May 16, 2025 • 48 mins
This is obviously an extraordinarily difficult time to make economic forecasts. Nobody really knows how tariffs will affect the US economy. And beyond that, nobody knows what the ultimate state of tariffs will be, or if they'll ever settle into a predictable rate. So how do you conduct monetary policy in this environment? On this episode, recorded at the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta, we spoke with Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic. He walked us through how he's thinking about the dual mandate right now, and why he has significantly dialed back his expectations for aggressive rate cuts since the start of 2025.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
And I'm Joe Wisenthal.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Joe, we're here in Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
I've never I'm embarrassed. I've never really spent any time
in Atlanta so far, but it seems lovely. We're in midtown.
I had a southern food.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I was going to ask, how much fried stuff have
you eaten?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I have to be really careful because I will devour
the food while I'm here.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
So I went out with our producer Carmen last night
and we had fried chicken, fried okra, fried green tomatoes.
I think there were a few other fried things. It
was so good, so good, all right, But we're not
actually here. We're not here just to talk about southern food.
We are actually here to interview someone very important of
the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. And I think it's
(01:02):
really interesting to be interviewing someone from the FED at
this particular moment in time, because just last week we
had an FMC meeting they decided to keep rates unchanged.
But then just a couple of days after that, over
the weekend, we had some pretty big news.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Well, that's right. So obviously it's an extraordinary difficult time
for literally everyone to understand what's going on with the economy.
The FED in particular, people have talked about it's in
a tight spot right because they're perhaps are signs of
economic deceleration. There's the potential inflationary impulse of the tariffs,
and the tariffs themselves keep moving. That being said, I
(01:42):
was sort of knock on wood between the reason they
tunt so to speak with China. Maybe things are quieting down,
Maybe we'll at least have some trade policy stability for
some period of time, which maybe makes things today slightly
easier to understand or to debate than they might have
even been a week ago.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
That is the big question. So why don't we get
right to it. We're speaking with Raphael Bostik. He is,
of course the president of the Atlanta FED. So Raphael,
thank you so much for coming on all thoughts.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Well, thank you for having me, and welcome to Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Thank you thanks for having us.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
So I'm going to start with the I guess the
obvious question, but you know, last week after the FOMC meeting,
you put out a statement saying that your baseline outlook
is for the economy to be less resilient than you
expected at the beginning of the year. Given the news
over the weekend a potential truce at least for ninety
days between China and the US, does that change your
(02:37):
outlook a little?
Speaker 4 (02:39):
I would say the overarching message that I've gotten from
the people I talked to and from our survey responses
and other things, and it's the reason why I was
comfortable with our policy action last week, is that there's
just a tremendous amount of uncertainty out there, and because
of that, businesses and households as well aren't really comfortable
(03:02):
making big decisions, and as a consequence, the amount of
energy I would have expected to see in the economy
is going to be less than that expectation is at
the beginning of this year. It looks like it's going
to be less than that for the remainder of this year,
and then we'll have to see how things play out
to determine how much less. But that uncertainty definitely is
(03:23):
weighing on consumers and business leaders alike.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Joe and I have been joking about trying to get
through podcast nowadays without saying the word uncertainty. I don't
think we've succeeded.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
It's literally never going to happen. That word comes up
in every episode. But actually, going back to Tracy's question,
what does it mean they become to me less resilient?
What did you mean by that term?
Speaker 4 (03:45):
So, what we've seen through the last several years is
an economy where all the analysts had expected things to
start slowing down. Yeah, you know, inflation went very high.
We had challenges in terms of supply chains, which led
people to worry maybe labor Marcus would loosen people who
(04:07):
lose their jobs. Sentiment expressed a lot of concern. Consumers
and households were all expressing their frustration with things. All
those things would have suggested that you would see less
economic activity.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
In the fastest phase of rate hikes in decades.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
Correct, And that just didn't happen. Like last year, GDP
was over two percent, which is faster than potential in
the face. Look, I go around and talk to a
lot of folks for much of the pandemic. The second
question I would get, after what are you going to
do with raids is when is their a session happening? Right?
(04:43):
That was the overarching sentiment. I used to would always say,
that's not my outlook. So people should expect that the
momentum will continue. That momentum did in fact continue, and
I call that resilience right, that strength and that continued
energy in the economy that allows firms to produce, people
(05:03):
to consume at robust levels. Then we come to today
where there's a lot of uncertainty, and the uncertainty hits
on many levels. And I'm sorry I'm saying this word.
Speaker 5 (05:13):
That it's just a joke.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
You're allowed to use the word uncertainly, right.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Well, thank you. Folks are not sure about the cost
of goods again, people are not sure whether that will
trigger recession. I will say, in the last six months,
acting the last three months, analysts have used the word
recession in their narrative about possibilities far more than they
have for quite some time. And all of that people notice,
(05:42):
and if folks think that there's going to be a
possibility that they're going to lose their job or those
sorts of things, they're going to engage differently. There are
perceptions of what a safety netlet needs to be for them.
That rainy day fund is going to change and they're
willing to spend out of savings, is going to change,
or even spend out of regular income. All of that
(06:04):
would suggests less energy. That's less resilience. And you know,
the less resilience does not necessarily mean recession. I would say,
even today, recession is not in my outlook, but it's
less right, So rather than the two percent or two
and a half percent, it may be one percent, maybe
a half percent. That's the thing that I'm looking to
(06:25):
really understand is as I try to keep my finger
on the pulse of the US economy.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I think one of the reasons a lot of people
expected recession going back to twenty twenty three twenty twenty
two was the soft data measures. The surveys looked absolutely terrible,
and you know, if you looked at something like consumer sentiment,
people seem to think it was basically the end of
the world. Fast forward to twenty twenty five, and we
(06:53):
do have a similar dynamic happening now where the soft
data is deteriorating but the hard data remains relatively wrong.
Is there a risk that this time is different and
maybe we're a little overconfident in the economy given what
happened with the soft data a couple of years ago.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
So you know, it's funny that you say this time
is different.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
I always hesitate to say on a podcast, but I
still do it.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Sometimes it can be done.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Yeah, well a lot of times it can be different,
but just often as not right. And so part of
what I try to do in my approach is never assume,
never have a preconceived notion or an expectation about what's
going to happen, but rather just pay attention and what
I would say on the sentiment, which is quite interesting.
You know I was a psych major undergrad. Oh I
(07:37):
didn't know that, and so psychoicon. Yeah, And so for me,
I know psychology is important, and I know psychology can
shift people's decision making even when the information set doesn't change,
and so understanding that psychology and how it translates into
decision making is a critical thing. The very interesting thing
(07:57):
with the sentiment today is that we have had two
realities with sentiment. Right. The conventional wisdom is that when
people are feeling bad, they do less. When sentiment turns negative,
things slow down. I think there's been a history to
show that that has been an experience. More often than not,
the anomaly or the odd one was this most recent
(08:18):
one where a sentiment was really down in the dumps,
you know, the vibe session and all those sorts of things.
But when push came to shove, consumers continued to go out,
people kept going to restaurants, going on trips, renovating their homes,
all those things, and the economy remained robust. So the
question we have today is which of those realities is
(08:41):
going to play out. And the one thing I would
say that's different today than in the pandemic environment is
that going into the pandemic, we hadn't had a high
recessionary period, and we also didn't have a situation where
the government was going to provide support for the economy
to robust away. So you might imagine that even in
(09:03):
the face of more negative sentiment. Look, the pandemic was
super stressful on many dimensions, and so it didn't surprise me.
People were a little kind of upset and rattled, if
you will, but they got a lot of support. People
kept their jobs. It's very interesting when I think about
the pandemic. A lot of it is people kept getting paid.
(09:26):
The employment rate rebounded incredibly fast, but they didn't have
things to spend on. They couldn't go to restaurants, they
couldn't go on vacation. So the household balance sheet was
actually quite stronger than you would expect to see in
sentiment turning south. Today, that balance sheet is quite a
different place. I talked to a lot of folks and
(09:47):
asked bankers, for example, compared to pre pandemic, where your
customer's balance is during the pandemic, everyone's like a lot higher,
thirty forty percent higher today, That's not what I'm hearing.
And many of them are back to pandemic levels, which
might mean that families response function maybe back to a
pre pandemic setting, and we'll just have to see how
(10:08):
that plays out.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Eventually, I want to get to the contemporary situation and
thinking about the tariffs, etc. But before we do, you know,
thinking back one of the residual lessons of the pandemic period,
and there are two big ones, and they've come up
a lot many lessons. But from the corporate perspective, one
is companies, maybe for the first time in a long time,
(10:46):
realize that they can raise prices without losing market share,
and so suddenly price increases become maybe back on the
strategy book. And then the other thing is the sort
of residual fear of being caught short labor, right, And
so for years there was this expectation you put a
help want it sign in the window, and you get
a line out the door, and labor is easy to
(11:09):
come by. And maybe one of the reasons that's been
theorized for the lack of layoffs and say twenty twenty two,
twenty twenty three, is just this fear that if you
cut jobs, you're not gonna be able to get them
back in the door when you need them. Do you
think those lessons still linger with us today when you
talk to business leaders today, do they still have sort
(11:29):
of these searing memories of not having been able to
staff their staff their facilities once demand starts picking up.
