Pod Insights Odd Lots Kansas City's Fed President on What Everyone Will Be Talking About at Jackson Hole About this episode It's Jackson Hole time again, when the most prominent minds in monetary policy meet in an idyllic Wyoming setting for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's annual symposium on monetary policy. For markets, the main event tends to be the speech from the Fed Chairman. But beyond that, there's always a theme that central bankers and academics are tasked to discuss. So to raise the curtain for this year's event, we spoke with none other than Jeffrey Schmid, the president and CEO of the Kansas City Fed. We talked about the official theme of this year's conference, the growing political pressure on the Fed itself, and how he thinks about monetary policy at a time when markets are at record highs, the unemployment rate is low, and inflation continues to come in above target. Only Bloomberg.com subscribers can get the Odd Lots newsletter in their inbox — now delivered every weekday — plus unlimited access to the site and app. Subscribe at bloomberg.com/subscriptions/oddlotsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript 10,577 words · 7 speakers
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0:00 Speaker 00 Finance is increasingly being built on digital rails. But as the adoption of virtual assets, tokenization and stable coins grows, can regulation not only keep pace but help accelerate it? Find out more later in the podcast.
0:16 Speaker 01 This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. I'm Carol Muster. Getting hired at SpaceX requires exceptional ability and may include having Elon Musk review a candidate's resume. So writes Bloomberg Business Week's Lauren Grush. She reports that the company culture is defined by Musk and job candidates must understand that a commitment to SpaceX means adhering to this culture and exhibiting loyalty to Elon Musk. To get hired, candidates must demonstrate their achievements from past jobs and hands-on experience matters more to recruiters than advanced degrees, with the company looking for people with raw innate intelligence. A spokesperson for SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment on its recruiting and hiring practices.
1:00 Speaker 01 But according to recruiters, advisors and those who've interviewed for jobs there, it's the space exploration dream that draws people to the company and Musk invokes that dream regularly to remind workers why they're there. Prospective hires are told that the job will require stamina, including in job ads that candidates quote "must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed." One major perk for all that hard work? Employees' access to equity, either the right to buy shares or payment in the form of restricted stock units that vest over time. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by ChatGPT. Get started at chatgpt.com.
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3:11 Tracy Alloway? Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.
3:15 Joe Weisenthal? And I'm Joe Weisenthal.
3:16 Tracy Alloway? Joe, it's that time of year again.
3:18 Joe Weisenthal? Jackson Hole week.
3:19 Tracy Alloway? It's my favorite time of year.
3:21 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah. So, I mean, it's a great time of year anyway, but in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, come on.
3:26 Tracy Alloway? For many reasons. Okay, so this is the Kansas City Fed's annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and they basically get together a bunch of different, you know, Fed presidents, a bunch of different speakers on economic policy, and then everyone geeks out while looking at mountains, basically.
3:44 Joe Weisenthal? It's really extraordinary, so this will be the third year that we'll have been there. We are recording this August 18th, but by the time people are listening to this, the event will have just will be kicking off. It really is extraordinary because you really have the top minds in this stuff from truly all around the world. But also, it's late summer, people chill, people hike, people recognize that they're in an amazing location, and they would be wasting their time if they just spent the whole time inside talking monetary policy.
4:11 Tracy Alloway? This is true, but I think part of the planning of this event is this idea of, okay, you get everyone out in this really nice place in the wilderness, and people are maybe a little bit more forthcoming, maybe a little bit more open to having creative discussions about policy. And it's interesting, you know, you mentioned people talking. Talking about like this year's theme, I have a pop quiz for you.
4:30 Joe Weisenthal? Okay.
4:31 Tracy Alloway? Which is, do you remember the themes from the last two Jackson Holes that we went to? We've been to, this will be our third.
4:38 Joe Weisenthal? I'm a little embarrassed to say it's monetary policy and a changing world. No, I actually, it's a good question.
4:43 Tracy Alloway? You're not that far off, actually. So last year, it was reassessing the effectiveness and transmission of monetary policy. The first Jackson Hole we went to in 2023, that was structural shifts in the global economy. That one, I gotta say, a little, I could forgive you for forgetting that one. But this year's theme, it just came out, you know, just got announced. So this theme is labor markets in transition, demographics, productivity, and macroeconomic policy. It's a good topic for many reasons. So obviously, you know, the future of AI and its impact on the labor force will certainly fit under that particular thematic umbrella. But also, it goes straight into the heart of what a lot of Fed policymakers seem to be discussing right now and arguing, right?
5:27 Joe Weisenthal? All kinds of things, immigration, aging, et cetera. How does that bear on the data that we're seeing right now? It's a great topic for both the short term and the long term of monetary policy. So it should be a fascinating conference.
5:38 Tracy Alloway? Right. And so on that note, I'm very happy to say we do in fact have the perfect guest. We are going to be speaking with Jeff Schmidt. He is of course, the president of the Kansas City Fed and responsible for putting on this event every year. So Jeff, thank you so much for coming on All Thoughts.
5:54 Speaker 05 Oh, it's my pleasure. It's great to finally meet both of you officially. And we follow you quite intently. So it's really great to be on.
6:01 Joe Weisenthal? We're leaving that in.
6:03 Tracy Alloway? That's right. Well, I mean, it is mutual, to be fair, because we follow you quite intently. So first of all, let me just extend a personal thanks for putting on an event which allows Joe and I to go to one of the most beautiful places on earth every year. That is truly wonderful for both of us. And then I just, going back to the theme for a second. How do you come up with the themes for these events every year? Is there like a brainstorming session and everyone goes into a room and 12 hours later?
