Heather Long

Yeah, it almost feels foggier than it did a week ago.

I've been sort of comparing it to that fairy tale.

The emperor has no clothes.

It's like the data walked out in the undergarments and we're all trying to extrapolate what it might look like if these undergarments were tuxedos or ball gowns.

But, you know, I think sitting here at the end of the week here is.

I would say that the job market is probably the same or a tad worse than what we thought it was looking at September data.

And the inflation seems the same or maybe a tad better than what we were thinking.

I don't know that it's a ton better, but that's sort of where I'd read in the margins from what we saw this week.

No, I feel like they probably feel like with this data in hand now that they made the right decision at their meeting last week.

As Heather was saying, some parts of the job report that we got show this continued slowdown.

We had a rise in the unemployment rate.

the continued slowdown in the pace of job creation.

And so if you're a Fed that wanted to give the labor market a little bit of cushion here with the cut last week and the cuts that they've done since September, I think you feel good about those moves.

That's right.

I think, you know, what we have at the Fed now is sort of policymakers that are in two camps.

You have one group that is still very much concerned about inflation.

They flag the fact that inflation has been above the Fed's 2 percent target for several years now.

And so, you know, for the most part, policymakers were on board with the cuts that happened since September.

But you have a group that's saying, OK, from here on, we need to be a little careful because we do still have an inflation challenge on our hands.

And then you have another group that doesn't see it that way, right?