Stephen Miran

And that's how it was.

And everyone was very collegial in airing their views.

And I, the same.

And that's how it will continue to be.

You know, we make policy, as the chairman said last week, by persuasion.

And so I will continue to try to lay out my views and make the case as best as I can.

Well, I mean, you know, it's sort of funny.

If you look at the dots in the summary of economic projections, you know, obviously there's a divergence between my projection for appropriate policy for 2025 versus where the weight of everyone else's is.

But if you look at next year and the year after, you know, I'm sure I'm still on the low end, but, you know, there's not really that much daylight between all the rest of the dots and myself and following years.

So it's really just about the speed with which we come down to what's closer to neutral.

Sure.

So, look, you know, I discussed a number of forces which have kicked in over the course of this year and which are, I think, in stark contrast to where they were last year.

So I've argued that neutral was higher in the past than it is now, and that neutral was higher for a variety of reasons, but I've highlighted recently...

Fiscal policy, you know, sort of driving up net national borrowing, decreasing net national savings, as well as immigration policy driving what was the biggest positive population growth shock in my lifetime and has now turned into the biggest negative population growth shock in my lifetime in very rapid succession.

relative to how changes in population growth normally occur in the data.

And so, to me, when you have huge swings in net national savings driven by fiscal policy, and you have huge swings in population growth driven by changes to border policy, it would be bizarre for me to think that that wouldn't have implications for the fundamental structure of the economy that gets reflected through monetary policy in the neutral rate.

So my view is that neutral was higher last year because of these reasons, and so last year policy was not as tight as a lot of people believed, and now neutral has come down, or is in the process of coming down, and now policy is more tight than people believe.

And this has happened recently.

These policies didn't change overnight.

They've been kicking in over the course of the year.