Neil Irwin

So if you're the Fed, you think that the way you preserve affordability, the way you keep inflation low, is by raising interest rates or keeping rates high.

That's how you keep aggregate demand in check.

That's how you keep inflation from becoming a problem.

Back in 2022, when inflation took off, they raised rates a lot to try and bring it back down, and it worked.

Now, to ordinary people...

Higher interest rates are part of the affordability crisis, right?

So higher mortgage rates, higher auto loan rates, those are things that make life more expensive.

So to you, what the Fed thinks they're doing to help affordability, help inflation, is actually making affordability worse.

And I think the president views it through kind of that lens in the same way that a lot of normal civilians do.

And it creates a real disconnect between what the Fed thinks it needs to do to help on affordability, keep inflation in check, and what's perceived by everybody out there.

Yeah, it really has become a reality show.

It's kind of a cliche, but it's...

Cliche is true.

It's accurate.

You know, allegedly there are five, maybe down to four finalists, but it looks pretty clear the president is strongly leaning toward Kevin Hassett, his White House economic advisor, to be the next Fed chair.

So Kevin Hassett is the director of the White House National Economic Council.

He worked for President Trump in his first term as Council of Economic Advisers chair.

So this is somebody who the president has a longstanding relationship with and somebody who goes on TV and speaks the administration's line quite a lot.

He's worked at think tanks and kind of conservative policy circles.

So he's a credible candidate for this job.