Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts.
Speaker 2: Radio news.
Speaker 3: Torson' slock of Apollo got two benefits there. One he
Speaker 3: got an extra twelve minutes to go over all of this,
Speaker 3: and two might be key setting them up perfectly because
Speaker 3: Toaston New just sound there nodding, you agree, don't you?
Speaker 4: Hundred resent? I mean, let's look at the numbers. Non
Speaker 4: fine pay roles in August was better than in July.
Speaker 4: The unemployment rat in August was better than in July.
Speaker 4: Average arlie earnings higher than in July. And you look
Speaker 4: at average weekly hours also better than in July. I mean,
Speaker 4: this report is better than in July. This economy is
Speaker 4: not slowing down in the way that markets anticipating we
Speaker 4: will not get eight cuts over the next twelve months.
Speaker 4: Here you should instead look at this report as this
Speaker 4: is really telling you that there is a soft lending.
Speaker 3: So help me with this. In October, when we look
Speaker 3: back at this report and we get another revision, a
Speaker 3: downward revision, don't we have to reframe some of this
Speaker 3: conversation and just say everything gets keeps getting revised lower.
Speaker 3: This is Leasta's point. Over the last few days, this economy,
Speaker 3: this labor market is weaker than we initially thought.
Speaker 4: It was. GDP in the second quarter was three percent.
Speaker 4: It was just revised up. Jobless claims continues to be
Speaker 4: a good. Continuing claims was also good. If you look
Speaker 4: at the daily data for how many people go to restaurants,
Speaker 4: how many people fly on airplanes, the weekly data from
Speaker 4: Redbook on retail sales, if you're going across the boat
Speaker 4: on bankruptcies, if you're going across the boat on credit
Speaker 4: card spending. In the aggregate, the growth data is just
Speaker 4: not showing signs of a slowdown. It is true that
Speaker 4: the label marit is weakening, and yes the dual's data
Speaker 4: has bidding a little bit, maybe more imbalance, as the
Speaker 4: fit would be saying, But this whole notion that the
Speaker 4: economy is slowing down rapidly, it is completely misguided.
Speaker 2: What I thought was fascinating.
Speaker 1: I was speaking to a number of retail executives at
Speaker 1: this conference this week, and their biggest question was what's
Speaker 1: going to happen with the consumer.
Speaker 2: They didn't know, they had zero visibility. Even though you.
Speaker 1: Are seeing some trends and signs of robustness, some signs
Speaker 1: of weakness. They said, Ultimately, it just depends on whether
Speaker 1: they have the money to spend. These labor market reports
Speaker 1: are raising a red flag for a lot of people,
Speaker 1: saying if they lose their jobs, they won't How fragile
Speaker 1: is that sort of happiness that you're describing to a
Speaker 1: scenario like that.
Speaker 4: Certainly, if we do have a rise in the un
Speaker 4: aplant rate, so that's not what happened there on Empliner
Speaker 4: Way and down, it would become a problem. But if
Speaker 4: you also exactly as you know too well, look at
Speaker 4: what they did say the retailers during this earning season,
Speaker 4: target Set, no sign of a slowdown, Walmart, no sign
Speaker 4: of a slowdown, and also Costco no sign of a slowdown.
Speaker 4: You saw dollar general. Some parts of consumers are under
Speaker 4: more distress, but broadly speaking, looking at retail sales both
Speaker 4: the monthly, the weekly, and across the board on credit
Speaker 4: card data, there is just no sign of a sharp slowdown.
Speaker 4: So the bottom line in this discussion is that you
Speaker 4: only get a recession when you have a really big
Speaker 4: shock to the economy, and that makes sense of course
Speaker 4: with COVID human brothers going under of course, the bust
Speaker 4: of the IT bubble in two thousand, But this is
Speaker 4: not an exogynous shark with something coming from the outside.
Speaker 4: This is all engineered by the FED trying to slow
Speaker 4: things down. And now the Fed is telling us that
Speaker 4: they're about to lower rates, So that's about to counter
Speaker 4: some of those negative things.