But do you think that still affects the sort of
marginal impulse to layoff workers.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
So I wouldn't put it exactly like that. I think
that there is a reluctance among firms, and this is
what I've heard from most firms. Yeah, that you know
they're going to hold tight today and see how things evolve.
And because there's two sided risk, because the economy might
be stronger than people are projecting today, or it might
be weaker. You don't want to take actions that might
(12:07):
cause you to have to do extra things to get
back to where you are, So I think there's a
precautionary posture that's happening today which is actually quite different
than what happened during the pandemic. We ask our firms
through our surveys, is a labor market easier for you today?
Or is it worse than it was a year ago
and two years ago, And uniform of the answer is easier.
(12:28):
We're hear easier to hire. The number of people who
apply for a vacant position is up in some instances considerably,
and the quality of the applicants is also a relative
to where they were in the pandemic. Back then, they
put a shingle out and if they got someone, it
(12:48):
was someone that they probably didn't want to hire, and
they were hiring them anyway because they didn't have options.
That's not the environment that we have today, and that's
important in terms of the the impulse of firms to
increase prices. I do think that's still real today. And
you know, one lesson that I think people did learn
(13:09):
through the pandemic was if you tell people conser up,
and it's obvious that if that wasn't in the debates,
then people understand that the price might have to go up.
And what businesses learned is that most consumers, most of
their customers, were okay with that. The question is are
they still okay with that? And to me, I would say,
(13:32):
there are two really interesting dynamics that I think are
potentially emerging. One is I think firms are going to
try to apply the lesson learned from the pandemic. They
have an assumption or an expectation that the consumer response
is going to be exactly the way it was before.
We will see if it actually is. And I think
(13:55):
the concern about the level of prices that we heard
a lot about in the last six months suggests that
maybe they won't, but maybe they will, And in fact,
it might actually be more complicated in that for some
households it may be the size of the change, So
if it's it's a smaller incremental it may not register.
(14:18):
For others it could be one penny and that's too much.
And then the third piece to this is sector bisector.
Do you wind up seeing different responses And then if
you wind up with something like that, and I think
that's probably where we're going to wind up, then forecasting
it at the aggregate level becomes incredibly challenging. I mean,
you have to wind up doing a lot more. Your
(14:39):
spreadsheets get larger, the math gets more complicated, and so
you know, I think our job will get a bit
more challenging.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
So, just on this point, at the press conference last week,
Howe seemed to suggest this idea of tariff impacts maybe
operating at different speeds. The impact on inflation could potentially
come quicker, especially if you had a bunch of companies
immediately raising prices to offset the cost, But the impact
(15:09):
on something like the labor market could take a lot
longer to actually feed through, maybe even because some businesses
still have residual scars from the pandemic or whatever. How
do you deal with those two different factors operating at
different speeds. It seems very difficult.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
Well, we have a very dynamic economy, and that's just
an overarching feature of the environment that we work in.
I think part of what we try to do in
Atlanta is try to get hints about the longer run
things in real time as much as possible, because for
(15:48):
many of these things, if you wait for them to
show up in the national data, you're two months behind,
a quarter behind, sometimes a couple weeks behind, and then
there's more of a scramble. We learned and the Great
Financial Crisis that we needed to be asking much more front,
forward and prospective questions about what businesses are seeing, what
(16:09):
they're feeling, and how they're going to respond, so that
even if the revelation happens at different speeds, the impulses
and the drivers will be more contemporaneous, and if you
can discern those, then you might be able to get
ahead start on where things are going. What I would
say today is and it gets back to what we
(16:29):
were just talking about. I think many firms will probably
try to pass through costs to the extent they see them.
They will learn pretty quickly whether those cost increases are
being taken on by customers or being rejected by them,
and then they'll have to make a decision about what
is their protection production function going to look like. And
(16:50):
once they make that decision, then they'll decide what kind
of workforce they need. I'm expecting that those lessons will
be learned quickly and what I've As I go around,
I talk to Chamber of Commerce, I do open discussions
and cities all across the sixth district. I say, if
you see someone doing something that's really different than what
they were doing two weeks ago, you need to call
(17:10):
us and let us know, because we need to be
collecting that information to try to understand whether a single
impulse is actually a trend and whether there are some
lessons that can be learned from the collection of the masses.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
We need a fed tip line.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Wait, how many calls have you been getting? Have you
been getting calls?
Speaker 4 (17:29):
So no, nobody calls me, but we have a team
that's out in the field and they are getting calls
on a regular basis. You know, when I got here,
I was really I didn't really know any of this.
But we have a network of staffers whose job it
is is just to have relationships with business leaders and
with community folks all over the Southeast and come and
(17:50):
see them and talk to them in really conversational, unstructured
ways for ninety minutes two hours, just to get a
sense of where are they, how are they feeling, and
what are they worrying about, what are they excited about?
What's changed, and because the relationships are personal on some level,
people do feel more comfortable picking up the phone and
(18:11):
telling us things. And it's been something that's really helped us.
So we knew fairly early on that people's horizon in
the pandemic was expanding. So the right we did a survey.
We do a number of surveys. We have a survey
shop here, and we did survey of businesses and asked them, Okay,
in April of twenty twenty, when do you think this
will be done? They said September of twenty twenty. In
(18:35):
January of twenty twenty, when don't we asked them. They
said probably another eighteen months, right, And it was this
learned experience, and we got to see their understanding of
the environment evolve in real time in ways that really
I think helped us understand what questions we needed to
ask and what kind of decisions and policy changes that
(18:56):
we should be looking for. It's been quite interesting, and
I think there's going to be some of that. There's
going to be a lot of that that happens in
the next several months. Look, we've just gone through a
period where people were expecting tariffs. I think many people
didn't expect the tariffs to roll out at the scale
that we saw, and it's causing everyone to think about, Okay, now,
(19:17):
if this is our new reality, how do I think
about this? What am I going to do? And just
as it was at the early stages of the pandemic,
people are kind of doing it on the fly. And
the only way to really understand how things are going
when people are doing on the fly is to be
there with them and to be continually asking them and
seeing how their decision making and their changes are evolving
(19:41):
as they get more insights. So as the tariff environment shifts,
as the numbers move around, there's learning when you see, oh,
their strategy was a and now their strategy is M
like that's saying something about their thought process and what
they're likely to do and moving forward.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
To So, let's talk a little bit more about the
intersection of tariffs and monetary policy. And something that's been
(20:20):
on my mind in particular is tariffs are a supply
shock in some way, and what I've been wondering about
is does that therefore increase the terminal rate in terms
of how low the FED can ultimately go in a
cutting cycle Okay, your supply constrained on some level. Perhaps
(20:41):
also in theory, there's going to be some force development
in the United States of some industrial capacity, and so
that's a positive activity impulse. Does that mean when you
think about like weakness and when you think about possible
rate cuts, which is what everyone is expecting at some point,
does that increase the floor of how.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Low you can go? I don't think of it like that, okay,
But first of all, I think being able to say
a blanket statement on anything like this is going to
be quite challenging. It would be challenging if you just
picked one tariff rate for the whole world. Yeah, in
an environment now where there's so much variation and descript
(21:22):
price discrimination country to country and sector to sector, it's
really difficult to know how to add it all up.
And then you overlay that the numbers can change, we're expecting.
One of the things I do when I talk to
folks in public settings, show a hands how many people
think that the tariff numbers that we see today are
going to be the tariff numbers that we see a
(21:43):
month from now, and anon raises, nobody's hands goes up.
And in part that's by design right, So we know
their negotiations going on. We know it's a ninety day
moratorium in some of these instances, So that change that's
out there means that it's going to be very challenging.
I try to go back to just our basic mandate.
We got price stability and we have maximum employment. Maximum
(22:07):
sustainable employment is how I like to think about it.
And so what I try to do is figure out, Okay,
given all the things that are going on, what's that
likely to do for us getting closer to our two
percent target and inflation? And what's that likely to do
in terms of the movement of labor markets relative to
some broad notion of full employment today. What I would
(22:31):
say is what I hear from analysts when I talk
to my economists in the building, like, relative to the
pre tariff environment, tariffs have a put upward force on inflation,
and so that means that our policy is going to
have to anticipate and to some extent potentially push against
(22:52):
those inflationary forces to the extent that we see them.
So that will put a limit on where our current
policy stands is Now, you ask something about a broader
economy wide new fundamental as to like an R star
type of thing. I think there's a lot of debate.
