All the details from the Fed’s long-awaited tapering announcement on Wednesday, in the central bank laid out a plan for slowing its Covid-era asset-buying program. During comments after the Fed’s release, Chair Powell affirmed his belief that the currently high levels of inflation “should fade,” though he stressed that a return to normalcy for supply chain disruptions is “uncertain” and noted the Fed “will not hesitate” to act to raise rates to fight inflation if the circumstances warrant it - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg and MarketWatch and Marketplace

If stock reaction is our gauge, the Fed and Chair Powell managed to navigate that tricky taper announcement with aplomb - NYTimes and WSJ and Bloomberg

Also, for the record, the Fed’s not the only central bank that’s turning back the dial on the unprecedented financial support it doled out during the depths of the pandemic - NYTimes

Despite a very public 2018 statement from its employees protesting the company’s involvement in Pentagon programs that caused it to pause its work on the venture, Google is once again “aggressively pursuing a major contract to provide its technology to the military.” Specifically, Google is vying to replace Microsoft as the key provider in the DOD’s Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability effort that “aims to modernize the Pentagon’s cloud technology and support the use of artificial intelligence to gain an advantage on the battlefield” - NYTimes and WSJ

The Meta folks acknowledged outages on their Facebook and Instagram messaging platforms on Wednesday, a month or so after “an hourslong global outage, which left billions of users unable to use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger” - WSJ

A look at the massive overhaul currently in the works at Credit Suisse in the wake of the twin Capital Management and Greensill Capital disasters, which hit the Swiss banking giant hard and have pushed it almost completely out of hedge-fund financing - WSJ

Continuing its impressive post-bankruptcy turn, Hertz officially filed for a stock offering on Wednesday and is seeking to list on the Nasdaq exchange (following its delisting last year after the company filed for Chapter 11 protection) - WSJ

Silicon Valley fav Allbirds, the SF-based sneaker maker, rose dramatically in its market debut this week, with shares rising 64% and valuing the company at nearly $4 billion - WSJ and Bloomberg and TechCrunch

A consideration of how Covid has impacted our dreams is raising a broader discussion of why humans dream in the first place - NYTimes

Stay safe, and get vaxxed,

MDR