6:31 Speaker 05 You emerge with some sort of consensus, much like a FOMC meeting, I suppose, but. Yeah, it's a great behind baseball question. And as you can imagine, you know, we're in our 48 years. So every year, you know, immediately after it's over, we get in a room and we talk about what went well. What can we make better? And I really give credit to Joe Gruber, a Gruber, our chief economist and his team. It's probably the most nerve wracking decision that has to be made because, you know, Jackson won't get over in late August. And then probably by sometime early, the fourth quarter, you're, you're starting to talk about what should we create a theme around for the following year? And so they actually end up deciding on that by the end of the year.
7:17 Speaker 05 And it's nerve wracking because you hope that all the research you've asked these brilliant people to do and present is applicable by August because you know how fast things move in the business and economic world. And boy, they are so good at it and they do think forward about some of the emerging issues that are going to be dealt with. But whether it be with the central bank or with the global economy. And I tell you what, they hit a home run this year because I'm actually, as a, you know, economist and Fed president. I'm very interested in the dynamic of demographics, not just nationally, but internationally. There's things going on that you'll hear and will be presented on Friday and Saturday
8:00 Speaker 05 that I think are going to really spur a lot of thinking and a lot of conversation about how demographic behaviors and movements move the workforce and labor force in the U.S. and abroad. So, so it is a, it's a tenuous eight months because you've got, you know, Nobel level economists doing the research and preparing these papers around a topic. And I think this one is really going to hit a really good chord.
8:26 Joe Weisenthal? It is definitely a great topic for right now because of, you know, there's all the questions. And here is just, I'm talking U.S. specifically, but as you mentioned, it is a global story because there is aging and the effect that that's going to have on the workforce and especially in many advanced economies. Non-advanced economies, frankly, and then obviously AI is a huge one and then in the US specifically changing immigration policy and so forth. Just on the inside baseball part a little bit more. Okay, so you establish, the team establishes the theme. How do you then like figure out, it's probably almost anyone I assume would say yes to an invite to present to Jackson Hole, but how, what is that actual process like where you identify the presenters that you're looking for?
9:08 Speaker 05 Yeah, so here again, as you can imagine, there's a, a community of economists and researchers, both nationally and abroad. While it's a big community, it's pretty connected. And so the team's going to get together and they're going to do a couple of things. One is they're going to try to break down maybe inside the topic, what are some of the nuances of, because I think we have four papers that'll be released in, on Friday and Saturday. And so within that topic, there's subtopics. And so you're going to have researchers in university settings, you're going to have researchers inside of central banks. And a lot of that community is going to kind of focus itself
9:48 Speaker 05 on certain micro and macro topics. So they have a really good inventory of experts that they'll reach out to. And I would say you're right. I mean, I think in most cases, the researchers would really covet the opportunity to do this research and submit the paper, but they're also very thoughtful about it. You know, some will just maybe not take the engagement just because it's not well aligned to the research that they're either doing, or they're, they feel their experts have. But it, but by and large, it's really a great honor and we, and we typically have a very positive response. The challenge is time. You know, a lot of these things might take a year
10:30 Speaker 05 or two to research, but they have a very tight window. Once they're asked and they agree, you know, they might have to submit within four or five months. And sometimes when you're talking about a very macro topic, that can be a super big challenge for a researcher.
10:46 Tracy Alloway? So speaking of challenges, why don't we get right into more of that theme, the idea of labor markets in transition?
10:54 Tracy Alloway? Why don't you go ahead and give us your sort of a high level interest in this particular topic? I guess, how does something like AI, how does something like aging demographics, lower birth rates, actually complicate the task of setting monetary policy, especially when you think about things like the neutral rate of interest, R star? You know, R star is a nebulous concept at the best of times. I can only imagine what it's like trying to estimate R star at a time when we're also talking about, you know, AI potentially transforming the way everyone on earth is working.
11:25 Speaker 05 Yeah. So let me kind of set the stage for this, because first of all, my background's, I'm a little bit of a hybrid Fed president. So you're going to typically have maybe Fed presidents that are in two different camps. One is going to be the traditional camp of economist, PhD, researcher, scholar, really focusing attention on the monetary policy discussions relating their background to making good decisions at the policy table with the FOMC. The second is going to be more in my camp. I'm much more of a practitioner, not a professor of economics. I mean, I've run banks, I've been a bank supervisor with the FDIC early in my career.
12:07 Speaker 05 I've done a little bit of leadership teaching at SMU the last couple of years, but I'll take my banker experiences. Through my 30-plus years of building banks, the most important part of that is really the workforce of people that you put together. And through that 30 years, to your points, there's really two big drivers on the demographic end that are of interest to me. One is just the behavioral nature of the labor force generationally, how they're changing, how they use technology. I'm a baby boomer. The 20 to 30-something coming in has a different sense of what the job is and how they're going to be successful at that work. The second thing is just, and there's a very compelling paper that's going to be released
12:52 Speaker 05 on, that addresses things like fertility rates. And so that's not only a national, but that's an international phenomenon, is how does the labor force migrate, let's say in the US state to state, what drives that migration of labor force? And then what's happening in other large labor centric countries? Where the fertility rates are actually affecting the workforce going forward? I mean, China's a really stark example, Japan, India is something, a country I think everybody's really watching. Relative to how their labor force is maturing, educating, growing. I think all those dynamics are going to play a really important piece to the puzzle
13:37 Speaker 05 of where, where are things going to be made and how are economies going to, going to grow? Because most economists and people in the markets would argue, you've got to have a growing labor force for your economy to grow. And that probably gets to the next observation you made, I think, Tracy, and that's how does technology, maybe specifically artificial intelligence weave its way into this conversation? And you'll see some really good arguments about maybe the advent of AI is going to be perfectly timed for the nature of the labor force and how it's shifting because overall, when you add fertility rates and you add labor market at large, it's pretty static, it's not growing in a big way.
