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Being a nurse means being focused on others. At Post University, our advanced nursing degree programs are focused on you. With 100% online classes, monthly start dates and accredited programs for BSN, MSN and DNP degrees. Apply now at Post Edu.
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B
What do you think makes the perfect snack?
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A
Hmm, it's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.
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B
Could you be more specific?
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A
When it's cravinient. Okay. Like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter available right down the street at am, pm. Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at am pm.
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B
Seeing a pattern here.
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A
Well, yeah, we're talking about what I.
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B
Crave, which is anything from am, pm.
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A
What more could you want? Stop by AMPM where the snacks and drinks are perfectly craveable and convenient. That's cravenience ampm. Too much good stuff. Hi, Bill Kristol from the Bulwark here, joined by my colleague Katherine Rampel to discuss the economy and Trump's economy and Trump's political economy and all that. Katherine joined the Bulwark just seems like a little over a month ago an invaluable addition and author of a very newsletter you need to subscribe to if you don't note called. What's it called? The Receipts. Receipts.
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B
Receipts. Receipts. Yep.
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A
I have various witty names for that newsletter that were rejected. I'm just going to.
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B
Oh, tell me, I want to know.
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A
Well, maybe off the air is more appropriate.
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B
Okay.
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A
The bucks, my, the bucks stop here. Wouldn't that would have been good, right?
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B
Okay, yeah, maybe not.
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A
Maybe receipts. Receipts is good anyway. People can sign up for it and should sign up for it at the Bulwark website. So your last newsletter actually is very interesting. Let's just begin with that for a minute. You discussed it with Andrecker yesterday I think. But on economic data in the age of Trump. Say a word about that.
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B
Sure. So there's been a lot of attention paid to the fact that we're in kind of a data blackout right now because the government was shut down for six weeks. A bunch of releases that were supposed to come out didn't come out. A bunch of data that was supposed to be collected wasn't collected. So those releases will never come out. So like we'll never have the unemployment report for October or the inflation report for October. And I think the general assumption has been, well, at least this was like a one time thing and now that the government has reopened we'll be back on track. And that's not. That's sort of Right. It is the case that, like the Bureau of Labor Statistics is back in business, but there's a more widespread threat to the availability of government statistics on the economy and otherwise. And that's because the Trump administration has been purging statisticians, defunding statistical agencies and otherwise censoring and manipulating lots of data. So in some cases, they're like canceling data releases altogether. There's an annual hunger report that assesses how many Americans are having difficulty struggling to get adequate food that's been collected for, I don't know, 30 years or something like that. They canceled that altogether. They fired the entire team that calculates the poverty guidelines, which, you know, and most people like wouldn't pay any attention to this. But these are the guidelines that help assess who is eligible for food stamps, Medicaid, lots of other benefits. And then there are a lot of other efforts to again, either defund agencies, purge the people who would be collecting the data, or canceling the reports altogether on climate change, immigration, crime. Lots of things that, again, people may take for granted in normal times, but do help us make sense of our world. They help businesses decide where to open up a new retail store, what to stock, who to hire, what prices to charge. They help workers figure out what's a reasonable raise, things like that. They help doctors figure out what's wrong with you if you show up with mysterious symptoms. There's a, you know, regular infectious disease data, things like that that are just not being collected anymore. And then a lot of other things that, you know, besides like day to day practicality are basically just erasing the existence of undesirable groups from our records. So that's what it's about. I've been tracking it basically since the beginning of this administration and I will continue to track it. And I have like a ginormous thread on Blue sky, among other places of all of the different examples that I'm coming across. If people come across other things that I should be paying attention to, please feel free to reach out because I'm trying to aggregate as much as I can.
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A
No, but it's worth following. I know our colleague Jonathan Code on the public health side, that really is important. I mean, business is important, but businesses also collect data and put out studies. And some of the. So one can probably. Don't you think some of that can be made up for, so to speak, by the private sector, which has a huge interest in knowing what it's. I mean, if every major corporation reports on sale, for example, I had a friend who Used to follow who's an economist, I mean, and he always liked to follow, I don't know, various, not exotic, but kind of individual corporate reports, especially Walmart types of the world, but also big business, you know, car sales. And, and that's put, presumably, you know, you can sort of get a sense of it. Where's the public health stuff? I feel like that's, that's, no one else really can do that. I mean, you know, and sort of, that's very bad if that anyway. But it's all bad.
