The report, released Wednesday, says that while the economy is growing, "that the pace of growth slowed... constrained by supply chain disruptions, labor shortages, and uncertainty around the Delta variant of COVID-19."
"Outlooks for near-term economic activity remained positive, overall, but some Districts noted increased uncertainty and more cautious optimism than in previous months," the report said.
Oil hit an intraday high of $84.25 a barrel, topping $84 a barrel for the first time in seven years.
The latest rally comes after a new government report showed weekly crude inventories unexpectedly fell by half a million barrels. Crude has now settled at seven-year highs for five consecutive trading days.
Brent crude, the world benchmark, gained nearly 1% to finish at a fresh three-year high of $85.82 a barrel.
There is no Federal Reserve meeting this month, so investors waiting for an official taper announcement will have to wait a little longer. But FOMC voting member Randal Quarles just threw those people a nugget.
The Fed next meets on November 2.
The high level of pandemic-era inflation has been a continuing thorn in the Fed's side. For months, the central bank kept saying the price increases were merely temporary, before acknowledging that they could stick around for longer.
And that presents a new challenge for policy makers: tightening policy to rein in inflation now, given that monetary policy moves rather slowly, could lead to lower demand just as supply chains are improving, said Quarles. "We could undershoot our inflation target."
Then again, there's a chance that price increases will stick around.
If the current supply bottlenecks were to last longer than they should, leading current levels of inflation to last longer, American consumers will take that into account for their buying decision.
"The fundamentals question we face at the Fed right now is ‘how long is too long’? I don’t think it has been too long right now," Quarles said.
Earnings season is in full swing and it's been good news so far, according to Schwab CIO Omar Aguilar:
So far this year, investments in cyclical stocks have been leading the market higher, Aguilar said.
But there are plenty of clouds on the horizon, he added: supply chain constraints are shoring up inflation and could hurt the recovery. This makes the Federal Reserve -- that guardian of stable prices -- nervous, and has led to expectations of tighter monetary policy going forward.
"While the market might expect that [rate hikes] will happen faster than anticipated, that doesn't mean that it will," Aguilar said. After all, the Fed has confirmed again and again how data-driven it is. Aguilar predicts a first interest rate increase may occur in the last quarter of 2022 or in early 2023.
Shares of Stronghold, a company that operates in Pennsylvania coal country, skyrocketed nearly 65% in their initial public offering.
CNN Business spoke to Stronghold CEO Greg Beard about the stock sale, which raised nearly $115 million for the company.
"We're very proud that we went public the regular way," Beard said, a jab at companies that have used so-called blank check mergers with special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) to go public instead of selling new shares in an IPO.
Stronghold takes waste coal, a byproduct from coal mining, to use as an energy source for its bitcoin mining operations. Beard is quick to point out that the company is not using new coal to create energy for its bitcoin mining rigs.
"We do burn it, but with emissions controls to knock out toxins," Beard said, explaining that this is a more environmentally friendly way to use coal assets.
Beard said that Stronghold's mining costs are about half of the industry average since the company owns its own mining hardware as well as its own power plant, and that the company plans to use some of the proceeds from the offering to buy more equipment.
Prices are rising all over the place as supply chain issues and high demand from consumers are keeping producers on their toes.
Some worry that prices could rise so far that Americans might stop spending. But so far it doesn't seem that's likely to happen.
"Consumers are moving forward facing this pent-up demand," she added.
But while the higher prices and supply chain problems have yet to hurt the US consumer, Piegza expects these problems to persist: "I think it will have to be around for quite some time," she said.
The two companies were not immediately available for comment. But a deal could make sense for PayPal, which has courted a younger user base with its Venmo payment sharing app.
The pilots unions at Southwest and American are on record opposing recently announced vaccine mandates for those airlines' employees. But Southwest and its pilots union both insisted that those objections had nothing to do with the service disruptions, in which the airline was left without the crews it needed to operate its full schedule for several days. They point to statistics on absenteeism and pilots volunteering for flights that they said show there was no sick-out.
Later, speaking with investors, Kirby clarified that he thinks it is a risk for airlines to allow employees to choose Covid testing or getting vaccinated, rather than requiring the vaccine for everyone, as United has done.
"Other airlines ... they're likely to have tens of thousands of employees that need to be tested every week," he said. "Can you imagine, you have tens of thousands of employees, people forget to get their tests, people do the test wrong, people don't get it done, people test positive. And if you think weather in one state can lead to a meltdown, imagine if you have thousands of employees a day calling in and saying, "For some reason, my test didn't pass."