14:22 Speaker 05 Probably the only areas that are growing significantly would be India and maybe the African continent. Though all those things are going to play into this mix of, of both national and global labor force.
14:49 Speaker 00 What's next for virtual assets? I'm Jacob Rees, host of Economy Scale, a series exploring growth in key global sectors. And in this episode, we're diving into the digital forces shaping finance. Sean McHugh from Dubai-based Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority has this to say.
15:05 Speaker 06 We're seeing a lot of institutional players come in, digital asset dedicated hedge funds, high frequency traders and that sort of thing, and folks who service institutional clients.
15:14 Speaker 00 As more capital enters the market, adaptive regulation is likely to become increasingly key. Reese Merrick of Ripple says. A lot of regulators globally would like to keep the industry at arm's.
15:26 Tracy Alloway? Length, that's the opposite here. I think also what you'll find is that regulation and frameworks can come out, but some of them are maybe a slight iteration on some 80 year old policy and not actually in line with what the technology can do and offer. And again, that's very different in Dubai.
15:41 Speaker 00 Listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts. This series is brought to you by Bloomberg Media Studios and the Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism.
15:51 Speaker 01 This is the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by Chat GPT. I'm Carol Muster. Getting hired at SpaceX requires exceptional ability and may include having Elon Musk review a candidate's resume. So writes Bloomberg Business Week's Lauren Grush. She reports that the company culture is defined by Musk and job candidates must understand that a commitment to SpaceX means adhering to this culture and exhibiting loyalty to Elon Musk. To get hired, candidates must demonstrate their achievements from past jobs and hands on experience matters more to recruiters than advanced degrees with the company looking for people with raw innate intelligence. A spokesperson for SpaceX didn't respond to a request for comment on its recruiting and hiring practices.
16:34 Speaker 01 But according to recruiters, advisors and those who've interviewed for jobs there, it's the space exploration dream that draws people to the company and Musk invokes that dream regularly to remind workers why they're there. Prospective hires are told that the job will require stamina, including in job ads that candidates quote must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed. One major perk for all that hard work, employees access to equity, either the right to buy shares or payment in the form of restricted stock units that vest over time. That's the Bloomberg Tech Minute brought to you by Chat GPT. Get started at chatgpt.com.
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18:07 Joe Weisenthal? So speaking of technology, a couple of weeks ago, we interviewed Fed President Mary Daly. She was talking about the iPhone and for example, that the current iPhone can do so much more than the first iPhone, you know, however many years that go. And then I thought of a follow-up question to that, but I forgot to ask her. So I'm like, okay, I'm just going to ask the next Fed president. So I'm asking you the question that I actually should be asking Mary Daly. I apologize for the unfairness, but I think this could inform the AI discussion, which is that we have seen already, setting aside AI, these incredible tech advances, undeniable, that have changed the world, right? No one would deny that. And yet, measured productivity gains have not been particularly extraordinary. So if you look at like, since
18:50 Joe Weisenthal? the first iPhone or the, from the pre iPhone era to now, the world's changed dramatically on account of the technology changes. And yet, productivity, nothing particularly special, at least in the data. And I'm curious, like, when you think about the effect of AI, do you have any sort of theory for why that is? Or why it is that these obvious technological breakthroughs haven't actually moved the dial in some of these important measures?
19:17 Speaker 05 Well, I have some personal thoughts, maybe some observations within the Fed itself, at least with the Kansas City Fed. One is just be patient. A lot of things are happening. I think a lot of this technology is emerging. Now, granted, it'll go fast, but the adoption, I mean, even I think about the Kansas City Fed itself, you know, getting comfortable with what's kind of embedded inside, let's say, the AI technology.
19:46 Speaker 05 You know, the thing I worry a lot about is just things like copyright laws. What, you know, that we're sensitive to using that technology. And is it safe for us to use as we try to figure out ways to be more productive inside our bank? From a more macro standpoint, I think everybody's trying to figure out, I would kind of categorize the AI phenomena today as kind of a low fruit to high fruit process. So what everybody's trying to do is say, what are the, what's the nature of job, of things inside my job that actually can make me more productive, just inherently more productive? Whether it be narrative in a legal brief, or let's say, taking a bank examination report
20:30 Speaker 05 and trying to download things that would normally take you hours or days to populate an examination report with. I think we're at that kind of crossroads where we're trying to figure out, what's the easy low fruit? And then I think over time, I don't know if you're going to get this blast of productivity, that all of a sudden it's this moment of epiphany. I think you're gonna, I think it's actually perfectly timed because over time, I think you're going to be able to integrate this technology and you're going to figure out where it's best used. Now granted, and people are doing studies on this, there are some jobs that, that I think, I'll give Mary Daly credit, she coined the phrase soul sucking jobs.