- [05:16]
B
But yeah, no, no, it's all bad. And it's true that there are a lot of private sector, you know, proprietary data sets. And look, I look at those all the time. In normal times, even when there isn't a threat to government statistics. I will say government statistical agencies in the US have kind of been the gold standard and in many cases they are used to benchmark the private sector data collection. So for example, there's this annual survey that gets done by the Census Bureau that is used to sort of calibrate and weight lots of private sector data collection because they're not sure how representative it is. Right. And they're relying on the infrastructure of government to help them fill that out. So there are, in many cases these things are complementary. Even when it seems like, oh well, the private sector should be able to step in. And again, private sector serves a very valuable function but they can't do everything and things like public health. Yeah, that's very difficult. There are some state level governments that are trying to step in and not just on data collection, but on guidance. Let's say there's another pandemic. Heaven forbid the bill will try to provide some guidance because people don't really trust the CDC anymore to provide, you know, I don't know, useful or reliable information all the time. So there again there are some efforts here, but I think it's really a loss. And you also have the risk of if you have a void, if you have a data vacuum, if you will, it makes it easier for demagogues and authoritarians if they so choose to fill those voids with whatever numbers they, they would like. And this administration has done that. Right. You've seen the Trump administration cite Walmart's Thanksgiving dinner bundle as evidence that prices are falling. And Walmart, because it's Walmart and it's trying to tell customers it's got a great deal on sale right now, they're not incentivized necessarily to, to like provide data on, on prices that is necessarily apples to apples or turkeys to turkeys or if you will. And, and they didn't, they, they said prices have fallen, but that's because, like, there's less food in the bundle. And the administration also cited DoorDash data, of all things, because DoorDash says that getting your breakfast foods delivered has gotten cheaper year over year. Again, of course, they're going to tell you that it's a great deal and you should buy more breakfast foods via DoorDash. That doesn't necessarily mean it's a good indicator for the health of the overall economy.
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A
No, that's very well said. So what is the, let's just talk a minute about the real, let's say the real economy. So I mean, let's leave aside Trump. I mean, he's like, you know, he's always just making things up basically, and talking, talking the economy up, I guess is, has been his theory and it's been his theory of salesmanship for decades. So. But Scott Besant, I think, said this morning that inflation is down under, under Trump, which I don't believe is empirically exactly correct. But I mean, where are we 10 months into Trump? But leaving aside almost causality, because obviously things don't change at a time just because Trump becomes president, that they would claim their policies haven't gone into effect or some have, but just really in the economy, in terms of inflation, unemployment, the kind of core, you know, factors where how are we doing?
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B
So, as I mentioned, we have a little bit of a gap in the official numbers right now because there was this shutdown. But we can look at how the economy was doing at least as of September, and those numbers suggest that unemployment ticked up a little bit. We still had, you know, better than expected job growth. So it's not like the job market is imploding, but there does seem to be some weakness there. It seems like, among other things, businesses just don't, don't have as many openings as they had had. So if you find yourself out of a job, if you get laid off, if you quit, if you move, et cetera, it might be harder to find a new job. So there's just like, not as much dynamism and there are different ways to interpret that. You know, it could just be uncertainty because of tariffs, because of other things, global uncertainty, geopolitical issues that make it make businesses a little more tentative about hiring than they had been. Who knows? But, you know, the job market, like, hasn't imploded. It just seems a little more fragile on inflation. We have not had the huge burst of inflation that I think many of us feared relating to the tariffs, but it has been ticking up. And I think, again, there are different ways to interpret why that might be happening. When I've talked with businesses around the country, including those that import a lot of goods, many of them have said that because tariffs have started and stopped and been delayed and paused and all of that kind of stuff, it's made it harder for them to plan. But it also means that they're maybe not at the phase where they really need to be passing along huge price increases to customers, because the stuff that they're buying, maybe it hasn't been terror tariff yet. Maybe there's been a pause or a lot of them seem to be expecting that the Supreme Court will strike down the emergency tariffs that Trump has put in place. That's most of his. His tariff agenda to date is about these national emergency tariffs. So while importers have been paying the tariff money, a lot of them are expecting to get that back. And so they don't want to tick off customers in the meantime by raising their prices a whole lot to offset their increased costs as they normally would do, because they're like, well, maybe this is temporary. Maybe we're going to get the money back. And. And so I think a lot of businesses are just, like, really stretching themselves right now, and profit margins are squeezed and all of that, but consumers may not be feeling it as much now. Supreme Court rules differently than expected. Like, all hell could break loose. I don't know. But in the meantime, yeah, I mean, prices are going up somewhat more than they had been, but it's not, like, hugely expensive. Now, none of that is going to be of any comfort to normal Americans who are struggling with affordability. Like, they thought prices were already too high because we got a whole bunch of inflation in the years since the pandemic. And the administration, again, is not really helping things. They didn't cause that. You know, Trump in. In many ways, Trump inherited a very strong economy, but he also inherited a lot of resentment about the economy because there had been so much price growth to date. But the things that they're doing are not particularly helping. And I think you see that like a tacit acknowledgment of that. When you see this administration, for example, saying, okay, we're gonna pare back the coffee tariffs or beef tariffs or cocoa or bananas and things like that. And it's like, that's a great idea. I don't know why you put the tariffs on in the first place, but sure, that would be welcome.
