00:00 Speaker A
Jen, I think Christopher Waller was the last to weigh in this morning, although he hasn’t changed his tune recently.
00:06 Jen
Yes. Uh it’s actually going to be a slower week this Thanksgiving week for the Fed speak. But we heard from Fed governor Chris Waller this morning, as I said, who told Fox Business in an interview that he still supports a rate cut in December because he sees a softening in the labor market. He actually thinks we will see large downward revisions to the September jobs report to between 50,000 and 60,000 jobs. He thinks though, when it comes to January and throughout the next year, the FOMC will take a meeting by meeting approach because there will be a deluge of data that will really start after the December Fed meeting with that November jobs report, November CPI as we go into more real-time data next year. And if there’s any inflation pop up there, it kind of seemed to indicate that it might give the committee pause. He was also asked about his interviews to be the next Fed chair. He said he spoke with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about 10 days ago. It went pretty well. He said he would be very good for the job and will continue the press conferences after every FOMC meeting. So that was Chris Waller. Uh on the other hand, over the weekend, we heard from Boston Fed President Susan Collins, who is a voting member for December. And she repeated the comments she said on Friday, which is that she does not see a strong need for a rate cut in December, perhaps implying that she could dissent if the rest of the Fed were in favor of voting for a rate cut. Of course, no decision has been made yet. But I want to go back to the conversation we had on Friday because that’s when the tune changed for the markets with New York Fed President John Williams who said that he sees the option of a rate cut in the near future, that there was room for one. And that really changed the odds. And this again is so critical because it is one of the so-called Troika. He and President Powell and Vice President Jefferson are always aligned. And the fact that he came out with that speech during a critical time when the markets were really divided about what the Fed was going to do. Some analysts this morning post that maybe Powell gave the chair of the New York Fed, uh the president of the New York Fed the blessing to do this, to kind of signal the markets. So again, that’s still the comment in the last few days that has the most weight for me. Uh we knew, as you said, Fed Governor Waller supports a rate cut for December.