00:00 Speaker A
also had some more commentary from other Fed officials today. What what did they have to say, Jen?
00:06 Jen
That’s right. We are hearing from a couple of different Fed officials today. Notably New York Fed President uh John Williams, who was very upbeat about the economic outlook for 2026. He says the economy has turned the corner and that uh all the uncertainty that we had this year is sort of behind us and that we are poised to return to what he calls solid growth and price stability. He thinks inflation is going to fall to just under 2 and a half% next year. We’re only going to see one-time increase from tariffs as far as the impact on prices and that inflation returns back to the Fed’s 2% target by 2027. Now, interestingly, Williams characterized the rate cut last week as quote moving modestly restrictive policy towards neutral. That he characterized policy as quote modestly restrictive indicates to me that there is room for the Fed to cut rates further before they get to that so-called level of neutral, a level on interest rates designed to neither spur nor slow economic growth. Now, separately, we also heard from Boston Fed President Susan Collins, who said that her vote in favor of a rate cut last week was quote a close call. She going into the meeting, it didn’t seem like she favored a cut. However, new data that she got uh leading up to the meeting was able to convince her otherwise. However, looking ahead, she says that she’s going to need to see much further evidence that inflation is falling before cutting rates further. And lastly, we heard from Fed Governor Stephen Myron today, who reiterates that he thinks inflation is much lower than what current measures are showing because of the way they are being calculated. He doesn’t see any tariff inflation and he believes that rents are now growing at a level of 1% per year and we will see that eventually show up in inflation measures which will pull overall inflation down, which is his case for why we need more rate cuts now.