability,” he said in prepared comments.

The Fed held US interest rates between 3.5% and 3.75% at Warsh’s first meeting in June and some analysts suggest rates could be raised in the coming months.

President Trump pushed Warsh’s predecessor, Jerome Powell, to cut interest rates, and has made it clear he expects Warsh to fulfil his demand for reductions in borrowing costs for Americans.

But Lindsay James, investment strategist at wealth management firm Quilter, said despite Warsh having got his “feet under the table, it does not mean rate cuts are looming in order to appease President Trump”.

“Instead, we are likely to see a conservative outlook from the Federal Reserve when it meets in a fortnight,” she added.