The Fed’s recent rate cut signaled something clear about the US economy, but what are they trying to say? With a bolder rate cut than many of us expected, homebuyers, business owners, and real estate investors are seeing the light at the end of the high-rate tunnel, where borrowing money and buying houses could come at a lower cost. But with markets already anticipating a rate cut, did the recent cut even really matter?
Today, Federal Reserve reporter from The New York Times, Jeanna Smialek, shares her thoughts on what the Fed move meant after studying them full-time for over a decade. Jeanna believes that the Fed feels confident, even if this recent rate cut was overdue. Inflation has seen a substantial dropoff, but on the other hand, unemployment is rising, and Americans are getting nervous. Did the Fed move fast enough?
Jeanna also shares the future rate cuts we can expect from the Fed, with more potentially coming this year and a sizable series of cuts already lined up for 2025. How significant will the cuts be, and will they be enough to stop unemployment from getting out of control? How will rent prices and home prices move due to more rate cuts? We’re answering it all in this episode!
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Dave:
The Fed finally did it last week. The Federal Reserve went big and they cut the baseline interest rates, the federal funds rate by half a percentage point, and most analysts expected a rate cut. The Fed basically said that they were going to do that. And if you listen to this show, you’ve probably heard us talking about this anxiously and eagerly for a couple of weeks now. But last week’s rate cut and the Fed meeting was full of new information and left me with a lot of new questions to help me answer those questions. I’m bringing on a professional fed researcher and reporter, the New York Times, Jeanna Smialek to help us answer all the many questions I am sure we all have about where the fed’s going and what’s going to happen with interest rates.
Hey everyone, welcome to On the Market. I’m Dave Meyer and my guest today, Gina Ick covers the Federal Reserve and the economy at the New York Times. She’s been doing this for more than 11 years, so she really, really understands what’s going on with the Federal Reserve. And today she and I are going to get into questions like, what does the rate cut? Tell us about how the Fed feels about the US economy and where they’re trying to steer it. Are we finally out of the woods on inflation? How long will these rate cuts take to hit the economy and will average Americans actually feel these rate cuts in terms of the broader economy, the job market, or just in their wallets? Plus, we’re going to talk about a lot more. So let’s bring on Gina. Gina, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being here.
Jeanna:
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Dave:
Well, I’m super excited to have this conversation, at least for people in our industry and who listen to this podcast. We have been talking about the Fed and potential rate cuts for so long and they’ve finally done it. Just as a recap, at the most recent Fed meeting, September 17th and 18th, the FOMC, the board of people who make these decisions decided to cut the baseline interest rate by half a percentage point. So let’s just lay some groundwork here. Gina. How long has it been since there’s been a rate cut like this?
Jeanna:
So it’s been more than four years, so your listeners may remember that at the very start of the Coronavirus Pandemic in early 2020, the economy was crashing down, markets were falling to pieces, and the Fed slashed interest rates to 0% basically overnight. And that was the last time we had a rate cut. Ever since then, we’ve either had them steady or rising. So this is the first time in a while
Dave:
And heading into Covid, what was the federal funds rate at?
Jeanna:
So it was just under 2%. It was hovering around one six heading into the pandemic, and it had only been as high as about 2.4, 2.5% over the course of the decade preceding that. So we were relatively low but not at zero, and then we slashed it to zero right at the start of the pandemic.
Dave:
And then from there, I think starting in March of 2022, anyone in real estate knows what happens, but interest rates rose very quickly over a short period of time going up above 5% up until recently. And one of the interesting things is going into this meeting of the Fed in September is pretty much everyone knew they were going to cut rates. They’ve been telegraphing this for months, but the intrigue, at least for weird people like me who follow this so carefully is that we didn’t know how significant a cut it was going to be. I think originally people were thinking it would be 25 basis points, and for anyone listening, if you don’t know what a basis point is, it’s 100th of 1%. So when you say 25 basis points, it’s basically 0.25%. And so talking about cutting it 25 basis points and then there was higher inflation and worse labor data, and so they thought it was going to be 50 basis points. Ultimately they went with what most people would consider the bolder, more aggressive move to stimulate the economy of 50 basis points. What do you think that tells us about the Fed’s thinking right now?