21:13 Speaker 05 What are the things that people are, let's say, more monotonous or boring, or things that just don't move needles, that aren't like super interesting and challenging? And I think you're going to see, that's going to be the part of the low fruit process. The upper half of the tree, I think you might see some real productivity gains. But it, but in the end, when you see shifts in like immigration policy and you see workforce is not growing, you're actually going to need to integrate that technology to keep a balance in the supply and demand. I, I think Chair Powell mentioned this in his last conference after the FOMC, when he was addressing the, some of the data that came out in the workforce.
21:56 Speaker 05 In the summer and some of the adjustments that while it was a little bit eye opening, we feel like there's a balancing in supply and demand of the labor force today. And it's probably why you're not seeing at least today, a major uptick in the unemployment rate. It's it's kind of rebalancing itself going into the next couple of quarters.
22:16 Tracy Alloway? This was going to be exactly my next question, since you brought up immigration. Why don't you go ahead and tell us what you're seeing in the labor market right now? Because the debate that seems to be emerging is that, yes, we've seen these big revisions to payrolls recently. But on the other hand, if we have a lot of people exiting the workforce because they're aging out of it or because of new immigration policies, then maybe that break even labor rate doesn't really matter as much anymore. And we can tolerate it as long as the employment rate stays pretty strong. And we are pretty close to full employment levels still.
22:52 Speaker 05 Yeah.
22:52 Tracy Alloway? So what are you seeing now? How would you characterize it?
22:56 Speaker 05 So Tracy, I would say that there was a bit of a convergence of things in the first and second quarter. So when we talk about being data dependent, there's two buckets of data that that I really focus on. One is the kind of the hard data that's issued by third parties or internally by by government agencies, things that would that they track and have tracked for a long, long time that emerge with things like unemployment rates. The second bucket is really my travels in and around the 10th district. We're seven states, 20 million people and businesses, trying to get four cornered in the district to try to get as much real time information. And so the convergence, the way I see it, I think a couple of things were at odds
23:41 Speaker 05 in some of the information and data that was that emerged here in the last month or two. The first is that there was a lot, you know, we heard that the word uncertainty everywhere we went. You got a change in administration, you got some big policy rocks, you had a budget that was being debated. All those things create uncertainty in in a business person's mind, right? The second thing was a major change in. Immigration policy and so that that created its own set of uncertainties and dynamics. And I think what we're finding, or at least what we're seeing in the 10th district is a lot of those things converged over a very short period of time. And what normally will happen, and this kind of gets me back to my banker days,
24:24 Speaker 05 is businesses will actually, they'll slow their decisioning down. They'll, let's say, freeze hiring for a time. They'll be a little bit more conservative with their spend on certain things. And so I actually think that affected some of the labor numbers that came out. In the most recent tabletops we've done with businesses, they seem to be digesting a lot of that that change and those changes. In the last couple of weeks, I've seen a level of confidence back in both the business sectors and some of the discussions about labor and workforce. So we'll see. I mean, I would expect maybe a bit of a rebound in some of the labor statistics, but at the end of the day,
25:06 Speaker 05 it really is about balancing the supply and demand of the labor force and what emerges from that over the next, I'd say, a couple of quarters.
25:15 Tracy Alloway? It's interesting. You talk about maybe people feeling slightly more comfortable, at least relatively compared to the beginning of the year recently, because I've seen some chatter about maybe an economic re-acceleration right now. You know, some of the tariffs have now been finalized. It looks so far like we haven't had that huge inflationary uptick, although of course producer prices that we saw last week maybe tell a slightly different story. We did have that retail spending report out on Friday that showed people were still spending quite a lot of money. Yeah. Do you see signs of a sort of like recovery or re-acceleration at the moment?
25:54 Speaker 05 I don't know. I mean, we got good GDP numbers, kind of a bit of a rebound slinging back in the second quarter from the first quarter's weakness, and that had a lot of noise in at the first quarter. I think, I don't know if I necessarily categorize it as a rebound. I think that there's just, there's a lot of things that are kind of working themselves through. I mean, you've got a major, major cycle change. With a new administration with a lot of really very interesting macro ideas that they're putting in place. And, you know, I think you could make a fair argument that a lot of those are pro-growth types of policies and processes and programs.
26:31 Speaker 05 So I think the nature of what we see in both the labor data and the inflation data are going to be pretty interesting. And there's a lot yet to emerge between even this week and our September FOMC meeting. But, but I, I think the nature of how people are thinking about the economy, what the markets are, how they're performing. There, there is an optimism, I think, shift from, it wasn't that they were down in the first couple of quarters. They just weren't sure. And so there, there was some pausing happening. And then I think we're sensing that the nature of the next couple of cycles as we get into the holiday seasons, toward the end of the year.
27:15 Speaker 05 There just seems to be a, a pretty good optimism about, about what's going to happen in the next couple of quarters.
27:21 Joe Weisenthal? Let me ask you a question about the latest jobs report that actually sort of ties near-term cyclical story with the broader terms theme of the conference, which is that the two sectors that basically, in the most recent jobs report, the two sectors that basically added all of the jobs were healthcare and social assistance. And these sectors basically add employment virtually every month without fail. And it's very easy to connect that to aging because people who are elderly or retired need a certain type of, you know, nurses and silver to take care of them. But these aren't considered to be particularly high productivity jobs. Looking in the medium term, do you worry about this? Like, how much of the productive labor force will be necessary to essentially
28:07 Joe Weisenthal? take care of old people and what that means for productivity overall?