There's a lot of debate on sort of our star
in nonturbulent times, for sure, and so today I think
(23:16):
you would see the same thing. Look, I think pre
pandemic coming out of the Great Financial Crisis, and actually
even before that, we knew there was a long secular
decline in our star demographics and a whole host of
other things were believed to be behind it. And the
notion that you could see inflation move the way it
has kind of caused people just have to step back
(23:38):
and say, well, wait a minute, maybe our notion of
the immutable is not so immutable. And I think that
debate is being taken on board right now. And so
the other thing to think about is look to the
extent that this that we are in a period where
firms are redoing their supply chains and perhaps not looking
(24:00):
for lowest cost location. That has implications for just it
could potentially have implications for what a baseline new level
of inflation is likely to be writ large. And if
that is what happens, then sure all the fundamental dynamics
and measures are going to change as well. But we
(24:20):
haven't seen that, and you know it's been as I've
talked to a number of producers and they have production
in multiple countries, and they say, you can put the
same plant in three different countries and they will have
different levels of productivity, and that is interesting, but it
also means that the specifics of where they put things down,
(24:44):
how much production happens in those places, and then where
assembly and it all comes together is incredibly material and
folks don't have the answers to those things now. So
I actually try to shy away from thinking about those
bigger issues right now and just say, look, we're in
a period of tremendous transition where we had a received
(25:08):
wisdom cost minimization and production free and open trade, and
that equilibrium is being broken. And when you're in dis
equilibrium in ECON, you know, there's the I forget but
they say it, but there are an infinite number of
possible new equilibriums that you could achieve. And so what
(25:29):
we're trying to do now is kind of figure out
are there ways to narrow and get a sense of
what are the ranges of possibilities given where things are going,
So then we can start to think about those parameters
make judgments about what best long run policy might look
like on.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
The neutral rate our star. I was going to ask
if it's even a useful concept given the current levels
of uncertainty, if it's actually even possible to try to
attempt to navigate by the stars.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
Well, you know, the chair famously had a speech on
the stars and express some skepticism that the scars are
always going to be reliable guides. I think there are
really two things, and you know, I was psych major
undergrad in addition to econ One of the things I
take took or have taken from being in both those
professions is that economic models are models. There are stylized
(26:26):
characterizations of how the world actually works. We should all
understand and appreciate that there is a confidence interval around
any number that comes out from these models, even though
some econas may declare them as truth, and you should
never deviate from those sorts of things. It's one of
the reasons why, you know, a lot of the rules
are useful, but the actual numbers that come out never
(26:47):
hit right where the rule is, and so there are
other things that are going to influence what makes sense
from a policy perspective, and those are the things that
we have to actually acknowledge. People are not ruthless utility maximizers.
Firms aren't either. And in fact, what's been interesting for
me in this pandemic period is the old model I'm
(27:09):
calling this more like a high level was cost minimization,
and that means find the place where you can produce
everything at the lowest cost, do all your stuff there,
because that makes you the most efficient. What that doesn't do, though,
is acknowledge that if you're locally reliant or dependent, if
anything happens in that locality, your ability to produce basically
(27:29):
goes to zero. So there's a higher variance potential in
your output. And we were not putting any cost value
on that, and we learned that there is a cost
value on that. And so the change of philosophy that
might be going on right now, and we'll get to
see how many people really start to set up these
supply chains with the eye toward diversifying locations just for
(27:53):
reducing variants. That's a new thing and that could be
quite interesting to look out moving forward.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
So I want a T shirt that says ruthless utility maximizer.
Speaker 5 (28:03):
I think could rock.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
The most people aren't, but Tracy is actually the one person.
Speaker 5 (28:09):
But I do want the T shirt.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Economic We'll see, we'll see what we can do. I'll
look around and see if there's some economic education club
that does that.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Prior to the Turriff's actually thinking back to like January,
et cetera, we didn't know anything about what the terff
for a lot. Was the US economy decelerating, like was
it an economy that was sort of due for several
more rate cuts?
Speaker 4 (28:34):
So my outlook at the beginning of the year was
that the economy would continue to grow in a solid
way and the place would return to two percent over time.
And my expectation was somewhere toward the end of this
year we would be at that point where it would
be appropriate for US to have a neutral stance for policy.
(28:56):
So I had maybe three or four rate cuts for
the year with the idea that there was a lot
of momentum. We're still over two percent GDP, hiring us
happening at a robust clip, and we could avoid having
sort of a recessionary negative outcome. I felt like the
bones of the economy were pretty solid and strong, and
(29:17):
you know that's why I talk about the resilience and
all those sorts of things. So even with a slow down,
I thought that we would still see pretty robust growth.
People would still have jobs. One of the things that
was quite useful for us to see was that wage
growth was returning to a pre pandemic levels, So we
were evolving to an environment that was fairly sustainable and
(29:38):
which going to be Yeah. I never used those words, right,
So I try to stay away from that stuff because
it means different things to different people. But if that's
what you want to call it, I'm happy for that,
you know. To me, I think one of the questions
that I ask is to what extent once we get
through and get to some degree of steady state, we
(30:00):
will still have those aspects of the US economy still
in place at the same level as the strength, and
you know, something we're going to continue to look at
and look for as we go through the rest of
twenty twenty five and into twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
So you mentioned wage growth just then, and one of
the things I've been thinking about when it comes to
inflation under the tariff regime is wage growth. Do you
think it's fair to say that the chances of having
a lot of wage growth alongside higher goods prices is
lower than it was post pandemic. And if that's the case,
(30:34):
does it perhaps give the FED more room to look
through higher goods prices if you're not worried about you know,
a big self reinforcing inflationary spiral.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
Yeah, so that's a very interesting question. I would say
it's possible. One of the things that's been quite interesting
is I think in this environment, wage growth has been
a trailing indicator as opposed to a leading indicator. And
so what we will see if that continues is that
a lot will depend on the extent to which consumers
(31:07):
are willing to take on price. If they're unwilling to
take on price, then the dynamic that we have is
pretty set. And then we'll I think we'll see different
strategies taken by firms as to how to manage their
increased cost basis, and to the extent that is necessary,
you might see some reductions in the staffing level. I
(31:28):
don't think you'd see reductions in wages. But again, a
lot of this depends. You know, there's a big difference
between a ten percent tariff rate a forty percent tariff
rate and at one hundred and twenty five percent tariffyrate.
As to what the cost implications are going to be
and the ability of firms to absorb them in their margins,
it's supposed to having to pass those on, and so
(31:51):
again this is another one where I think the details
will matter in a pretty significant way, and you know,
we'll have to see where it goes.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
You know, in the wake of the original big inflation
in the late seventies and early eighties, and it took
a while for that to come down, but I get
the strong oppression over the years that for the FED
this was like a crowning achievement of sorts, having defeated
that inflation and had several years of price stability. And
(32:20):
I also think that you know, fast forward in the
wake of the Great financial Crisis, particularly in the latter
half of the twenty tens, that something resembling what people
would call full employment has been another achievement. And I
think that you know, if you go back to Powell's
speech in August to Jackson Hall last year, as part
of what he said, like this has been an achievement
to get low unemployment and we don't want to lose
(32:42):
that we don't want to let it slip again in
your view, like, how important is that for you know,
when you think about the potential tension of the dual mandate,
how do you think about sort of like preserving that
achievement of maintaining a low level of unemployment even in
the phase of all this uncertainty and potentially you know,
(33:04):
inflationary shocks from the form of tariffs.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
So let me say two things on this. First, I'm
very pleased that during my tenure here the two mandates
have not been in conflict. They've not been intentions, so
I've not really had to face that challenge. We've either
had low inflation so we could worry more about the employment,
or we've had really rock solid employment so we could
worry about inflation. I think one of the things that
(33:31):
was quite interesting to where the end of the twenty
tens was the effort by the FED, and it started
before I got here to be less preemptive around anticipate
anticipated in inflation must happen, because we've never seen an
environment where inflation didn't arise, and so and so there
(33:54):
was a philosophy that was embraced to say, Okay, we
should actually see signs of inflation before we get too
crazy ones. And what we wound up seeing was unemployment
levels fall to numbers that were inconceivable. Right, So at
one point unemployment was a three and a half percent
(34:15):
somewhere like that. When I first started my career as
an economist, the unemployment rate that was viewed to be
the natural rate of unemployment was I think it was
like six percent. And so the idea that you could
get to three and a half without seeing inflation was
just just it was like crazy to talk, right, And
(34:37):
so for us to then just well, let's let it go,
and then it kept going and kept going and kept going.
I think that was a tremendous you could call it
an achievement, but it was a discovery that a lot
of our perceip or perceptions are understanding of what the
possible could be might be constrained by our own preconceived
(35:03):
notions of where the world is. And in this instance,
you know, I think about all the advances that have
been made in technology in job searches, so a lot
of natural unemployment is about you know, it takes time
for the match to happen between an employer and an employee.
Now you can sit over lunch on your phone and
submit like one hundred applications to things. Businesses are using
(35:26):
AI type tools to review resumes to really be able
to pick out the people and that match happens faster.
If that's the case, then the natural rate should be lower.
And now the question is how much lower? And you
know this is something we argue about. I actually think
it's as much lower than others in my building do.