Jeanna:
I think by choosing to go big here, they really sent a very clear message, which is that they don’t want to slow down the economy anymore. They think that inflation is basically on track to come under control. It’s come down really rapidly recently, the fed’s preferred inflation indicators at 2.5%. We’re going to get a new reading of it on Friday. So it’s been coming down steadily and that’s expected to continue. And so I think in that environment, in an environment where inflation is really moderating pretty solidly, the Fed is increasingly attuned to what’s happening in the labor market and they want to make sure that they don’t keep hitting the breaks so hard on the economy that they caused the job market to crash. And so I think this was a really clear statement that that is their top priority now it’s taking their foot off that gas pedal quickly enough to make sure that they can assure the soft landing.
Dave:
And just as a reminder, the Fed has what is known as the dual mandate from Congress where they have these somewhat competing priorities, which is one is price stability, a k, a fighting inflation. The other one is maximizing employment or AKA just stimulating the economy. And they’ve been on this. Those are the two things that they think about and they’ve been focused almost entirely on fighting inflation for the last two years. But Gina, what has changed? They’ve clearly made this big significant policy shift. What is going on in the broader economy that led them to make this change?
Jeanna:
Yeah, so I think the number one thing that’s happened is just inflation has come down a lot. We had 9.1% consumer price index inflation as of the summer of 2022. That was the peak and we’re down well below 3%. Now inflation has really moderated quite a bit and if you look at the Fed’s preferred gauge, it’s sort of a less dramatic decline, but still a pretty substantial decline. And so inflation has climbed down a lot and at the same time we’ve seen the job market really start to show cracks. It’s not obvious that the job market is following off a cliff yet we’re still adding jobs every month. Unemployment’s still at a historically relatively low level, but unemployment’s definitely creeping up. Job openings are really shutting down and we’re seeing some signs and hearing some signs anecdotally in the economy that hiring is really slowing. The companies are starting to pull back. And so I think you add that all up and it looks like a slightly more fragile situation. I think they’re just worried that if you keep pushing on the economy so hard, if you keep trying to slow it, there’s a real risk that you could cause some pain here and that pain might not really be necessary in a world where inflation is coming pretty clearly under control.
Dave:
And there’s a lot of historical precedent that shows that when the unemployment rate starts to tick up a little bit, it’s followed by a more aggressive increase in the unemployment rate. And so we’re starting to see just the beginnings of what could turn into a more serious job loss scenario. And so it does seem that they’re trying to send a strong signal to the economy. Alright, we know that the Fed cut rates and why it’s significant, but how much of an impact is this actually going to have on the economy and why have we seen mortgage rates actually go up since the Fed announcement? Gina’s analysis on all of this right after the break, everyone, welcome back to On the Market. I’m here with Gina Smick talking about the latest Fed rate cut. So let’s jump back in. Gina, I’m curious, is this just a signal or is the 50% basis point cut really going to have any sort of immediate impact to the economy?
Jeanna:
So I think it’s both. When you do a large rate cut like the one that they just did, that theoretically does translate over to all kinds of other interest rates. But the way that this stuff works in practice is that the moment we see these adjustments in markets is typically when markets start anticipating a rate cut rather than when the rate cut happens itself. And so the signal and the actuality are almost inseparable in this case. So when the Fed cut rates by half a point last week, it’s a good case in point. What that really did was it communicated to markets that the Fed is paying attention to this, that they’re ready to be sort of very forthright about rate cuts if that’s what’s necessary. And what we saw is sort of over the next couple of years, markets started anticipating a slightly more aggressive path forward for rate cuts. And so that translates into lower mortgage rates. It’s really the expectations that sort of moves markets translates what the Fed is planning on doing into the real world. And so I think that the expectations are really the kind of pivotal thing here, but the actuality of having done the half point cut is the thing that the expectations.
