Chao Deng
speaker
72 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2025
last heard 18 Aug
Chao Deng’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 2.
Appearances
Right.
For a long time, the Federal Reserve has wondered whether it needs to keep cutting interest rates to support what appears to be a shaky labor market.
Now that we've had this strong report, I think it puts more focus on the inflation data, which we'll see next week from the Labor Department for the month of April.
We know inflation is drifting up instead of down because of tariffs and also because of the effects of the Iran war.
And so I think we're going to see the Fed focusing increasingly on that.
It was clear that consumer spending was very strong.
Economists think that that's due to high-income consumers carrying a lot of that spending.
And then the trade component played a role too, as it did in the second quarter.
Imports continued to contract, which bumped up the headline growth figure.
And then lastly, investment in AI continued to help.
economic growth, although the pace of that investment slowed down a bit.
The report showed that consumers were spending on things like health care, which includes outpatient services and nursing homes.
The Commerce Department also flagged that there was an uptick in spending on recreational goods and vehicles, and that this is a sweeping category that includes spending on personal computers and software.
The other thing to flag is that spending in services was especially strong.
That grew 3.7%, accelerating from 2.6% in the prior quarter, and that's another indication economists think that
A lot of the spending is coming from higher income households.
There were some signs of weakness.
Business spending on stuff like commercial buildings and factories contracted.
Investment in housing was down for a second quarter in a row.
WSJ What’s News · Why Economists Are Urging Caution About November’s Inflation Report · 18 Dec 2025
podcast
Even before this report came out, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell was warning that
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