28:12 Speaker 05 So when we kind of interview a lot of our healthcare professionals in the district, there is still a huge demand need in that sector. And so I think there's a big up potential in specifically in the healthcare industry. And here again, I'm a baby boomer, so I'm using more of those services. And as you do experience that, you do see that there's a real demand need for healthcare professionals in kind of all spectrums of that industry. And so I do think that there are pockets by industry that could still use a lot of labor talent. I'd say healthcare, certain agricultural industries in the 10th district, there's certainly
28:53 Speaker 05 some technology and manufacturing that I think you could see a bit of nice growth in over the next several quarters. So I think what's going to be interesting, and kind of getting a little bit back to the AI conversation, Yeah. is I think the nature of jobs inside industries is going to change. So we talked a little bit about this in the Reserve Bank is we just launched a new five year strategic plan. And embedded in the plan is really to re-explore the skill sets that are necessary to make this plan happen. And I think the things that we used to be doing the last five or 10 years need to be shifted to something else to stay a high performing Reserve Bank.
29:36 Speaker 05 So I do believe in a lot of these industry areas with, I think, healthcare being at the top of the list. I think you're going to see a re-skilling in a lot of these job areas as some of the jobs that can be done by a more artificial intelligence technology are going to shift to much more, let's say, intellectual or behavioral based job skills going forward. So I think here again, I think that's the message I give to our business associates in the 10th district is tell us how you're re-skilling your workforce, because I think that's where AI is going to really play a big role. You can't be static in the job you're doing.
30:19 Speaker 05 You have to reimagine that job with new technologies.
30:23 Tracy Alloway? You know, you mentioned markets earlier, and clearly there's a lot of enthusiasm about. AI still in the markets and that's one of the reasons we've seen stocks, you know, hovering around all time highs and credit spreads are now at what like a 30 year low, basically. Talk to us about where you see rates at the moment in terms of their restrictiveness, because some of your fellow Fed presidents will say that they think rates are still restrictive. And then when I look at something like credit spreads at, you know, a three decade low, I think actually this doesn't look that restrictive to me.
31:01 Joe Weisenthal? And with inflation still above target.
31:03 Tracy Alloway? Right, and with inflation still above target. How restrictive are rates at the moment?
31:08 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's a, it's a great question and I've been very public. I believe they're, I would call them modestly restrictive. They're not overly restrictive. And I think that what we have to be careful of is kind of rebasing our decisioning on rates. And, and I think the markets do this because look, I'm a former banker. Bankers and bank clients, they love low credit rates. They like lower rates because they can perform better on their capital base. So I understand that piece, but there, but I think we talk about being range bound to a degree. I like to think about, you know, I love the 90s, right? So if you think about how hard the 80s were, as we emerged into the 90s, we had a technology surge. And, and
31:51 Speaker 05 if you watched or looked at the nature of the economy, it performed really well, but there were monetary policy was, became a bit of a wave. So you would start to make decisions where if you saw things happening in either the, you know, your, your dual mandate, you're, you know, keeping stable prices and full employment, you would adjust that policy rate. And when things got maybe a little bit hotter and then as they cooled, you'd bring them down. But it was a nice range bound process. For me, the experience of the last, let's say, two or three shocks. So you had the 08 shock, you had the 2020 pandemic shock. You know, you're pushing rates down to de minimis levels. You probably don't want rates
32:35 Speaker 05 down there that low because if, if they're down there that low, you're trying to. Pick something off its back. And so you're trying to create a rate environment to create stimulus. So I think right now, we seem to be in a really good place. And so, you know, it almost becomes more difficult in the debate on rates, whether they should be higher or lower, when you're at the margin versus when you're trying to use monetary policy as more of a blunt force instrument to try to pound a high inflation rate down like we did in the 2223 cycle. So it's actually going from kind of a blunt force tool to actually more surgical.
33:19 Speaker 05 And then the debate gets very interesting about where that you should turn those dials relative to the data that you're seeing. So it actually becomes more difficult when you get on the margin in that range bound area versus when you're trying to really sledge the economy on the inflation side down.
33:38 Joe Weisenthal? So Tracy mentioned that estimating the neutral rate of interest is a sort of difficult concept in any period. But there is this view that the neutral rate of interest today in 2025 is significantly higher than it was in 2019. And probably some of the best evidence for that is the fact that even though the market is anticipating rate cuts in the short term over the next couple of years, that the long term rate is still fairly elevated, curves steepen, higher rates for longer. What changed? What's the difference between 2025 and 2019 such that it looks like the neutral rate of interest is so much durably higher?
34:16 Speaker 05 Yeah, Joey, this is really interesting science. With the policy side of our mandate, we have some influence on the short end of the curve, right? So but so taking the long end, the whole concept of the long rate, it has what we call term premiums in it, right? And you have to kind of sub.
34:35 Joe Weisenthal? Joe doesn't believe in the term premium for the record, but I do, I do.
34:40 Speaker 05 I'm not sure. I don't know if I believe in it, but I think there are pieces of a long rate that have sections of it that the market is going to try to digest.
34:50 Joe Weisenthal? Can I just say Tracy thinks that I have a complete crank, but every once in a while we get a guest who's like, no, there's something to Joe's skepticism. No, no, no. Every once we get a guest who will say, you know, it's a nuanced thing, which it is. We all agree. All right, keep going, keep going.
