It’s the first Fed day of 2026, and Chair Jerome Powell is in the hot seat.
Central bank leaders will announce their January interest rate decision at 2 p.m. ET. The meeting follows weeks of political pressure from the Trump administration and a recently announced Department of Justice probe.
Business Insider will be covering projections from economists, the Fed decision, and market moves all day. Check back here for updates.
If your techie friend is texting a lobster, here’s why.
Clawdbot is an open-source AI agent that works around the clock and can connect to many common consumer apps. Users have asked their Clawdbots to organize their schedules, monitor vibe-coding sessions, and build new AI employees.
It’s scored some high-profile fans, from Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan to multiple Andreessen Horowitz partners. Many have praised it, others have meme’d it, and some have warned people about potential security concerns.
You can spot Clawdbot by its friendly lobster mascot.
Founded by Peter Steinberger, Clawdbot is an AI agent that manages “digital life,” from emails to home automation. Steinberger previously founded PSPDFKit.
In a key distinction from ChatGPT and many other popular AI products, the agent is open source and runs locally on your computer. Users then connect the agent to a messaging app like WhatsApp or Telegram, where they can give it instructions via text.
Clawdbot was named after the “little monster” that appears when you restart Claude Code, Steinberger said on the “Insecure Agents” podcast. He formed the tool around the question: “Why don’t I have an agent that can look over my agents?”
“I already did the whole startup thing,” Steinberger said. “I’m just here to have fun.”
Clawdbot runs locally on your computer 24/7. That’s led some people to brush off their old laptops. “Installed it experimentally on my old dusty Intel MacBook Pro,” one product designer wrote. “That machine finally has a purpose again.”
Others are buying up Mac Minis, Apple’s 5″-by-5″ computer, to run Clawdbot. Logan Kilpatrick, a product manager for Google DeepMind, posted: “Mac mini ordered.” It could give a sales boost to Apple, some X users have pointed out — and online searches for “Mac Mini” jumped in the last 4 days in the US, per Google Trends.
https://trends.google.com/explore?q=Mac%20Mini&date=today%201-m&geo=US
But Steinberger said buying a new computer just to run the AI isn’t necessary.
“Please don’t buy a Mac Mini,” he wrote. “You can deploy this on Amazon’s Free Tier.”
The Mac Mini buy-ups have spawned dozens of memes.
One founder wrote that his “meal prep” was a fridge full of Mac Minis and Monster energy drinks. An engineer joked that his Mac Mini had quit his job and divorced his wife. Another founder prophesied a wave of Mac Mini returns in two weeks.
As for Clawdbot, many techies were excited by the agent’s capabilities.
One founder asked it to make him a dinner reservation; when it couldn’t complete the task via OpenTable, it used its ElevenLabs skill to call the restaurant. “AGI is here and 99% of people have no clue,” he wrote.
Others were less impressed. One founder called it a “generational psyop,” joking that it took him 6 texts to get a calendar invite.
Clawdbot seems to be at least moderately popular. Steinberger posted on X that he had 89 GitHub pull requests — and that venture capitalists were flooding his inbox.
Is Clawdbot the future of agents? Some onlookers seem skeptical.
First, the setup process can be technical. A16z partner Olivia Moore described the process, from terminal commands to API keys. “For most consumers (or even prosumers), the learning curve is likely too steep,” she wrote.
Then there’s the security question. You are giving an AI agent almost unlimited access to your digital life and passwords, after all.
Rahul Sood, a former Microsoft exec who founded its investment arm, wrote that Clawdbot turned text messages into “attack surfaces” and had “zero guardrails by design.” He advised using it carefully.
Gave Clawdbot access to my portfolio.
“Trade this to $1M. Don’t make mistakes”
25 strategies. 3,000+ reports. 12 new algos.
It scanned every X post. Charted every technical. Traded 24/7.
It lost everything.
But boy was it beautiful. pic.twitter.com/wYpEZ3kB67— Kevin Xu (@kevinxu) January 26, 2026
One hacker described Clawdbot as hiring a “brilliant” butler who later opened your home to the public, allowing a stranger to read your diary.
Steinberger responded to these security concerns by outlining some guardrails users could employ, including reading the security document and avoiding adding Clawdbot to group chats.
How much should we hand over our digital lives to AI? A16z partner Justine Moore warned against being the “guy who automated his entire life with ClawdBot.”
President Donald Trump has taken another shot at big business, this time targeting banks.
On Friday, Trump said on Truth Social that he would call for a 10% cap on credit card interest for one year.
“Please be informed that we will no longer let the American Public be ‘ripped off’ by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%, and even more, which festered unimpeded during the Sleepy Joe Biden Administration,” Trump wrote in his social media post.
“Effective January 20, 2026, I, as President of the United States, am calling for a one year cap on Credit Card Interest Rates of 10%,” he added. “Coincidentally, the January 20th date will coincide with the one year anniversary of the historic and very successful Trump Administration.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. The president cannot unilaterally impose such a cap; it would require an act of Congress to advance. Similar efforts that have been advanced in Congress have yet to become law.
The announcement, made on Truth Social, is the latest in a series of swipes at big business this week.
Earlier this week, he announced that he is instructing “representatives” to buy $200 billion in mortgage bonds, aiming to lower interest rates and monthly payments. He also said he was barring “large institutional investors” from buying up single-family homes and signed an executive order that would limit defense contractors’ corporate spending.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Fed leaders have kept monetary policy moderately restrictive in recent months, holding rates steady until September before introducing two quarter-point cuts.
Chair Jerome Powell said in the last meeting that a rate change in December is “not a foregone conclusion, far from it” and “policy is not on a preset course,” though on Wednesday morning, CME FedWatch is showing a roughly 90% chance of another quarter-point reduction.
Fed leaders have kept monetary policy moderately restrictive in recent months, holding rates steady until September before introducing two quarter-point cuts.
Chair Jerome Powell said in the last meeting that a rate change in December is “not a foregone conclusion, far from it” and “policy is not on a preset course,” though on Wednesday morning, CME FedWatch is showing a roughly 90% chance of another quarter-point reduction.
Investors and consumers are hopeful for more cuts. Americans could see more affordable mortgage, auto, and credit card rates in the new year, and businesses would be able to borrow money more easily — a move that could juice the sluggish job market.