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A
Do you agree with the two things I've read and that seem plausible? That anecdotally seems kind of plausible to me. One, that it's harder for young entrants into the job market now than it has been for quite a while. Does the data suggest that and do you agree with that? And secondly, that insofar as the economy has been kept at a decent rate, though slowing maybe a bit by consumer spending, basically that it's disproportionately spending by the wealthy or reasonably wealthy, that there's more of a gap than there may be, that the working people and people with fewer means are cutting back more. And so there's kind of a little more of a two tiered economy than there was just a year or two ago.
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B
Yeah, I've heard lots of different nicknames for this. There's the K shaped economy. The idea that like the top part of the. Okay. And the bottom.
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A
Yeah, that's good. Yeah, yeah.
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B
They're all these cutesy little terms. Work. I was actually just looking at the data on younger workers and it is true that for recent college grads, their unemployment rates have ticked up. They're still not super high, but they're higher than they were. It's like, I don't know, 5% or so. Again, we're getting this, this information with a lag. So if things massively deteriorated in the last month or so, we wouldn't know. But, but it's still, it is harder for recent college grads and young people in general. So if you include people who didn't go to college, the. So like people 22 to 27 I think was. Than the series that I was looking at, those people do have higher unemployment. I mean it's always higher for younger people, but it's, it's getting worse. And again, there's some uncertainty about why that is. Is it just like companies are holding off in general? Is it about AI potentially displacing some of those entry level jobs, particularly in white collar professions? We don't really know yet, but it's concerning. And if you are, even if it's, you know, a relatively small share, generally speaking, of the overall population of younger people, if you are among those people, you know it does, that's no comfort. Right. It's difficult for you to find a job. There don't, as I mentioned, there don't seem to be a lot of job openings right now. And you want that sort of churn in the economy. You want that dynamism in the economy to create new positions for people just graduating into the labor market. And since we don't really know where things are headed, we don't know how much like how much policy is going to change. We can talk about the potential AI bubble if you want, but there are a lot of big risks out there that I think understandably make people nervous if they're still pounding the pavement or they're worried about potentially losing their current job.
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A
I mean, let me ask about that because it seems to me again, as a non economist, I mean, in a way we've had the reconciliation bill, which if you are one of Trump's economic advisors or maybe just more generally a kind of believe that top marginal rates are extremely important to the economy and so forth. But that's happened. I mean, that's presumably priced in and that we're keeping the rates that we had where there's no tax increase and some tax reductions, I guess, in terms of expensing and stuff for business. So, but that's probably, I say presumably that's already happened and is priced in. I feel like the things that are coming up, what would they be? There'll be questions about tariffs, questions about Fed policy certainly, and about Fed chairmanship. That's got to be a fairly big one. Coming up, the possible AI stock market bubble. I mean, I don't know, those seem like they have more downside risk than upside potential. Maybe I'm wrong that if you're betting on the next year, it seems like there's more chance of, of, of negative surprises or maybe not. Maybe we're just a very strong economy and we chug along and all will be well.