35:03 Speaker 05 Okay, so what I'm trying to do with, let's say, the concept of the long end of the curve, is you've got issues of, okay, some of the market's going to say they're going to be influenced by the prospect of inflation because you have to build a price into the long rate for inflation. Some of them are going to say it's a demand and supply issue with the debt that's trying to be financed, both government and private debt. The nature of that long rate, there's pieces of it that are going to influence it. It's interesting, you know, I talk about the Fed balance sheet quite a bit. It's hard to second guess what we did in the 08 and 2020 cycle with our balance sheet
35:45 Speaker 05 relative to trying to keep the long rate somewhat in submission. So actually, the duration of our balance sheet is influencing the long rate to some extent, which I think is in a positive way. So when you think about it, the Treasury duration is about four or five years. Our balance sheet's about a little over eight years in duration. So that's that quantitative twisting that people talk about. So we're actually influencing the long rate a little bit in our balance sheet in a positive way, but I think over time, as long as the market believes that debt can be financed and there's not a lot of inflation expectation, you're seeing the long end of the curve drift downward.
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40:00 Joe Weisenthal? So I'm gonna go to what I think, you know, what is maybe the hot button topic of the moment. The formal theme of this year's Jackson Hole is, of course, about the labor market and various trends. The subtext theme, and I think this is going to be a lot of interest, is the attacks on the Fed and concerns about central bank independence. Just to your point about what's driving that long end of the curve, if there are concerns that the political will is no longer there to keep an independent central bank, if there are concerns that in the future that the Fed will more be at the beck and call of elected officials, could that also be a factor in driving up the long end of the curve
40:40 Joe Weisenthal? as investors may rationally presume that a future Fed may not be as committed to stable prices as the current Fed?
40:47 Speaker 05 Wow, that's a, that's deep, Joe.
40:51 Speaker 05 Actually, there's so much, there's such an onion in what you just...
40:55 Joe Weisenthal? I know, I know, but I'm trying, but so strip away all of my throat clearing, which I felt was necessary. If there is concern that there is no longer the political will to maintain an independent central bank, that there is concern that a future Fed may not be as committed to inflation fighting as it ought to be to keep that 2% goal, could that be a factor driving up rates at the long end?
41:15 Tracy Alloway? Peel the onion for us, we have time.
41:18 Speaker 05 So the quick answer is, I don't know. I guess I wouldn't, I don't see or hear that. Acknowledge the debate. Yeah. Joe, and I believe, look, our country's gonna be 250 years old next, next year. It's still the great experiment. It's built on. Just getting started here. Legislation and, and what's fascinating to me is the, the issue of Fed independence, it's codified, right? So it, you know, we have a mandate, it's legislative, that, that legislative authority can shift and change. But it's hard to argue the, the efficacy of, of the independence piece. I mean,
41:56 Speaker 05 I think there's a bit of perfection in me being able to go to a table with 18 other really committed and bright people to try to keep this economy on a level rail. You know, I, I talk to people about the economy being this big, very massive train. The largest, most powerful train, economic train in the world. $30 trillion and you've got administration and a Congress that really is running the train. Where the American people are, are riding on that train. Now, for the Fed, the Fed is not the train. The Fed is actually the rails. It, it simplifies the, to me, to think about the two rails being, you know, stable prices and, and full employment.
42:40 Speaker 05 And for us, it's really, it helps us not to have to worry about the market or the politic of things to, to try to keep the rails steady and level. So that train can go fast. And so the nature of, of what we do in those two rails and the decisioning we do is really more balancing than it is trying to shoot towards some predetermined place. We know 2% is a good place to be for inflation. We, I think time has tested that. We know full employment is a really very positive friction to the stable price mandate.
43:20 Speaker 05 So kind of getting back to the independence thing, healthy friction in the conversation just makes the republic. Looks stronger, in my opinion. So I'm happy with the debate. I'm happy to express it. But frankly, it's it's less important that I express it as what you and your listeners believe that independence does to this to the decisioning of that massive economy. I think it works. I think you you see other countries that that disentangle it to the pop body politic. And I think it's very difficult to keep economies level set when you don't have that independence piece.
44:00 Tracy Alloway? Well, on this topic, let me ask, I guess, a blunter independence question because Joe's right that this is, you know, this is the unofficial theme of the conference, I think, and you yourself have previously stressed the importance of Fed independence. So are there steps that the Fed should be taking in order to, you know, not necessarily improve its independence or even protect its independence, but to convince people like us and the markets that it is truly making decisions independently?
44:32 Speaker 05 So the proof is in the pudding about, you know, how is our policy action affecting the level setting of those rails? And so, look, we should be held to task that are we making decisions that are rationalized on sound data? And that they are in compliance with the congressional mandates that we have. And so we are kind of duty bound to that framework. And so I would say there's a measure of perfection in the fact that even in the Fed's structure, where you've got seven Board of Governors and 12 Reserve Bank Presidents, where the nature of just how those individuals are seated
45:16 Speaker 05 with, let's say, Senate confirmation, a White House nomination for the Board of Governors, and then the 12 Reserve Banks having their own in-market, in-district boards that really kind of act as a ballast to the whole independence architecture. So I actually think that the nature of how it was structured in 1913 is still effective. Effective today, we're just continuing to learn about how to make policy better relative to what to the cycles in the economy. Think about the twenties and thirties, think about the nineteen seventies and eighties cycle. We're still learning as a body to to get this right,
45:56 Speaker 05 because we've got this amazing economy, thirty trillion of a hundred trillion. And we're if we're healthy, the globe can be healthy. And that's the way I see our our role. And that's why I think independence matters.
