Quinton Webb

So you can see that there is quite a big split.

I think you could probably divide them into three big camps.

The hawks, who would probably want to be careful about a cut because they're worried about inflation, which has run above target for several years.

The doves, who would prefer to cut rates because they're worried about where the labor market is headed and they think that the effect of tariffs on inflation is overstated.

And then there's the third camp of

of the kind of undecideds where their public comments today have been pretty carefully hedged and so you can't quite tell where they stand.

And what we saw in mid to late November was that one influential Fed policymaker, John Williams, the New York Fed, came out in favor of a cut

And effectively that signal to the market that a cut was going to be likely because the balance overall was shifting that way.

And Powell was probably likely to go in that direction as well.

There's some sense that some senior Fed officials are close allies of Powell.

Let's put it that way.

And so if they say something, it's likely to track with what he's thinking.

Correct.

So for a while, the Fed has had this kind of difficult trade-off to balance.

But it has been reasonably united behind cuts.

If you recall, there have been two cuts so far this fall.

In the second of those, at the end of October, there were two dissents, actually.

But they were notable because they went in both directions.

So one governor, the governor of the Kansas City Fed, wanted to hold off on a cut.

Jeffrey Schmid.