Toby Howell
speaker
33,236 appearances
345 recordings
5 series
first heard Oct 2023
last heard yesterday
Toby Howell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 204 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 49.
Appearances
So why is the Fed hiking now?
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Well, it's essentially made no progress towards one of its core mandates, which is keeping inflation around its 2% target.
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It has been above that since mid-2025.
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Last year's rate cuts were in insurance actually against the other part of the Fed's mandate.
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They didn't want the labor market to break down, but that downturn in the labor market never really fully materialized.
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Unemployment has remained pretty low.
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Hiring has remained strong.
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Essentially, they've looked at the economy and said it can take higher rates for now.
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And then on the inflation side of things, it has been very complicated because there are three big things that have happened.
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One, tariffs, the tariff regime rolled out, which kind of throws sand into the gears of the global economy and just raises prices dramatically.
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Two, the Iran war broke out and caused an energy shock.
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That's probably the biggest thing.
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And then actually three, the enormous AI investment boom that has been propping up the economy has actually been working against the Fed a little bit because it is adding this big supply and this big injection of activity to the economy, causing it to run a little bit hotter than
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than it would have the AI boom not happen.
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So those three headed monster is the thing that is keeping inflation higher than the Fed wants it to be.
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I actually think this is a good example of how statistics can lie a little bit.
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Not lie, or just basically portray a picture that a lot of people may not be experiencing themselves.
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Because for a long time, higher earners have been responsible for bigger and bigger amounts of consumer spending.
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We see this across lots of industries.
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Showing 461–480 of 33,236 · page 24 of 1662
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