But I think the experience would show that change did happen,
(35:50):
and it happened in ways that we could get more
people employed and in a sustainable way without being a problem,
without that being a problem for inflation.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
I wanted to go back to something Joe brought up,
which is the sort of I guess cross current of
monetary versus fiscal policy. And I get that, you know,
monetary is always existing alongside fiscal policy, which may change
in various directions, but it does feel like the tariffs
are sort of an extreme example of that in the
(36:19):
sense that they have a big impact on the market,
so they have a big impact on financial conditions, and
they seem to be changing constantly. As we've been discussing,
how is the fed just generally thinking about I guess,
the tension between your own monetary policy versus the changes
in financial conditions being wrought by the Trump administration and
(36:42):
its impact on financial conditions.
Speaker 4 (36:45):
So I don't think it's different in character, but it
is different in magnitude. And so look, we take all
non monetary policy as given right, and then you know,
I just respond and thinking about where we need to
go based on where that part of policy is and
(37:07):
where businesses are and all those sorts of things. These
changes here that are being made are very much like that.
Like trade policy is not something that the FIT manages,
and there are lots of different ways so you can
influence it, and so that's what we're seeing here. I
think for me, one of the things that's been quite
interesting to reflect on is that if your standard econ,
(37:30):
if you do your models, it's all marginal this and
marginal that, and the margins is calculus. So these are small,
small changes on the status quo, and what we see
today are decidedly not small changes relatives to the status quo.
And so the question is does that require a different
kind of conceptual model about what response functions will be
(37:52):
for businesses and for families and households. That's the bigger
question that we're having to wrestled with, which is different
than what we usually do, but it is it is
not so much about the idea that you know, there's
a policy and it changed how financial markets are thinking
about risk, right. There are lots of other things that
do that as well, and you know that's just part
(38:14):
of the landscape.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
With any luck, we might have some policy stability for
a while, lots of ninety day pauses, et cetera, and
I have you know, my personal guess is that ninety
day pauses could turn into more ninety day pauses at
some point in the future. You mentioned at the beginning
of the year, you know, maybe this was an economy
that would you know, require or be three to four
(38:37):
cuts today May fourteen, assuming some policy stability. I'm mindful
of the fact that our Bloomberg colleagues would love a
nice clean headline. But what U So I've tried to
do them a favor here. What does the rest of
the year look like for you from a policy perspective?
How many cuts are we getting?
Speaker 4 (38:59):
All Right? So, okay, I will say, so I'm required
to do this, right, so so you know, and then
the plot some avic and our perspectives. I have one
cut for the year, and in part it's because I
think the uncertainty is unlikely to resolve itself quickly right days.
(39:21):
So we have ninety days in two settings, right So
you have the reciprocal tariff ninety day window, you have
the China tariff ninety day window, which is at a
different periodicity than that. And we have all these negotiations
and we don't know how any of them. We know
the UK, but other than that, you know, it's all I.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Think that's formally signed anyway.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
Well you would, yeah, I just I just read the
Bloomberg headline on it and it seemed like it was done.
And so so until there's uncertainty, you know what, We've
asked our businesses like what kind of plans are you
making for this year? And many of them are like, well,
I don't, I really know. We're going to keep changed
to a minimum until we get that resolution. And so
(40:06):
if that uncertainty continues, then I expect we're not going
to see the same level of big investments or those
sorts of things, and that will then push out the
time before we'll be able to get to that a delibrium.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
I think we both have two more short questions and
just real quickly on those business conversations. And this is
something that's been coming up in episodes. Do you see
a divergence between small and large businesses? Large businesses who
have the balance sheet can lose money for a couple
of quarters. For a small business, they make a mistake,
they make an order. There's a huge tariff bill at
the poor it might be existential. Have you noticed a
(40:40):
sort of a distributional effect in terms of planning and.
Speaker 4 (40:43):
How and the effect absolutely, And I think forecasts for sales,
forecasts for costs are much higher for small buinesses. We
talk to small bus leaders. You could see this in
our survey responses. They're the ones who are feeling most
at risk, and we'll just have to I mean, I
think they're hoping that this is a short episode and
(41:03):
we can get to a new steady state so they
can understand how to run their businesses.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
I have just one more question, and it's a very
important one. We heard that you like birding. Do you
prefer seeing hawks or doves?
Speaker 5 (41:16):
This is a very serious question.
Speaker 4 (41:18):
You know, that's very good. You know when I first started,
I got asked in my hawker dev and I said
I was an owl, and I have doves in my
backyard pretty regularly. Mourning doves.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
They're the stupidest birds.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
But it's always super exciting when a red shoulder a
redtail hawk comes swooping in or Cooper's So just like
when they ask parents their their favorite child and they say,
we love them all. I love all my birds.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
I don't love mourning doves. They're idiotic. They're like they
have a death wish and always are getting killed and
building their nests in stupid places, and then it becomes
my problem. Okay, enough about mourning doves. Raphael Bostic, thank
you so much. Really appreciate the invite to Atlanta and
this converse.
Speaker 4 (42:00):
Thank you, thanks for coming down to Atlanta. I look
forward to talking again sometime in the future anytime.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
That was a flash the time, Joe.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
That was fantastic getting to talk to I guess Bostic
is non voting at the moment, but getting to talk
to a FED person at this really interesting juncture in
economic and I guess central bank history.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
It's such an interesting time for all kinds of reasons.
I mean, you know the fact that the COVID shock
still looms with us in various ways, clearly in particularly
just the fact that you know, up until very recently,
arguably depending on how you measure it, inflation still running
(42:53):
above target. But this is sort of uncharted territory to
some extent because of the speed of Paul changes in
both directions in DC. You know, I wrote in a
newsletter I think it was last week after the Polle's
press conference. You know, I've never heard more different ways
to express the concept of we don't know anything that's
(43:15):
about to happen. That's right, an extreme level of humility
is required in this moment.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Well, he certainly mentioned the word uncertainty a number of times. Yeah,
it really is. Well, the other thing I was thinking is,
I guess the complexity of trying to do economic analysis
in the current period is really really coming through. And
I thought the point that Bostik was making about productivity
depending on where people actually move manufacturing or move operations too,
(43:43):
like that level of detail seems almost impossible to predict.
And yet productivity is obviously something that matters enormously for
the economy.
Speaker 5 (43:53):
What is it?
Speaker 3 (43:53):
Who are we talking to and they're quoting Paul Krugman
someone recently, and they're like, productivity isn't everything, but it's
almost everything. I guess pretty much all there is. You know,
you think from the perspective of any sort of international
any company that has international ties, and now we've had
like two supply shocks in a way in a very
(44:14):
short period of time, you could almost be forgiven for
post COVID say, oh, you know, this is a once
in a century type of thing. So I don't know
how much we're going to change our businesses, but a
now we've had this other one, and so at some
point this idea of moving supply chains, which has already
like been happening to various degrees, has to be top
(44:35):
of mind. And how these things get organized, and what
do you reshore, and what do you friendshore and what
do you put in Vietnam that has links to both
US and China. They're policymaking in a state of flux,
for sure.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
Yeah, and it also gets harder for companies, right like
the longer this kind of goes on, because you had
the first wave of reshoring after the twenty sixteen Trump administration,
and now what's left to move places, especially if you
have tariffs on both Vietnam and China.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
You know, what I've been thinking about. I would never
give financial advice on a podcast because it would be terrible,
But something I've been thinking about a little bit lately
is that you actually might have this situation. This doesn't
even really have to do with our conversation, but straight
thought in my head. You actually have the situation now,
which I think is kind of interesting, in which if
you're an American importer, you're obviously thinking at least to
(45:27):
some extent, about diversifying the base of where you source from.
So do you like go more to Latin America, do
you go to other non China parts of Asia and
so forth. If you're a Chinese exporter, you might be
thinking about the same thing. There's already been this pressure
from Chinese exports, just a business pressure to move some
of their lower end manufacturing outside of China. Now there's
(45:50):
the fact that there's this big terarifa disparity, assuming that
current levels stay roughly stable, so it'll be interesting to
see if there is some sort of, you know, positive
impulse to non China em generally, because it strikes me
that a lot of different entities really do have an
(46:11):
economic reason to truly diversify in a way that maybe
hadn't been the case several years ago.
Speaker 5 (46:17):
Oh for sure.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
And we saw that in the episode we did with
Sarah Lafleur when one of her Chinese manufacturers was talking about, well,
if we can't export a bunch of stuff to America,
maybe we start selling m. M. Lafleur clothes into China
that as well. Right, it's like on both sides of
the equation, so many moving parts. You know what, I'm
thinking about eating more fried things before I leave Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Okay, so I got to wrap it up.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
Yeah, shall we leave it there?
Speaker 3 (46:42):
Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
This has been another episode of the ad Thoughts podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
And I'm joe Isnenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow Rafae Albostic. He's on LinkedIn. You could check out
some of his posts there. Follow our producers Kerman Rodriguez
at Kerman Armadesh O, Bennette Dashbug, and Kilbrooks at Kalebrooks.
More oddlotscontent go to bloomberg dot com slash odlots, where
we have all of our episodes in a daily newsletter,
(47:09):
and you can chat about all of these topics twenty
four to seven, including monetary policy with fellow listeners in
our discord discord dot gg, slash od loots.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
And if you enjoy Oddlots. If you like it when
we travel around the US interviewing regional FED presidents, then
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And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can
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you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel on
Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
And I'm Joe Wisenthal.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Joe, we're here in Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
I've never I'm embarrassed. I've never really spent any time
in Atlanta so far, but it seems lovely. We're in midtown.
