Austan Goolsbee

It's really great.

All right.

Thank you, Austin.

We'll see you guys the next time around.

Well, I saw yours.

So you gave them a B on the economy and A-plus on independence, right?

Correct.

I consider Jay Powell a first ballot Hall of Fame Fed chair.

And every Fed chair has got stuff that went wrong and stuff they did well.

And the biggest knock on his tenure as chair is the Fed was slow coming off the block as inflation started back up.

That's the only knock.

And I think the combination of, one, we had the epic collapse of the economy in COVID, and it did not turn into a financial crisis.

Fair.

That, number two, we had—

Bank failure, Silicon Valley Bank, et cetera, after the Fed started raising rates quite significantly, and that didn't turn into a financial crisis or even a credit crunch.

And in 2023, going into 2024, inflation fell as much as it's ever fallen in a single year, and there was no recession.

Each of those three things, many smart people said was impossible.

There was, in 2023, people were making fun of the idea that inflation could go down without there being a recession.

Larry Summers, you saw, said there will be an intense recession for five consecutive years before inflation will come down.

All three of those, any one of those would be a pretty strong accomplishment.