Dave:
Yeah, that makes sense. So we’ve talked about this just for everyone to remember. The Fed does not control mortgage rates. Their federal funds rate does have indirect implications for mortgage rates. They much more closely follow bond yields and bonds. To Gina’s point, we’re moving down for months ahead of this decision in anticipation of the cut, which is why at least the day of the cut mortgage rates actually went up because bond yields and bond traders, there’s a lot of calculations that go into bond prices that factor in not just the federal funds rate, but things like recession risk or inflation risk. And so all of those things are impacting mortgage rates and why they moved up. But I’m curious beyond mortgage rates, and we will get back to that, everyone talking about housing, we’re talking about trying to stave off a serious job loss situation, whether that’s a recession or not, but obviously the Fed doesn’t want the unemployment rate ticking up outside of highly leveraged industries like real estate where mortgage rates do almost have an immediate impact on the industry. Do you think this changes the, for let’s say manufacturing businesses or tech companies or restaurants, does this really change anything for them?
Jeanna:
I think over time the cost of capital absolutely does change things. For your run of the mill business. I think manufacturing is a good example because it’s very capital intensive. They operate on a lot of borrowed money. And I think that if your cost of capital is lower, if it’s cheaper to borrow, then it just means that you can make a profit at a much lower, you can turn a profit with a lower actual sort of revenue because you’re not spending so much on your interest costs. And so this does matter. I think it affects how people think about their future investments. But I think again, it really comes down to what the path going forward is. It’s not one rate cut that’s going to change the calculus for all of these actors across the economy. It’s really the path ahead, how much rates come down over the next couple of years, how that sort pairs up with what’s happening in the real economy.
If interest rates are coming down because we’re about to plunge into a recession, then I as a factory owner in the Midwest am not going to take out a huge loan and hugely expand my operations. But if interest rates are coming down because the Fed has declared victory over inflation and they’ve nailed the soft landing and they just don’t think they need to have high interest rates anymore, that could be a much more sort of positive story for my future investment. And so I think we’re at this moment where people are probably trying to figure out which of those scenarios we’re in, but it certainly could matter for how people think about investing.
Dave:
That makes a lot of sense. And it just seems like the mentality shift alone will do something that’s just a personal opinion, but the Fed has been so clear for two and a half years now that they are not being accommodative to business. That was not their priority. They were fighting inflation and now just this signal that they’re saying, Hey, listen, we know it’s been hard, the cost of capital has gone up so quickly and so rapidly that even if just 50 basis points doesn’t make deals pencil, just the knowing that the Fed is shifting their mentality towards business, I’m sure has some implication. Now, Gina, you mentioned that inflation has come down and that the Fed is feeling confident. And just for the record, it’s at CPIs at about 2.5%, the lowest it’s been since 2021, but not at the 2% target that the Fed has repeatedly stated. What is it about recent trends in data that seems to be giving the fed such confidence that they’re winning this battle?
Jeanna:
So I think it’s a couple of things. I think one is just the trend, right? If you look at it, if you look at the chart on a graph, you see just a steady hike up a hill where inflation is rising, rising, rising between 2021 and mid 2022. And currently we’re in this sort of down slope where it’s just steadily been coming down. And so it seems like it’s headed very much in the right direction. So I think the trend has one thing. I also think things sort of the fundamentals, like the things that go into inflation are making people feel pretty good. The decline’s been very broad based. It hasn’t just happened in one or two categories. This isn’t just a story of one thing getting back to normal. We’ve seen it happen across quite a few categories. It seems like a generalized decline, and I think that’s good because it makes you believe it’s more sustainable.