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B
I mean, that's certainly happened well again, when Trump took office, he inherited generally pretty strong fundamentals in the economy. The economy, the job market was very strong. Inflation was still elevated, but trending down. That's, we've kind of lost some of that progress in part because of, because of tariffs. Some other things too, like coffee prices and beef prices have gotten much more expensive, partly because of tariffs, but also partly because of droughts and other things well beyond the president's control. I would say in addition to those risks you mentioned, there's also the risk of another shutdown. The CR goes only through January 30th. It's not really clear what's changed between now and a couple of weeks ago when the government was still shut down in terms of where the parties are. Is there going to be another renewed fight over the ACA tax credits? Is there going to be a fight over something else. With Marjorie Taylor Greene stepping down and some other special elections coming up, I think they're, where are they? Tennessee, Texas and New Jersey. I think, I think it's a long shot that Democrats capture all of those. I think they already hold New Jersey. They'd have to hold on. They'd have to keep that. The other two, It's a long shot, but you never know. Either way, that margin that Republicans have in the House gets slimmer. If they, if Democrats get all of those, then they have a zero margin. All of which means that the stakes become higher in these negotiations. Like maybe Democrats will be more emboldened and Republicans just can't afford to lose any votes. So, so there's still a big political risk which will in turn affect the economy. But yeah, the, the other things that you mentioned I think are more top of mind. Hey, this is Sarah. Look, I'm standing out front of a.m. p.m. Right now and, well, you're sweet and all, but I found something more fulfilling, even kind of cheesy.
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A
But I like it.
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B
Sure, you met some of my dietary needs, but they've just got it all. So farewell.
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A
Oatmeal.
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B
So long, you strange soggy.
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A
Break up with bland breakfast and taste AM PM's bacon, egg and cheese biscuit made with K tree eggs, smoked bacon and melty cheese on a buttery biscuit. AM PM Too much Good stuff.
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B
Calling all sightseers and selfie takers.
- [18:42]
A
Welcome to Texas, where a day at.
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B
Our hiking trails will lead to a.
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A
Lifetime of memories.
- [18:49]
B
And family road trips beyond become family legends where thrill seekers make a splash into spring fed pools.
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A
And picky eaters will clean their plates. This is your invitation to visit Texas and see it for yourself.
- [19:05]
B
Visit traveltexas.com and plan your family's trip today.
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A
Let's Texas me. Anyway, what about the Fed? I mean, how. Oh yeah, Will Powell's term as chairman not on the Fed board, but his chairman, I think ends where in the spring sometime. And yeah, Trump will replace him assuming the Senate confirms, you know, with someone more in accord with Trump's wishes. And Trump has always been being a real estate guy, maybe a low interest rate guy and, and all that. And he certainly has been as president both in the first term and now. I don't know. I mean, is that maybe that's good, incidentally, for the markets, you know, it's a. But interest rates obviously are a drag in many ways. It's just they are, on the other hand, well, they reflect inflation, so presumably they're not simply a Drag. And also if you go cut them too much, you then get a bad stagflation cycle. I don't. Tell me about the. Yeah, how much of a zat do you think of a thing that's lurking out there that matters?
- [19:55]
B
I'm very worried about that. And I think that's a bigger issue for the long, the long term economic trajectory. Because we have a lot of evidence that when central banks are less independent, less politically independent, when they are more under the thumb of whoever is in political power, you have much worse inflation outcomes. We've seen this, there's some very stark examples in like Turkey recently, Argentina, pre euro Italy, pre euro, Greece. This is, this is a big problem because if you're a politician, you always want lower interest rates, even if you are not the king of debt. In Trump's case, there's a reason why he's always liked low interest rates, because he takes on a lot of debt and he wants to pay as little as possible on that debt. But politicians in general want generally lower interest rates because it gooses the economy in the short term. If you pump more cash into the economy, it's easier to borrow, it's easier to build stuff, it's to hire, to invest and all of that stuff sounds great. But if the economy doesn't need that additional stimulus, if you will that additional liquidity, then you end up over, you can overheat and you can basically push up inflation. So the reason why you have central banks that are politically independent in places like the United States is to shield them from, from those short term political pressures so that they're not under the pressure to like heat up the economy right before an election and then, you know, ignore the potential longer term fallout. So if Trump puts in place a lackey as Fed chair, if he succeeds also in getting Lisa Cook, who's a Fed governor, fired and puts in place a bunch of other, you know, hand picked people who are just going to do what he wants regardless of their best judgment for what is good for the economy. That's really bad for long again, for like medium long term outcomes. In the US you're likely to have more inflation and plenty of data on this. And you saw this, I mentioned all these foreign countries, but actually you saw the same thing happen here. It's part of the reason why we had the stagflation of the 70s.
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A
Right, I was thinking about that. As you said, the foreign countries, I'm old. You weren't born them, but I'm old enough to, I was in my freshman year at Harvard, sophomore year, you know, taking the introductory economics course. And Arthur Burns had, yeah, was responsive to Nixon. I think it's the conventional view, maybe this is unfair to him personally, but whatever. He decided to be very dovish on.