I had a southern food.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
I was going to ask, how much fried stuff have
you eaten?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I have to be really careful because I will devour
the food while I'm here.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
So I went out with our producer Carmen last night
and we had fried chicken, fried okra, fried green tomatoes.
I think there were a few other fried things. It
was so good, so good, all right, But we're not
actually here. We're not here just to talk about southern food.
We are actually here to interview someone very important of
the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. And I think it's
(01:02):
really interesting to be interviewing someone from the FED at
this particular moment in time, because just last week we
had an FMC meeting they decided to keep rates unchanged.
But then just a couple of days after that, over
the weekend, we had some pretty big news.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Well, that's right. So obviously it's an extraordinary difficult time
for literally everyone to understand what's going on with the economy.
The FED in particular, people have talked about it's in
a tight spot right because they're perhaps are signs of
economic deceleration. There's the potential inflationary impulse of the tariffs,
and the tariffs themselves keep moving. That being said, I
(01:42):
was sort of knock on wood between the reason they
tunt so to speak with China. Maybe things are quieting down,
Maybe we'll at least have some trade policy stability for
some period of time, which maybe makes things today slightly
easier to understand or to debate than they might have
even been a week ago.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
That is the big question. So why don't we get
right to it. We're speaking with Raphael Bostik. He is,
of course the president of the Atlanta FED. So Raphael,
thank you so much for coming on all thoughts.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Well, thank you for having me, and welcome to Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Thank you thanks for having us.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
So I'm going to start with the I guess the
obvious question, but you know, last week after the FOMC meeting,
you put out a statement saying that your baseline outlook
is for the economy to be less resilient than you
expected at the beginning of the year. Given the news
over the weekend a potential truce at least for ninety
days between China and the US, does that change your
(02:37):
outlook a little?
Speaker 4 (02:39):
I would say the overarching message that I've gotten from
the people I talked to and from our survey responses
and other things, and it's the reason why I was
comfortable with our policy action last week, is that there's
just a tremendous amount of uncertainty out there, and because
of that, businesses and households as well aren't really comfortable
(03:02):
making big decisions, and as a consequence, the amount of
energy I would have expected to see in the economy
is going to be less than that expectation is at
the beginning of this year. It looks like it's going
to be less than that for the remainder of this year,
and then we'll have to see how things play out
to determine how much less. But that uncertainty definitely is
(03:23):
weighing on consumers and business leaders alike.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Joe and I have been joking about trying to get
through podcast nowadays without saying the word uncertainty. I don't
think we've succeeded.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
It's literally never going to happen. That word comes up
in every episode. But actually, going back to Tracy's question,
what does it mean they become to me less resilient?
What did you mean by that term?
Speaker 4 (03:45):
So, what we've seen through the last several years is
an economy where all the analysts had expected things to
start slowing down. Yeah, you know, inflation went very high.
We had challenges in terms of supply chains, which led
people to worry maybe labor Marcus would loosen people who
(04:07):
lose their jobs. Sentiment expressed a lot of concern. Consumers
and households were all expressing their frustration with things. All
those things would have suggested that you would see less
economic activity.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
In the fastest phase of rate hikes in decades.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
Correct, And that just didn't happen. Like last year, GDP
was over two percent, which is faster than potential in
the face. Look, I go around and talk to a
lot of folks for much of the pandemic. The second
question I would get, after what are you going to
do with raids is when is their a session happening? Right?
(04:43):
That was the overarching sentiment. I used to would always say,
that's not my outlook. So people should expect that the
momentum will continue. That momentum did in fact continue, and
I call that resilience right, that strength and that continued
energy in the economy that allows firms to produce, people
(05:03):
to consume at robust levels. Then we come to today
where there's a lot of uncertainty, and the uncertainty hits
on many levels. And I'm sorry I'm saying this word.
Speaker 5 (05:13):
That it's just a joke.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
You're allowed to use the word uncertainly, right.
Speaker 4 (05:18):
Well, thank you. Folks are not sure about the cost
of goods again, people are not sure whether that will
trigger recession. I will say, in the last six months,
acting the last three months, analysts have used the word
recession in their narrative about possibilities far more than they
have for quite some time. And all of that people notice,
(05:42):
and if folks think that there's going to be a
possibility that they're going to lose their job or those
sorts of things, they're going to engage differently. There are
perceptions of what a safety netlet needs to be for them.
That rainy day fund is going to change and they're
willing to spend out of savings, is going to change,
or even spend out of regular income. All of that
(06:04):
would suggests less energy. That's less resilience. And you know,
the less resilience does not necessarily mean recession. I would say,
even today, recession is not in my outlook, but it's
less right, So rather than the two percent or two
and a half percent, it may be one percent, maybe
a half percent. That's the thing that I'm looking to
(06:25):
really understand is as I try to keep my finger
on the pulse of the US economy.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
I think one of the reasons a lot of people
expected recession going back to twenty twenty three twenty twenty
two was the soft data measures. The surveys looked absolutely terrible,
and you know, if you looked at something like consumer sentiment,
people seem to think it was basically the end of
the world. Fast forward to twenty twenty five, and we
(06:53):
do have a similar dynamic happening now where the soft
data is deteriorating but the hard data remains relatively wrong.
Is there a risk that this time is different and
maybe we're a little overconfident in the economy given what
happened with the soft data a couple of years ago.
Speaker 4 (07:10):
So you know, it's funny that you say this time
is different.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
I always hesitate to say on a podcast, but I
still do it.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Sometimes it can be done.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
Yeah, well a lot of times it can be different,
but just often as not right. And so part of
what I try to do in my approach is never assume,
never have a preconceived notion or an expectation about what's
going to happen, but rather just pay attention and what
I would say on the sentiment, which is quite interesting.
You know I was a psych major undergrad. Oh I
(07:37):
didn't know that, and so psychoicon. Yeah, And so for me,
I know psychology is important, and I know psychology can
shift people's decision making even when the information set doesn't change,
and so understanding that psychology and how it translates into
decision making is a critical thing. The very interesting thing
(07:57):
with the sentiment today is that we have had two
realities with sentiment. Right. The conventional wisdom is that when
people are feeling bad, they do less. When sentiment turns negative,
things slow down. I think there's been a history to
show that that has been an experience. More often than not,
the anomaly or the odd one was this most recent
(08:18):
one where a sentiment was really down in the dumps,
you know, the vibe session and all those sorts of things.
But when push came to shove, consumers continued to go out,
people kept going to restaurants, going on trips, renovating their homes,
all those things, and the economy remained robust. So the
question we have today is which of those realities is
(08:41):
going to play out. And the one thing I would
say that's different today than in the pandemic environment is
that going into the pandemic, we hadn't had a high
recessionary period, and we also didn't have a situation where
the government was going to provide support for the economy
to robust away. So you might imagine that even in
(09:03):
the face of more negative sentiment. Look, the pandemic was
super stressful on many dimensions, and so it didn't surprise me.
People were a little kind of upset and rattled, if
you will, but they got a lot of support. People
kept their jobs. It's very interesting when I think about
the pandemic. A lot of it is people kept getting paid.
(09:26):
The employment rate rebounded incredibly fast, but they didn't have
things to spend on. They couldn't go to restaurants, they
couldn't go on vacation. So the household balance sheet was
actually quite stronger than you would expect to see in
sentiment turning south. Today, that balance sheet is quite a
different place. I talked to a lot of folks and
(09:47):
asked bankers, for example, compared to pre pandemic, where your
customer's balance is during the pandemic, everyone's like a lot higher,
thirty forty percent higher today, That's not what I'm hearing.
And many of them are back to pandemic levels, which
might mean that families response function maybe back to a
pre pandemic setting, and we'll just have to see how
(10:08):
that plays out.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Eventually, I want to get to the contemporary situation and
thinking about the tariffs, etc. But before we do, you know,
thinking back one of the residual lessons of the pandemic period,
and there are two big ones, and they've come up
a lot many lessons. But from the corporate perspective, one
is companies, maybe for the first time in a long time,
(10:46):
realize that they can raise prices without losing market share,
and so suddenly price increases become maybe back on the
strategy book. And then the other thing is the sort
of residual fear of being caught short labor, right, And
so for years there was this expectation you put a
help want it sign in the window, and you get
a line out the door, and labor is easy to
(11:09):
come by. And maybe one of the reasons that's been
theorized for the lack of layoffs and say twenty twenty two,
twenty twenty three, is just this fear that if you
cut jobs, you're not gonna be able to get them
back in the door when you need them. Do you
think those lessons still linger with us today when you
talk to business leaders today, do they still have sort
(11:29):
of these searing memories of not having been able to
staff their staff their facilities once demand starts picking up.
But do you think that still affects the sort of
marginal impulse to layoff workers.
Speaker 4 (11:44):
So I wouldn't put it exactly like that. I think
that there is a reluctance among firms, and this is
what I've heard from most firms. Yeah, that you know
they're going to hold tight today and see how things evolve.
