Stephen Miran

Thanks for having me back.

It's good to see you again.

Look, as you say, my term expires over the weekend.

But per the Federal Reserve Act, I'll be staying in my seat until someone is confirmed to replace me, presumably Chairman-designate Kevin Warsh.

This is common practice and has happened many times by other governors who have waited for someone else to be confirmed into their seat.

I have no idea.

I mean, I wish I knew.

You know, my confirmation process took, what, six weeks or so?

A little bit more than that.

So, you know, I have no idea how long it will take for Chairman and Designate Warsh, but, you know, I'm confident that the process will work and the Senate will come together.

Yeah, so I descended for 25 instead of 50 for a couple reasons.

One of them is that we did cut since I joined the FOMC in September.

We cut three times.

We reduced the federal funds rate by 75 basis points.

That means we're less far from neutral than we were when I arrived in September.

I still think rates are too restrictive, as I've made very clear.

I still think we need to cut interest rates substantially further from here.

However, given that we've moved, we've made some progress reducing rates, we can now sort of, I think, in my view, proceed at a slower pace of about a quarter point per meeting.

It's no longer as imperative to move in 50 clips as it was.

The other thing that happened is the labor market data did come in a little bit better.