And then I think we’re starting to see some changes that in the broader economy that make you feel good, that inflation is likely to come back under control. One of those is that wage growth has slowed quite a bit. It sounds kind of ghoulish to be happy that wage growth has slowed, but wage growth is really, really rapid for a while during the deaths of this inflationary episode. And when you have really fast wage growth, you worry that that could potentially keep inflation at a sort of consistently higher level. And the reason is it’s pretty obvious to anybody who’s ever worked in the business world, if you are paying your employees a lot more and you are expecting that to happen sort of contractually year after year, you’re going to have to put up prices a little bit more or else you’re going to have to take a hit to your profit margins or else you’re going to have to improve productivity. One of those things has to happen. So assuming productivity is remaining relatively stable, you’re probably got to put prices up. And so I think that because wage growth has cooled off a little bit, I think officials are feeling a lot more confident that inflation’s capable of returning to those previous levels.
Dave:
Thank you for explaining that. If you’ve ever heard, if anyone listening has heard of the, I think they call it the wage price spiral. It’s basically that idea that businesses have increased costs due to labor. They’re paying their labor force more, which for most businesses is one of if not the largest expense that they have. And so then they pass that price, that increase in cost onto consumers, and then those consumers say, Hey, I go demand a raise because everything’s more expensive. And so then the businesses have more expenses that they pass on the consumers and it creates this cycle that can be really bad for inflation. And as Gina pointed out, that could be lessening. Now, the one thing at least I am concerned about Gina is housing. Because housing has been one of the biggest contributors to inflation over the last couple of years.
And you see that in asset prices, obviously with the price of houses, which is not typically reflected in the CPI, the consumer price index just so everyone knows. But rent is a big bucket in consumer price index and that has been huge and it’s just finally starting to come down. But with rate cuts, because again, real estate, highly leveraged industry, which just for everyone highly leveraged just means uses a lot of debt and this rate cuts could really help real estate. And I’m curious if there’s any concern from either the Fed or people you talk to that rent prices could go up or asset prices could start reinflating because of these rate cuts.
Jeanna:
This is definitely something people will bring up. I do think it’s important to kind of walk through the mechanics of how that would practically work. And I think when you do that, you feel a little bit less worried about this story. So I think like you mentioned, asset prices themselves do not factor in to the consumer price index. So home price goes up, the CPI, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which puts together the CPI index basically looks at that and says, that is an investment that is your investment appreciating. And so we’re not going to treat that as price inflation because really not the same thing. And so I think when you’ve got rates coming down, what you would most expect to see is that that’s sort of feeds into higher home prices because me a wannabe home buyer, I can afford a little bit more house in a world where interest rates are a little bit lower and there’s going to be more competition for houses because more people are going to be able to jump into the market, et cetera, et cetera.
Home prices go up a little that doesn’t really feed into inflation. The place where you could see an effect on inflation is really through the rental market. But we’ve got a couple of factors that matter here. One is that if people can jump into the market for purchased homes, if more people are capable of buying houses, then you would hope and expect that there’s going to be less pressure on the rental market. The second thing is we have had quite a lot of supply come online over the last couple of years and a couple of important markets in the Southeastern Sunbelt in particular, and that’s helping rent prices to go down right now, and that’s kind of slowly feeding into the rental data still. And then I think just the third thing which is important to note is that rent prices track really closely with wage growth.
If you chart them together, if you go to Fred and put rent of primary residence against average hourly earnings, you can see a really clear relationship there. And so I think the fact that wage growth has moderated somewhat, whichever is the chicken or the egg, I think can imagine that we’re going to see some rental growth moderation as well. Rent’s our biggest, there’s a reason it’s such an important number, it’s the thing we spend the absolute most money on in the typical person’s budget. And so it tends to reflect how much people can afford. And so I think for those three reasons, I don’t think we have to be super, super worried. Clearly it is something that because it’s such a big deal, it’s something that people are going to pay a lot of attention to.