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B
Interest rates in 70, Nixon to LBJ, both of them leaned on the Fed.
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A
And they boost the economy in 72. And we had a very bad, I mean the oil shock happened too, obviously, but very bad. As you say, recession and inflation, right.
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B
It pushes up prices. And it's not only a question of does the President actually lean on the Fed, but is the Fed perceived as politically independent. Because if people start to worry that the central bank is, is not going to keep inflation in check, they're not going to take the punch bowl away. Is the expression end the party before everybody gets too drunk. Then inflation becomes a self fulfilling prophecy because people start to worry, well, what if my suppliers start to raise prices? I guess I should preemptively raise prices. And then everybody raises prices anyway. Workers start to demand much higher wages, which normally sounds like a good thing, but only if there's more stuff to buy. If everybody's basically raising prices and raising wages at the same time, but the economy hasn't actually gotten any more productive and there aren't more things to buy, it's just more money chasing after the same amount of goods and that pushes up prices. It's not super intuitive. Right. I don't think that people necessarily think all of this through consciously, but they act on it. They say, I don't trust that, you know, that inflation is going to be in check, so I better do all of these things to, to save myself, to save my business. And it's totally rational. So that's why you want, you know, a bunch of technocrats on the Federal Reserve who are, they got things wrong. You know, I'm not saying otherwise. They're not perfect. They definitely got things wrong in their early run up in inflation and during the pandemic. But at least they are trying to get it right. At least they are thinking about their long term mission, their dual mandate of maximum employment and stable prices as opposed to what's going to help the party or what's going to have a particular politician in the next few months.
- [24:58]
A
I mean, for me, some of the analysis of Trump, it's very much he's a low interest rate guy, as you said, both as a debt, as a chronic debtor and just because, you know, he thinks it goes to the economy and he's for that and he's a short term oriented guy. But I think people have underestimated the extent to which though he's not entirely foolish. I mean he wants someone in there in 28 who will goose the economy for him if he's on the ballot again or for his successor. And again there is actual precedent for that in 72 and he doesn't care that much what happens in 2030 or something. And I think that would, I mean I would say don't you think that but of course markets aren't idiot or foolish and they, they will see that beginning to happen or the prospect of that happening in late 26 or 27. So I think the degree to which we could have a Fed related problems, let's say in the economy and investment people aren't going to buy 5% bonds, long bonds if they think inflation is going to go up to 4 or 5%. So you get all kinds of knock on effects of that uncertainty at least maybe a little more than people expect. I think people talk about the Fed thing as if it's almost like well, he's going to lower will he lower rates this quarter or this month. But it is a.
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B
Well, yeah, like who was it? Lutnick, the Commerce secretary was on TV a couple of days ago saying that he thinks, I think he said that at the next Fed meeting, which is happening relatively soon, that they should cut rates by a full percentage point, 100 basis points, which if you don't follow these things maybe I understand like you don't have any context for whether that's a lot or a little, but it's a lot. Basically the only times in recent memory when the Fed cut interest rates in one fell swoop by that amount were in, I think it was like March 16, 2020 and then during the financial crisis like in 2008. So that suggests if the Fed were acting that way, that would mean that the economy was in real distress. Now I don't think that they're going to listen to Howard Lutnick or Donald Trump or anybody else who's publicly jawboning them. But it's, it's not helpful, right, to have the, have the administration publicly basically saying threat. Well, not only encouraging the Fed to do this, but kind of threatening them with prosecutions, with firings and, and various other unpleasant outcomes. And as you point out, they don't even need to fire Jay Powell because his, his term as chair ends. There's also this like lurking threat that I've heard some people worry about with the, this is going to get very in the Weeds. But the regional Fed bank presidents, so the group of people who vote on interest rates, there's the chair who is currently Jerome Powell. Then there are some board members who are appointed by the president, Federal Reserve Board members who are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. And then there's a rotating group of these regional Fed presidents. They're in New York, Boston, Atlanta, Kansas City. They're, you know, they represent different parts of the country. They're supposed to be, like, representing the interests basically, of different regions in the country, but they also vote on interest rates. And they are all up for reappointment very soon. Normally, this what happens is if you're currently in the job, you're likely to get reappointed. It's pretty much pro forma, unless you want to leave. And it's like the local business leaders that the, the people who are on the board of that regional, you know, the Federal Reserve bank of Philadelphia, they have a board. They decide who's going to get that job. And like I said, it's usually the, the person who's in the job sticks around unless they want to go or there's a big search, and then they find someone new. But they're all up at the same time pretty soon. And in theory, the, the people that Trump appoints in Washington could veto any one of those picks. They never have, to my knowledge. Normally, again, this is like a rubber stamp. This is just a, okay, the local business people vetted this person. They seem okay. They put a, you know, reasonably competent person in the job. And then the Fed board says, okay, yeah, now we're having our next meeting. But there's a little bit of jitters out there about whether this time might be different, that Trump, once he gets his people on the board, might try to block those other people from getting their jobs, which, again, normally, this is not even an issue, but that's how he could cobble together enough people on the, on the, the group that sets interest rates, it's called the Federal Open Market Committee, to more quickly change their path than might otherwise be the case. So, again, it's like, kind of in the weeds, but I think it is a lurking risk out there for another way that Trump could screw up monetary policy and wreak a lot of damage on the US Economy.