46:10 Joe Weisenthal? All right, I have another question that I forgot to ask Mary Daly. And now it's and I've been thinking about it. And I was like, OK, now you're here. At the most recent Fed decision, there were two dissents, which is not, you know, crazy to have it. Dissents happen, but they're like fairly rare, etc. Why are dissents rare? How would you articulate why dissents are rare? Because I think this again, could be relevant in the future, depending on who the next Fed Chair is. Are they rare because generally speaking, you and your colleagues roughly arrive at the same view of what's appropriate policy? Or are they rare because historically, when there is some marginal difference, the regional Fed presidents and the other governors tend to defer to the judgment of the Chair?
46:55 Speaker 05 Yeah, it's I love that that question. And so I maybe frame it in a couple of ways. One is, I think, in a lot of ways, dissents are healthy. I think there are times when we we get kind of criticized as is being kind of Fed speak, you know, that they're always aligned.
47:12 Joe Weisenthal? And yet, by and large, like one, there are two is rare. Sometimes there's one frequently is there. So what's the reason why, generally speaking, they are pretty rare?
47:21 Speaker 05 So so here again, we're at the margin on things like the policy rate today. So the data could shift people's opinions one way the other on the dual mandate relative to their vote on on dissent or not. So I think the two dissents were fairly rational, public statements about concern about the labor, the labor market and the labor force. I, you know, there was great debate. And so you're trying to figure out where do you settle on the debate? The other influence really is the chair. I I've worked with Jerome Powell for a couple of years now. I I he's a principled, he's committed.
48:00 Speaker 05 I think he appreciates in his background and experience trying to collaborate with people at the table to get a sense of where they are in their their opinions of of where the economy is and where the policy rate should be. And I've really enjoyed working with him and we don't always agree, but the the nature of once you get to the table, you've got to make a decision. And I think that you just have to have good data, good background, good discussions in your district about where do you think that the policy rate should go? And I and so I think it really does. It's healthy discussion and at times I suppose it's going to be a vote of dissent at a time or two,
48:42 Speaker 05 but I we're in the margin play now relative to where that policy rate should be.
48:47 Tracy Alloway? Okay, so speaking of where the policy rate should go and healthy discussion, obviously, there's a lot of stuff happening between now and the September meeting. We have the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium itself. We have a couple more big data points. What specific data or developments would signal to you that perhaps it is time to start, you know, really thinking or advocating for that rate cut? What are you watching out for?
49:13 Speaker 05 Yeah, so I'd be watching what a lot of us watch, you know, some of the inflation data. There's quite a bit of it going to come out in the next four or five weeks. Certainly, we're going to be very determined to network our inside the 10th district about what's happening inside labor and the workforce. Just try to get a better beat on where unemployment is and supply and demand, where that is. So I think those are the principal data points. Then I think that there's that's what's beautiful about the Jackson Hole timing. I think there's going to be a lot of discussion, not just domestically, but internationally. I mean, we've got 150 people, experts in their own rights, central bankers, some of those most amazing economists on
49:57 Speaker 05 Globe, all four corners, just to get a calibration of where everybody is just globally. And I think we'll be able to emerge with solid decisioning in September. We'll see where that goes. Like I said, I, when I put everything in the basket, it just seems like we're in a pretty good place right now. But look, that data can shift and change and we're in kind of, as I've mentioned, kind of the nuance of the range of where we want to be with policy rate. And we'll see where, where it goes in September.
50:31 Joe Weisenthal? My last question is, and it's basically just a restatement of Tracy's earlier question, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around this. You know, Americans have experienced years of above target inflation. It's still running a little warm. As Tracy mentioned, stock market is at all time high, credit spreads very low. And again, inflation still warm. And you also say that you think the labor market is all right. It's fine and that maybe businesses have a little confidence. Just articulate, what is it therefore that's restrictive or even, even modestly restrictive about the current stance?
51:04 Speaker 05 Well, so here.
51:05 Joe Weisenthal? How do you, how do you, how do you demonstrate that it's restrictive?
51:08 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah. So, so look, there's a lot of market opinion about kind of the nature of where the policy rate is to say, let's say where the two-year treasury is. And just the, you know, everybody has kind of, they get, go back to this whole neutral rate conversation.
51:26 Joe Weisenthal? Right.
51:26 Speaker 05 Which I think has some value. I mean, the R star processes of value, there's going to be some really interesting discussion on the Taylor rule. I mean, some of the Taylor rule dated today would suggest that maybe rates ought to be a little higher. So that we're gonna, I think we're gonna really bear down on the nature of how restrictive things might be. And but to your point, Joe. With all the data sets that you just espoused, along with the dual mandate data sets, it just seems like we're in a pretty good place. Yeah. I don't think we should not talk about would there be a scenario where rates could go higher on the policy side? The PPI was a bit eye opening.
52:10 Speaker 05 We'll see where the CPE comes in and in later here in August and September. Not that necessarily it needs to go higher, but you have to be willing to anchor yourself inside those mandates. So if in fact you see something that needs more restriction, you shouldn't be unafraid to act. That's our job. So, so we'll see, but right now it seems like we're in a good place. By the way, we brought that policy rate down 100 basis points since a year ago. So it's not like we haven't moved it and the yield curve seems to be in a pretty good place too.
