Jeanne Whalen

And is that something that is an unstoppable force?

Or could there be one little speed bump that derails all of that spending?

Everyone's worried that the AI bubble will burst and that it will be sort of an emperor has new clothes situations when we all realize that these companies that are building AI models really don't have a way to monetize them, that there's not a way for them to earn money selling this service and that that will cause a lot of stocks in this space to fall.

So there's some dominoes out there.

What are your, we'll just go around, what are the biggest questions that are on your mind about the economy heading into 2026 or the things that you'll be watching for?

I'm interested in how the housing market and rates shake out.

We have this huge number of people who are just sitting on their low mortgage rates from the pandemic era of 3% or 3.5% and don't want to sell their houses.

And what I've heard from real estate agents is that if rates can get down into the 5% range, that might be the golden age.

zone for some people to say, OK, that's low enough for me to sell my place and buy again, even though that's higher, a higher rate than I have now.

That's not terrible.

Well, thank all of you so much.

This was awesome.

I feel smarter than I did an hour ago.

Before we go, how do you feel the economy is going?

I want to know, what are you most worried about in 2026?

What word would you use to describe the economy?

Send us an email with a voice memo to thejournal at wsj.com.

That's all for today.

Friday, December 19th.

and me, Ryan Knudsen.