- [30:04]
A
Yeah, he could just directly jawbone the governors in these regions. I mean, it's not as if Trump, with all kinds of things that we have not thought could happen. University president getting fired of a state university. Why does that, you know, how Many times. Uva, let's say that the presidents don't usually intervene in that. But you know, what if they especially have a sympathetic governor, in that case. But there are some of the. I mean, I just feel like people are underestimated. The people are still. I've been struck talking to economists, I don't know if you find this. They stay are very much living in a world that for the last 40 years has been pretty. President's been pretty good about keeping their hands off the Fed. There's such a consensus in the profession. It's really, you know, whether you're a Republican or Democratic, you know, because of.
- [30:41]
B
What happened, people are too.
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A
People are too complacent. I think now about that Trump is not interested in these rules and in these norms and, and anyway, I feel like the Fed is an interesting thing to follow.
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B
Totally agree, totally agree.
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A
Okay, well, that's worrisome. But yeah, everyone's been so focused on tariffs, which is understandable and important. I think a little overdone on it. I mean, the truth is about the inflation stuff, which I always wondered why people were so obsessed with that. The standard economic, I vaguely remember interpretation of tariffs is they're bad for the economy if you believe in sort of free trade and, you know, comparative advantage and so forth. But it's a dead weight on the economy. It's not necessarily. It's inflationary in the very short term in the goods that are tariffs. But yes, I don't know what 12% of our economy is imports or something. I mean, it's not like actually the whole economy is just going to go, you know, off the rails if it's. It's. Anyway, I feel like the inflation side of it got a little exaggerated as opposed to the general case against. Well, and then the uncertainty and then the political manipulation stuff.
- [31:37]
B
It matters to consumers, right. If suddenly, like we already have a housing shortage for a whole bunch of reasons unrelated to Trump. And if you tear up all of the inputs into a house, as we are doing, from the lumber, the steel beams, the bathtubs and doorknobs and, you know, basically everything in a house is being tariffed and gets more expensive at a time when housing is already short supply, it's already very difficult to build because of state and local permitting issues and labor shortages. And by the way, we're also deporting a lot of the labor force that works in construction. Those things matter. So I don't think it's nothing. And I think it's reasonable for Americans to be ticked off about the price increases that they are enduring related to tariffs because this president came in saying wrongly that he was going to get prices down. Right. That's never going to happen unless, like, we have a Great depression, which we don't want. But at the very least, he could be not pushing prices up further. So I think it's. I think it's reasonable for people to pay attention to this. Yeah, but I take your point that.
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A
Like, I mean, immigration could be as important. I'm just making this up. But cutting, you know, deporting people and not letting people in could be as.
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B
Oh, yeah, yes.
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A
As important to hiking housing prices as, you know, as the particular tariffs on whatever percentage of the goods are imported. But anyway, I did. The dovetailing of these is bad, right? I mean, that's.
- [33:07]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [33:07]
A
I mean, you know, it's, it's funny for a guy who saw Biden get so damaged, he wrote about this politically by inflation. He's not been very sensitive. The obvious, I think any economy, the obvious ways not to have inflation or yet not to impose tariffs and not to deport immigrants and reduce the labor supply, like those are just unambiguously inflationary, not to do them as inflation. You know what I mean, what I'm trying to say here. Right. I mean, yeah, he's so. It's funny that he's not actually acting in a way consistent with, you would think, his own political interests.
