FlyDubai Rescue Latest; Trump Calls on Powell to Resign from Fed Board

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

Karen Moskow (0:10)

Good morning, I'm Karen Moskow.

Alexis Christophoros (0:12)

And I'm Alexis Christophoros. Here are the stories we're following today.

Karen Moskow (0:16)

Well, Alexis, we want to begin in the skies. Investigators are trying to understand why a co-pilot stabbed his captain on a FlyDubai flight to Israel. The flight carrying 174 people made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia after the attack unfolded on board. We get more from Bloomberg Global Aviation Editor Benedict Camel.

Benedict Camel (0:35)

There is an axe that is stored generally in cockpits for safety measures. So we think that might have been the weapon.

Jake Silverman (0:40)

That was one of the questions yesterday that came up.

Benedict Camel (0:43)

What kind of weapon might the assailant have used? And what would that tell us about possible screening or lack thereof? So we think it was an axe that was used here. We also know what then happened. The pilot seemed to have had the power, the final sort of courage to open the door and let others in. Passengers rushed to the front of the plane.

A reserve crew that happened to be on the plane also came to the front and they managed to stabilize the aircraft. This could obviously have ended in dramatic catastrophe and it didn't. Everybody got off the plane safely.

Karen Moskow (1:16)

And that's Bloomberg's Benedict Hamill who says the plane plunged more than 14,000 feet in less than 30 seconds before the crew was able to stabilize the aircraft.

Alexis Christophoros (1:24)

And turning to the nation's capital now and President Trump once again calling for Jay Powell to resign from the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors. Trump blamed the former Fed chair for a headquarters renovation whose cost has risen to 2.4 billion dollars.

Donald Trump (1:38)

It's horrible what they've done. He's incompetent. And the man that's incompetent should not be sitting on the Federal Reserve Board. And I'm sure that Todd and everybody is going to be lucky because the report was a pretty bad report. The report said they did a bad job.

They didn't know what they were doing.

Alexis Christophoros (1:55)

The president's comments come after the Federal Reserve's internal watchdog found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing in the central bank's renovation of its Washington headquarters. We get more from Bloomberg Economics and Fed reporter Mike McKee.

Mike McKee (2:07)

They did not identify administrative misconduct during our evaluation. In other words, nobody did anything criminally wrong or to benefit themselves. They just did not manage this very well. The bottom line question here is why did the Fed go ahead with this because according to the Inspector General, they were not competent to do so or at least according to the report here.

Alexis Christophoros (2:31)

Bloomberg's Mike McKee says the Fed will implement the watchdog's recommendations, including engaging an independent auditor to scrutinize all awarded costs to date.

Karen Moskow (2:40)

Well, we now turn to the markets, Alexis, where we begin the final quarter of the year. The S&P 500 coming off a 2% gain in the third quarter. The benchmark index is up almost 12% for the year. Mark Pinto is head of America's Equities at Janice Henderson Group.

Mark Pinto (2:55)

If you look forward, the market is trading at 19 times earnings. And, you know, I remember many years ago, we talked about the inverse and the market PE essentially being the inverse of the 10-year bond rate. We are there today.

So in my view, that's not an uneven backdrop.

Karen Moskow (3:10)

Janice Henderson Group's Mark Pinto, by the way, the top performing stock in the third quarter was not an AI name. It was Moderna. The biotech company jumped 175 percent. It was spurred ahead by positive data behind a melanoma drug. It's been developing in partnership with Merck.

Alexis Christophoros (3:27)

And Karen, stock futures aren't mixed this morning. Micron Technology shares falling despite the chip company giving a sales forecast for the current quarter that beat estimates. That is due to the AI buildout fueling unprecedented demand. Jake Silverman covers Micron for Bloomberg.

Jake Silverman (3:43)

Micron has become kind of a really important story because it's ubiquitous within electronics, the products that they sell. And within AI, they sell a number of different products. I think for a while, people really focused on high bandwidth memory, but now we're just really focused on the entire product portfolio because pricing has increased so much, it's becoming an increasing percentage of not only enterprise and IT capex, but also importantly AI and hyperscaler capex as well.

Alexis Christophoros (4:12)

That's Bloomberg's Jake Silverman. Years of Micron down about three-quarters of a percent in the early going.