Transcript
A (0:00)
Foreign.
B (0:05)
Are we headed for stagflation in 2026? Miley Full money starts now.
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Everybody needs money.
B (0:27)
That's why they call it are free. But you can give them to the
A (0:36)
From Fool Global Headquarters. This is Motley Fool Money.
B (0:40)
Welcome to Motley Fool Money. I am Travis Hoyam, joined today by Jason Moser and Lou Whiteman. And guys, we've got to start with the topic of the day. That is the economy. We got information about GDP growth in the fourth quarter. This morning that growth was 0.7%. Earlier estimate was 1.4%. The reason that this is notable is that the further we get away from the end of the fourth quarter, the better the data gets. Lou so where does your head go when you, when you think about this? Because this is a sharp drop from, I believe it was 4% growth in the third quarter. We also have inflation, which was over 3% in January. So it seems like we're. That stagflation word starts to come up when you have low growth and high inflation. That's not a great place to be from an economic perspective standpoint.
C (1:27)
Yeah, you're right. With each revision, not only do you get more better data because they've had time to digest it, but you also get this rare gift to see into the future. Compared to a few weeks ago when we didn't know what the first quarter of 2026 was going to look like, now it's almost over. So we can actually take that data from the fourth quarter and look at the world now. And look, it's not great. I wish we had a real uncertainty gauge, the way we have the VIX for volatility. And it's kind of the same. But it feels like what's going on, this lack of activity, it isn't because just everything's terrible. It's because just for the last year, between tariffs, between war, between just so much uncertainty, it is causing companies, it's causing consumers to just do a little less or to kind of wait and see. The good news there is is that in theory, if we get more certainty, that's a quicker turnaround than it would be if just the economy is in the dumps. The bad news is, like I said, we've had time to see how things play. Arguably, I think we weren't at war at the end of the fourth quarter. We have oil, we have so much going on. If anything, things look worse now than they did at the end of the year. So kind of combining the fact that things weren't growing in the fourth quarter with, wow, look at what's happened in the first quarter. I think there's a lot of reasons to be concerned right now.
B (2:54)