- [33:40]
B
I think he doesn't think things through. He doesn't. He has a degree in economics from Wharton. But I think he should get his money back for that because he doesn't seem to understand how any of these things affect the economy. As I said, sometimes there are these tacit acknowledgments that maybe tariffs are bad, like by virtue of the fact that they're rolling some of them back as part of their affordability messaging right now or their affordability agenda, such as it is. So sometimes they kind of acknowledge that, yes, it is Americans who are largely paying tariffs and not just, you know, the evil foreigners. But a lot of the time I don't know what kind of advice he's getting. I don't know how well he really understands what's happening. Or even with immigration, you know, the, the Labor Department under Trump actually released this analysis saying that deporting lots of immigrants was going to threaten to raise food prices because we were talking about construction. But obviously a huge part of the agricultural labor force is immigrants, whether documented or undocumented. I mean, a lot of them are here on Visas, but not all of them. And we're deporting all of the above. We're making it harder to get visas. So that's going to put pressure on food prices as well, in addition to the human cost of all of that, obviously. So in theory, parts of his government understand that this stuff is damaging, but maybe they don't care. Like, clearly Stephen Miller has sway on immigration and not everybody else who might be worried about food prices or the information isn't getting up to him. Like Trump will say periodically something about, oh, don't worry, like we're not going to touch the agricultural workers, we're not going to touch the restaurant workers, we're not going to deport people from Home Depot and then they do it anyway. So I don't know. It's hard to assess how well he understands what his own administration is doing or what the implications would be even if he does understand what they're doing, like what it would mean for the economy.
- [35:53]
A
No. That's so interesting. Really. And I didn't know his own Labor Department had put out that study.
- [35:58]
B
Yeah, like a couple weeks ago.
- [36:00]
A
Oh, wow. Last question. I'm just curious about whether you think I may be over interpreting this way. So Vance gave an interview, Vice President Vance, Thursday, Friday, something like that, in which he sort of went out of his way to seem more concerned about the economy than Trump didn't. Not just happy talk. And we feel what people are experiencing out there very much. I think kind of standard, what a standard politician would say if he were hearing that Trump's, you know, happy talk is not going over so well for people who, as you said earlier, are having trouble finding jobs or who finding see the prices continuing to go up some and so forth. I also felt like, and I think that got a fair amount of attention correctly, that maybe Vance is watching out for his own political future. I also wondered, this maybe comes from my experience a long time ago in the White House. I mean, Vance has access to a lot of economic data. I'm not suggesting anything inappropriate could be, but I mean that he's getting data that he shouldn't see ahead of time or anything like that. That's separate. But just if you're there literally, you can obviously have access to a ton of, to the economists in every department who can see stuff. And I wonder if he really kind of thinks it's going to get a little worse, the economy. I mean, it felt like I watched the clip of him doing this and I'm not some expert on Vance. I don't really like watching him much. So I don't watch it much, but I felt like he was maybe had sat through a briefing from someone which was, you know what, we're seeing more signs of slowing or we're seeing signs of problems here and there. You should, you might wonder why he would they wouldn't say to him this way. He would then think maybe I should get out there a little bit more on the we understand there's and I think he said something like it could get a little worse before it gets better. I don't know. Do you think? I just wonder. It just struck me that maybe we're he sees some stuff that would suggest a little more of a slowdown than, than maybe some of his supporters certainly think. I don't know.
- [37:44]
B
I don't think he we need to hypothesize about whether he's getting secret briefings warning him about secret data. I mean, we have public data.
- [37:52]
A
Well, that's right. And he's also the link to the business community in many ways for Trump. And so he is Talking to actual CEOs who are busy sucking up to Trump and coming to the state dinners. And what who knows if they're telling him and they're perfectly appropriate this that means they shouldn't tell him that. Gee, you know, we see some problems down the road or whatever, right?
- [38:10]
B
Yeah, definitely. I've talked with other people in the administration or who have approached the administration who are trying to find whatever inroads they can to explain how damaging some of these policies are on tariffs, on immigration, on the Fed. It's interesting. Like this is a whole other tangent, but a lot of members of the business community have been eerily silent as these destructive things are happening in the economy. Even some of the business industry groups, US Chamber of Commerce, Business Roundtable, they'll like complain a little bit, but not nearly as much as you would think relative to the scale of the damage that is being inflicted. Especially when you consider how vocal many of them were under Biden and Obama. Hey, this is Sarah. Look, I'm standing out front of a.m. p.m. Right now and well, you're sweet and all, but I found something more fulfilling.
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A
Even kind of cheesy. But I like it.