Speaker 3: We get another headline from the Federal Reserve Mi McKay
Speaker 3: from the neo FED President John Williams.
Speaker 5: Yeah, John Williams is saying it is time now to
Speaker 5: join the party. He is not commenting in his prepared
Speaker 5: remarks about today's numbers. Of course he wouldn't have had
Speaker 5: them ahead of time, but he does say it's time
Speaker 5: to cut rates.
Speaker 2: Excuse me.
Speaker 5: With the economy now in equipoise, which he titled his
Speaker 5: speech that means in balance and inflation on a path
Speaker 5: to two percent, it is now appropriate to dial down
Speaker 5: the degree of restrictiveness in the stance of policy by
Speaker 5: reducing the target range for the Federal funds rate. So
Speaker 5: the guy who's vice chairman of the Open Market Committee
Speaker 5: is saying we're going to cut rates. He's not yet
Speaker 5: talking about by how much, but there.
Speaker 2: Is a Q and A so we'll keep an eye on.
Speaker 3: And apparently uns Athosaurus for the New York fat tossin slock,
Speaker 3: What do you make of that? What are you looking for?
Speaker 3: From Kamanawalla?
Speaker 4: So I do think Waller will also give some more
Speaker 4: guidance in terms of what's going on, at least with
Speaker 4: a bigger economic picture. But I don't think that he
Speaker 4: will tell us much about whether this is twenty five
Speaker 4: or fifty. It requires probably a very important debate given
Speaker 4: the spectrum of where if MC members have been recently
Speaker 4: in their speeches, some are clearly saying some are even
Speaker 4: suggesting we should have much fewer cuts over the next
Speaker 4: several quarters, and others, of course are suggesting that we
Speaker 4: should go much faster. So I do think that they
Speaker 4: need to gather in the room and think hard about
Speaker 4: do we want to go towards twenty five or fifty?
Speaker 4: I would say, and I would agree with the Mike
Speaker 4: that twenty five is the right now. But given that
Speaker 4: literally everything in this report was better than in July,
Speaker 4: would it be.
Speaker 2: A policy error though to go by fifty?
Speaker 4: See that opens up the debate about our sty and
Speaker 4: how far do we need to go down if our
Speaker 4: star and where we need to go to and ultimately
Speaker 4: so real rates plus inflation, if we only need to
Speaker 4: go to four and a half. We're not far away
Speaker 4: from that, so there's no rush to lower rates. If
Speaker 4: we do need to go all the way down to
Speaker 4: two and a half or three, then there is certainly
Speaker 4: more of a rush. But given the incoming data across
Speaker 4: the board is still good, why is there this rush
Speaker 4: to cut rates or traumatically other than the our star
Speaker 4: framework which says that we got to get going.
Speaker 1: Jackson Hale speech was all about understanding the effect that
Speaker 1: FED policy has in the overall economy.
Speaker 2: The conclusion was, we still don't know.
Speaker 1: We don't have a sense of exactly how quickly it
Speaker 1: gets sort of transmitted in how much of the lag
Speaker 1: effects that we're starting to see. There is an argument
Speaker 1: if you cut rates more aggressively now you can get
Speaker 1: ahead of some of the lag effects that we haven't
Speaker 1: yet even seen.
Speaker 2: Why don't you give credence to that?
Speaker 4: Because there are three very important reasons why we did
Speaker 4: not get that slow down that we all anticipated for
Speaker 4: so long throughout twenty twenty three. Remember they started hiking
Speaker 4: rates in mants of twenty twenty two. First, of all,
Speaker 4: consumers and firms had locked in low interest rates. AI
Speaker 4: investment has been very strong and fiscal policy has been
Speaker 4: a huge tail when all these things combined have been
Speaker 4: the key reason why the economy has not slowed down,
Speaker 4: and those things actually still in place. A lot of
Speaker 4: people still, of course have low interest rates in mortgages,
Speaker 4: it investment, greade credit fixed rate also very locked in
Speaker 4: for a long time, so that means that if you
Speaker 4: do start cutting rates, it's actually the transmission is also
Speaker 4: going to be weaker. On the downside, it was weak
Speaker 4: when you were raising rates, it's also weak when you're
Speaker 4: cutting rates. So because of that, AI investments still strong,
Speaker 4: fiscal policy from Chips Act, Inflation Reduction Act, and infrastructure
Speaker 4: acts still strong. All this argues that the data will
Speaker 4: just continue to be steady over the next several quarters.