And because there's two sided risk, because the economy might
be stronger than people are projecting today, or it might
be weaker. You don't want to take actions that might
(12:07):
cause you to have to do extra things to get
back to where you are, So I think there's a
precautionary posture that's happening today which is actually quite different
than what happened during the pandemic. We ask our firms
through our surveys, is a labor market easier for you today?
Or is it worse than it was a year ago
and two years ago, And uniform of the answer is easier.
(12:28):
We're hear easier to hire. The number of people who
apply for a vacant position is up in some instances considerably,
and the quality of the applicants is also a relative
to where they were in the pandemic. Back then, they
put a shingle out and if they got someone, it
(12:48):
was someone that they probably didn't want to hire, and
they were hiring them anyway because they didn't have options.
That's not the environment that we have today, and that's
important in terms of the the impulse of firms to
increase prices. I do think that's still real today. And
you know, one lesson that I think people did learn
(13:09):
through the pandemic was if you tell people conser up,
and it's obvious that if that wasn't in the debates,
then people understand that the price might have to go up.
And what businesses learned is that most consumers, most of
their customers, were okay with that. The question is are
they still okay with that? And to me, I would say,
(13:32):
there are two really interesting dynamics that I think are
potentially emerging. One is I think firms are going to
try to apply the lesson learned from the pandemic. They
have an assumption or an expectation that the consumer response
is going to be exactly the way it was before.
We will see if it actually is. And I think
(13:55):
the concern about the level of prices that we heard
a lot about in the last six months suggests that
maybe they won't, but maybe they will, And in fact,
it might actually be more complicated in that for some
households it may be the size of the change, So
if it's it's a smaller incremental it may not register.
(14:18):
For others it could be one penny and that's too much.
And then the third piece to this is sector bisector.
Do you wind up seeing different responses And then if
you wind up with something like that, and I think
that's probably where we're going to wind up, then forecasting
it at the aggregate level becomes incredibly challenging. I mean,
you have to wind up doing a lot more. Your
(14:39):
spreadsheets get larger, the math gets more complicated, and so
you know, I think our job will get a bit
more challenging.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
So, just on this point, at the press conference last week,
Howe seemed to suggest this idea of tariff impacts maybe
operating at different speeds. The impact on inflation could potentially
come quicker, especially if you had a bunch of companies
immediately raising prices to offset the cost, But the impact
(15:09):
on something like the labor market could take a lot
longer to actually feed through, maybe even because some businesses
still have residual scars from the pandemic or whatever. How
do you deal with those two different factors operating at
different speeds. It seems very difficult.
Speaker 4 (15:26):
Well, we have a very dynamic economy, and that's just
an overarching feature of the environment that we work in.
I think part of what we try to do in
Atlanta is try to get hints about the longer run
things in real time as much as possible, because for
(15:48):
many of these things, if you wait for them to
show up in the national data, you're two months behind,
a quarter behind, sometimes a couple weeks behind, and then
there's more of a scramble. We learned and the Great
Financial Crisis that we needed to be asking much more front,
forward and prospective questions about what businesses are seeing, what
(16:09):
they're feeling, and how they're going to respond, so that
even if the revelation happens at different speeds, the impulses
and the drivers will be more contemporaneous, and if you
can discern those, then you might be able to get
ahead start on where things are going. What I would
say today is and it gets back to what we
(16:29):
were just talking about. I think many firms will probably
try to pass through costs to the extent they see them.
They will learn pretty quickly whether those cost increases are
being taken on by customers or being rejected by them,
and then they'll have to make a decision about what
is their protection production function going to look like. And
(16:50):
once they make that decision, then they'll decide what kind
of workforce they need. I'm expecting that those lessons will
be learned quickly and what I've As I go around,
I talk to Chamber of Commerce, I do open discussions
and cities all across the sixth district. I say, if
you see someone doing something that's really different than what
they were doing two weeks ago, you need to call
(17:10):
us and let us know, because we need to be
collecting that information to try to understand whether a single
impulse is actually a trend and whether there are some
lessons that can be learned from the collection of the masses.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
We need a fed tip line.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Wait, how many calls have you been getting? Have you
been getting calls?
Speaker 4 (17:29):
So no, nobody calls me, but we have a team
that's out in the field and they are getting calls
on a regular basis. You know, when I got here,
I was really I didn't really know any of this.
But we have a network of staffers whose job it
is is just to have relationships with business leaders and
with community folks all over the Southeast and come and
(17:50):
see them and talk to them in really conversational, unstructured
ways for ninety minutes two hours, just to get a
sense of where are they, how are they feeling, and
what are they worrying about, what are they excited about?
What's changed, and because the relationships are personal on some level,
people do feel more comfortable picking up the phone and
(18:11):
telling us things. And it's been something that's really helped us.
So we knew fairly early on that people's horizon in
the pandemic was expanding. So the right we did a survey.
We do a number of surveys. We have a survey
shop here, and we did survey of businesses and asked them, Okay,
in April of twenty twenty, when do you think this
will be done? They said September of twenty twenty. In
(18:35):
January of twenty twenty, when don't we asked them. They
said probably another eighteen months, right, And it was this
learned experience, and we got to see their understanding of
the environment evolve in real time in ways that really
I think helped us understand what questions we needed to
ask and what kind of decisions and policy changes that
(18:56):
we should be looking for. It's been quite interesting, and
I think there's going to be some of that. There's
going to be a lot of that that happens in
the next several months. Look, we've just gone through a
period where people were expecting tariffs. I think many people
didn't expect the tariffs to roll out at the scale
that we saw, and it's causing everyone to think about, Okay, now,
(19:17):
if this is our new reality, how do I think
about this? What am I going to do? And just
as it was at the early stages of the pandemic,
people are kind of doing it on the fly. And
the only way to really understand how things are going
when people are doing on the fly is to be
there with them and to be continually asking them and
seeing how their decision making and their changes are evolving
(19:41):
as they get more insights. So as the tariff environment shifts,
as the numbers move around, there's learning when you see, oh,
their strategy was a and now their strategy is M
like that's saying something about their thought process and what
they're likely to do and moving forward.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
To So, let's talk a little bit more about the
intersection of tariffs and monetary policy. And something that's been
(20:20):
on my mind in particular is tariffs are a supply
shock in some way, and what I've been wondering about
is does that therefore increase the terminal rate in terms
of how low the FED can ultimately go in a
cutting cycle Okay, your supply constrained on some level. Perhaps
(20:41):
also in theory, there's going to be some force development
in the United States of some industrial capacity, and so
that's a positive activity impulse. Does that mean when you
think about like weakness and when you think about possible
rate cuts, which is what everyone is expecting at some point,
does that increase the floor of how.
Speaker 4 (21:02):
Low you can go? I don't think of it like that, okay,
But first of all, I think being able to say
a blanket statement on anything like this is going to
be quite challenging. It would be challenging if you just
picked one tariff rate for the whole world. Yeah, in
an environment now where there's so much variation and descript
(21:22):
price discrimination country to country and sector to sector, it's
really difficult to know how to add it all up.
And then you overlay that the numbers can change, we're expecting.
One of the things I do when I talk to
folks in public settings, show a hands how many people
think that the tariff numbers that we see today are
going to be the tariff numbers that we see a
(21:43):
month from now, and anon raises, nobody's hands goes up.
And in part that's by design right, So we know
their negotiations going on. We know it's a ninety day
moratorium in some of these instances, So that change that's
out there means that it's going to be very challenging.
I try to go back to just our basic mandate.
We got price stability and we have maximum employment. Maximum
(22:07):
sustainable employment is how I like to think about it.
And so what I try to do is figure out, Okay,
given all the things that are going on, what's that
likely to do for us getting closer to our two
percent target and inflation? And what's that likely to do
in terms of the movement of labor markets relative to
some broad notion of full employment today. What I would
(22:31):
say is what I hear from analysts when I talk
to my economists in the building, like, relative to the
pre tariff environment, tariffs have a put upward force on inflation,
and so that means that our policy is going to
have to anticipate and to some extent potentially push against
(22:52):
those inflationary forces to the extent that we see them.
So that will put a limit on where our current
policy stands is Now, you ask something about a broader
economy wide new fundamental as to like an R star
type of thing. I think there's a lot of debate.
