Jim Bianco

It's a victory for Jerome, but I'll take the other side, Bob.

I'll say that it's not as good as it could have been.

I was hoping for a 7-5 vote.

I was hoping for a Fed that was more divided, that was more independent, that was going to send a message to the administration.

You could put a guy in that wants to go to 1%, but he's not going to bully us to cut rates next year just because he's the Fed chairman.

They kind of left the door open, I think, that the Fed can be bullied by the next Fed chairman to do the bidding of President Trump.

I agree.

I think that the Fed has to be very worried about that.

We're worried about affordability right now.

The CPI is up 27 percent since the end of COVID.

And that's what people are upset about.

How do we fix that?

We need the inflation rate to run below 2 percent for a while so that wages can catch up.

If the inflation rate is going to stay at three and moderate to two and a half, that is going to keep the affordability anger white hot over the next year to year and a half or so.

And so I don't think that

accommodating that by cutting interest rates is going to help.

And that's the question I hope the chairman gets is, how are you helping affordability with 175 basis points of cuts in the last 14 months?

Well, that's if that's what he says.

And again, what I was trying to say before is if the chairman imitates that it's one and done, it means the chairman's running the show.

And in May, we're going to have a handpicked successor from Donald Trump running the show.