Speaker 4: There is no reason to expect this to be a
Speaker 4: hard landing. There is no exctanness shock similar to what
Speaker 4: we have seen during previous recessions.
Speaker 6: Chirstan kruglebaks the revision for a second. If you take
Speaker 6: off the twenty five thousand we took off last month,
Speaker 6: and you do here for August, you'd get one seventeen.
Speaker 6: Would you still feel this way if it printed one seventeen?
Speaker 4: Sure? Of course, the revisions are very important because we
Speaker 4: have seen some modest slow down, but broadly speaking, the
Speaker 4: data was still better than what it was in July,
Speaker 4: so taken as the overall picture of him, particularly with
Speaker 4: the un aploiner rate, which is especially important when you
Speaker 4: put that into your tailor rules and try to figure
Speaker 4: out what should the reaction function be from the fit
Speaker 4: And that's how all the regional feds prepare the forecast.
Speaker 4: And if there on a planinar rate goes down, it's
Speaker 4: hard to argue why they should be going fifty. To
Speaker 4: go fifty, you need some very excuse me, academic argument
Speaker 4: about our star and you've got to get going with
Speaker 4: low rates very very quickly. And the question is with
Speaker 4: the incoming data being so strong, it's mon up rypolsia
Speaker 4: really so restrictive. It doesn't look like it's restrictive. If
Speaker 4: it was really restrictive, the important report would be a
Speaker 4: lot weaker.
Speaker 3: Pause because this is exactly where I wanted to finish
Speaker 3: with you. You're saying five point fifty still not that restrictive
Speaker 3: for this economy.
Speaker 4: So if ASDA, if where we're going in the terminal
Speaker 4: rate is four and a half, it's five and a
Speaker 4: half far away from four and a half. I know we,
Speaker 4: excuse me, have been somewhat not quite brainwashed, but very
Speaker 4: distorted by a lot of fmcemen. Was continuously saying we
Speaker 4: got to normalized race, normalized raise, normalized rates. But let
Speaker 4: me ask you this, John, if we really had restrictive
Speaker 4: monetary policy, why have we for two and a half
Speaker 4: years and counting, still been getting very good economic data,
Speaker 4: including GDP in the second quarter at three percent.
Speaker 3: The lassage is so longer, they might say, the lags
Speaker 3: are just long.
Speaker 4: It should be the reason for that. The tailwinds from
Speaker 4: AI continue to be strong. The tails for fiscal policy
Speaker 4: is still strong. We have locked in low interest rates
Speaker 4: for the consumer and for corporates. Where is this very
Speaker 4: significant transmission of monetary policy.
Speaker 3: We sit here and do this again a year from now,
Speaker 3: We'll do it before then. Don't worry. In twelve months time,
Speaker 3: where do you think rates are. They've got a four handle,
Speaker 3: they still got a five.
Speaker 4: I think that they will be much higher than what
Speaker 4: the market is pricing at the moment. Because this is
Speaker 4: not a shock that is generating a recession. Why haven't
Speaker 4: we had a recession for now? Thirty six months in counting.
Speaker 4: I mean, it is really the case that the economy
Speaker 4: and the economic data has just been much better than
Speaker 4: what literally any model had predicted for the reasons that
Speaker 4: I just mentioned, name be locked in low interest rates,
Speaker 4: tales from fiscal policy, and AI spending being completely independent
Speaker 4: of whatever the Fed is doing.
Speaker 3: This is box office and we should do it again
Speaker 3: next week. Tosin sluck and looking forward to it. Tosson'
Speaker 3: sluck of Apollo, Thank you very much,