There's a lot of debate on sort of our star
in nonturbulent times, for sure, and so today I think
(23:16):
you would see the same thing. Look, I think pre
pandemic coming out of the Great Financial Crisis, and actually
even before that, we knew there was a long secular
decline in our star demographics and a whole host of
other things were believed to be behind it. And the
notion that you could see inflation move the way it
has kind of caused people just have to step back
(23:38):
and say, well, wait a minute, maybe our notion of
the immutable is not so immutable. And I think that
debate is being taken on board right now. And so
the other thing to think about is look to the
extent that this that we are in a period where
firms are redoing their supply chains and perhaps not looking
(24:00):
for lowest cost location. That has implications for just it
could potentially have implications for what a baseline new level
of inflation is likely to be writ large. And if
that is what happens, then sure all the fundamental dynamics
and measures are going to change as well. But we
(24:20):
haven't seen that, and you know it's been as I've
talked to a number of producers and they have production
in multiple countries, and they say, you can put the
same plant in three different countries and they will have
different levels of productivity, and that is interesting, but it
also means that the specifics of where they put things down,
(24:44):
how much production happens in those places, and then where
assembly and it all comes together is incredibly material and
folks don't have the answers to those things now. So
I actually try to shy away from thinking about those
bigger issues right now and just say, look, we're in
a period of tremendous transition where we had a received
(25:08):
wisdom cost minimization and production free and open trade, and
that equilibrium is being broken. And when you're in dis
equilibrium in ECON, you know, there's the I forget but
they say it, but there are an infinite number of
possible new equilibriums that you could achieve. And so what
(25:29):
we're trying to do now is kind of figure out
are there ways to narrow and get a sense of
what are the ranges of possibilities given where things are going,
So then we can start to think about those parameters
make judgments about what best long run policy might look
like on.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
The neutral rate our star. I was going to ask
if it's even a useful concept given the current levels
of uncertainty, if it's actually even possible to try to
attempt to navigate by the stars.
Speaker 4 (26:00):
Well, you know, the chair famously had a speech on
the stars and express some skepticism that the scars are
always going to be reliable guides. I think there are
really two things, and you know, I was psych major
undergrad in addition to econ One of the things I
take took or have taken from being in both those
professions is that economic models are models. There are stylized
(26:26):
characterizations of how the world actually works. We should all
understand and appreciate that there is a confidence interval around
any number that comes out from these models, even though
some econas may declare them as truth, and you should
never deviate from those sorts of things. It's one of
the reasons why, you know, a lot of the rules
are useful, but the actual numbers that come out never
(26:47):
hit right where the rule is, and so there are
other things that are going to influence what makes sense
from a policy perspective, and those are the things that
we have to actually acknowledge. People are not ruthless utility maximizers.
Firms aren't either. And in fact, what's been interesting for
me in this pandemic period is the old model I'm
(27:09):
calling this more like a high level was cost minimization,
and that means find the place where you can produce
everything at the lowest cost, do all your stuff there,
because that makes you the most efficient. What that doesn't do, though,
is acknowledge that if you're locally reliant or dependent, if
anything happens in that locality, your ability to produce basically
(27:29):
goes to zero. So there's a higher variance potential in
your output. And we were not putting any cost value
on that, and we learned that there is a cost
value on that. And so the change of philosophy that
might be going on right now, and we'll get to
see how many people really start to set up these
supply chains with the eye toward diversifying locations just for
(27:53):
reducing variants. That's a new thing and that could be
quite interesting to look out moving forward.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
So I want a T shirt that says ruthless utility maximizer.
Speaker 5 (28:03):
I think could rock.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
The most people aren't, but Tracy is actually the one person.
Speaker 5 (28:09):
But I do want the T shirt.
Speaker 4 (28:11):
Economic We'll see, we'll see what we can do. I'll
look around and see if there's some economic education club
that does that.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
Prior to the Turriff's actually thinking back to like January,
et cetera, we didn't know anything about what the terff
for a lot. Was the US economy decelerating, like was
it an economy that was sort of due for several
more rate cuts?
Speaker 4 (28:34):
So my outlook at the beginning of the year was
that the economy would continue to grow in a solid
way and the place would return to two percent over time.
And my expectation was somewhere toward the end of this
year we would be at that point where it would
be appropriate for US to have a neutral stance for policy.
(28:56):
So I had maybe three or four rate cuts for
the year with the idea that there was a lot
of momentum. We're still over two percent GDP, hiring us
happening at a robust clip, and we could avoid having
sort of a recessionary negative outcome. I felt like the
bones of the economy were pretty solid and strong, and
(29:17):
you know that's why I talk about the resilience and
all those sorts of things. So even with a slow down,
I thought that we would still see pretty robust growth.
People would still have jobs. One of the things that
was quite useful for us to see was that wage
growth was returning to a pre pandemic levels, So we
were evolving to an environment that was fairly sustainable and
(29:38):
which going to be Yeah. I never used those words, right,
So I try to stay away from that stuff because
it means different things to different people. But if that's
what you want to call it, I'm happy for that,
you know. To me, I think one of the questions
that I ask is to what extent once we get
through and get to some degree of steady state, we
(30:00):
will still have those aspects of the US economy still
in place at the same level as the strength, and
you know, something we're going to continue to look at
and look for as we go through the rest of
twenty twenty five and into twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
So you mentioned wage growth just then, and one of
the things I've been thinking about when it comes to
inflation under the tariff regime is wage growth. Do you
think it's fair to say that the chances of having
a lot of wage growth alongside higher goods prices is
lower than it was post pandemic. And if that's the case,
(30:34):
does it perhaps give the FED more room to look
through higher goods prices if you're not worried about you know,
a big self reinforcing inflationary spiral.
Speaker 4 (30:44):
Yeah, so that's a very interesting question. I would say
it's possible. One of the things that's been quite interesting
is I think in this environment, wage growth has been
a trailing indicator as opposed to a leading indicator. And
so what we will see if that continues is that
a lot will depend on the extent to which consumers
(31:07):
are willing to take on price. If they're unwilling to
take on price, then the dynamic that we have is
pretty set. And then we'll I think we'll see different
strategies taken by firms as to how to manage their
increased cost basis, and to the extent that is necessary,
you might see some reductions in the staffing level. I
(31:28):
don't think you'd see reductions in wages. But again, a
lot of this depends. You know, there's a big difference
between a ten percent tariff rate a forty percent tariff
rate and at one hundred and twenty five percent tariffyrate.
As to what the cost implications are going to be
and the ability of firms to absorb them in their margins,
it's supposed to having to pass those on, and so
(31:51):
again this is another one where I think the details
will matter in a pretty significant way, and you know,
we'll have to see where it goes.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
You know, in the wake of the original big inflation
in the late seventies and early eighties, and it took
a while for that to come down, but I get
the strong oppression over the years that for the FED
this was like a crowning achievement of sorts, having defeated
that inflation and had several years of price stability. And
(32:20):
I also think that you know, fast forward in the
wake of the Great financial Crisis, particularly in the latter
half of the twenty tens, that something resembling what people
would call full employment has been another achievement. And I
think that you know, if you go back to Powell's
speech in August to Jackson Hall last year, as part
of what he said, like this has been an achievement
to get low unemployment and we don't want to lose
(32:42):
that we don't want to let it slip again in
your view, like, how important is that for you know,
when you think about the potential tension of the dual mandate,
how do you think about sort of like preserving that
achievement of maintaining a low level of unemployment even in
the phase of all this uncertainty and potentially you know,
(33:04):
inflationary shocks from the form of tariffs.
Speaker 4 (33:06):
So let me say two things on this. First, I'm
very pleased that during my tenure here the two mandates
have not been in conflict. They've not been intentions, so
I've not really had to face that challenge. We've either
had low inflation so we could worry more about the employment,
or we've had really rock solid employment so we could
worry about inflation. I think one of the things that
(33:31):
was quite interesting to where the end of the twenty
tens was the effort by the FED, and it started
before I got here to be less preemptive around anticipate
anticipated in inflation must happen, because we've never seen an
environment where inflation didn't arise, and so and so there
(33:54):
was a philosophy that was embraced to say, Okay, we
should actually see signs of inflation before we get too
crazy ones. And what we wound up seeing was unemployment
levels fall to numbers that were inconceivable. Right, So at
one point unemployment was a three and a half percent
(34:15):
somewhere like that. When I first started my career as
an economist, the unemployment rate that was viewed to be
the natural rate of unemployment was I think it was
like six percent. And so the idea that you could
get to three and a half without seeing inflation was
just just it was like crazy to talk, right, And
(34:37):
so for us to then just well, let's let it go,
and then it kept going and kept going and kept going.
I think that was a tremendous you could call it
an achievement, but it was a discovery that a lot
of our perceip or perceptions are understanding of what the
possible could be might be constrained by our own preconceived
(35:03):
notions of where the world is. And in this instance,
you know, I think about all the advances that have
been made in technology in job searches, so a lot
of natural unemployment is about you know, it takes time
for the match to happen between an employer and an employee.
Now you can sit over lunch on your phone and
submit like one hundred applications to things. Businesses are using
(35:26):
AI type tools to review resumes to really be able
to pick out the people and that match happens faster.
If that's the case, then the natural rate should be lower.
And now the question is how much lower? And you
know this is something we argue about. I actually think
it's as much lower than others in my building do.
But I think the experience would show that change did happen,
(35:50):
and it happened in ways that we could get more
people employed and in a sustainable way without being a problem,
without that being a problem for inflation.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
I wanted to go back to something Joe brought up,
which is the sort of I guess cross current of
monetary versus fiscal policy. And I get that, you know,
monetary is always existing alongside fiscal policy, which may change
in various directions, but it does feel like the tariffs
are sort of an extreme example of that in the
(36:19):
sense that they have a big impact on the market,
so they have a big impact on financial conditions, and
they seem to be changing constantly. As we've been discussing,
how is the fed just generally thinking about I guess,
the tension between your own monetary policy versus the changes
in financial conditions being wrought by the Trump administration and
(36:42):
its impact on financial conditions.