Dave:
Okay, so it sounds like rent growth probably isn’t too big of an immediate concern, and that is consistent with everything we see. Gina, we talk to a lot of economists who focus on these things on the show, and so we hear that consistently that because of this multifamily influx of supply and a lot of the other variables you mentioned that rent growth has really moderated. It’s actually below wage growth right now in most markets in the us. But I guess the thing that I guess think about, I don’t know if I worry about it, is that even though housing prices aren’t in the CPI, and I understand why it’s not because it’s an investment, there’s a psychological element that just seeing housing prices take off again and for real estate investors, for some real estate investors, that’s a good thing. Personally, I would love to just see stable normal growth. That’s my preference as a real estate investor is just get back to that 3% appreciation rate. That’s normal. I just wonder what that does to the economy and to American consumer if home prices become so unaffordable that people feel like the American dream of home ownership is getting even further and further away. I wonder what that does to the economy in general. But I don’t know if I even have a question there, but that’s just something I think about a lot.
Jeanna:
I will say one interesting thing here, we also think about this a lot. I’ve written a lot of stories about this because it is the number one thing people will tell you if you survey them on the economy right now is the economy’s bad. I can never buy a house. Or interestingly, the economy’s bad. My kid can never buy a house. Older people who already own homes will feel bad about it because of the next generation. So I think this is obviously a huge concern. I will say that one thing that is really interesting is Larry Summers and a couple of co-authors did a really interesting paper on this earlier this year, but they were basically making the case that to a consumer, the fact that interest rates have been so much higher, the fact that mortgage rates have been so much higher, basically scans as part of this affordability problem.
It’s not just the house price, it’s the effective cost of owning a house every month. And so mortgage prices definitely factor into that equation. They’re a big part of the reason affordability has been so bad. And so I do think that it’s possible. I actually, I was playing around with some math on this. For a lot of people it will be the case that if you are completely financing a home purchase, your affordability is still going to look better with a slightly lower mortgage rate even if home prices accelerate a little bit. And so I do think that’s an important part of that equation.
Dave:
Okay, yeah, that’s good to think about and something that we’re just going to have to keep an eye on. As Gina mentioned of home affordability, there is a way to measure it. It’s basically a combination of wages, mortgage rates, home prices. It’s near 40 year lows. It’s close to since the early eighties when mortgage rates were like 18% was the last time we saw affordability this low. And most economists I talked to don’t think that’s sustainable. And I think that’s why a lot of people say the housing market’s going to crash or something like that, where in reality as we talk about on this show that a lot of the indicators don’t show that the housing market’s going to crash and instead the more likely path to restored affordability is slower. And I know that’s frustrating to people, but it’s going to be the most probable and no one knows.
But the most probable way we restore affordability is continued real wage growth, which we’re seeing, which is good, but that takes a long time and a slow and steady decline of mortgage rates back to a more normal rate or historic long-term averages, which is more towards a five and a half percent mortgage rate. Something like that would increase affordability, probably not as quickly as some people, but that is probably what’s going to happen. Okay, we have to hear one more quick word from our sponsors, but I am curious what you all think about this rate cut and what it means for the housing market. So if you’re listening on Spotify or YouTube, let us know in the poll below. Do you think this is going to help the housing market? Do you think it’s going to kick off more inflation or higher appreciation in the housing market? Please tell us your thoughts. We’ll be right back with Gina’s thoughts on the rate cuts that might be in store for 2025 right after this.
Welcome back investors. Let’s pick up where we left off, Gina. I wanted to shift towards the future. We’ve seen this rate cut now and the Fed a couple times a year puts out something called the summary of economic projections, which is not a plan. I want to shout that out, that this is not them saying this is what we’re going to do instead, it is a survey of the members of the FOMC, so it’s the people who vote on these things. It asks them where do they think things are going, how do they think the economy’s going? Can you give us a summary of what came out of this time in the summary of economic projections?