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- [39:28]
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Stop scrolling. Start spinning. Chumba Casino has hundreds of social casino games. No downloads, just pure fun. Play for free and you could redeem real prices. Ready to turn your free moments into winning moments? Head to chumbacasino.com today. No bridges necessary. BDW Group we're prohibited by law. 21/ terms of conditions apply, for example. And you know about how they elevated uncertainty, for example, much, much worse. Now they've been very quiet and I think part of the reason why is maybe obvious that nobody wants to put a target on their back, right? They don't want to be the lone complainant out there saying, hey guys, this is really bad for the economy. This is really bad for businesses. You're hurting manufacturing, even though you want to be helping manufacturing, you're hurting, et cetera, et cetera. And they all think that they can get what they want achieved more effectively, I guess behind closed doors. So they are asking for meetings. I don't know about Vance. I assume that they are, but I know with other members, you know, the economic groups within, you know, cea, nec, Commerce, like they're, they're all asking for these more direct private discussions to relay their concerns. And I think that's happening. And so they are probably, you know, members of the administration are probably getting that information. Whether it gets to the present, I don't know. He does talk to members of the business community, it seems, when they're calling and sucking up to him and probably asking for favors or for preferable treatment on particular tariffs. There's been a bunch of reporting from ProPublica on that as well. So these relationships matter not only to like getting information to members of the administration about bad things that they're doing, but also for getting little carve outs so that maybe my company isn't as affected as much as my competitors are. So I think some of that is happening. But if you're asking about J.D. vance specifically saying I feel you're paid, I don't think any of that even needs to happen because we see, we saw it at the polls, right? We saw it at the polls a couple of weeks ago where Republicans took a drubbing because Americans are pissed off about high prices and you know, some things that have to do with the president and some things that don't, as I've just been saying, like plenty of problems with droughts affecting certain grocery items, the electricity problems around the country, electricity prices are going up. That's generally, it's not, I mean, there are some things that the administration is doing to make it worse, like canceling big solar projects, for example, or making it harder for them to get permits. But for the most part, that's like a long standing problem that's just been building up and getting worse, particularly as there's more demand for electricity from these data centers, blah, blah, blah. Like it's not exclusively about policy, not exclusively about Trump's policy, I should say. But you're seeing people complain at the polls. You're seeing it in polling data surveys out there and you are seeing it in some of the, you know, harder economic data. So, yeah, it doesn't take a genius or like a secret meeting for JD Vance or others to to notice that this is a problem for them and Democrats are taking advantage of it. Right. Democrats, not just in this past election, but like in lots of messaging right now they're hammering on affordability and how the Trump administration is making life more expensive and they're not only raising tariffs, but they're taking away your subsidies for your health insurance. So Democrats see this as a winning issue whether or not the economy deteriorates a lot more. People are anxious enough about it now that, yeah, the administration should be paying attention.
- [43:19]
A
Yeah, very interesting. I'll let you go and thank you for that final point. I guess we'll know much more. You'll be reporting on this and writing on this and speaking about this for us and for the next as day to day, week to week. But I suppose we should maybe reconvene, what, maybe just after Christmas. I feel like we'll know a lot more. Right? I mean, Christmas is such a huge season for the economy. And also we'll have data from November and December.
- [43:42]
B
Yes. So, you know, knock on wood.
- [43:44]
A
So we should have a, like a New Year's conversation about that. I mean, don't you. Will we know more? Am I wrong about that? I feel like.
- [43:50]
B
Yeah, I mean, we'll know more. The Fed will have met by then. We'll have some more inflation.
- [43:56]
A
Shopping date is pretty Christmas shopping.
- [43:58]
B
Yep. We'll see what happens with that. That's a really important time for businesses. That's when they get in the black for the year. And a lot of businesses that are sustaining big hits because of the tariffs, they are really counting on a robust holiday shopping season. And I haven't really seen anything to suggest right now that they won't get that. But we'll have to see. So, yeah, would love to chat more.
- [44:20]
A
Okay. Well, meanwhile, people should keep up with you on the bull work on video, on obviously on your newsletter with your newsletter and on various forms of social media and stuff. So thank you Catherine for taking the time this morning. Thanks Bill, and thank you all for joining us. Wish life was all fun and games at Chumba Casino it is. Play hundreds of free social casino games. No downloads needed. Win the chance to redeem incredible prizes. Why will wait? Play your way anytime, any place. Only@chumbacasino.com no purchase necessary. VGW group void were prohibited by law 21 + terms and conditions apply.
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