Michael Batnick

I mean, I thought the Beige Book this week was very interesting.

I haven't seen a Beige Book like that in a while.

It's a very uneven economy, I think, is a fair kind of characterization of it.

But...

If the Fed's hiking and it's because we have this sort of broad growth and labor markets are fine, I think the markets are going to be fine with that.

But if they're hiking for the reasons that Skanda's talking about, that is not a good outcome.

It's like, remember what Josh was talking about last week?

Well, he was talking about how like it makes no sense to hike because of oil prices going up.

Now it's like, OK, now you're going to hike because cattle prices are up.

Now you're going to hike because, you know, I mean, can the Fed control the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz?

Absolutely not.

Can it does it have any power over the El Nino?

Like, no, it does not.

The one thing I wanted to come back to on Warsh was I did find it fascinating that

like in the last week that Bernanke, what did he say about like his views on the balance sheet?

He called it a meaningless statement.

I thought that was really fascinating because obviously Warsh worked for Bernanke and the balance sheet for whatever reason is like Kevin Warsh's hobby horse and Bernanke just took a big massive crap all over that.

So I think it's kind of like emblematic of how he actually feels about him without saying it.

Well, first, I mean, I sort of reject the premise that AI will actually eat all the jobs.

I mean, you know, that's kind of like the lump of labor fallacy.