Jeanna:
Yeah, so the summary of economic projections comes out once every quarter. They do it four times a year and they tend to emphasize it exactly as much as they like what it says. So really if Jay Powell doesn’t like what it’s saying, he’s not a plan, this is not our plan. And then sometimes when he basically it seems aligned with their plans, he’ll be like, as you can see in the summary of economic projections. And I will say this was one of those, as you can see in the summary of economic projections month, they do seem to sort of be embracing it this time. So we got a forecast for interest rates for the next couple of years that shows that officials are likely to cut rates another half point this year and then a full point next year as well. So basically two more quarter point cuts or one more half point cut this year and then either two half point or four quarter point cuts next year if you’re doing the math at home.
So we are in for a pretty clear cycle of interest rate reductions going forward, and that’s predicated on a slightly slowing labor market. The Fed officials think that unemployment’s going to raise up to 4.4%, which is a little bit higher than the 4.2% we’re sitting at currently. And then in a immaculate moment, it’s just going to miraculously stabilize at 4.4% how that happens, not entirely clear, and inflation is going to steadily come down to the fed’s target over the next couple of years. And so it’s a pretty benign, benign cool down that they are forecasting, but obviously predicated on this idea that they’re going to lower interest rates.
Dave:
So they’re sticking with the soft landing is possible, meaning if you haven’t heard this term, soft landing, I don’t know where that term came up from, but it’s this continuous idea that you can raise interest rates without creating a recession was basically the whole idea back in 2022. And for context, when you raise interest rates, the whole point is to slow down the economy, and that’s because often the symptom of an overheated economy is inflation. And so the Fed is like, Hey, we got to slow this thing down, but they want to slow it down so perfectly that they can create this right set of conditions where interest rates are just at the right rate, where businesses are still hiring, they’re still growing, the economy is still growing, but inflation comes down. And so we’re yet to see if that’s possible. There’s a lot of recession red flags. A lot of economists I’d say are kind of split right now on are we heading towards a recession or not, but it looks like the Fed is sticking with their belief that they can pull this off, avoid an official recession and get inflation under control. Jane, I don’t know, in your work if you talk to a lot of economists, investors, do other people other than the Fed think this is possible?
Jeanna:
Yeah, I would say so. I think that actually pretty broadly, people are feeling fairly optimistic. I think partially because everyone spent years feeling pessimistic and then inflation came down really rapidly and pretty painlessly. And so I think the pessimists have been proven wrong pretty repeatedly for the last couple of years. So I think most people you talk to are feeling pretty good. I will say that there are some economists who are a little bit more concerned that if we take it for granted, we’re going to lose it. I think that there was definitely before this meeting, there was a real sense that the Fed needed to get, there’s a risk of overdoing it and causing some pain here. But in general, yeah, it seems like people are feeling pretty good. I think partially sort of encouraged by the fact that retail sales and overall growth and gross domestic product growth, they look pretty good right now. That part of the economy still looks really strong. We’re seeing a slowdown in the hiring obviously, but sort of the spending and consumption portions of the economy really holding up. That said, those things are lagging indicators, so they tend to sort of slow down later than the job market. And so I think that there’s a reason to read all of that with some caution.
Dave:
Alright, so what’s next for the Fed? We just had our September meeting. When is the next meeting and what are you looking out for?
Jeanna:
So the next meeting is very start of November, and I think that the big question is just going to be, are we still on track for these two more quarter point cuts this year? Is it going to be two quarter point cuts, one in November, one in December, which is their final meeting of the year? Just sort of the timing, pacing, all that kind of stuff. I think it’s going to be up in the year over the next couple of months. We’re going to have a lot of data before the next meeting, so we’ll have more jobs report, one more jobs report, we’ll have another couple of inflation reports. So I think that all of that paired together will kind of give us a clear idea of what’s likely to happen. And as often happens at moments like this when a lot is in flux and the Fed has to make some big decisions, fed officials are just speaking in full force at the moment. They are just everywhere. So I’m pretty sure that they will clearly communicate with us whatever is happening next, they’re clearly going to have
Dave:
Opportunities. Gina, I don’t know how long you’ve been following the Fed. For me as an investor, I used to kind of pay attention to what they were doing. Now I pay a ton of attention to what they’re doing. But it seems like in previous years, meetings were sort of a mystery. You didn’t really know what they were going to do and now they’ve gotten to this way of just telling you sort of ahead of time what they’re going to do and telegraphing it. Exactly. I’m just curious, has that changed in your career as you’ve covered the Fed? Do they do this more?