52:51 Speaker 05 And so I, I don't know, I like, I like what I'm seeing right now with a bit of caution on, let's just keep our eye on this inflation number as they emerge.
53:02 Tracy Alloway? So I have one more question because I realize it would be bad if we had you on and we didn't ask you at least one banking question, given your previous career history. But the other forgotten theme of our macroeconomic policy moment is quantitative tightening, right? QT is still going on in the background and recently we've seen use of the RRP, the repo facility, going to less than 50 billion. And so people are talking again about, are we getting to a point where we are going to see bank reserves start to drop and maybe they will become scarce? I know the Fed has been watching this. Is funding on your radar at the moment? Is there a possibility that we do start to see some signs of additional stress in the funding market?
53:47 Speaker 05 Okay, so I would say that right now, there's a, I think, a general consensus that we are in an abundant reserves policy framework. But there's also debate on both the size of the Fed balance sheet and the size of the reserves in the system. There's actually, actually, very good debate relative to the cost or non-cost of ample or abundant reserves in the system. Is it, does it create an inefficiency? Does it create too much of a footprint of the Fed into the markets? I will say that I'm encouraged that we're in a project now that's, I think, gonna, gonna modernize the discount window process.
54:29 Speaker 05 So I think there's an opportunity where the Fed, as the nation's central bank, can make the activities inside the discount window much more fungible and much easier for banks to access. And I think you could start to see in the, in future years where reserves and discount window act or react in a positive way, where you can actually see a smaller footprint of reserves, where banks are much more comfortable having the backstop and having a much, much easier way to access reserves through the discount window and other tools as a way to make the market comfortable that there's plenty of liquidity in the system. So I'm excited about that.
55:11 Speaker 05 It's very timely that we do that because here again, two years ago, we launched Fed Now. So I think what's, the other fascinating thing about the ecosystem of banking is we are moving to an instant payment economy. I mean, you're starting to see even businesses start to think about paying people every day, you know, and just the nature of, of how we move money instantly, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. The nature of that is really gonna be a very interesting dynamic, and it's gonna be necessary for the central bank to be accommodative to the immediacy of that money movement.
55:51 Speaker 05 And so I'm excited about some of the conversations we're having to make that, to make our system of money movement, movement much more modern.
56:00 Tracy Alloway? All right. Well, Jeff, we're gonna have to end it there. We could go on forever, but we'll save some of it for in person at Jackson Hole, I suppose.
56:07 Speaker 05 Oh, great. Yeah, I really look forward to that.
56:09 Tracy Alloway? Yeah, thank you so much for coming on and giving us a preview and we'll see you in Wyoming.
56:15 Speaker 05 You're welcome. See you there.
56:29 Tracy Alloway? Joe, there was a lot to pick out of that conversation and it was a really good preview of, I think, what's gonna be like hot button topics at the event itself. But one sentence kinda jumped out at both of us, I think, which is the idea that, well, you know, there are scenarios where interest rates, you could argue, interest rates should be higher here.
56:45 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah, that was a little bit interesting and he phrased it in an interesting way and I have to like go back to the tape because there was like, I think, a double negative in there. But, I mean, look, you said it. Stocks are record high. Credit spreads are record low. He characterized, maybe we've already seen the worst of the labor market momentum for 2025 with the unemployment rate still in the low 40s and inflation is still warm.
57:09 Tracy Alloway? Well, I know he also, he pushed back on the specific use of economic re-acceleration, that word. But it is true. We have seen, in addition to some of the data like turning negative or showing a slowdown, we have seen some of the data start to tick up, at least compared to like recent months.
57:27 Joe Weisenthal? So this is an interesting thing. We got that recent jobs report and you say, oh, we're like slowing down. But when we did our recent episode with Skanda, he made the good point of like, well, actually, maybe that data was weak because that was the immediate post-terror volatility and you slammed the brakes on the hiring and so forth. And assuming that the uncertainty measures have come down certainly since the middle of April, it is plausible that we've already seen the softest labor market of 2025. Anyway, lots of interesting there. And I think like it's a really good theme. I mean, it's a good theme for this year's conference because it does feel like some of the things that are happening immediately right now also intersect with long-term
58:05 Tracy Alloway? Definitely.
58:06 Joe Weisenthal? And so there's a lot of moving parts.
58:07 Tracy Alloway? It's it's one of those conference themes that is not just like theoretical, you know, 10 or 20 years in the distance. It's sort of like,
58:15 Joe Weisenthal? Yeah.
58:15 Tracy Alloway? It's very much now. And on that note, you know, we're going to have some good episodes that we record with people who are presenting papers on those topics.
58:22 Joe Weisenthal? Very excited. So listeners should be prepared for much Jackson Hole content to come.
58:27 Tracy Alloway? Yeah. All right. Shall we leave it there?
58:29 Joe Weisenthal? Let's leave it there.
58:29 Tracy Alloway? This has been another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
58:35 Joe Weisenthal? And I'm Joe Weisenthal. You can follow me at TheStalwart. Follow our producers, Kermit Rodriguez at Kermit, Armin Dashel Bennett at Dashbot, and Cale Brooks at CaleBrooks. For more Odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg.com/oddlots, where the daily newsletter and all of our episodes. And you can chat about all of these topics 24/7 in our Discord, discord.gg/oddlots.
58:56 Tracy Alloway? And if you enjoy Odd Lots, if you like it when we go to Jackson Hole, then please leave us a positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely ad-free. All you have to do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening.
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