Stephen Miran

You know, I can't speak for them, but I think that every month we come in and the unemployment rate ticks up a little bit and the inflation data sort of seem to be doing a little bit better.

I think it's really difficult to argue that policy is neutral, especially when we've been on this course of gradual loosening of the labor market for a couple of years now.

It's just really difficult in my mind to sort of argue that policy is not restricting the economy.

Sure.

So same thing as I said in the last few times I've been here.

We're still materially above neutral in my mind.

And there's not really a reason to be materially above neutral if the labor market is on a weakening path and underlying inflation is already running close to our target and on trajectory to hit the target.

There's just not a real reason to be so restrictive.

And we're running unnecessary risks on the labor market by being so restrictive.

And so in my mind, it's like we're selling options for nothing.

And I don't see why we're selling those options.

So first of all, I'll say that I was right about inflation coming out of the pandemic.

And if you sort of go back to 2020, when I was at the Treasury Department, you know, we were arguing for a smaller stimulus package because we didn't see COVID as a similar type of recession that we had post-GFC, post-dot-com bubble, where you had persistent deleveraging, dragging on demand that caused a balance sheet recession with a persistent, slow, crappy recovery, right?

COVID was like a switch turned off, right?

People stayed home, and the switch turned on when they started going out again.

And so there wasn't going to be that slow recovery.

And that's why we were pushing for smaller stimulus packages, because we didn't think that it merited that type of package.

We were concerned about inflation picking up.

So I did get that right.

And I do understand the value of being cautious and having humility in these things.