Jeanna:
Yeah, so I’ve been covering the Fed for 11 years now, a long time. I’ve been covering the Fed for a long time and it has certainly changed in that time. It’s become even more transparent. But I also wrote a book on the Fed, and a big chunk of my book on the Fed is about this question about how communications have changed over time. And so I’ve done a lot of research into this and it is just astonishing how much this has changed. We got up to the nineties and Alan Greens fan wasn’t regular, who was then the Fed chair wasn’t regularly announcing, announced Fed Fed decisions. People were just watching him walk out of the meetings and trying to gauge the size of his briefcase to try and figure out what had happened with interest rates.
Dave:
Oh my God.
Jeanna:
So not the paragon of transparency. And then only in the early two thousands did under Greenspan, but then much more intensely under Bernanke and Yellen. Did the Fed really start to sort of open up, explain what it was doing? Bernanke instituted the press conferences when Chair Powell, the current fed chair came in, he made those meeting. They were every quarter prior to that. And so we’ve really had to shift toward extreme transparency, very different from what the Fed had historically done.
Dave:
Interesting. That’s pretty fascinating. Yeah, I can imagine. Everything is a little bit more transparent, and at least as investors myself, I think it’s helpful and I think it probably helps avoid some extreme reactions or any panic in the markets when you can sort of drip out information slowly and at the right intervals to make sure that people understand what’s going on, but aren’t freaking out about potential outcomes that aren’t necessarily going to happen. Is that sort of the idea?
Jeanna:
Yeah, and I also think, so this was really an innovation under Ben Bernanke who had done a lot of research into the topic and sort of one of his many areas of expertise. But I think that the idea here is what you’re really doing when you are setting monetary policy is you are influencing expectations and you are sort of trying to guide people into an understanding of the future that will help that future to be realized. And so I think that he thought, and I think that it has sort of been shown by practice that if you communicated clearly what the Fed was doing and what its goals were, it was going to be easier to achieve those goals in sort of like a relatively painless and orderly manner. And so I think that’s been sort of the idea and the innovation, and I think that that’s why they focus so much on communications and so much on what they would call forward guidance, which is kind of communicating what they’re going to do so that they start to move economic conditions before they actually do anything. It’s been a real innovation in monetary policymaking, and it’s not just the Fed that’s doing this these days. This is sort of gold standard central banking practice all around the world at this stage.
Dave:
Alright, well thank you so much for explaining this. I’ve always been curious about that. Ben, thank you so much for sharing your insights on recent fed activity and your expectations, Jeanna. We really appreciate it.
Jeanna:
Thanks for having me.
Dave:
And if you want to read more about Jeanna’s work research book, we’ll put all of the contact information and links in the show notes below. Thank you all so much for listening to this episode of On The Market. We’ll see you next time. On The Market was created by me, Dave Meyer and Kaylin Bennett. The show is produced by Kaylin Bennett, with editing by Exodus Media. Copywriting is by Calico content, and we want to extend a big thank you to everyone at BiggerPockets for making this show possible.
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In This Episode We Cover
- The Fed’s recent 0.50% rate cut explained and their forecast for 2025 rate cuts
- The signal the Fed is sending by making a bigger rate cut (and preparing for more to come)
- Why the Fed decided NOW was the time to finally cut rates (and whether it was too late)
- Inflation updates and good news for the slowing of growing prices
- Housing affordability and whether or not these rate cuts will help homebuyers/renters
- And So Much More!
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Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.