Speaker 4 (36:45):
So I don't think it's different in character, but it
is different in magnitude. And so look, we take all
non monetary policy as given right, and then you know,
I just respond and thinking about where we need to
go based on where that part of policy is and
(37:07):
where businesses are and all those sorts of things. These
changes here that are being made are very much like that.
Like trade policy is not something that the FIT manages,
and there are lots of different ways so you can
influence it, and so that's what we're seeing here. I
think for me, one of the things that's been quite
interesting to reflect on is that if your standard econ,
(37:30):
if you do your models, it's all marginal this and
marginal that, and the margins is calculus. So these are small,
small changes on the status quo, and what we see
today are decidedly not small changes relatives to the status quo.
And so the question is does that require a different
kind of conceptual model about what response functions will be
(37:52):
for businesses and for families and households. That's the bigger
question that we're having to wrestled with, which is different
than what we usually do, but it is it is
not so much about the idea that you know, there's
a policy and it changed how financial markets are thinking
about risk, right. There are lots of other things that
do that as well, and you know that's just part
(38:14):
of the landscape.
Speaker 3 (38:15):
With any luck, we might have some policy stability for
a while, lots of ninety day pauses, et cetera, and
I have you know, my personal guess is that ninety
day pauses could turn into more ninety day pauses at
some point in the future. You mentioned at the beginning
of the year, you know, maybe this was an economy
that would you know, require or be three to four
(38:37):
cuts today May fourteen, assuming some policy stability. I'm mindful
of the fact that our Bloomberg colleagues would love a
nice clean headline. But what U So I've tried to
do them a favor here. What does the rest of
the year look like for you from a policy perspective?
How many cuts are we getting?
Speaker 4 (38:59):
All Right? So, okay, I will say, so I'm required
to do this, right, so so you know, and then
the plot some avic and our perspectives. I have one
cut for the year, and in part it's because I
think the uncertainty is unlikely to resolve itself quickly right days.
(39:21):
So we have ninety days in two settings, right So
you have the reciprocal tariff ninety day window, you have
the China tariff ninety day window, which is at a
different periodicity than that. And we have all these negotiations
and we don't know how any of them. We know
the UK, but other than that, you know, it's all I.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Think that's formally signed anyway.
Speaker 4 (39:43):
Well you would, yeah, I just I just read the
Bloomberg headline on it and it seemed like it was done.
And so so until there's uncertainty, you know what, We've
asked our businesses like what kind of plans are you
making for this year? And many of them are like, well,
I don't, I really know. We're going to keep changed
to a minimum until we get that resolution. And so
(40:06):
if that uncertainty continues, then I expect we're not going
to see the same level of big investments or those
sorts of things, and that will then push out the
time before we'll be able to get to that a delibrium.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
I think we both have two more short questions and
just real quickly on those business conversations. And this is
something that's been coming up in episodes. Do you see
a divergence between small and large businesses? Large businesses who
have the balance sheet can lose money for a couple
of quarters. For a small business, they make a mistake,
they make an order. There's a huge tariff bill at
the poor it might be existential. Have you noticed a
(40:40):
sort of a distributional effect in terms of planning and.
Speaker 4 (40:43):
How and the effect absolutely, And I think forecasts for sales,
forecasts for costs are much higher for small buinesses. We
talk to small bus leaders. You could see this in
our survey responses. They're the ones who are feeling most
at risk, and we'll just have to I mean, I
think they're hoping that this is a short episode and
(41:03):
we can get to a new steady state so they
can understand how to run their businesses.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
I have just one more question, and it's a very
important one. We heard that you like birding. Do you
prefer seeing hawks or doves?
Speaker 5 (41:16):
This is a very serious question.
Speaker 4 (41:18):
You know, that's very good. You know when I first started,
I got asked in my hawker dev and I said
I was an owl, and I have doves in my
backyard pretty regularly. Mourning doves.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
They're the stupidest birds.
Speaker 4 (41:30):
But it's always super exciting when a red shoulder a
redtail hawk comes swooping in or Cooper's So just like
when they ask parents their their favorite child and they say,
we love them all. I love all my birds.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
I don't love mourning doves. They're idiotic. They're like they
have a death wish and always are getting killed and
building their nests in stupid places, and then it becomes
my problem. Okay, enough about mourning doves. Raphael Bostic, thank
you so much. Really appreciate the invite to Atlanta and
this converse.
Speaker 4 (42:00):
Thank you, thanks for coming down to Atlanta. I look
forward to talking again sometime in the future anytime.
Speaker 5 (42:05):
That was a flash the time, Joe.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
That was fantastic getting to talk to I guess Bostic
is non voting at the moment, but getting to talk
to a FED person at this really interesting juncture in
economic and I guess central bank history.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
It's such an interesting time for all kinds of reasons.
I mean, you know the fact that the COVID shock
still looms with us in various ways, clearly in particularly
just the fact that you know, up until very recently,
arguably depending on how you measure it, inflation still running
(42:53):
above target. But this is sort of uncharted territory to
some extent because of the speed of Paul changes in
both directions in DC. You know, I wrote in a
newsletter I think it was last week after the Polle's
press conference. You know, I've never heard more different ways
to express the concept of we don't know anything that's
(43:15):
about to happen. That's right, an extreme level of humility
is required in this moment.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
Well, he certainly mentioned the word uncertainty a number of times. Yeah,
it really is. Well, the other thing I was thinking is,
I guess the complexity of trying to do economic analysis
in the current period is really really coming through. And
I thought the point that Bostik was making about productivity
depending on where people actually move manufacturing or move operations too,
(43:43):
like that level of detail seems almost impossible to predict.
And yet productivity is obviously something that matters enormously for
the economy.
Speaker 5 (43:53):
What is it?
Speaker 3 (43:53):
Who are we talking to and they're quoting Paul Krugman
someone recently, and they're like, productivity isn't everything, but it's
almost everything. I guess pretty much all there is. You know,
you think from the perspective of any sort of international
any company that has international ties, and now we've had
like two supply shocks in a way in a very
(44:14):
short period of time, you could almost be forgiven for
post COVID say, oh, you know, this is a once
in a century type of thing. So I don't know
how much we're going to change our businesses, but a
now we've had this other one, and so at some
point this idea of moving supply chains, which has already
like been happening to various degrees, has to be top
(44:35):
of mind. And how these things get organized, and what
do you reshore, and what do you friendshore and what
do you put in Vietnam that has links to both
US and China. They're policymaking in a state of flux,
for sure.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
Yeah, and it also gets harder for companies, right like
the longer this kind of goes on, because you had
the first wave of reshoring after the twenty sixteen Trump administration,
and now what's left to move places, especially if you
have tariffs on both Vietnam and China.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
You know, what I've been thinking about. I would never
give financial advice on a podcast because it would be terrible,
But something I've been thinking about a little bit lately
is that you actually might have this situation. This doesn't
even really have to do with our conversation, but straight
thought in my head. You actually have the situation now,
which I think is kind of interesting, in which if
you're an American importer, you're obviously thinking at least to
(45:27):
some extent, about diversifying the base of where you source from.
So do you like go more to Latin America, do
you go to other non China parts of Asia and
so forth. If you're a Chinese exporter, you might be
thinking about the same thing. There's already been this pressure
from Chinese exports, just a business pressure to move some
of their lower end manufacturing outside of China. Now there's
(45:50):
the fact that there's this big terarifa disparity, assuming that
current levels stay roughly stable, so it'll be interesting to
see if there is some sort of, you know, positive
impulse to non China em generally, because it strikes me
that a lot of different entities really do have an
(46:11):
economic reason to truly diversify in a way that maybe
hadn't been the case several years ago.
Speaker 5 (46:17):
Oh for sure.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
And we saw that in the episode we did with
Sarah Lafleur when one of her Chinese manufacturers was talking about, well,
if we can't export a bunch of stuff to America,
maybe we start selling m. M. Lafleur clothes into China
that as well. Right, it's like on both sides of
the equation, so many moving parts. You know what, I'm
thinking about eating more fried things before I leave Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
Okay, so I got to wrap it up.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
Yeah, shall we leave it there?
Speaker 3 (46:42):
Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
This has been another episode of the ad Thoughts podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 3 (46:49):
And I'm joe Isnenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow Rafae Albostic. He's on LinkedIn. You could check out
some of his posts there. Follow our producers Kerman Rodriguez
at Kerman Armadesh O, Bennette Dashbug, and Kilbrooks at Kalebrooks.
More oddlotscontent go to bloomberg dot com slash odlots, where
we have all of our episodes in a daily newsletter,
(47:09):
and you can chat about all of these topics twenty
four to seven, including monetary policy with fellow listeners in
our discord discord dot gg, slash od loots.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
And if you enjoy Oddlots. If you like it when
we travel around the US interviewing regional FED presidents, then
please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform.
And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can
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Hosts And Creators
Joe Weisenthal
Tracy Alloway
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