Austan Goolsbee

That's in our framework review.

That's the best measure that we have of inflation, I think.

If it comes in hot, and it's just goods, I would be more comfortable saying that looks more like a tariff-driven thing, and that's the optimist's case, maybe, that it would prove transitory.

If it comes in hot, but it's heavily on healthcare, a bunch of service sector industries, that's a different kettle of fish, and that feels a little more persistent.

It might cause people to pull back.

The last five to eight years, however, there's been a breaking of the link between consumer sentiment and actual consumer spending.

for some reasons we understand and some reasons we don't understand.

So if you saw deterioration of consumer sentiment as say gas prices go up, which historically when gas prices go up, consumer sentiment goes down.

If that did not translate into a slowing of consumer spending, I would be much less nervous.

As I've highlighted, in 2025, the strongest thing that we have going for us was not AI data center investment.

Yeah, that was great, but the main thing driving growth was a strong, stable consumer, broad-based spending, which drove growth in the country.

And that still continues until it doesn't.

So if sentiment deteriorated, and there's a lot of concern as I'm going around the Midwest and the Chicago Fed District, a lot of expression of concern about affordability, about costs on both the business side and the consumer side.

If people begin to be nervous about their employment,

Historically, that tends to show up as they're trying to build a little precautionary buffer so the savings rate would start to rise.

That'd be a thing to watch out for.

All of our inner economists are getting a little bit of a warm glow.

Productivity growth is what makes us rich.

Incomes can go up.

Wages can grow faster without inflation if productivity growth is going to remain high like this.